In the 80s when they were talking about 6C increases in temperature I figured that we would be getting the typical summer 24C moving to 30C and winter would freeze less. They likely talked about more intense storms too but I really didn't anticipate frequent heat waves and all this flooding.
I was and remain appalled that Kyoto fell through after America pulled out and I still aghast at how little commitment there is with the Paris accords, its a very limited deal and even then no one is doing much. We better get our act together soon or we are going to end up displacing 2 billion people and that world is going to be very different, I doubt it ends up good. We are already at the stage where the cost of mitigating these heat waves and frequent flooding is enormous and largely not met yet and its only going to get worse.
The problem is ... democracy. Why bother maybe solving a problem that's 20 years down the road if it costs you economic strength (and thus: votes in the election three years from now)?
There is a saying about what can be asserted without evidence can be likewise dismissed. But in this case there is even blatant empirical counter-evidence to send the argument on its way.
The problem is that there is a gigantic time delay or even hysteresis between cause and effect. A dog will never understand punishment if the offense was long into the past. We are the dogs now.
6 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 21.5 ms ] threadI was and remain appalled that Kyoto fell through after America pulled out and I still aghast at how little commitment there is with the Paris accords, its a very limited deal and even then no one is doing much. We better get our act together soon or we are going to end up displacing 2 billion people and that world is going to be very different, I doubt it ends up good. We are already at the stage where the cost of mitigating these heat waves and frequent flooding is enormous and largely not met yet and its only going to get worse.
There is a saying about what can be asserted without evidence can be likewise dismissed. But in this case there is even blatant empirical counter-evidence to send the argument on its way.
The problem is that there is a gigantic time delay or even hysteresis between cause and effect. A dog will never understand punishment if the offense was long into the past. We are the dogs now.