Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/08/2-deg-150-mil-dead.html
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I will agree with the Trumpkins on one point. Each iteration of the IPCC report has been proven wrong. But, what they will not face up to is that these report are more optimistic than the actual situation on the ground allows. If we make all the changes we need to right now, we are still screwed. We need to start thinking big, and that is just not going to happen under the current political regime. I do believe that eventually we will get sane people on office, but how long will it take to just undo the disaster that has been imposed by Trump & co? We may wind up with getting back to where we are now as an optimistic pipedream.
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Reading this report and others like it, I’m glad I don’t have kids. As it is there’s no longer any doubt we’ve placed an enormous and terrible burden on them, one they’ll start feeling the effects of before many of them reach age 30 (so will older people, but we’ve bloody well earned that grief).
But a midterm result that puts the entire political and ruling class on notice, that emboldens the people, might be the turning point that we look back on and say, “That was the day things started to change.”
If you’re placing that much weight on a midterm result in the U.S. …
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“It is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. But, it may just be the end of the beginning.”. We can only work with what we have and where we are. The fatal mistake would be to throw up our hands and abandon the field.
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Unfortunately I don’t see that happening before we’ve already hit the temperature records we’ve been trying to avoid, given the newly revised predictions.
Unfortunately what we have is basically nothing and where we are is totally fucked. According to the newly revised estimates, we’ve got about ten years to turn things around, not 100. To do so, we’d need a massive global effort far beyond anything that’s ever happened before. Instead of that, we’re doing less than we were doing (which was almost nothing). By the time US politicians get around to even thinking about acknowledging the seriousness of the situation, we’ll already have hit the thresholds we’re desperate to avoid. Not that we give up - if we work, we might avoid total extinction of the human race.
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This is one among a thousand reasons why even prominent Republicans are calling for voters to throw Republicans out of office. The Republican President and his extremists in congress have as their prime directive to concentrate and protect wealth while preventing voters from interfering with that directive. They’ve been at it for decades and now they run the whole show.
For them it has nothing to do with the environment or whether they themselves “believe” the science. They just do not care; making as much money as they can right now is all they care about.
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All agrees. We are fucked. Doesn’t change what I said. We do what we can, electorally, technologically, gustatorially, and whatever other -allys you can come up with. The only other option is to give. I am way to bullheaded to do that, so…
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most optimistic projection, based on the assumption of an immediate, drastic retooling to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which will hold warming at 1.5’ C. A median projection, with temperatures rising to 2’ C, involves trillions more in damage and hundreds of millions more people having to migrate, facing extreme weather events and pandemics, and suffering through famines and water shortages.
So, what you’re really saying, is that there is a looming opportunity here to divert a shitton of public money away from frivolous spending on roads and schools and libraries, and into the pockets of companies like Haliburton and KBR?
“Honey? Turn up the radiator!”
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You may joke, but…
A top investment strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management sent a note to clients earlier this year with a dire forecast. Despite global efforts to stop climate change, sea levels are likely to rise dramatically, threatening the 40 percent of Americans who live along the coast.
On the other hand, there will probably be some investment opportunities in seawalls.
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We certainly are. Watching the world attempt to deal with this is like watching a car crash in extreme slow motion. While sitting in the back seat.
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I really wasn’t joking.
For every shitty situation, there is always a group of grifters who will look at it and think “You know what? There’s money to be made here, but if we make it even worse, we’ll make more money.” Facebook are the poster children for this, but the GOP have taken notes and decided that “here, hold my beer …” is an appropriate response to climate change.
And as for those fucks who decided that now is a good time to start making CFCs again … 
That was a problem we’d collectively managed to actually resolve. Until now.
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Being Dutch I have experience with this, and let me tell you, those things aren’t cheap. I pay a separate tax bill just to keep my feet dry. Our country spends over a billion euro a year just on maintenance and forward planning. New projects eat up billions more. And while they do save our lives, they don’t pay dividends…
Edit: that’s a billion a year for a country roughly the size of New Jersey, for reference.
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Sure they do; they give you somewhere to live, somewhere to work, and somewhere to grow food. That’s the dividend.
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The irony… All the organizations with skin in the game, including big oil, big finance, military and etc recognize what is coming. They are preparing for massive consequences of climate change, while simultaneously funneling money to sham “research” and political candidates who will work to prevent the general population from that same realization and, even more so, prevent any effective government response to those consequences. This should piss people off to no end! And yet as of the now, just not seeing it. They will express shock and disbelief when Bangladesh floods and millions are displaced, while protecting gated communities (And Mara Largo, of course.) And insisting that this flooding is “completely unforeseeable” and that we cannot attribute it to climate change, since " that is still controversial." Puke.
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Yes, that’s true, bit of an awkward turn of phrase I used there. They certainly work for us, but I doubt they make sense as an investment opportunity for some random banker on Wall Street.
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No, not the walls themselves. The investment opportunity is in construction companies.
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Shock Doctrine carried to the logical extreme, winner take all!
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Yeah, that is actually my thought as well.
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Yeah, no kidding - from the linked article:
“A storm surge barrier system protecting New York City and parts of New Jersey could cost $2.7 million per meter”
That’s just a “storm surge barrier,” not any kind of long-term solution to permanently rising sea levels. And I was recently reading that even the Dutch seawalls were in potentially in trouble from rising sea levels because of a lack of fresh water on the land side to keep things in equilibrium.
It should. It really should. It is, in a word, evil. Yet, I suppose we expect that kind of behavior from those corporations, so we’re weirdly accepting of it.
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