People really don’t appreciate yet. How really bad this situation is and will be. They’re talking about 1.76°C higher temperatures next year because of this El Niño. Those are climate change temperatures that are not supposed to be around until 2035. So it’ll give us a sneak peek into our future.
But the biggest effect and this is noted by many insurance companies now is going to be in places like India.
But this is something the world has never seen and I mean that literally so I don’t expect it to be anything but really bad and you should be ready.
It was inevitable we'd get to the point where climate change began substantially disrupting ecology and human livelihoods. Looks like we're ahead of schedule.
People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen.
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Your linked figure confirms that 2018 was cooler than things are today.
The chapter 11 temperature over view is concerning for the consequences:
... It's the harder to precisely predict potential tipping point changes that should really concern and motivate global changes to emissions.> Your linked figure confirms that 2018 was cooler than things are today.
So? what does that have to do with the question at hand? An 8 year change is irrelevant in the world of climate science. It's statistical noise in a system where cycles run for decades. Weather, not climate.
> The chapter 11 temperature over view is concerning for the consequences:
...and then you quote the part that says exactly what I explained to you, as some kind of counter-argument?
You will note that the part you quoted is, again, combining the types of extremes. They're not talking about just hot days.
I honestly do not understand this need to fatalize data. You don't have a counterargument (because what I said was factually true) so your only rebuttal is to wave your hands and say that it's all scary.
We can be honest -- the world is getting warmer -- and admit when the people predicting imminent death and destruction are exaggerating. This is good!
As the original poster you replied to, why do you think it's exaggeration to predict that people will die from increasingly strong heatwaves? This is already happening [0]. And: "For 2022, it was estimated that between 60,000 and 70,000 people in Europe died from heat (Ballester et al., 2023; Ballester et al., 2024)"
It's extremely hypocritical of you to accuse me of exaggerating when your own presentation of facts is selective and not-representative of what we are seeing globally. An El Niño will only exacerbate heatwaves in some parts of the planet over the next 24 months.
[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-report-shows-2877-e...
[1]: https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/observatory/topics/he...
You need to bring evidence, not press releases.
Your first link says that more people died this year, relative to predictions for this year, because of a single heat wave. This has ~nothing to do with the discussion at hand, and is a classic example of the sort of hyperbole I am talking about.
The second link says that heat events kill people in the UK. Fine. It links to a single paper claiming that:
> half of the heat-related deaths in Europe in the summer of 2022 have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change (Beck et al., 2024).
Regardless of the quality of the cited paper, this is a far cry from evidence of a trend.
> It's extremely hypocritical of you to accuse me of exaggerating when your own presentation of facts is selective and not-representative of what we are seeing globally.
You're literally exaggerating, right now. I quoted the latest IPCC report and told you factually what it says. You linked to a press release and a UK climate portal page that don't support what you're insuinating.
> This has nothing to do with the discussion at hand
This is a topic concerning El Niño. You acknowledge that the downstream consequences of El Niño effects is amplified heatwaves, presumably. Heatwaves already kill people in many continents globally. It stands to reason _strong_ heatwaves will probably raise mortality further; which is _directly related_ to my original comment.
I don't engage with people who aren't willing to be honest with what the data supports.
> I don't engage with people who aren't willing to be honest with what the data supports.
OK, whatever. But what was I dishonest about? Cite the figures. Should be pretty easy.
...oh, and by the way:
> You acknowledge that the downstream consequences of El Niño effects is amplified heatwaves, presumably.
In some places, sure. In others (i.e. the western pacific), it leads to regional cooling.
Let's at least get our facts straight.
> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen.
The rhetoric is all well and good, but if you look at the numbers according to the WMO[0], deaths from climate-related hazards have been dropping steadily in the 50-year period from 1970 to 2019, even as atmospheric CO2 went from ~326ppm to ~410ppm and the world population more than doubled. That's not a per capita decrease; it's an absolute decrease, from over 50k deaths worldwide the 70s to fewer than 20k in the 2010s.
All of this is due to the increased ability of humans to deal with what the climate might throw at them, mostly due to cheap energy unlocked by fossil fuels during that time. Remember, there are no countries that are both rich and have a low per capita energy usage. Surplus energy allows humans to build the infrastructure that makes them more resilient to disasters.
If I had to wager, more people will suffer and die in the coming decades from efforts to combat climate change (i.e. hamstring energy production and usage) than from climate change itself. You can already see this in the anti-air conditioning sentiment in parts of Europe.
[0]: https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564
Look, I think you made some good points, but at the same time, humans have become better at handling the climate because we’ve been able to predict it and have found solutions to certain known issues. What happens when it gets less predictable, like when certain regions get much less water for an extended period, is very much unknown.
Your last claim makes no sense. Is there actually a widespread political effort to ban air conditioning or make it hard to get in Europe? That certainly isn’t the case in the US. And yet hot summers are still killer in cities which aren’t accustomed to them: that’s climate change doing the killing.
Solar is just about the most abundant source of energy on the planet, and easily decentralized. Plugin solar is becoming increasingly popular and cheap, for example.
I think energy production would be much more abundant and directly in control of the people if governments stopped subsidizing energy sources that need massive amounts of resources just to keep running. Why not give solar an advantage when every watt installed can just… work by itself for the next three decades? Every watt of a gas plant needs you to figure out who to buy gas from forever.
Regarding air conditioning in Europe, I suspect that there are other interests at play given that there has been zero pushback against air conditioning in cars.
Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.
At least here in the UK, recent revisions to the default planning rules around heat pumps (“Permitted Development” legislation) removed the restriction that an install be “used solely for heating purposes” and revised this to “not be used solely for the purpose of cooling”.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant also permits cooling - it’s based on the heating credentials of a unit only.
So in Britain at least, installing cooling systems in private residences seems to be getting easier.
> Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.
Not sure it makes sense, most of those countries are already phasing out fuel/gas boilers.
IMO it's just cultural shift is slow to adjust (in those countries, a few decades ago AC would have been a wasteful luxury, summer temperature would be well below 30 except for a few days).
Regarding air conditioning in Europe, the issue is terminally onlime assholes mostly not Europeans trying to start culture war around them.
And I used that offensive word intentionally, because it fits perfectly.
It’s a cultural issue, nothing to do with industry interests
Reality is much of Europe hasn’t needed air con until recently
mMy phone tells me that the temperature this week has been 15°C above the long term average for this time of year.
Don’t really need air con when the peak temperature in the past has been 20–25°C
> I think energy production would be much more abundant and directly in control of the people if governments stopped...
Lots of people pat themselves on the back for (correctly) believing that climate change is real. Why is it so hard for people to also believe that regulatory capture and oligarchy are real, and directly responsible for the lack of action against climate change?
Think of all the for-profit power utility companies in the US. Why are they for-profit? For that matter, why are ISPs for-profit and not run as non-profits with heavy government assistance? Answer, basically: Because the existing people that make lots of money off them have been lobbying heavily to make it so. Similarly, it is no coincidence the current leadership in the US is actively against renewable energy.
A lot of the existing wealth, especially in North America and Europe was built on top of fossil fuels directly or indirectly (cars, power plants, industries, maintaining diplomatic relations with oil-rich nations). That dependence is hard to unwind and is going to take 50 years or more unless the US electorate can start electing people that believe in climate change. And for this reason, actually addressing climate change is going to come from unintuitive social actions, like making smaller housing more fashionable, moving to urban areas, possibly cracking down heavily on crime in those areas, and financially rewarding the use of public transport and bikes.
I'm pretty sure that GP agrees with you on this point? You just cut off the rest of their quote where they point that out.
Do they?
Unless stuff like "Why not give solar an advantage..." is a rhetorical question with the answer of "Because lots of current billionaires would make less money", I don't think they are pointing out the same stuff I said.
all airconditioning brands had massive uptick in sales in Europe; Spain and other southern countries over 100%. what anti air conditioning sentiment?
Online right is trying to create culture war around them, so that they can blame the victims here.
All the while they vote and cheer for political parties that make warming worst.
The two are racing each other. So far, human adaptation is winning. But climate change is just getting started. The change that happened over the last 50 years is tiny compare to what will happen over the next 50. It may well start winning that race.
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Ministry for the Future ch. 1 scenario?
https://www.scribd.com/document/979965270/Robinson-Kim-Stanl...
The future will be much worse. Some effects take years or decades to manifest and we wont see them during a relatively short event like El Niño.
Eg: the severe disruption of the jet stream or the collapse of the AMOC.
Plus all the long term feedbacks like methane etc.
Death is a feature and not a bug of the system, in my mind atleast. I come from a pretty dysfunctional/chaotic family which sometimes makes me think larger systems have this unpredictability and lack of control too. Do I spend my time studying the dysfunction? Beyond a point its exhausting. Ask anyone who comes from a trauma organized system. For us it is more a relief that there is an exit door out of such traps we are born into. Maybe the buddhist philosophy is a healthier way to think about it - over attachment to anything that is ever changing is the path to suffering.
You don’t get to be unattached to the lives of others; only your own. What ugly thinking to cloth in Buddhism!
Attachment being the cause of suffering really is core to Buddhism. It's not for everybody though.
What is your point? What system are you taking about? Also I don't want to judge but I hope you don't use your past trauma as an excuse for indifference. You can be indifferent but just say so. The fact that you have trauma doesn't give you a leg to stand on. There are plenty of people with trauma and have come out of it. It just sounds rather angsty.