8 ms·

It was inevitable we'd get to the point where climate change began substantially disrupting ecology and human livelihoods. Looks like we're ahead of schedule.

by lukeify 1mo ago

It was inevitable we'd get to the point where climate change began substantially disrupting ecology and human livelihoods. Looks like we're ahead of schedule. People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen.

gottorf 1mo ago
> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen. The rhetoric is all well and good, but if you look at the numbers according to the WMO[0], deaths from climate-related hazards have been dropping steadily in the 50-year period from 1970 to 2019, even as atmospheric CO2 went from ~326ppm to ~410ppm and the world population more than doubled. That's not a per capita decrease; it's an absolute decrease, from over 50k deaths worldwide the 70s to fewer than 20k in the 2010s. All of this is due to the increased ability of humans to deal with what the climate might throw at them, mostly due to cheap energy unlocked by fossil fuels during that time. Remember, there are no countries that are both rich and have a low per capita energy usage. Surplus energy allows humans to build the infrastructure that makes them more resilient to disasters. If I had to wager, more people will suffer and die in the coming decades from efforts to combat climate change (i.e. hamstring energy production and usage) than from climate change itself. You can already see this in the anti-air conditioning sentiment in parts of Europe. [0]: https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564 https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564
- none2585 1mo ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- anon7000 1mo ago
  Look, I think you made some good points, but at the same time, humans have become better at handling the climate because we’ve been able to predict it and have found solutions to certain known issues. What happens when it gets less predictable, like when certain regions get much less water for an extended period, is very much unknown. Your last claim makes no sense. Is there actually a widespread political effort to ban air conditioning or make it hard to get in Europe? That certainly isn’t the case in the US. And yet hot summers are still killer in cities which aren’t accustomed to them: that’s climate change doing the killing. Solar is just about the most abundant source of energy on the planet, and easily decentralized. Plugin solar is becoming increasingly popular and cheap, for example. I think energy production would be much more abundant and directly in control of the people if governments stopped subsidizing energy sources that need massive amounts of resources just to keep running. Why not give solar an advantage when every watt installed can just… work by itself for the next three decades? Every watt of a gas plant needs you to figure out who to buy gas from forever.
  - throwaway473825 1mo ago
    Regarding air conditioning in Europe, I suspect that there are other interests at play given that there has been zero pushback against air conditioning in cars. Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.
    - danw1979 1mo ago
      At least here in the UK, recent revisions to the default planning rules around heat pumps (“Permitted Development” legislation) removed the restriction that an install be “used solely for heating purposes” and revised this to “not be used solely for the purpose of cooling”. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant also permits cooling - it’s based on the heating credentials of a unit only. So in Britain at least, installing cooling systems in private residences seems to be getting easier.
    - watwut 1mo ago
      [flagged]
- wat10000 1mo ago
  The two are racing each other. So far, human adaptation is winning. But climate change is just getting started. The change that happened over the last 50 years is tiny compare to what will happen over the next 50. It may well start winning that race.
- anonzzzies 1mo ago
  all airconditioning brands had massive uptick in sales in Europe; Spain and other southern countries over 100%. what anti air conditioning sentiment?
  - watwut 1mo ago
    [flagged]
timr 1mo ago
[flagged]
- defrost 1mo ago
  Your linked figure confirms that 2018 was cooler than things are today. The chapter 11 temperature over view is concerning for the consequences: The frequency and intensity of hot extremes will continue to increase and those of cold extremes will continue to decrease, at global and continental scales and in nearly all inhabited regions with increasing global warming levels. This will be the case even if global warming is stabilized at 1.5°C. Relative to present-day conditions, changes in the intensity of extremes would be at least double at 2°C, and quadruple at 3°C of global warming, compared to changes at 1.5°C of global warming. ... The frequency of hot temperature extreme events will very likely increase nonlinearly with increasing global warming, with larger percentage increases for rarer events. It's the harder to precisely predict potential tipping point changes that should really concern and motivate global changes to emissions.
  - timr 1mo ago
    > Your linked figure confirms that 2018 was cooler than things are today. So? what does that have to do with the question at hand? An 8 year change is irrelevant in the world of climate science. It's statistical noise in a system where cycles run for decades. Weather, not climate. > The chapter 11 temperature over view is concerning for the consequences: ...and then you quote the part that says exactly what I explained to you, as some kind of counter-argument? You will note that the part you quoted is, again, combining the types of extremes. They're not talking about just hot days. I honestly do not understand this need to fatalize data. You don't have a counterargument (because what I said was factually true) so your only rebuttal is to wave your hands and say that it's all scary. We can be honest -- the world is getting warmer -- and admit when the people predicting imminent death and destruction are exaggerating. This is good!
    - lukeify 1mo ago
      As the original poster you replied to, why do you think it's exaggeration to predict that people will die from increasingly strong heatwaves? This is already happening [0]. And: "For 2022, it was estimated that between 60,000 and 70,000 people in Europe died from heat (Ballester et al., 2023; Ballester et al., 2024)" It's extremely hypocritical of you to accuse me of exaggerating when your own presentation of facts is selective and not-representative of what we are seeing globally. An El Niño will only exacerbate heatwaves in some parts of the planet over the next 24 months. [0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-report-shows-2877-excess-deaths-caused-by-may-and-june-heatwaves https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-report-shows-2877-e... [1]: https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/observatory/topics/health-impacts/heat-and-health?activeTab=0055b3cc-e3f2-4d3f-9066-a8312d9be927 https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/observatory/topics/he...
timr 1mo ago
> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen. Yeah, people have been "predicting" it, but the fact is that this is currently mostly hyperbole, driven by bad reporting and activist exaggeration. What is happening, right now, is that winters are mostly getting warmer. Summers are getting hotter in certain places, but not at nearly the rate that cold days are decreasing -- and the evidence is weaker on a global scale. From the IPCC 6AR report, figure 11-9 shows it clearly: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure... Figure 11-2 shows it another way: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure... Even the IPCC report only gets to the "virtually certain" evidence level by combining the two claims: > The frequency and intensity of hot extremes (including heatwaves) have increased, and those of cold extremes have decreased on the global scale since 1950 (virtually certain). That's because, when you actually look at the data, it is abundantly clear that the increase in hot extremes are far less common than the decrease in cold extremes. Of course, when you take the ratio of the two, this looks worse, because the denominator is getting smaller. Chapter 11 is worth reading. You will be shocked how many of the widely reported memes about extreme weather and climate are just not supported by good data: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/ I recommend in particular going through the figures, and looking at how many of them are model predictions (nearly all), versus plots of historical data. Setting aside the debates about model quality, etc., surely we can all agree that predictions are not evidence?
- mr_toad 1mo ago
  Go back and compare some of the earlier IPCC reports and see which bits have been left out. The worst case scenarios keep getting removed, and the best case scenarios are based on projections of CO2 emissions which are highly unrealistic. Official reports have been downplaying the impact for decades, while countries have been setting climate targets that they had no intention of achieving.
  - 1mo ago
WheatMillington 1mo ago
Way more people die of being exposed to the cold than exposed to the heat. So you could make a good argument that weather events save more lives than they cost by increasing the temperature of marginal zones where people otherwise freeze.
- jdlshore 1mo ago
  > Way more people die of being exposed to the cold than exposed to the heat. I was skeptical of this claim, so I looked it up. You’re right. Globally, about 9x as many people die due to cold-related causes than heat-related causes. It’s not freezing, though, but longer-term effects like kidney failure in elderly people. [1] I’m still dubious about the argument that weather events could save lives, though, partially because climate change makes weather more extreme, not simply “more pleasant for people in colder climates.” [1] https://ourworldindata.org/part-one-how-many-people-die-from-extreme-temperatures-and-how-could-this-change-in-the-future https://ourworldindata.org/part-one-how-many-people-die-from...

by lukeify 1mo ago

gottorf 1mo ago

> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen. The rhetoric is all well and good, but if you look at the numbers according to the WMO[0], deaths from climate-related hazards have been dropping steadily in the 50-year period from 1970 to 2019, even as atmospheric CO2 went from ~326ppm to ~410ppm and the world population more than doubled. That's not a per capita decrease; it's an absolute decrease, from over 50k deaths worldwide the 70s to fewer than 20k in the 2010s. All of this is due to the increased ability of humans to deal with what the climate might throw at them, mostly due to cheap energy unlocked by fossil fuels during that time. Remember, there are no countries that are both rich and have a low per capita energy usage. Surplus energy allows humans to build the infrastructure that makes them more resilient to disasters. If I had to wager, more people will suffer and die in the coming decades from efforts to combat climate change (i.e. hamstring energy production and usage) than from climate change itself. You can already see this in the anti-air conditioning sentiment in parts of Europe. [0]: https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564 https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564

none2585 1mo ago
[flagged]
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
anon7000 1mo ago
Look, I think you made some good points, but at the same time, humans have become better at handling the climate because we’ve been able to predict it and have found solutions to certain known issues. What happens when it gets less predictable, like when certain regions get much less water for an extended period, is very much unknown. Your last claim makes no sense. Is there actually a widespread political effort to ban air conditioning or make it hard to get in Europe? That certainly isn’t the case in the US. And yet hot summers are still killer in cities which aren’t accustomed to them: that’s climate change doing the killing. Solar is just about the most abundant source of energy on the planet, and easily decentralized. Plugin solar is becoming increasingly popular and cheap, for example. I think energy production would be much more abundant and directly in control of the people if governments stopped subsidizing energy sources that need massive amounts of resources just to keep running. Why not give solar an advantage when every watt installed can just… work by itself for the next three decades? Every watt of a gas plant needs you to figure out who to buy gas from forever.
- throwaway473825 1mo ago
  Regarding air conditioning in Europe, I suspect that there are other interests at play given that there has been zero pushback against air conditioning in cars. Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.
  - danw1979 1mo ago
    At least here in the UK, recent revisions to the default planning rules around heat pumps (“Permitted Development” legislation) removed the restriction that an install be “used solely for heating purposes” and revised this to “not be used solely for the purpose of cooling”. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant also permits cooling - it’s based on the heating credentials of a unit only. So in Britain at least, installing cooling systems in private residences seems to be getting easier.
  - watwut 1mo ago
    [flagged]
wat10000 1mo ago
The two are racing each other. So far, human adaptation is winning. But climate change is just getting started. The change that happened over the last 50 years is tiny compare to what will happen over the next 50. It may well start winning that race.
anonzzzies 1mo ago
all airconditioning brands had massive uptick in sales in Europe; Spain and other southern countries over 100%. what anti air conditioning sentiment?
- watwut 1mo ago
  [flagged]

timr 1mo ago

[flagged]

defrost 1mo ago
Your linked figure confirms that 2018 was cooler than things are today. The chapter 11 temperature over view is concerning for the consequences: The frequency and intensity of hot extremes will continue to increase and those of cold extremes will continue to decrease, at global and continental scales and in nearly all inhabited regions with increasing global warming levels. This will be the case even if global warming is stabilized at 1.5°C. Relative to present-day conditions, changes in the intensity of extremes would be at least double at 2°C, and quadruple at 3°C of global warming, compared to changes at 1.5°C of global warming. ... The frequency of hot temperature extreme events will very likely increase nonlinearly with increasing global warming, with larger percentage increases for rarer events. It's the harder to precisely predict potential tipping point changes that should really concern and motivate global changes to emissions.
- timr 1mo ago
  > Your linked figure confirms that 2018 was cooler than things are today. So? what does that have to do with the question at hand? An 8 year change is irrelevant in the world of climate science. It's statistical noise in a system where cycles run for decades. Weather, not climate. > The chapter 11 temperature over view is concerning for the consequences: ...and then you quote the part that says exactly what I explained to you, as some kind of counter-argument? You will note that the part you quoted is, again, combining the types of extremes. They're not talking about just hot days. I honestly do not understand this need to fatalize data. You don't have a counterargument (because what I said was factually true) so your only rebuttal is to wave your hands and say that it's all scary. We can be honest -- the world is getting warmer -- and admit when the people predicting imminent death and destruction are exaggerating. This is good!
  - lukeify 1mo ago
    As the original poster you replied to, why do you think it's exaggeration to predict that people will die from increasingly strong heatwaves? This is already happening [0]. And: "For 2022, it was estimated that between 60,000 and 70,000 people in Europe died from heat (Ballester et al., 2023; Ballester et al., 2024)" It's extremely hypocritical of you to accuse me of exaggerating when your own presentation of facts is selective and not-representative of what we are seeing globally. An El Niño will only exacerbate heatwaves in some parts of the planet over the next 24 months. [0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-report-shows-2877-excess-deaths-caused-by-may-and-june-heatwaves https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-report-shows-2877-e... [1]: https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/observatory/topics/health-impacts/heat-and-health?activeTab=0055b3cc-e3f2-4d3f-9066-a8312d9be927 https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/observatory/topics/he...

timr 1mo ago

> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen. Yeah, people have been "predicting" it, but the fact is that this is currently mostly hyperbole, driven by bad reporting and activist exaggeration. What is happening, right now, is that winters are mostly getting warmer. Summers are getting hotter in certain places, but not at nearly the rate that cold days are decreasing -- and the evidence is weaker on a global scale. From the IPCC 6AR report, figure 11-9 shows it clearly: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure... Figure 11-2 shows it another way: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-11/figure... Even the IPCC report only gets to the "virtually certain" evidence level by combining the two claims: > The frequency and intensity of hot extremes (including heatwaves) have increased, and those of cold extremes have decreased on the global scale since 1950 (virtually certain). That's because, when you actually look at the data, it is abundantly clear that the increase in hot extremes are far less common than the decrease in cold extremes. Of course, when you take the ratio of the two, this looks worse, because the denominator is getting smaller. Chapter 11 is worth reading. You will be shocked how many of the widely reported memes about extreme weather and climate are just not supported by good data: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/ I recommend in particular going through the figures, and looking at how many of them are model predictions (nearly all), versus plots of historical data. Setting aside the debates about model quality, etc., surely we can all agree that predictions are not evidence?

mr_toad 1mo ago
Go back and compare some of the earlier IPCC reports and see which bits have been left out. The worst case scenarios keep getting removed, and the best case scenarios are based on projections of CO2 emissions which are highly unrealistic. Official reports have been downplaying the impact for decades, while countries have been setting climate targets that they had no intention of achieving.
- 1mo ago

WheatMillington 1mo ago

Way more people die of being exposed to the cold than exposed to the heat. So you could make a good argument that weather events save more lives than they cost by increasing the temperature of marginal zones where people otherwise freeze.

jdlshore 1mo ago
> Way more people die of being exposed to the cold than exposed to the heat. I was skeptical of this claim, so I looked it up. You’re right. Globally, about 9x as many people die due to cold-related causes than heat-related causes. It’s not freezing, though, but longer-term effects like kidney failure in elderly people. [1] I’m still dubious about the argument that weather events could save lives, though, partially because climate change makes weather more extreme, not simply “more pleasant for people in colder climates.” [1] https://ourworldindata.org/part-one-how-many-people-die-from-extreme-temperatures-and-how-could-this-change-in-the-future https://ourworldindata.org/part-one-how-many-people-die-from...