If climate change at this point is inevitable, how could we survive it?

[MonkeySage]

I hate to think of it as inevitable, I'd like to think we could do something to minimize the damage before its too late... Realistically however, I don't see anything happening any time soon to help, and we're running out of time.

So how do you suppose we could survive it, realistically?

(Keep this discussion strictly scientific- no politics)

[Palanan]

Climate change is not only inevitable, it’s been having effects for decades now. Twenty years ago I read a paper about coastal marine invertebrates shifting their ranges north due to changes in water temperature. That’s only one of countless effects already taking place.

Keep in mind that most coral reefs are dead or dying right now, and that’s only one of the ecosystem types that are being hammered out of existence. High-mountain habitats are especially vulnerable, because once they heat up too much there’s nowhere else for the endemic species to go.

As for affecting it, the rule of thumb is that the next century of consequences will be happening no matter what we do. All we can do now is prevent worse damage in subsequent centuries—which is a timescale the vast majority of people aren’t really interested in thinking about, much less caring about.

And as for surviving—the rest of this century will be turbulent, to say the least. Apart from the direct effects, climate change will only exacerbate many other issues, such as the loss of topsoil, the depletion of aquifers, and the expansion of tropical diseases, to name only a few ramifications out of of legion.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

(Keep this discussion strictly scientific- no politics)

There is literally no solution to climate change that doesn't involve politics in a rather central role. The problem is too broad for it to be addressed at anything other than global agreements.

We managed it for CFCs, so we might manage it this time, but I am extremely pessimist about our chances.

Grey Wolf

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c
We managed it for CFCs, so we might manage it this time, but I am extremely pessimist about our chances.

I'm afraid I have to agree. The time to head this off with minimal damage was twenty years ago, but that time is long past.

If we plan carefully we might be able to mitigate some of the worst effects, such as massive outmigration from coastal areas, but even that is extremely unlikely.

.

[MonkeySage]

There is literally no solution to climate change that doesn't involve politics in a rather central role. The problem is too broad for it to be addressed at anything other than global agreements.

We managed it for CFCs, so we might manage it this time, but I am extremely pessimist about our chances.

Grey Wolf

I realize it's hard to avoid, and I don't disagree- just trying to make sure this thread stays open, really.

[Spojaz]

Move cities inland, move crop production north, farm fish that tolerate more acidic water, continue as normal?

It's going to be expensive and unpleasant, but humanity is not in existential danger. People will die from it, but it will be in a statistical way, with no individuals you could point to and say "he would still be alive if not for those cursed greenhouse gasses!" Other species will die, quite a few of them, but humans are the most adaptable species the world has ever seen. We're going to survive anyway.

That said, there are a lot of things we can do about it, from chemical or biological carbon sequestration to orbital light deflection. We could also work on weather control technology, something as easy as spraying a fine mist of seawater a couple meters into the air could make artificial fog out at sea, decreasing the local albedo, and cooling an area very effectively and cheaply. The main reasons we haven't tries any of this geoengineering is that we have no absolutely safe way to test it, and people want to keep nature natural.

[Fairy]

It all returns to nothing.

[Tvtyrant]

Lots of people are going to die of starvation, then once we hit a population level that can survive losing a savage amount of farmland we will right the ship and curse our ancestors.

The sad thing is you can't make farmland, and most of our food is made in a narrow belt and exported to areas that will never feed themselves. So the population capacity of the Earth will likely diminish.

[halfeye]

It's going to be very, very slow.

They're talking about a 2 metre rise in sea level by the end of this century (it's currently not 1/5th begun), and a similar rate from then on, for a total of 150 metres. That is a very long time.

The odds are, someone's going to make a sunshade before that's done.

Global warming isn't good, but the cause is pollution, and that's much worse, because in extreme cases, and cases are getting more extreme all the time, it can stop us using land for farming that we were previously using for farming, with a growing population that's really, really not good.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The sad thing is you can't make farmland

I'm actually slightly hopeful this might not be the case for much longer [note: not actually saying that one company has the solution, that was just the first link I found in google on the topic]. But yeah, mass starvation has likely already begun, and is going to get a lot worse. Even if we do figure out hydroponics to the point where cities can self-sustain food-wise, the train is already coming off the rails.

It's going to be very, very slow.

They're talking about a 2 metre rise in sea level by the end of this century (it's currently not 1/5th begun), and a similar rate from then on, for a total of 150 metres. That is a very long time.

The issues of global warming are NOT limited to "sea level rise". In fact, it might be the least of our problems, compared to mass failure of crops due to insufficient or excessive rain as rain patterns change.

Grey Wolf

[Tvtyrant]

There is always the hope that energy efficient salt water desalinization gets figured out. That won't fix the now random weather patterns that kill off crops, but it would help with mass hydroponics and fighting the salinization of the aquifer that accompanies water level rise.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

There is always the hope that energy efficient salt water desalinization gets figured out. That won't fix the now random weather patterns that kill off crops, but it would help with mass hydroponics and fighting the salinization of the aquifer that accompanies water level rise.

I know very little about this topic, but I thought we had figured it out already? Or do you mean more efficiently that "boil it and condense it"? If so, fair enough, if we could filter out the salt without having to dump enough energy to volatilize one of the best heat reservoirs substances known to mankind, that'd be nice. Is there any kind of push that is promising?

Grey Wolf

[Tyndmyr]

I hate to think of it as inevitable, I'd like to think we could do something to minimize the damage before its too late... Realistically however, I don't see anything happening any time soon to help, and we're running out of time.

So how do you suppose we could survive it, realistically?

(Keep this discussion strictly scientific- no politics)

Surviving it ought to be relatively easy. If the sea level rises 3 inches over your lifetime, and you decide to build your house on ground 3 inches higher to compensate, you ought to be good. This ain't really mad max/zombie apocalypse level. If you're planning to build on a coast, sure, by all means, check to see rough sea level rise that's forecasted. Depending on area, it may be a lesser effect than regular coastal shifts, so check those too.

Likewise, growing areas may shift slightly. You may be able to plant crops from a slightly warmer climate, depending on locale. If you keep a garden, this may be of slight interest, but the effect usually ought to be small.

However, while global warming is rapid on a geological timespan, a human lifespan is not so great. Over your expected 50-60 years left alive on this rock, the change ought to be fairly modest. It should fall well short of a life threatening event in almost every case.

[georgie_leech]

Surviving it ought to be relatively easy. If the sea level rises 3 inches over your lifetime, and you decide to build your house on ground 3 inches higher to compensate, you ought to be good. This ain't really mad max/zombie apocalypse level. If you're planning to build on a coast, sure, by all means, check to see rough sea level rise that's forecasted. Depending on area, it may be a lesser effect than regular coastal shifts, so check those too.

Likewise, growing areas may shift slightly. You may be able to plant crops from a slightly warmer climate, depending on locale. If you keep a garden, this may be of slight interest, but the effect usually ought to be small.

However, while global warming is rapid on a geological timespan, a human lifespan is not so great. Over your expected 50-60 years left alive on this rock, the change ought to be fairly modest. It should fall well short of a life threatening event in almost every case.

The concern is more to do with the geopolitical instability that results from said shifting growing areas, the collapse of the extremely interconnected system of economics and energy that underlies our society, a massive restructuring of said society, and the general collapse of our current ways of life that involve things like international lines of communication like the Internet.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
If the sea level rises 3 inches over your lifetime, and you decide to build your house on ground 3 inches higher to compensate, you ought to be good.

Except the ocean’s reach will be far greater than those three inches, since that’s an average figure. Coastal erosion will accelerate and reach much further inland, and of course storm overwash will have a stronger impact on top of that. For an example of the first, see Tangier. For the second, NC 12, which floods like clockwork now.

In each case the respective islands have lost a tremendous amount of coastline with only a modest amount of sea level rise. Tangier has lost 70% of its surface area over the past 120-ish years. Aerial photos of the Outer Banks show major losses in half that time. This is not trivial.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Likewise, growing areas may shift slightly.

More likely they’ll shift a great deal, which means dust bowls, disrupted economies and ghost towns galore. It’s not simply a question of a slight increase in average temperature, but major alterations to rainfall and climate patterns, compounded with the effects of ongoing depletion of aquifers as mentioned above.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Over your expected 50-60 years left alive on this rock, the change ought to be fairly modest.

I don’t see any way that the changes will be “modest” even within this timespan, and as mentioned above the truly radical changes will continue for centuries to come.

.

[halfeye]

If the sea level rises 3 inches over your lifetime, and you decide to build your house on ground 3 inches higher to compensate, you ought to be good.

2 metres in 80 years is not 3 inches per lifetime, it's more like an inch per year.

[Psionic Dog]

So how do you suppose we could survive it, realistically?

Very easily. There is zero chance that the Earth will transform into an uninhabitable Venus. At our distance from the sun the energy input/output balance doesn't allow that sort of outcome. The primary concerns are economic, ecological conservation, and oceanic.

Economically if Manhattan, Sidney, or every other rich port/beach-side city will need to choose between dikes, land fill/pylons to elevate themselves, or relocation. Expensive.

Ecologically if climate zones shift the niche species local to a specific region may die out. However farms will switch to new crops previously grown one zone closer to the equator, invasive/migratory species will establish themselves, and life will go on. If the warming leads to higher humidity levels and increased storms/rainfall the arable cropland might even increase.

Oceans are a wildcard with preexisting economic/ecological/political problems of their own that will only get messier with warming, oxidation, and salinity shifts.

2 metres in 80 years is not 3 inches per lifetime, it's more like an inch per year.

I agree that 3"/lifetime is unrealistic (the current trend of 3mm/year is ~6-9"/lifetime) but it is also worth noting that 2 metres in 80 years seems to be the worst-case plausible outcome.

[Rakaydos]

Ironically, what will save us is space-related technoligies. Not in the sence of the survivors fleeing a ruined earth, but in that technoligies developed for mars colonization and orbital colonies will see use here on earth as existing ecological standards break down.

The Sabatier Reaction, being looked into to create rocket fuel from Mars's Co2-rich atmosphere, will see use as an atmospheric cleaning technique and as a stopgap to turn existing natural gas generator plants into electrical storage facilities. (it takes more electricity to make methane with sabatier than the natural gas plant extracts from burning methane, of course, but the losses arnt THAT bad)

Shipping Container Farming is a development of hydroponics, which is developed for space operation. Hydroponics and Aquaponics (which adds a fish pool in balance with the plants) can scale to replace existing farmland as it is rendered useless by climate change, given sufficent motivation

High efficency solar, itself, is a space technoligy, while satelites and probes dont have the mass budget for larger panels, they can get more power from the panels they have. That same tech here on earth turns more sunlight into electricity, weaning us off carbon-producing fuels.

And dont forget electric cars. Astronauts were driving an electric buggy around the moon almost half a century before Tesla's model S hit the market, but there's already talk of SpaceX "borrowing" the model S chassis for cheap mars rovers... like that wasnt the plan to start with. Now that Electric Semi Trucks are on the horizon from multiple providers, and the EU has announced going electric only in the next few decades, electric cars are finally gettingtheir feet under themselves.

[Tvtyrant]

I know very little about this topic, but I thought we had figured it out already? Or do you mean more efficiently that "boil it and condense it"? If so, fair enough, if we could filter out the salt without having to dump enough energy to volatilize one of the best heat reservoirs substances known to mankind, that'd be nice. Is there any kind of push that is promising?

Grey Wolf

Not that I have heard recently. The two basic ways are reverse osmosis and boiling, and both require a lot of energy to deal with the scale needed for agriculture.

I'm more optimistic about it then most technologies, because lots of countries put money into research for it (Australia and Isreal especially) and it seems plausible in the next century unlike sunblockers.

[halfeye]

Not that I have heard recently. The two basic ways are reverse osmosis and boiling, and both require a lot of energy to deal with the scale needed for agriculture.

I'm more optimistic about it then most technologies, because lots of countries put money into research for it (Australia and Isreal especially) and it seems plausible in the next century unlike sunblockers.

Sunblockers are essentially drones, we have those already. We don't have the automated coordination/traffic control system yet, but it doesn't seem like something we couldn't make if it was a priority.

[Mechalich]

The level of response necessary to adapt to climate change depends immensely on how significant the impacts ultimately are. As a result, the most important factor is how much climate change their ultimately is, which depends on decisions being made at present. The difference between 1.5 degrees of warming and 3 degrees of warming are incalculable, but even the differences between 1.8 and 1.9 degrees are quite large.

Ultimately the key tipping point is whether or not the consequences of climate change - in conjunction with other pressures - will destabilize the global political and economy system and cause a worldwide societal collapse.

In the event the system remains stable till roughly the end of the century society will transition into a negative emissions scenario, mitigating future climate changes and potentially even rolling them back by (slowly) reducing the global concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This, coupled with a beginning of global population decline means things will likely get easier even as sea levels continue to rise and biodiversity drops further.

In the event the system collapses, all bets are off and the most likely outcome is a massive population crash due to climate change exacerbated factors such as drought and ecosystem collapse (global fisheries collapse, which will induce catastrophic protein deficiency in billions, is the first in line). At that point any surviving polities will have to wall themselves off and attempt to survive the collapse period and rebuild later, even as climate change gets worse in the short term due to mass deforestation by struggling refugees.

At this point a collapse scenario is not inevitable, but aggressive action will be needed to limit warming to a level that allows existing systems to endure. The scope of such actions are essentially entirely political, since the majority of the relevant technologies are in place already. There are a few that do remain, such commercial scale carbon capture technology and the development of better cultured protein sources (lab-grown meat, etc.). It's also possible that technological breakthroughs in other areas could mitigate complicating factors. For example, the development of a viable male birth control method might have the potential to dramatically lower global birth rates, which would have a huge impact.

[Bucky]

I think, *assuming* a few (~4) degrees warming in a century:
I'm optimistic in general. It has a large impact but very spread out.

Food will work itself out, barring an upwards inflection in population growth. Longer growing seasons and newly arable land in Canada and Russia should be able to compensate for desertification elsewhere. And better farming tech should continue to keep pace with population growth

Energy's biggest issue isn't climate change, so much as our reaction to it. We can use a primarily gas/nuclear/oil/hydro mix for the full century if politics doesn't get in the way. Higher sea surface temperatures mean more evaporation, more rain and more hydro potential. And accepting 4 degrees of warming means we have the carbon budget to keep using oil and gas for the applications where they're most useful. I politics continue to block nuclear, natural gas and hydro development, we'll have a politics-driven energy crisis. But don't blame climate change unless we went all in on wind where the wind stopped blowing!

Regarding coastal infrastructure, we'll need to replace most of it in the next 100 years. But we'd probably do that even without climate change.

Migrations caused by climate change will have 10 full decades to play out. They won't be all that intense compared to normal migration. Unless, that is, there's a stupid panic and it all happens at once.

Endangered species might be wiped out if they're particularly temperature sensitive and can't find new territory. However, humans are destroying habitat faster than climate change does. And even then, as far as we know only one animal has ever gone extinct due purely to habitat loss.

Any other concerns?

[Khedrac]

We managed it for CFCs, so we might manage it this time, but I am extremely pessimist about our chances.

If only. It turns out that with the drive for better insulated homes (to save energy) polyurethane foam use has gone up dramatically - and there are effectively two ways to make it - the cheap way and the legal way; a lot of Chinese (and who knows what other) companies have been opting for the cheap way which releases CFCs into the atmosphere...
BBC article.

[khadgar567]

actually on one family per case basic you can survive pretty long by going decently back to the core basics. but for whole city or more to survive and trive long enough your best bet funnyly comes from last simcity game were we have megatowers with closed enough loop that provides needed climate and land to keep the current tech viable. But that requires on much better construction methods then we currently have. another good choice comes from atlantis project a solid space based nation/ city can keep living long enough that they can catch the return of perfect weather patern to recolonize and re connect with world.

[Eldan]

Going to space to avoid climate change is... ludicrous. I mean, if you intend to build a tin can with a closed loop inside it, sure (not that it will be necessary), but why ship to space then, instead of leaving it on the ground?

[Yora]

Don't put houses and industrial facilities where the water is going would be a good start.

Which is not just where the water had been going in the past, but where it will be going in the future. Which means that in the long run, a lot of stuff will have to be relocated. That's inconvenient and expensive, so instead we just hope that nothing bad will happen.

[halfeye]

as far as we know only one animal has ever gone extinct due purely to habitat loss.

Oh yeah, which one was that then? given the hundreds of extinctions, that seems pretty unlikely.

[hamishspence]

Rocky Mountain locust was possibly killed off accidentally, though habitat destruction alone:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_locust

but there's probably plenty of other examples - with the habitat destruction being less accidental.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So how do you suppose we could survive it, realistically?

By trying to minimize the change and dealing with the results.

There is room for disasters between "nothing happens" and "everybody dies". We'll lose a bunch more species and we'll probably have a few wars and stuff, but as far as I know the predictions are not that Earth will turn into Mars.

[pendell]

On a hopeful note, haven't humans survived dramatic climate changes before? There was an ice age and the medieval warm period, was there not? Caused by human activity or not, I should think climate *stasis* would be far more remarkable than climate *change*. Even if we become a perfectly sustainable society, the climate will still change, won't it? Maybe not on the same schedule, but it'll still happen, right?

Which means we need the capability to adapt. Our society will not survive in its present form, of course. But then, once again, we've done this before. The bronze age ended because we ran out of easily accessible copper and tin deposits. The agriculture age gave way to the industrial age. Massive dislocation, technological change, and societal revolution are not *aberrations* , they are a fact of life.

I don't know what the future holds. But so long as this planet remains even marginally habitable I expect their to be humans on it. Maybe not so many as we have now, but the survivors will eventually repopulate. I get the distinct impression that, as a species, humans are as bad as rats or cockroaches to eradicate.

*Imagines an intergalactic exterminator looking down at the planet and saying "Yup, you've got hummies all right. This won't be cheap"* .

Respectfully,

Brian P.