Doom loop
We’re too busy mopping up after climate disasters to try to prevent climate disasters.
The damage caused by global heating across the globe is increasingly clear, and recovering from climate disasters is already costing billions of dollars. Furthermore, these disasters can cause cascading problems including water, food and energy crises, as well as increased migration and conflict, all draining countries’ resources.
Sounds kind of tipping pointish, doesn’t it.
The report said: “This is a doom loop: the consequences of the [climate] crisis draw focus and resources from tackling its causes, leading to higher temperatures and ecological loss, which then create more severe consequences, diverting even more attention and resources, and so on.”
And this is while it’s all too obvious that nobody is really doing anything in the first place. Nobody can. Tell people to stop flying? Tell the airlines to shut down? Tell people to stop driving? Let the price of oil skyrocket? Tell corporations to stop making cars? Close the freeways? Shut down the cruise industry? Tell people to get out of Florida and Arizona and much of California?
Not going to happen.
People have no clear understanding of cause and effect. I’ve noticed that since Musk took over Twitter my feed contains many more climate deniers. I don’t even bother arguing, I either mute or scroll on
But, every social media app has people who insert this denial into conversations. Someone asked on NextDoor about their gas bill being so high last month. Another person replied that it’s Biden’s fault cause he has policies hostile to Natural Gas. Which, actually, will have the opposite effect. Gas is responding to increased demand, switching over to other sources of energy will reduce demand pressure.
The petroleum companies are making hay, but, no it’s Biden and the Green New Deal! Other repliers mentioned how it’s great to see someone “awake.”
Maybe awake, but not very smart.
And now imagine how all this will go down when energy becomes constrained. World global oil peak may have already occurred in 2018, but we won’t know for sure for a few years, in which case it will be way too late.
Seneca Cliff, anyone?
I’ve given up on prophets. Only a tiny minority will ever listen to them. Only wizards can save us now.
The atmosphere-hydrosphere-lithosphere-biosphere array is the most complex interactive system we know about in the entire Universe. Part of the biosphere is the ‘humanosphere’ with its attendant global economy. Assume that changes to one part can bring on changes in one or more other parts that are impossible to predict; popularly known as the ‘Butterfly Effect.’
(The ‘scientific investigations’ favoured by AGW denialists start out by assuming what they seek to prove and then seek supporting evidence. This IMHO is one step removed from walking around with one’s head permanently inside a thick black bag.)
If the fossil-carbon interests have their way, all the fossil carbon will be converted into $$$$ in their private bank accounts over the next 500-1,000 years, while the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere goes through the roof. BUT the Earth might just have been there before and have a mechanism to deal with it.
As ocean temperature rises, so too will evaporation, leading to increased cloud cover, solar reflectivity, and stabilisation at some new level. Hence the title of climatologist Michael Mann’s book ‘Storms of My Grandchildren.’
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/understanding-the-butterfly-effect