I don’t know anymore… I’m more confused about the severity of climate change as time goes on.
Climate change is not a big deal if the life a person is expecting to live is only a slightly more stressful version of a life without climate change (I think this is where we are currently). It is a big deal if it has the same degree of impact of that a mental health disorder might have - work, relationships, and overall lifestyle are significantly impacted and that person needs to make major adjustments to learn to live with it. I don’t see a middle ground here, but I’m also not thinking that hard about it.
I don’t know where we are going. And yes… I know the world is a big place and some people are going to feel the worst aspects, but to keep things simple (and relevant) I’m only thinking of other “middle” class Canadians living in large urban centers. If this argument takes into account every person on earth then the answer is just going to be a meaningless ‘yes’.
I had a conversation with a friend. A well educated friend, who has devoted his life to the cause
He thought he was fighting for his children or grandchildren. I told him no, we’ve been saying that for two generations - this is our problem. We will feel the hurt. Your water supply is not guaranteed, our food so supply could run dry one year. Our parents were told this was a future generation problem - we’re that generation… This is already happening
In the US, in the EU - some places are already feeling it, but we will all feel it soon
Shouldn’t we put more weight into your friends opinion?
Another person replied to me with a list of things that are a constant in our world. Except ‘collapse of civ’ which is exactly the kind of conclusion I’m raising doubts on as there isn’t as much to support it. Again, focused on regional impacts and not places that are going to be obliterated.
Another person said ‘wait till permafrost melts’. This is already baked into models, it’s not expected that all permafrost is going to melt everywhere.
Idk. I’m eagerly waiting for AR7 and I’m regularly checking in on a few places. I’m aware of the narrative that IPCC leans towards conservative estimates or is overly optimistic. Internet forums don’t seem to offer much to this conversation and it’s mostly people echoing what they already believe. I’m not seeing any exceptions to that norm here in this thread.
That’s not the effects I’m talking about - what we were talking about specifically was water shortages, across the US we’ve drained aquifers that will need centuries to build back up. Another fun side effect is crazy sinkholes
Droughts and lack of snowpack obviously play into it, but across the Western states it’s already a critical problem - and we’ve done very little to address it. We don’t have a plan, and the problem isn’t going to fix itself - wild ideas like water pipelines across multiple states have been proposed, we could provide drinking water in tankers temporarily, but ultimately this just buys a bit more time. This is a right now problem - we’ve been rationing and talking about this future problem since I was a child, but water needs have only gone up
As for other similar issues happening right now - wildfires across the continent, massive floods everywhere, massive crop failures in China and India, Spain turning into a desert, algae blooms killing already depleted fisheries, deadly heatwaves, polar vortexes, bigger and slower hurricanes hitting places unprepared for them - the list goes on
It’s a right now problem. It affects the vulnerable first, but it’s already touched all of us in one way or another. But what happens when the sinks in salt lake City run dry? What happens when someone’s house is burned down in a wildfire, twice? What happens when the power grid of Texas keeps going down every heat wave or cold snap?
People who can move will move. People who can’t will die in place or become climate refugees when things get bad enough. It will be just inconveniences and news of distant tragedies until somewhere hits a tipping point - hopefully you’re not in the wrong place at the wrong time, but even then you’ll feel the aftershocks
One thing to bear in mind, is that the draining of the water tables in the western U.S. is completely artificial, as in we could easily refill them with correct management. The issue is a crazy, CRAZY amount of water (inefficient flood irrigation farming accounts for 75% of water use out west) is wasted on growing alfalfa for export, or almonds, and farmers are able to do this due to water rights from 100 years ago.
If we just stopped the farmers from wasting water alone, we’d have enough water to replenish and drastically refill our aquafers.
I don’t know anymore… I’m more confused about the severity of climate change as time goes on.
Climate change is not a big deal if the life a person is expecting to live is only a slightly more stressful version of a life without climate change (I think this is where we are currently). It is a big deal if it has the same degree of impact of that a mental health disorder might have - work, relationships, and overall lifestyle are significantly impacted and that person needs to make major adjustments to learn to live with it. I don’t see a middle ground here, but I’m also not thinking that hard about it.
I don’t know where we are going. And yes… I know the world is a big place and some people are going to feel the worst aspects, but to keep things simple (and relevant) I’m only thinking of other “middle” class Canadians living in large urban centers. If this argument takes into account every person on earth then the answer is just going to be a meaningless ‘yes’.
I had a conversation with a friend. A well educated friend, who has devoted his life to the cause
He thought he was fighting for his children or grandchildren. I told him no, we’ve been saying that for two generations - this is our problem. We will feel the hurt. Your water supply is not guaranteed, our food so supply could run dry one year. Our parents were told this was a future generation problem - we’re that generation… This is already happening
In the US, in the EU - some places are already feeling it, but we will all feel it soon
Shouldn’t we put more weight into your friends opinion?
Another person replied to me with a list of things that are a constant in our world. Except ‘collapse of civ’ which is exactly the kind of conclusion I’m raising doubts on as there isn’t as much to support it. Again, focused on regional impacts and not places that are going to be obliterated.
Another person said ‘wait till permafrost melts’. This is already baked into models, it’s not expected that all permafrost is going to melt everywhere.
Idk. I’m eagerly waiting for AR7 and I’m regularly checking in on a few places. I’m aware of the narrative that IPCC leans towards conservative estimates or is overly optimistic. Internet forums don’t seem to offer much to this conversation and it’s mostly people echoing what they already believe. I’m not seeing any exceptions to that norm here in this thread.
The few places:
An article/search topic that swayed me a while ago:
I expect that geoengineering is going to happen on a larger scale, it would be counter to how people operate to not pursue that option.
That’s not the effects I’m talking about - what we were talking about specifically was water shortages, across the US we’ve drained aquifers that will need centuries to build back up. Another fun side effect is crazy sinkholes
Droughts and lack of snowpack obviously play into it, but across the Western states it’s already a critical problem - and we’ve done very little to address it. We don’t have a plan, and the problem isn’t going to fix itself - wild ideas like water pipelines across multiple states have been proposed, we could provide drinking water in tankers temporarily, but ultimately this just buys a bit more time. This is a right now problem - we’ve been rationing and talking about this future problem since I was a child, but water needs have only gone up
As for other similar issues happening right now - wildfires across the continent, massive floods everywhere, massive crop failures in China and India, Spain turning into a desert, algae blooms killing already depleted fisheries, deadly heatwaves, polar vortexes, bigger and slower hurricanes hitting places unprepared for them - the list goes on
It’s a right now problem. It affects the vulnerable first, but it’s already touched all of us in one way or another. But what happens when the sinks in salt lake City run dry? What happens when someone’s house is burned down in a wildfire, twice? What happens when the power grid of Texas keeps going down every heat wave or cold snap?
People who can move will move. People who can’t will die in place or become climate refugees when things get bad enough. It will be just inconveniences and news of distant tragedies until somewhere hits a tipping point - hopefully you’re not in the wrong place at the wrong time, but even then you’ll feel the aftershocks
One thing to bear in mind, is that the draining of the water tables in the western U.S. is completely artificial, as in we could easily refill them with correct management. The issue is a crazy, CRAZY amount of water (inefficient flood irrigation farming accounts for 75% of water use out west) is wasted on growing alfalfa for export, or almonds, and farmers are able to do this due to water rights from 100 years ago.
If we just stopped the farmers from wasting water alone, we’d have enough water to replenish and drastically refill our aquafers.