The human mind is just terrible at grasping problems on the scale and timeline of global climate change, and it's plausible that it'll be the end of life as we know it in another few decades. All the assholes who denied it was happening will be dead, already, of course...so they won't care. I just don't see any significant movement on solving these problems; despite cool stuff like electric cars and renewable power becoming cheaper than coal, emissions are still increasing worldwide, not decreasing (and, again, it needed to begin decreasing decades ago).
I'm an optimist in the general case, but when it comes to climate and the environment, I see little reason to be optimistic.
Solar power has become cheap enough now that it's reasonable for developing countries (especially India) to rely on it heavily as they become fully electrified.
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/National...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/07/chinas-c...
Combine that with the fact that technologies grow at an exponential rate and CO2 is much more linear in comparison, and it becomes a technology problem and less of a government / political issue.
We will have technology that takes CO2 as an input and produces something of value for us. We're seeing it already but it just isn't implemented on large scales. Things like algae farms converting CO2 to energy, or even bioengineering organisms for artificial photosynthesis.
CO2 will be a non-issue once technology grows more. Especially if you believe a "singularity is near".
Hell, even switching from beef to fish would be a huge savings. Fish require a lot less water per pound of edible flesh and require around 1/10th the feed. Combine that with duckweed which depollutes water, consumes CO2, and produces feed for the fish all at the same time.
There are so many technologies and solutions available even now. It's hard to not be optimistic in my opinion.
I think water shortages are a much bigger threat and we need to consider a way to desalinate water from the ocean and pump it inland. Variants of ram pumps that use the kinetic force of waves can pump water uphill without any external energy input. And then you just point a bunch of mirrors at a water tower for desalination. Not sure why it isn't being done more.
We're several years too late to stop it, and we still have half of our government (in the US) utterly denying the problem even exists.
C02 levels are rising (currently 0.04%, will be 0.05% by 2060) and cause a greenhouse effect. We don't know how strong this effect is, but we do know the effect is logarithmic (every additional unit of C02 causes less warming). Many predictions of knock-on effects of climate change are highly speculative (e.g., gulf stream shutdown) or products of distorted incentives (much more money is allocated for climate science research than for other environmental studies, incentivising researchers to exaggerate links between climate change and other environmental issues).
Every indication is that we're facing changes which we can adapt to or mitigate with technology. What's also clear is that cutting emissions by more than 80% (as is often advocated) would cripple energy production, which would cripple industrial civilisation. We're talking people going back to living in tiny smoke-filled cottages (no AC or central heating), in small villages (no commuting), mostly working on farms (no diesel-powered farm equipment).
Fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power are currently the only viable options to keep modern civilisation running. Hopefully we eventually find an alternative, but it's insane to risk mass suicide to avoid a manageable change in the climate, on the utopian hope that wind/solar will somehow leap forwards in efficiency.
Anyway, that's what I (and many other rational anti-environmentalists) believe.
there's a whole segment of the population that still believes in fairy tales spun by the oil and gas industry.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/01/02/dark-mone...
The human mind is just terrible at grasping problems on the scale and timeline of global climate change, and it's plausible that it'll be the end of life as we know it in another few decades.
You don't know this. You are convinced of it, and it is wrong.
See https://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm for a debunking of this particular claim.
Fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power are currently the only viable options to keep modern civilisation running. Hopefully we eventually find an alternative, but it's insane to risk mass suicide to avoid a manageable change in the climate, on the utopian hope that wind/solar will somehow leap forwards in efficiency.
And you're out of date. Real world costs per megawatt delivered is now lower for solar than coal. There is a lot of work to do to replace existing infrastructure, and this is not appropriate for all environments, but solar is definitely a cost-effective part of our future.
That is not "the end of life as we know it".
OK, that phrase is exaggerated. But, for example, a mass extinction of coral and shellfish due to ocean acidification is going to fundamentally change our oceans by a whole lot with who knows what long term fallout. And while we can mitigate warming effects with aerosols, we don't have a way to mitigate CO2+H2O = H2CO3 (carbonic acid).
[edit] Down votes, OK. But why do you disagree? I can't think of a solution other than having Guido van Rossum as our benevolent dictator for life for the entire globe.
I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
But the primary way that global warming manifests itself is by causing severe weather events to be more frequent and more severe. (This happens mainly because warmer air holds more water vapor.) So the next Katrina will happen sooner, and it will be worse - because of global warming.
Another problem is that warming will cause lots of problems for agriculture. Those of us growing corn in the Midwest will be okay - but places with marginally fertile land will have famines.
Another problem is that insect-borne illnesses (which already kill millions) are helped in a huge way by warming, even just a few degrees' worth.
These are all bad. But the civilization-threatening part is what happens politically with the people displaced by floods, famine, and plagues of malaria/etc. This kind of stuff causes refugee migrations, political upheaval, revolutions, dictators, etc. The U.S. government is legitimately worried about this stuff [1].
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/National...
But, Africans are already feeling it. The Zika virus, which was identified in the 40s, was never been considered a serious health crisis, until climate change enabled it to spread farther and faster. Anything that enables mosquitoes to live longer and breed faster is a death sentence for people in many parts of the world.
Drought-prone regions are also feeling it already. It isn't a matter of "just move to another place" when your wages are measured in single-digit dollars per week or month. So, as climate change progresses, more people go hungry.
And, I think what's most alarming about it is that it is progressing faster than even the most extreme (mainstream) projections predicted. Where small changes were expected over a long period of time, we seem to be seeing a domino effect, where slight rises in temperature trigger other events that cause faster change. So, we probably don't have a century to adjust, particularly in areas that already have challenging weather events; Florida and Louisiana because of hurricanes and flooding, Texas and California because of drought. Many of our food producing states will be forced to evolve rapidly...I doubt it will be a smooth transition. There's already constant political battles over water in some parts of California.
But there's a scarier scenario, where temperatures change much more rapidly due to a positive feedback loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
Even if we turn this planet into Mars, we can figure out how to live on it... humans are amazing adaptable. The issue is can we scale that up to 10 billion people? I imagine resource wars are the biggest threat from climate change.
(Not sourced as I am currently at work - presumably someone is composing a detailed response to you as well)
I'm guessing that even more people wanting to relocate in the future would be slightly unpopular.
I don't think people can comprehend re-housing 18 million souls.
I'd list accidental nuclear war as the greatest threat to civilization, fwiw.