Guest “Really?!?” by David Middleton
Do you know that “?!?” is an interrobang? Me too until I started writing this post.
What comes after the coming climate turmoil?
VIA PARAG KHANNA
August 15, 2022 7:55 AM EDT
Khanna is the founder of FutureMap and the author of a new book MOVE: The force that eradicated us.
In 2021, global carbon dioxide emissions will reach 36.3 billion tons, the highest volume ever recorded. This year, the number of international refugees will surpass 30 million, also the highest number ever. As sea levels and temperatures rise and geopolitical tensions flare, it’s hard to avoid concluding that humanity is headed towards systemic collapse. Superpowers will have no salvation: Caught in a “new Cold War,” the United States oscillates between populism and incompetence, while China remains locked at home and alienated from many nations. in another country.
We’re not good at predicting the next five days, let alone five years.
[…]
Today, talking about the collapse of civilization is fashionable. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Statuses that just 1.5 degrees Celsius will be devastating to the world food system by 2025.
[…]
Really?!?
2025 is only three years away. Let’s go to data.
Crop yield
Daily food supply per capita
The article actually got worse
Meanwhile, most recently IPCC Report warns that we must reverse emissions by 2025 or face irreversible accelerated disruption in key ecosystems, and even if the goals of the Paris agreement are realized, a 2.4 degrees Celsius increase is all but inevitable. In other words, the “worst-case” RCP 8.5 scenario used in many climate models is indeed a baseline.
RCP8.5 is almost as physically impossible as human imagination. Atmospheric CO2 will probably double the assumed pre-industrial level by the end of the century.
Climate sensitivity derives from the closest thing to actual direct observed measurements (instrumentation) yielding climate sensitivities ranging from harmless to slightly concerning. It is important to note that equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is not an important parameter. The transient climate response (TCR) is what’s important. It is warming that occurs simultaneously with the increase of CO in the atmosphere2 and it usually only accounts for about 1/2 to 2/3 of the ECS. So 2°C ECS could be equivalent to a temperature increase of 1.0 to 1.3°C when CO is in the atmosphere2 concentration doubled. The rest of the ECS warming theoretically occurs over the next 500 years, or so, as Trenberth is missing heat returns from the depths of the oceans. Anywhere between 0.5 and 0.8°C of warming predicted by TCR has occurred… Assume debate While the 2.0°C ECS estimate is reasonable, “business as usual” will lead to only 0.5°C or less warming by 2100.
And worse
Let’s assume that we are indeed facing a worst-case scenario in 2050: Hundreds of millions of people are killed in heat waves and wildfires, earthquakes and tsunamis, droughts and floods, failures. state and protracted war.
Then he switched the channel to Thanos
But even in the most dire situations, billions of people will exist.
[…]
So where will young people surviving today’s storms be concentrated in the next 20-30 years? What technologies will underpin our future societies and economies? What new civilization model awaits us?
He ends up with some plotlines from almost every post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie ever made. I wish I had time to mock every paragraph of the article.
Dr. Parag Khanna and his PhD in international relations have won the Billy Madison Lifetime Achievement Award.
Presenter
Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie (2013) – “Food Supplies”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Taken from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply’ [Online Resource]
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