Humans have caused 1.5 °C of long-term global warming according to new estimates

Call me pessimistic but I don't think anything is going to change and a lot of people are going to die due to climate-forced migration.

That being said, it's a difficult topic to discuss rationally. Part of the issue is deciding on what your baseline is. Looking at the last 200 years tells a pretty limited view. Consider around 100,000 years ago when global temperatures were similar [1].

That raises some questions about what caused that spike but, more importantly, what caused it to lower. You can say "an ice age" but what really triggers an ice age?

My point here is that doomsday predictions of Venus-like runaway inflation I think are both unrealistic and unhelpful in actually motivating people about an otherwise very real problem. We really have no idea of the mechanics in place.

But like I say, we're going to do absolutely nothing about it anyway.

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-is-it-actually...

It’ll take a couple of mass casualty wet bulb events to shift the discourse from ‘it’s too expensive, just drill more’ to ‘oh shit whatever it takes’

The rate of temperature change happening currently is much greater than anything in the geologic record.

What use it is to ponder about what has triggered an ice age in the past, when that mechanism can’t possibly counteract what’s happening now?

It’s like thinking about starting blood pressure medication when you’re having a heart attack right now.

Sadly, I'm skeptical about that. Covid killed a million Americans and half of America thinks the real enemy was the government telling people to stay home and wear masks. Drive down I-5 of CA's central valley, and you'll see signs saying "Congress created dust bowl."

In coming decades, I fully expect to see people blaming renewable energy and carbon tax for whatever new climate disaster we end up with. Hopefully we could ignore them, in the same way adults stop entertaining toddlers when shit happens.

Nah the oil and gas companies will just say these web bulb events are acts of God and there's nothing we can do about them. And plenty of people would believe them.

The first few are probably going to occur in south Asia and the most you'll see from Americans is some casual victim blaming. It's their poor infrastructure. It's their overpopulation. etc.

It would happen in poor countries and won't result into much "discourse". It has already happened actually. Moreover, even if it happens in the rich countries, are companies & countries ready to ban crypto or AI training of LLMs ? Would we be okay to increase airline prices (by putting a tax) so that people fly less ? Will countries be willing to reduce thermal energy by prioritising solar, wind and nuclear energy ? Can all countries decide to reduce petroleum usage by putting a 100% tax on gas ? Or will be ready to go vegetarian and vegan for reducing cattle farming ? Will be okay to put fines on food wastage ? If not, then there won't be any "whatever it takes"

I don't think ice-core measurements give year-by-year resolution good enough to determine this, but it would be interesting to know if someone proved it.

Economically taxation would be the solution.

But the Carbon Tax credits/handling shows that we aren’t grown up enough to handle taxes properly.

That's not true [1]:

> There are twenty-five of these distinct warming-cooling oscillations (Dansgaard 1984) which are now commonly referred to as Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, or D-O cycles. One of the most surprising findings was that the shifts from cold stadials to the warm interstadial intervals occurred in a matter of decades, with air temperatures over Greenland rapidly warming 8 to 15°C (Huber et al. 2006). Furthermore, the cooling occurred much more gradually, giving these events a saw-tooth shape in climate records from most of the Northern Hemisphere (Figure 1).

The last time I brought this up, someone said (paraphrased) "that's only over Greenland". Yeah, the place they did measurements. Do you really think a change in air temperature of 8-15C over decades is repeatedly localized in just one place?

[1]: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-cli...

I envy your optimism but I see no evidence that this will be the case. People want to believe all sorts of things and they'll reject all evidence that contradicts their world view. Just look at:

- Millions who died in Covid

- Vaccines in general

- "The election was stolen"

- Wind turbines are killing the whales [1];

- "There's a migrant crime wave"

And so on.

As long as the cost of climate change can be shifted to the Global South, by force when necessary, it will continue. It's sobering how cruel people can be, particularly in groups, if they feel like their way of life is threatened, or even when they might theoretically be slightly inconvenienced, as demonstrated by the recent protests in Kayesville, UT over providing warming centers for people in need when the weather gets too cold [2].

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66928305

[2]: https://ksltv.com/705578/kaysville-homeowners-show-up-in-lar...

We’ll be lucky if people blame technology, instead of other groups of people that they are then motivated to take vengeance on. That is what I fear.

Indeed, any and all rebuttals seem to reduce to:

>Nice argument. Unfortunately I have coined the phrase "Axe the tax" and shall depict you as the soy wojak.

Well, the link you cite puts forward 2 hypotheses that could explain localized temperature change in Greenland, and does not mention "maybe this was global temperature change."

> Do you really think a change in air temperature of 8-15C over decades is repeatedly localized in just one place?

I don't understand your point. This isn't a question where we have to extrapolate from this one study - you can look at similar measurements done in other places and answer this question once and for all.

Instead, you simply declare the hypothesis wrong, because...? You don't bring up an argument, you just ask whether others really think that.

> Do you really think a change in air temperature of 8-15C over decades is repeatedly localized in just one place?

Sure .. we can see this kind of "stutter" in dynamic environments all the time, vortexes "pulsing" in stream water for example.

The "rapid warming" followed by "slow cooling" pattern speaks to a lower tempreture being the long term natural stable temp. for the local region duringthat much longer period .. but interrupted by a pulsing in the climatic cell stability that routinely brings warmth in from the equatorial zone - likely via water currents, possibly via air currents.

Such things can happen during stable global mean land|sea energy levels as that's literally just an average of the activity of all the cells across the planet.

> My point here is that doomsday predictions of Venus-like runaway inflation I think are both unrealistic

Then it's a good thing no credible source is saying Earth will be getting Venus-like temperatures