Re:July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
by mikeash on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @01:13PM
(#12345366)
I think the problem with your idea is that there's huge lag in the system. Even if all human CO2 production ceased today, there would still be huge changes for decades to come. A global catastrophe due to climate change would eventually put a stop to further climate change, but by then it'll be a little too late.
It's a bit like arguing that you can't die from jumping off a bridge, because then you wouldn't be alive to make the jump. It misses the important temporal relationships.
Re:July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
by seiferteric on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @01:24PM
(#12345487)
Not only that, but it's cumulative, all the CO2 from the past century+ is not going away very fast.
Re:July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
by mikeash on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @01:29PM
(#12345542)
Right, that's a big part of the lag. If climate change causes civilization to collapse, it'll still take decades or centuries for the built-up CO2 to drop back to normal levels. Plus the fact that emissions won't stop right away just because a bunch of people start starving.
Re:July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
by spdustin on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @01:57PM
(#12345837)
You seem to be overlooking the part of those predictions that deal with the societal effects that the forced migration of entire cultures would likely entail when those groups try to ensure their own survival as they leave behind their homelands because their land is under water / no longer arable / too hot / too cold.
War.
Re:July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
by CWuestefeld on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @03:21PM
(#12346661)
Not at all. If things ever got to the point of forced migrations, that migration would necessarily entail a plunge in their GDP, thus at least slowing the effect.
(The other replies to my GP point out a delay in the feedback loop. I'm still thinking on that part.)
The projections for increased CO2 emissions and thus warming are predicated on global increases in GDP, because greater consumption correlates to greater emissions.
Thus, we should expect that famine will not be the result of climate change, at least within any foreseeable range of change. Falling into famine would dramatically decrease GDPs, and thus forestall climate change. It seems people fail to realize this connection. The factors creating the problem are symptoms of overall prosperity.
I suppose it's possible for things to go non-linear and mess up that relationship. Perhaps we start to rely more on energy sources that are even dirtier (maybe people burn wood to economize, or misguided environmental regulations won't allow for cleaner natural gas to replace increasingly-dirty coal). Or, as I mentioned above, maybe some threshold is crossed where agriculture suddenly requires vastly greater energy input per calorie harvested. But barring very unlikely events like that, climate change will happen because we're ever more prosperous.