Seriously, who do we hit first, and how?

How about big pharma and exclusively using water-boarding so nobody gets killed? Is that too far? What is too far? What is an is not acceptable in terms of punishment for extreme destruction of the earth and general oppression/enslavement of humanity? Are we really going to give them a slap on the wrist while torturing pot dealers?

I think torture is always wrong and calling for it is always wrong. Your comment, as responded to, has no place here and is hateful and vile, no matter how justified and entitled to violence you feel you are. Go soak your head.

You're harmless, and would never deserve such punishment. You don't understand this, but some people aren't like you and require hard boundaries. Hard boundaries as in pain.

You have to understand: not everyone is like you. Not everyone is harmless.

So on top of environmental collapse we can have social collapse as well? Sounds like a recipe for success.

A social collapse would coincide with an economic collapse and lower emissions. Honestly, speaking as a former climate change-adjacent geophysicist, I'd take it.

It is becoming fairly clear we will have revolutions. At some point, things will deteriorate to the point it will happen. Normalcy bias is a hell of a drug, and we are all sniffing it really hard.

The ruling class is unwilling and unable to solve this or any other wide-scale societal problem we have. Ruling classes never yield power without force.

Why do you prefer that outcome? Social and economic collapse could cost millions of lives, and mostly among the poorest parts of the world.

We're headed towards a collapse either way, with many, many millions dying. Very possibly billions over the course of this century. Either it's a major society upheaval leading towards positive change, or it's just general societal breakdown as civilization as we know it becomes impossible. Our current political-economic system is simply not up to the challenge, so not having upheaval is not an option.

A comparatively mild collapse sooner is better than later. This really is an existential threat like we have never experienced.

Have you considered alternative scenarios?

Yes. This is something I think about quite a bit, since I did used to work on climate-change related geophysics. If we started combating climate change decades ago, we wouldn't need such a drastic change. Realistically, no real change will happen for another decade, but our backs are already up against a wall.

Having waited so long, the changes required are unbelievably radical and painful, in that our entire way of life must change. AOC and Bernie's Green New Deal is woefully inadequate, and that's considered extreme. I can't see that happening when we can't even figure out how to make paper face masks.

But if human civilization has flourished in much warmer earth in the past, why are you so convinced that a warming globe is necessarily a bad thing? Humans seem pretty adaptable, especially if the change is slow like climate change seems to be. That would seem like a good alternative view to investigate before putting all your money on "destroy the current world order".

Human civilization has not flourished in a much warmer earth. That is 100% falase.

Human civilization has only existed during the Holocene, which has been a period of stability. We are now in the Anthropocene.

These changes are also very fast. By 2050, we will be living in a different world. Even in the 2030s, climate change will cause massive amounts of instability in developing countries due to droughts and famines, and huge migrant crises. It only takes 2-3 major food producing regions to have significantly failed harvests at once to have a famine on the scale of 1-2 billion going hungry. With a stable climate, this hasn't happened. However, it becomes more likely all the time.

The changes we are facing will lead to large portions of the tropics being uninhabitable without A/C and unsuitable for agriculture. That is where most of the world lives. This change is happening very fast, faster than we can adapt. Our industrial civilization depends on immense resource consumption on a global scale. This will be completely disrupted.

Trust me, I know a lot about the climate and its effects. It is a bad thing. No one seriously says it isn't. It's delusional to think it could be a good thing. Your line of thinking is just a continuation of the denialist garbage that got us into this mess.

I'll take your word you are an expert, and what you say sounds alarming. I cannot make all the connections, though. For instance, much of the Middle East lives in temperatures that fry eggs during the midday. I was in Afghanistan during the summer, not always with A/C. Not pleasant, but I wouldn't say uninhabitable. I also wonder about being unsuitable for agriculture, since plants flourish in greenhouses, which are quite hot and humid.

On the other hand, I can accept there will be large droughts, famines, and huge human migrations in the future. Our population continues to both climb dramatically, while congregating in a few very dense areas, mostly the cities where living is easier. That is clearly an unsustainable model.

I used to be a glaciologist, specifically. People don't grow significant crops in those hot deserts. Afganistan has hot summers, but not horrifically hot compared to some areas. Afganistan also has low humidity, which is key for our ability to perspire. The worst-hit areas are humid tropical climates.

Middle eastern populations in the hottest and humidest areas usually have AC. Most other places aren't quite so bad, due to lower humidity if not lower temperature. Traditional populations lived in stone or mud brick houses that can withstand the midday heat better.

There has been several occasions recently where the heat index has gotten near fatal in Rajasthan and Punjab, which caused quite a few deaths.

Greenhouses aren't that hot, usually not more than 30C. Not many plants like it super hot. Even plants in hot climates will do better if its a bit cooler. With hotter climates, plants (at least the ones people rely on) undergo more heat stress and have shorter growing seasons. Much of Africa is drying, especially the Sahel. Similar situations will occur in many parts of S. America and Asia.

A big distinciton here is timeframe and how much mitigation happens. We are more or less locked into a 3C rise, which is really bad. And that's our effective best-case scenario. However, if mitigation fails, and it has thus far, a 7C rise by the end of the century is not out of the question. That will lead to a total civilizational collapse and probably eventual human extinction. We wouldn't be able to maintain an industrial civilization in such an environment, and we'd have to fall back on localized, less industrial production. But, the environment would be so degraded that non-intensive agriculture probably couldn't provide enough food to stave off continual population declines.

Thanks, this is more convincing. So it looks like it is the,combination of great heat and humidity. Would that combination lead to more cloud cover and then back to cooling?

And, thank you for answering my questions, vs just dismissing me as a denialist. The way you are approaching the issue is making it easier for me to understand.

Standing up is the opposite of collapse. Failure to stand up is required for the collapse to go ahead.

Why do you think rebellion is synonymous with standing up?

It's not synonymous with it, it does entail it. Why would you think resistance against sleepwalking into the collapse of human civilization as something deserving of such a title, which would entail incredible suffering, is synonymous with "society collapsing"?

To quote the White Rose: "If a person cannot even summon the strength to demand his rights, then there is nothing left for him but destruction." If someone person equates that with random fighting and murder that says nothing about resistance as such, it's very clearly attacking the weakest form of the argument.

Rebellions are sometimes the only recipe for success. Think about Women's suffrage movement, civil rights movement, anti war movements etc.

I agree civil movements and bloodless revolutions through the political process are good. Violent overthrows are bad, AFAIK almost always resulting in a much worse regime than the one being overthrown. The USA's founding is a fortunate divergence from the norm. More recently, look at the Bolshevik revolution, resulting in over 100 million dead.

Agree. I should be more specific next time. By "rebel" I don't mean violent overthrows. I mean peaceful civil disobedience.

Btw, here is some science on violent vs. non-violent uprisings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

Yeah, how many are dead from the american revolution? And how many were lifted out of poverty by each revolution? Since you can apparently trace all of history following a revolution to that revolution, how do you add up these numbers? While we're at it, how many deaths do you pin on the british empire and the russian empire?

How many were lifted out of poverty through capitalism, despite massive, bloody revolutions that resulted in genocidal regimes that killed untold millions of their own citizens?