A great positive feedback loop, no? Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) creates a need for more AC which in turn creates more ACC which furthers the need for more AC. Yeah I don't see this going well for the next few decades.
The scariest thing to me about climate change is the rate at which it is happening. We bought a house in the Bay Area 11 years ago. It didn't have air conditioning. The builder said we wouldn't need it. We added a unit anyway and for the first few years we barely used it, maybe one or two weeks out of the year to cool the top floor on exceptionally hot days, which back then was the low 90s.
Since then, 100-plus-degree days have been happening more and more regularly. We're adding a second AC unit because there have been days that the first one just can't keep up. All this in 11 years.
There was a time when I was fairly sure that climate change would lead to the collapse of civilization, but there was no way I'd live to see it. Now I'm not so sure about the latter.
[UPDATE] There is also the sobering realization that even if we brought carbon emissions to zero tomorrow (which is obviously not going to happen) even that would not actually solve the problem. We're at 50% over pre-industrial CO2 with no viable way of getting rid of it, so at best it's going to stay that way for a long, long time.
If you include all known positive and negative feedback loops we're talking about human extinction within a couple decades. Furthermore, most of what the public thinks is the key leverage points of climate change generally turn out to be something else. Ie deforestation for meat production is the dominant human made climate mover, not CO2 from energy use. All other natural feedback loops then end up being force multipliers.
Source? We are destroying a lot of the negative feedback mechanisms (e.g. clearing rain forests, destroying the tundra, etc) what makes you sure we will be okay? A 4-5 degree Celsius increase in temperature is looking likely by 2100. If that is extrapolated out a few million years doesn’t seem plausible.
This comment is profoundly ignorant of the nature of anthropogenic climate change. It doesn't mean that "things will get warmer and happier for everyone."
It means severe water shortages, mass migration of climate refugees, xenophobia and the resulting political turmoil, huge increases in lung cancer from wildfire smoke, frequent flooding, destruction of infrastructure to the tune of billions of dollars, mass extinction of species, etc.
We don't even know what happens when certain feedback loops get triggered and a flywheel accelerant effect begins.
It seems like we keep discovering new positive feedback loops for global warming. Less ice means less reflection. Warmer arctic means more methane from permafrost. Desertification means less carbon capture. There was a recent article in Scientific American about likely changes in cloud formation from AGW. Some clouds reflect sun (cooling), while others trap heat (warming). Guess which are likely to increase?
I doubt humans will go extinct, but yeah... we're screwed.
I have not meant to sound apocalyptic, just wanted to say that after that time frame natural positive feedback loop of CO2 will take over and there is not chance of reversing, at that point it is big unknown.
But it will be very difficult for billions to survive as crops will start failing on regular bases, floods etc...
The issue with climate change is exactly that: change. Doesn't matter if it get colder, dryer, wetter, warmer than it used too. It is a huge undertaking to change the built environment to handle conditions that were once seen as exceptional. Houses, streets and waterways are normally replaced/adjusted on the scale of multiple decades or even centuries. Significant climate change is affecting areas everywhere on a single decade timescale. So infrastructure is now outdated much more quickly, and needs to be replaced/upgraded at a higher pace. This if hugely expensive and will lead to more waste and more emissions. And that is just for the built world on which we have a lot of influence. The natural world doesn't always have the ability to adjust; lots of habits are suffering and species are going extinct.
I'm of the unpopular opinion that climate change has the potential to be a net positive for humanity over the long term:
+ Protecting coastal (and some inland) populations against higher water levels will be huge infrastructure projects that will allow us to re-imagine cities, many of which are even now burdened by very ancient designs and infrastructure. This will be a great use of resources that will put people to work on grand and civically engaging projects. Work to be proud of.
+ New coastal land will be created and deserts will slowly re-green, encouraging populations to migrate to and develop areas previously thought worthless. With that we'll have an opportunity to build thoughtful, efficient cities and the infrastructure to connect them from the ground up. Imagine the wealth and opportunities, economic and political, that would be created developing Greenland, Antarctica, or the Sahara.
+ Total potential agricultural output of the world will increase drastically, possibly making food cheaper for all.
+ Human civilization will be forced to recognize that we exist at the mercy of a bountiful Earth, which might make some of those other celestial bodies a bit more appealing.
Of course some obvious consequences will be painful, but I think change isn't automatically bad, and that the best of humanity always comes through during periods of non-violent adversity. A slow but certain and predictable warming of the Earth's climate is just that.
Generally speaking future is more like the present than most would wish. Climate change is really the biggest change coming and one given the progress that’s been made, likely only going to get worse, not better.
There are also lots of negative feedback loops - photosynthesis, cloud albedo, radiation, oceans, at some point human population might start shrinking...
In the 80s when they were talking about 6C increases in temperature I figured that we would be getting the typical summer 24C moving to 30C and winter would freeze less. They likely talked about more intense storms too but I really didn't anticipate frequent heat waves and all this flooding.
I was and remain appalled that Kyoto fell through after America pulled out and I still aghast at how little commitment there is with the Paris accords, its a very limited deal and even then no one is doing much. We better get our act together soon or we are going to end up displacing 2 billion people and that world is going to be very different, I doubt it ends up good. We are already at the stage where the cost of mitigating these heat waves and frequent flooding is enormous and largely not met yet and its only going to get worse.
I just don't see that happening, especially given the extremely slow rate at which climate is changing. Personally, I haven't really perceived the change in my lifetime (30+ years). Of course, I'm not saying it's not happening, just my perception of it. Care to share some articles that support this scenario?
There’s no plausible scenario where climate change drives global GDP growth negative over the next 50 year. None.
Yea uncontrolled climate change will make life worse than had it not happened. But no it will not outweigh the cumulative beneficial effects of baseline economic growth.
Not to diminish the threat, but I think the impact of climate change on human civilization is often overrated. Countries most affected will include India, Bangladesh, Indonesia... none of them in the modern global powers. What I expect 50-100 years from now is:
In most affected countries, mass precarity, mass migrations, hardening of borders, end of the relative post-WW2 world peace.
In Europe/USA, flooded areas will be evacuated/relocated. Living conditions will worsen as a result of the end of globalization.
In Russia/Greenland/Canada, warming temperatures will create more temperate areas. This will create new economic hubs, and the economic growth paradigm will prevail. Business will continue, and conditions will worsen for another 100 years.
After that, a sizeable portion of Earth will be unfit for humans, and human population will have decreased a great deal. But no end of the human race visible for now.
Climate change is going to be our "great filter". I don't see any will to fix this at any level of society. As anthropogenic climate change worsens, wealthy societies are going to turn inward and double down on xenophobia to prevent migration from poorer nations more affected by climate change. The deterioration of the climate and of our geopolitical organizations will make it increasingly difficult to solve this problem and I don't see a happy ending for our species.
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