It's a very serious issue. All these global rich, Elites and WEF Gang, Politicians should sell all their private jets, SUV's, Expensive yatchs and all the other gas power vehicles and they should start using bicycles.
If you really think these elites doing these things will mean a damn thing against the scope of global annual carbon output (the vast majority on an industrial scale for industrial purposes), you have sommething of a misunderstanding of the scope of the problem and its solutions. Elites doing any of those things is little more than bland symbolism and virtue signaling.
Bear in mind that it matters little if you use a bike yet at the same time live a largely modern life of comforts that all alone involves connecting yourself to a vast underlying system of production that uses colossal amounts of carbon.
If such logic is the general idea among commentators here, it's hard to take their ideas seriously.
It might, indirectly, by giving them "skin in the game". Once personally inconvenienced by being forced to adopt green technologies, politicians may be more inclined to invest in making those technologies less inconvenient. We might see a surge in bicycle infrastructure funding, for example.
A nonsense hypothetical, of course; the primary issue with the "global elite" is that one cannot force them to do anything at all. If you could force them to sell their private jets, you could simply force them to pass eco-friendly laws directly.
Yes. The two sentences do not follow each other. It's a very serious issue, but the proposed solution is not only unfeasable (evil will be evil) but mostly it just does not solve the problem at all.
Problem with these predictions is the richest people look at them and say: No impact for me personally.
Do we have e.g. estimates about what happens to food production? Or is the problem just so complex that even predicting the consequences is near impossible?
On a net basis, food production is likely to increase. Plants grow faster when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere; it is warmer; and there is more moisture in the air. All of those are predicted (and observed!) effects of global warming.
The problem is distribution. Much of the newly-habitable growing zone is currently uninhabited - it's areas like the Canadian Shield, the Sahara, parts of Siberia. Meanwhile, some currently fertile areas like Northern Europe may become uninhabitable, as will densely-populated regions on the edge of habitability like the Middle East and South Asia.
Basically: expect wars and death, then abundance for the survivors.
There's some speculation involved, and a little hyperbole. Basically, if the gulf stream shuts down, Northern Europe will basically become virtually uninhabitable - not in the sense as in "nobody can live there", but more like "the population density supported will be more like Manitoba/Saskatchewan/Alberta or Mongolia/Kazakhstan". Scandinavia is the same latitude as Greenland and the UK/Germany/Poland is the same latitude as north/central Canada, after all. If the warming influence of the gulf stream disappears, expect the ports to freeze over (similar to the Hudson Bay) and the climate to become similar. It may be counteracted somewhat by general global warming - like the Northwest Passage may open up - but at best you should still expect climate more like Vladivostok or Juneau than present-day Europe.
AMOC/gulfstream shutdown is not a given, there is still scientific debate about it. But the scientific evidence is starting to pile up, along with evidence that circulation patterns are weakening right now. If you Google [amoc shutdown] you can read a quick overview.
That's been well-understood since the 1990s. Back then, it was clear from geological records that an increase of CO2 would disrupt the Atlantic currents. They had 50 year resolution for Europe, and the data showed that within fifty years of CO2 starting to tick up, most of Europe was stuck under ice (for centuries).
Since then, people say that the above is weak evidence, and are generally in denial of the science. As of a year or to ago, we've been able to measure the slowing and coming stoppage of the Atlantic currents. There's over 50-50 odds that some people reading this will live to see the next Eurpoean ice age. Much of France, Germany and things farther north are likely to end up under a glacier.
In the first map, the US habitable range moves north, then west. Look at what happens to South America. (Sadly, it isn't a world map).
The second to last map talks about crop yields directly. Look at the scale. They're predicting a 20% increase in yields in places like Wyoming and Montana (which are not exactly bread-basket states), and 50-92% losses in yields for California's central valley, and most of the US South. Yields in other countries might make up for it (I doubt it), but the US's agricultural yields are set to collapse.
The Propublica map is pretty illustrative. Note that the total size of ideal US habitability doesn't change. If anything, it increases under the "extreme warming" scenario.
But its shape is dramatically different. Key areas include the Dakotas, Montana, parts of the Basin & Range provinces, Modoc County in California - basically areas where virtually nobody lives now. Meanwhile densely populated parts of the American South, Texas, Florida, and the Southwest literally are becoming uninhabitable through wet bulb temperatures and sea level rise.
The crop yield picture is complex too. It's not actually true that we're looking at 50-92% losses in California's central valley. We're looking at ~13-44% in the southern Central Valley, as well as the Imperial Valley (basically those areas irrigated with Colorado River water). Also looking at 6.5-15.8% increases in other regions of California like the Salinas Valley, Bay Area, far north coast, Modoc County. Central Oregon and Washington and the Great Lakes region stand to benefit as well - these are not areas with large current agricultural production.
Expect upheaval. Humans don't do well when some people benefit and other people die for completely random reasons.
i remember news from 2023 that some counties in Vermont were hid by massive flooding (in 2023) although they were in the table from your article as the ones least likely to be hit by climate disasters (but hey, the stats are from 2020, so basically outdated anyway).
Meaning to say: nowhere is safe.
There are a couple sites that will let you put in your address and generate a report of how vulnerable your property and your community is to climate change.
Simple example was last year in Portugal, due to long months of dry soils, 80% of the harvest less than previous years, so you can observe a direct impact on people depending on harvests, means importing food, then more CO2 is generated due to imports, an infernal loop..
We sell them guns and profit off it... the same we've ever done.
What I'm really afraid of, if these global warming predictions come to pass, is that we will be so stupid that we will let millions of them to come to Europe. See what's already happening in the Mediterranean, etc. That would bring the war here.
dT becomes |dT| as soon as one points out the positives of higher temperature!
People also die from human stupidity and hubris (USSR experiments with agriculture). The arbitrary and idiotic policies of net zero could bring mass poverty and result in migrations and conflicts.
That may start changing sooner than you think. Search Google for "wet bulb temperature" and then check how parts in the India and China are so near it, and then consider than +1.5 on average, the sea wau less, the land way more.
