I have the feeling that many people (especially politicians) think that global warming is a linear process. It's not. It might even be exponential since some sources for climate-warming are affected by warmer climate. For example, melting ice that reflects sunlight back to space [https://arcticwwf.org/places/last-ice-area/].
I'm thinking about choosing a new place to live right now. Climate change is a big factor for that.
Sulfur dioxide aerosol injection in the stratosphere until carbon capture and decarbonization can catch up.
We desperately need an energy inexpensive way to sequester atmospheric carbon underground in stable (mineral) form. Hopefully we’ll see progress from Climeworks or similar concerns in this space.
As long as so many coal plants are happily smoking and even more are about to be build, I think the first priority is to shut them down and replace those, instead of experimenting with the already quite instable global climate, by injecting more chemicals.
And after we stop emmitting CO2, we can focus on artificial decarbonization. But I would rather invest in proven technology, like reforesting first.
In the field of active climate engineering one can try dispersing aluminum [0] or/and (synthetic) diamond micro-particles [1] in the stratosphere to reflect some of the Sun's light back into space. Especially useful because the effect is temporary and self-healing. An accidental "ice age" will resolve on its own in few months after one stops replenishing the stratosphere with the particles.
> Any control theory guys out there with suggestions?
Nothing small and cheap. We've been applying a massive forcing effect by adding billions of tons of CO2 per year to the atmosphere over decades. It's going to require a commensurate amount of effort, at the very least, to swing the needle back in the other direction.
Our best bet might be something crazy like using nukes to set off volcanoes to generate an ongoing low level 'nuclear winter' type effect. We'd have to be careful to pick the right volcanoes, though, to minimize the CO2 emitted by said volcanoes.
Don't forget about the fact that the amount of energy required to phase change 0°C ice into 0°C water is about the same amount of energy required to heat 0°C water to 79°C water...
It isn't even exponential, it might be much worse than that.
Tipping points have ability to change our climate in a very, very short time.
For example, Gulfstream breaking or redirecting can be a sudden event. Many people forget that Europe is very far north compared to its climate. If you chose a lattitude so that half Canadians live north of it and half south of it, that lattitude would intersect Croatia, Italy and Spain.
A sudden break in Gulfstream would bring immediate step change to European climate, complete crop and extensive infrastructure failure.
According to https://matadornetwork.com/read/where-canadians-live-south-l..., 70% of Canadians live south of the 49th parallel. That line is the US/Canada border for much of the country. (It isn't the border in the east, where Toronto, Ottawa, and Montréal are.)
Personally I would not buy property south of the 45th parallel anymore (in the northern hemisphere). Even north of that we have seen shockingly high temperatures. Anything south of that will become a hellscape within our lifetime.
Actually the problem is that a sizable cabal has come to understand the exponential function all too well. And has applied it to the theory and practice of capital investment in exchange for increasing returns (back to the investors) -- while externalizing cost (onto the environment, and those less empowered).
Calgary. It amazes me that despite the Chinese money laundering, the Trudeau Federal government willingness to back residential real estate through monetary, immigration, and legal policies; and just the general Canadian willingness to pretend everyone is well-intended and no one would lie in a mortgage application; that Calgary is the one place in Canada that remains somewhat reasonably priced. Multiple road and rail routes that would make it almost impossible for the city to be cut off (a la Vancouver last year). Reasonably good international airport that is set for expansion - although the expansion was very tied to energy.
Very well protected with mountains on one side (but far enough to avoid the major floods or mud slides). Some rivers in the city do flood, but stick to the higher-placed properties and you'll be fine. Some exposure to forest fire smoke, but only smoke, the land around is generally farmland or ranching, and well protected from catching fire. Great self-reliance for food and energy.
Problems: generally just the Canada-wide ones (e.g. healthcare system has collapsed but they haven't noticed, Ottawa largely doesn't care about the West, economy is 50% real estate, immigration is 95% of population growth and has resulted in a very exploitative and corrupt system that lures in young people to be poorly-paid expendable labour under the guise of Canadian Permanent Resident through exorbitantly expensive but low-quality education). Locally, Calgary leans very left (NDP, the Left-most party in Canada), but this balances well with the Conservative provincial government.
That mirrors what Canadians have told me. There's little interest in innovation and building tech when the simplest way to make money is simply housing.
The CSeries comes to mind, it was almost ready and had orders for years, then the Trump admin slapped tariffs on it and Trudeau did basically nothing. All it needed was a little capital injection while waiting for the courts to declare the tariffs illegal and remove them. Instead, Airbus bought it for virtually nothing.
As someone in tech, it's scary to see how little support such an innovative plane got from the government. This would never happen here with Boeing (just look at the 737 MAX) or in Europe with Airbus. And the A220 (the rebranded name) is making a fortune for European investors right now.
> immigration is 95% of population growth and has resulted in a very exploitative and corrupt system that lures in young people to be poorly-paid expendable labour under the guise of Canadian Permanent Resident
The point of immigration is to fill a shortage. That's why here there are rules regarding salary requirements for immigration purposes. If a job isn't paying a lot, it's because it's not in demand; why then bring-in more people to an already saturated market? What’s the logic here?
Is anyone on HN reconsidering having children because of climate change? Recently I've had a big shift myself on this topic, probably influenced by not many women my age (younger than 30) having any interest in bringing a child into a world where they could potentially suffer real physical danger due to climate change.
I wish you the best as you figure out the direction of your life.
I'm a bit older and have kids. They've positively impacted my life in ways I could not have imagined when I was younger. Having said that, the speed of climate change and what feels like a global political class that is incapable of taking meaningful action, I am very concerned for my kids' near future. I cannot imagine a life without them, but I do wonder whether they will suffer, or whether my grand kids will suffer due to climate change. And so I wonder whether the joy and fulfillment they bring me will be worth any suffering they will be forced to endure. I cannot successfully do this computation. I am left with a persistent concern that will not lift.
But then I think about people who had children during times of war and during famines. The urge to procreate is so amazingly strong.
By definition the adults who will tackle climate change have to be conceived by the adults who will suffer from it.
The irony of this is that the people who care about the wellbeing of the planet enough to question having children due to climate concerns are the ones who really should be having children. They are more likely to raise them to be conscious of issues like this, to look for solutions, and to minimize their impact.
And right there, you have the thesis underlying the plot for Idiocracy, a time-shifted documentary masquerading as a comedy, in which the value of t is claimed to be 500 years, but is actually unknown (and current data suggest far lower value).
One would (likely) have the biggest impact on their own children as opposed to other children, but by volunteering for various organizations one can impact far more kids than the few in one's own family.
On a long enough timeline I agree with your point, but your argument is one of the many many common examples we see now of people simply not understanding the timeline. 2050 is 29 years away. Kids born in the next few years will barely be out of school by the time we have to have this mostly solved.
True, but odds are by 2050 we will not have this mostly solved and we will still be arguing with each other about what's important when it comes to preserving the current climate vs adapting to a changing climate. I think that on the short timeline it definitely makes sense to use progeny as a means to effect change according to ones own ideals.
Well, the birds aren't going to fix climate change.
I can't speak for the women you know, but the women I know in their 20s-30s tell me they aren't thinking about children at all probably thanks to the empowerment of women of the last 100 years.
Over my life, I've heard all kinds of excuses for all people to not consider children until they are in their late 30s or 40s, then it's a rush. I did the same.
Most people I know are not having children because they don't have the economic stability to do so. Housing, individual low/middle income tax burden, cost of living, stagnated wages over the last several decades for all but the top 25%.
Maybe, but man, money can't help you be a good parent.
You're tired, at work, and not part of their day-to-day life. It'd almost be easier to be 20 and have mom/dad still around and just start career at 35. Hell, I practically started my career at 35 and have nothing to show for the delay!
What's funny is if you're completely broke and have kids, there are tons of government benefits designed to keep you afloat. But if you have a little too much money to qualify for those benefits, you'll feel like you'll never have money for kids.
yeah I've noticed that the antinatalists never seem to be saying, "man, I really really want to have kids, it's one of if not the most important driving forces in my life... but the threat of climate change looms ever-present, so it would be irresponsible to bring my heirs into this fallen Earth!"—it usually if not always seems to be a post-hoc excuse for a decision they've already made, or at the very least, a justification to move off the middle of the fence toward "no" instead of "yes." if anyone knows of anyone who's written something that contradicts this I would love to read it.
If you are strong and capable you should have kids to help build a better tomorrow. There aren't many young women who want to have kids because there aren't many young men who seem strong enough to bear the responsibility.
I always enjoy when the decision against having kids is subtly framed as a weakness or a character flaw.
I posit a different guideline: If having kids is something you feel is of vital importance to you personally and not because other people expect it from you, then by all means, try to find someone who feels the same way and have kids.
It is daunting, but the world has looked at least this scary before and it didn’t stop the generations of people who led to our existence right now.
As a person who just had a child, I strongly recommend it so far. It is more challenging than most things I have done in my life, but also more rewarding. I am forced to be selfless in a way that I never have been before. And I know it’s annoying to hear people say these things, but they are true.
For those who don’t want children, of course that’s your choice. I just hope we don’t let fear ruin such a beautiful opportunity for those who would be parents and children.
Thanks for this! Lots of my peers are going on and on about how we're all doomed. I belisve in climate change, and that it's bad and we must act. But I don't think we're gonna be living in Waterworld, which is what my friends are describing.
There is a pretty major flaw in this write up, which is the assumption that the changes we may see will be linear, be it sea level rise, temps, etc.
There are at least 4 tipping points that could upend this. If the Gulf Stream fails, Europe will be much colder than it is now, for example. Rapid breakdown of ice shelfs could quickly raise sea levels.
“It won’t be bad because it has not yet” is thin.
The middle latitudes are set to be in large part unlivable. Just imagine the geopolitical and humanitarian impacts of hundreds of millions of refugees. Just imagine when a country that is the source of a water source decides they need it and more than others downstream and reroute it.
These are massively destabilizing types of things. And not far fetched.
Can you point me in the direction of some stuff that supports the likelihood of these scenarios? The middle latitudes being unlivable does seem extreme and unlikely to me, especially given the explanation in the article about how 85F was used as a threshold for unlivable by some studies.
The threshold is typically 106F "wet bulb", above which much exposure will kill people, literally begin to cook them. Many parts of the world are hitting this.
You should consider the possibility that the climate skeptics are right, also. Imagine how you'd feel if you gave up your chance to have a family, and then one day realized that the scientists weren't being completely honest (as is now widely accepted to have been the case with virology/lab leaks).
Claims about world records in temperature can be extremely confusing. Many times, newly announced "record breaking temperatures" are actually lower than they have been recorded in the past. Here is one recent example:
"As anyone who follows the climate news is aware, July 2021 was the hottest month on record for our torrid little orb, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with a combined temperature 1.67 degrees F higher than the 20th century average of 60.4 F. NOAA noted in a Friday press release that the previous record was set in July 2016, and tied in 2019 and 2020. But as Bill Frezza, a sharp-eyed reader of Retraction Watch noticed, the agency’s website tells a different story. This press release, dated Aug. 15, 2019, and still live on noaa.gov, proclaims July 2019 to be the hottest month on record for the planet."
The reason this occurs is that temperatures reported by governments are no longer actual recorded temperatures, but rather the output of models. These models significantly change the historical record, both absolute values and trends, in fact they continuously recalculate old temperature values. Climatology doesn't believe you can answer a question like "what was the temperature at weather station X, Y days in the past" because the answer depends on when you ask it. This isn't really a secret but it's also not well known. NOAA explained it like this:
"NOAAGlobalTempv5 is a reconstructed dataset, meaning that the entire period of record is recalculated each month with new data. Based on those new calculations, the new historical data can bring about updates to previously reported values."
So 120 degrees is not an "all time temperature record" and 2021 was not the "hottest summer ever recorded".
Try to remember, claims about the end of the world come and go. Our parents were being told the world would end due to mass starvation when population growth exhausted food supplies, a new ice age (global cooling) and of course the ever-present possibility of nuclear war. Humanity survived and if they'd taken the attitude you're talking about now, you wouldn't exist.
I think it is reasonable to not have kids if you think the probability of an acceptable quality of life for them is too low.
I only agreed to have kids because I have a spouse who earns above average and I feel secure that we will be able procure resources and equip the kids well, but I think would have been just as happy if I had not had kids.
me neither, because there's no point in trying to convince someone to change their mind about whether or not to act upon their own primary biological instinct that they've been taught to suppress—it's a self-correcting problem, and one that most certainly doesn't concern me.
Of much greater concern to me is the stability of my income potential in a world that's increasingly automated and career stability is gone.
I feel like my default is no children, and that will only change if and only if I reach a level of wealth that I can feel very comfortable committing to the ~18 years of directly raising a new human, the 4+ years thereafter for continuing education, and all the costs associated with raising a well experienced and skilled human so they can have a chance at generating their own wealth.
However, I also think inheritance is mostly a curse on people who receive it, so if I had children, I would raise them with the explicit expectation that I will pay for their education, but will likely have a hard cutoff of financial help after a certain milestone or age. And they can expect 0 inheritance.
The opportunities for our children is dwindling. I am a full time health care worker who works lots of overtime and I can not even come close to affording a house that fits me and my kids. I am desperately trying to save up but would need $100k to even get my foot in the door at today’s market. To hear you say you would want to cut your child off seems so foreign to me. I want to get ahead enough in life that I can leave my kids with something. That is why in fact I just 2 weeks ago saw a financial advisor and am working on getting life insurance. I want to make my kids life a little easier then mine and with the way things are every cent I can leave them will help a lot. Hard work is not enough to do well in life anymore. Trust me my next check has 157 hours of pay coming. I still am not financially well off.
Part of the reason opportunities are dwindling is because generational wealth is accumulating more and more resources and rent seeking from the plebs who toil to survive. If you're not born into that club, it's very unlikely you'll enter it.
Can you inherit zero? Where I live, there is a mandatory minimum inheritance for children - I think it’s 1/6 of the total?
Cutting off financial help might result in them feeling stuck with their past choices, resulting in depression etc - I wouldn’t do that. Many successful entrepreneurs come from supportive households.
Where I live, a person has full discretion on who inherits their estate if they explicitly write their will. Your offspring and next of kin are the default inheritors, but can be excluded if you explicitly say so in your will.
> Under Austrian law children (including adopted children) and the spouse are entitled to a "reserved portion". The children´s and the spouse´s "reserved portion" has to cover at least half of the portion they would get in the case of intestacy.
I'm 30 and lived with my parents until I was 26. Not gonna lie, it made me soft.
When my kids turn 18, we'll fight to the death in the backyard. If they win, they get my stuff. If they lose, I'll have some more & repeat the process. Don't think I'll be around long enough for a third go.
The idea that it could be morally or ethically better to not have children feels like further in-depth thought out examining the specifics in attempt for a rational and non-emotional answer would yield a pretty strong "no". It is a vastly personal decision and I would encourage you to answer this for yourself personally and to try to look for the arguments of those who are saying the opposite of your close social friends (if they are saying "no", then look for people saying "yes", if they are saying "yes", look for people who are saying "no").
The arguments that come to my mind:
1. The world has always been filled with an amount of danger to offspring, this is not more existential than it has been in the past (though it's often hyperbolized to be).
2. There are vast amounts of anecdotal stories about children who were "almost not born" (failed abortion, doctors or parents said it would be too hard, etc.) because of a parents decision who ended up having a hugely beneficial and/or great life.
3. There is a stronger effort now than ever before on correcting climate change. There are more opportunities than there ever have to make a difference. Your child could be one of these people.
4. I have seen no science that an additional child or children is going to inherently negatively increase climate change, which means having a motivated parent to better the world has a huge potential upside for the climate and low downside.
----
An additional side, I would use any of amount of logic of "should have a child" either. If you don't want a child, I do not think you should have a child. A child needs love and compassion from its parents.
As an European under 30 living in a country whose our society isn't so worried (and we should) about climate change, and I don't personally feel it like a crucial factor in order to have or not a child. Most important factors for us are economic stability and having a couple who also want descendants.
I personally want to have child, and probably would do when I met those two requirement, and probably the most problematic of them are one you also have: Finding a woman who wants that.
Having a child in a modern European country isn't the same as our parents or grandparents had. We have paid parental leave, decent health, nursery, and education services, a society where both parts of the couple can go to work, share home tasks, and care of their childs (independently of being a man or a woman) without having to give up on other things, and so on.
I find it very sad having 40 or more, wanting to have kids, but having conception problems due to your age. I don't if there are statistics about this, and I don't want to influence anyone with this, but from personal experiences, most of the people who decided to not have kids regret that decision, and not too much of those who had them does.
I've never really understood this. If I had the choice today to be born today or never,I would definitely choose to be born. Why would my unborn children decide differently. Honestly curious how you would answer this question.
Well, we can't give them back. ;-) But it's something that I've thought about even though the die is already cast. I'm also not sure what country I'd want to bring kids into today.
I had this thought in the back of my mind, but we had a kid anyway. I just plan to train him to be an excellent archer and swordsman so he can take control of the coming wastelands
No(even though i fit in your description aswell), I used to think that way about many issues of the world(of which by the way climate change is not really that impactful towards the individual against kids, compared to economic issues, political,etc) until i was ~22, then i quickly realized that actually that's one argument in favor of having children.I'm not saying you cannot be selfish from having kids(just as much if not more from not having kids), i'm saying that pragmatically human life is the most efficient and important way to solve any problem.There are other more personal reasons(such as happiness, duty/fulfillment,etc) you should consider before putting priority on such issues.
This might be an unpopular opinion, yet i dare anyone to show me a point in history when having less kids was a good idea and showed better results than letting people do as they fit (because forcing people to have kids is not something i endorse, yet it sadly happened, and also is a bad idea: Look at China: more kids through a boom, then they forced people to 1-2 kids, which created a massive vacuum and nowadays China is facing not-so-bright future due to this fact , their middle class also increased massively, and we know that this results in less natality).
Sadly the socio-economic structure we have today(i'm not talking capitalism vs communism, they're both the same in this aspect) kind of forces us to have more kids but for the wrong reasons.We decay as a society when we view human life as a resource for work force for corporations or getting X/Y done, when in the past the booms of increasing populations(think post 89', or 18th century, 2500BC, roman era,etc) were mostly done because the prospects of the future were bright, thus leading adults to having more kids.
I'd like to remind the HN community, some of whom are rather quick to defend the corporate matrix, that fossil fuel companies saw this coming in the 70s and covered it up.
And they had broad, deep-pocketed support.
Government subsidized them, and protected them after their oil spills.
Media ran Exxon and Chevron's greenwashing ads,
Police beat up protesters, going so far as to infiltrate their groups, seduce their leaders, and have entire fake marriages with them all to keep tabs on them.
Judges sent those protesters to jail - Steven Donziger ought to be a household name, for a recent example.
The military invaded countries illegally for them.
And not a single comment here so far as I can tell is putting any of them on the hook for this ongoing atrocity.
Disclaimer: I have not read all of these specific sources; they are the result of quick searches. There are many other sources to choose from - if you have a nit to pick, I suggest DuckDuckGo.
The oceans are growing acidic, countless species are being lost forever. We could literally all die because of this.
Blaming me for my commercial air travel while Chevron can imprison a lawyer for fighting against them is beyond fallacy, and well past what I can describe in polite terms.
Do you have family in the oil biz or something? Why would you do this?
Just because Chevron did something wrong doesn't mean you get off scott-free. Chevron can't fix global warming on their own, it takes everyone, including you.
Actually we CAN go scott free. As per the links, they not only knew about climate change but actively tried to subvert activities related to spreading its awareness. If the general public had the same awareness and sense-of-impending-doom that we have now, do you think these companies wouldve been able to withstand that kind of growing public opposition from all walks of society? Pretty sure they would be forced to course correct.
And if Chevron (& Exxon, et al) didn’t spend 50 years lobbying, burying evidence, and smearing people who pointed out what they were doing, we wouldn’t be in this situation. I take ownership of my role, and I’ve made substantial lifestyle choices to ameliorate my impac, but don’t act like Chevron is some innocent actor born along by the cruel currents of an uncaring market - they have spent substantial energy and resources making this problem worse in ways not core to their business, and they have done so intentionally and knowingly. They bear more blame than any individual does, both collectively and proportionally.
Out of curiosity, how do you suggest that be done? Should I live in a mud hut and eat bugs? Forego interaction with society in a cave somewhere?
If you think I should protest, I do. And, I've pointed out exactly how protestors are dealt with: minimized, attacked, infiltrated, smeared, ignored, and so on.
Every year, hundreds of environmental protectors are murdered. So what exactly is your suggested course of action here?
Forecasts for +10C in Oslo Norway the next days, possibly melting all the snow and ruining skiing in the forests during lockdown, my best reason to go outside at the moment..
Too bad you can't go skiing, but I'm a bit more worried about plant and wildlife that "thinks" it's spring and then will get killed when it gets cold again later.
Of course. And I also know a single instance isn't proof of climate change. But I wanted to point out / rant about how the winters have changed over time here. It's sad.
And summers hotter than ever. Have had to buy AC, as if we're in Southern Europe.
Just interested in what temperatures have risen to that you need an AC?
I also understand that buildings in normally colder climates are optimised to keep warm so that if things get hotter in general they are not going to cope well so an AC may well be necessary at temperatures that in other regions would be considered relatively cool.
It can get above 30C here[1][2], which is pretty hot for us. As you say, buildings are well insulated for the winter which means that the walls retains a lot of heat into the night once they've been baking for several days.
Keep in mind the sun goes down at around 11pm, so it doesn't really get cold outside until well past midnight. In my home, that means it can be 25C inside for hours after bedtime unless I use AC and keep the interior cold during the day.
One could get used to 25C I suppose, problem is it's just for a few weeks at a time, then it goes back down. So you never really get used to it.
Is a good point and much what I thought was going on.
So your choices are, put up with it, with potential health problems for older/infirm people, rebuild to suit the new normal, or add an AC which hopefully is running from renewables and not contributing to the problem.
There is no easy solution.
I'm in Brisbane, and our climate is starting to move from northern subtropical to tropical. Most of the older houses are built for heat, but they are not built to deal with cyclones and extreme summer storms. Most of the new houses are not even built for heat, being designs that are popular in Sydney and Melbourne. Actually considering Sydney and Melbourne can get some stinking hot summers they are not even really built for that. Upshot is that most new houses are unliveable without AC, and this is in a country that has always had extremes of heat.
That would be my worry too! I wonder if the next step is to figure out if there's any sort of regularity of the newer climate and to find plants that might be able to support those time cycles..
Honestly, I'm beginning to think that constantly ringing the alarm bells desensitizes people. These sorts of articles year after year are creating people that either don't care or don't think their life matters enough to care, considering "life won't be worth living in 20 years anyways."
So I'm not sure what there is to be done, it's like a catch 22. Tell people nothing and they leave it out of their minds, tell them about it and they get desensitized, maybe mobilizing the people is doomed to fail from the start and this thing is irreversible.
I downvoted your parent comment not because I didn't catch your meaning, but because I didn't think it contributed meaningfully to the conversation (basically, a throw-away 'ha ha' comment).
Elaborating on your perspective on the situation, sharing how it's affected your behavior or though processes, or engaging others in discussion would have produced a more substantive contribution.
I am very sensitive to HN sliding into a 'Reddit, but for nerds' situation where facile comments dominate the conversation and the signal-to-noise ratio is unbearably low.
Looking at your other comments, in general you do a pretty good job of holding back the tide -- please don't take this as a general comment against you, but more as a signpost for others.
2021 also continued the streak of consecutive months with the global average surface temperature above the 20th century average. November 2021 was the 443rd consecutive such month [1].
Because ever recorded is a code word for only recently - sea surface average is about around the medieval climate optimum and under the roman age warming period.
Not to say climate is not warming up, but news reels always go for the most sensationalistic take they have available because that sell, while more nuanced takes tend to be buried under pressure from the ministry of truth to control the message, as they believe us to be simpletons.
It's relative to 1981-2010 baseline. Negative is lower, positive is higher. In 1995, presumably, it was also the average temperature for the 1981-2010 time.
The two colors are negative and positive, a potentially unimportant dramatization.
Clarifying based on what I understood: Data from 1940-today show that the period from 1985-today had 8x more heat added than the period from 1958-1985, and that each decade since 1958 has increased in temperature.
These are different problems that both need to be addressed as soon as possible, but for different reasons. Having said that, runaway global warming seems like the more pressing existential threat to me.
Reminder that according to the IPCC there is literally no scenario where the human race is worse off in 2100 than we are now, even if we do nothing about climate change and continue to use fossil fuels.
"Extinction event" narratives are not grounded in reality or backed by the science.
we can't accurately predict tomorrows weather or even trajectories of hurricanes, but lets go with this idea that the modeled weather forecast that's a decade out is realistic
Every year, it seems like we get closer and closer to the end. One day, temperatures will be so hot, and they will not go down. They will only continue to rise, people being kept alive by AC. Then the power grids will fail, and AC won't work, and people will just pass out from heat strokes and die off. And the world will be left with only the few who can withstand the increasing temperatures. And then the temperature will increase even more, and those too will die, or starve from nothing to eat. Bare shelves, dead crops. This is how the end will be. Crime will become rampant as rising temperatures make people more violent and people take what they need to survive by force. Grim.
I don't know if this comment is serious or not, but if so, it is hyperbolic nonsense. Not to say there's no warming, obviously there is, or to say it won't have detrimental effects, but it's people saying things like this that give deniers ammo to call it a doomsday cult. If you truly believe what you've just said, you need to take a step out of your own head and unbiasedly self reflect and examine the merit of your worldview for a minute.
Why would it be hyperbolic? What exactly do you think happens when temperatures keep rising to unbearable levels? Keep cranking up the AC? What about the crops that feed the animals we eat to survive? What about the dwindling oceans we farm sea food from?
It's a very naive view of climate change, on par with "whatever happened to global cooling?"
What exactly do you think happens? Runaway greenhouse effect? People just start baking to death in the street? It's senseless. Climate change causes negative effects, but it's much more complicated than that. You should do some reading.
No, I don't. I've clearly stated several times that negative effects will happen. You can slap your favorite label on it, not everyone who doesn't immediately agree with your absolutely ridiculous take is a denier and you can't just shame people into nodding their head. I never, not once, said it isn't real. Again, read about climate change and you'll actually know something about it.
Not only does science show the current temperatures are getting hotter than ever. We now know the past 50 years was colder than we ever thought. With new advanced scientific techniques, we now have a much better idea what the temperature was 50 years ago than they did 50 years ago.
It should be kept in mind, these new temperatures measured now are not breaking records compared to the temperatures measure 50 years ago, but rather to the modified and corrected temperatures of 50 years ago.
Here is a great little collection showing how the temperature records change over time.
That article is not convincing. The X- and Y-axes change in those plots, producing a misleading animation. Also, all plots clearly show warming trends that are accelerating.
The data is being "corrected" to "take away errors", this is clearly visible as well as explained by Heller in his many videos on the subject. Another issue is that the measuring network has notably shrunk in size in the last decades with the measurements from locations which have been taken out replaced by interpolated data. Heller claims that "uncorrected" historical data shows that the average temperature in the 30's was higher than it is today and that this is the reason for the "corrections" - simply to make the data fit the narrative. Looking at actual historical data seems to corroborate his claim of the records being "corrected", US state and territory temperature extremes [1] also show a tendency to have the highs somewhere in the 30's (23 states) with 1936 as the hottest year in 13 states. These are "uncorrected" temperature records.
I'm thinking about choosing a new place to live right now. Climate change is a big factor for that.