3c by 2100 seems on the optimistic end of something that appears to be a non-linear process, though. Especially since we have yet to meet even a single global emissions reduction target. Kinda feels like they picked a number that would be alarming enough to spur action, but not as alarming as a more realistic "if we continue to fail to do literally anything" number that would be taken as scare mongering.
Exactly. It's hard to take any prediction more than 5-10 years into the future seriously. Not because the predictors are being insincere or deceptive, just the inherent inability for prediction models to account for unknown unknowns.
Predictions of the actual future are hard, but predictions of the future we will encounter if we stay on the path we're on can be very straightforward and reliable.
If I move a shovel full of dirt to the same place in my backyard every day for 20 years, I'm going to have a big pile of dirt there.
It's the same for climate. If we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, physics says we're going to warm the planet. It's a more complex system than the dirt pile, but no reasonable person thinks some unknown unknown is going to randomly overturn that and cause an ice age (other than possibly nuclear winter).
We can see the warming signal from CO2 in history and we can reasonably project the future as well, if current emissions continue.
> Predictions of the actual future are hard, but predictions of the future we will encounter if we stay on the path we're on can be very straightforward and reliable
This is completely false. We are not interpolating with climate science, we are extrapolating. That is why the variance in the models is so wide (and expands rapidly). That variance, also, only applies to the known mechanisms: when a new important factor shows up, that can cause the predictions to be very wrong. This happened with ocean acidification in the early 2010's - the climate models had predicted increasing temperature, but it didn't materialize because the oceans were absorbing a lot more CO2 than we thought.
In your example, an earthquake, a tornado, a flood, a strong storm, another person stealing your dirt, or even a heavy wind can make your projection false. You can keep doing the same thing, but you will have no idea how big that dirt pile will be 20 years from now.
I don't think you're wrong to say that if we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere then we're _eventually_ going warm the planet to the point predicted in the article.
But > 10 years out, unpredictable technological innovation (either improvements to decarbonization tech or other tech that would make a lack of decarbonization irrelevant) would almost certainly change the path we're on to a point where projecting the current path isn't useful. To that point, Deloitte's finding of "insufficient action" on climate change couldn't possibly take into account actions happening today that could build toward useful climate change solutions if their only concept of action is applying existing tech to the problem.
If you go back and read old climate papers from the 80s a lot of them are pretty reasonable if they made a correct estimation of greenhouse gas emissions.
There was never a scientific consensus that there was a coming ice age. There were already more papers being published about global warming than about global cooling throughout the 1970s.
This number, or any other number, is a lie, which only discredits the climate change initiative. An honest estimate would be a 2-sigma range, e.g. $4..24T with 95% probability with such and such assumptions.
How much will action on climate change cost? The implication from the article " ...the United States economy could gain $3 trillion" seems to be 11.5 Trillion?
> If global warming reaches around 3°C toward the century’s end, Deloitte’s analysis indicates that economic damages would grow and compound, affecting every industry and region in the country.
I'm betting we overshoot +3c by a fair bit. Given how little progress has been made (emissions are still _accelerating_), I'm at least pleased to see some resource that doesn't merely talk about +1.5c. We've passed that point already. The IPCC's 6th report estimates that if we merely burn the GHGs that are easily accessible via our existing mines, oil rigs, etc, we're headed to +2.5c.
I really hope that Deloitte's report here does some good by giving financial numbers to people who only care about the numbers. (But I doubt it. Very few people with ANY decision-making power will be alive in 2100. "Why worry? I'll be dead.")
Your source looks at 2020 emissions, which is TRUE, but 2020 was covid shutdowns. I've seen somewhat-reliable estimates of 2-7% reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions. (If you look at 2019, it was remarkably about equal to 2018 after many years of increase.)
But 2021 was the biggest (full year) of emissions ever, more than covering the 2020 decrease. I don't know of any resources that track quarterly emissions, so I don't know if we can see whether 2022 is on-pace for another record year. Perhaps the price of oil reduced usage enough to reduce emissions this year compared to last, but I won't hold my breath.
"Will" is future tense yes. We expect the acceleration to reverse. As you say there is a reason to be optimistic if you look at the parts, but if you just look at the sum it's pretty bad still.
That’s it? Seems like it might be easier to spend money to mitigate the effects of climate change rather than stop climate change itself. There is probably a sweet spot between carbon reduction and climate change effect mitigation that optimizes the total cost.
Balancing this against the cost of whatever "green new deal" would be required to get there, it sounds like serious climate change mitigation is not worth it at all. Also, it's important to note that changes in GDP correspond to human lives: increases in GDP affect longevity, birth rates, and rates of accidental death.
If we take that as true, then either the top commenter or the UN is utterly incompetent to perform this very predictable prediction. Because the UN predicts steady US population growth over the next few decades, not a collapse. The Census Bureau predicts similarly.
I can't find any serious prediction of imminent collapse.
True, the population is aging (people live longer) and birth rate is collapsing.
The result is that it’s not apparent when you look at population. But aging is having a massive effect on the economy, the job sector, etc.
At some point it’s going to collapse, but because we have been below replacement for a long time it’s not going to stop anytime soon.
Look at Japan, Italy to see what is coming (they are a bit ahead)
Last year japan lost 800 000 of population. At some point the japanese culture will disappear if they don’t start having babies (really not happening at the moment)
I heard that in Japan they sell more adult diaper than baby diapers...
I don't know about demography but in my reading of various reports and so on the climate is more significantly predictable than most skeptics think it is.
The presence of many degrees of freedom does not make them all equally influential.
It's odd, then, that I can't find any serious institution which agrees with you on this projection. Most predict steady continued growth of the US population.
As others have commented, $14.5 trillion USD (even with inflation) is nothing compared to the US's current outgoings.
What I _never_ see costed is the other side - what negative cost will the climate policies have on GDP? I imagine that number to be far greater.
For example: Great, you increased fuel tax and got less people driving. Now people can't get to work, deliveries are now too costly, the cost of living increases because even basic items like food need to be transported to the store, with costs given directly to the consumer.
The single most concerning thing is that no politician appears to be doing these calculations. There is no open discussion about viable climate policies that don't crush the middle and working class into poverty.
An enlightening book I read on this topic is "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet" by Bjorn Lomborg.
The book explores the cost of: doing nothing to fight climate change vs doing everything to fight climate change vs doing something in the middle that optimizes global GDP (the book uses GDP as a "human welfare" metric).
My biggest take away from the book is that regardless of global temperature increases through the end of the century, global GDP is still projected to grow A TON. But because of the temperature increase, global GCP will grow _slightly_ less (like a few % less) that it otherwise would have. The wrong policies could cost GDP growth more than the temperature increase will.
Annual GDP of a country != the current sum total net worth of its population. Deleting the poorest half of the US population would destroy the annual GDP, which is built on the labor of said population. Theoretically, as the GDP of a nation grows, so does the quality of life of its population through better access to everything money can buy. It kinda doesn't matter how many billionaires there are if the rest of the population is still able to buy air conditioners, health care, sturdier houses, pay taxes, and generally afford the things that make the climate the least of their worries, as there are super diminishing returns on quality of life past a certain income level (all other arguments against billionaires are outside the scope of this comment).
Developed countries are quite well equipped (as in they're rich enough) to be able to adapt to the changing climate as needed. They can buy air conditioners, build dikes, choose not to build houses in areas prone to climate disaster, etc., all if which is insanely cheaper than attempting to reduce global temperature (though that's not an argument against any attempt to reduce global temperature). Making under-developed countries richer allows them to stop doing the "worser" things that aggravate climate change and make their populations unhealthy (like burning wood for a lot of their energy needs).
(This comment is just an elaboration on the arguments in the book I mentioned—not me being an expert.)
As @pseudobry mentions: 'the book uses GDP as a "human welfare" metric'.
I don't think anybody here (even the author of the book presumably) is suggesting that they are cause and effect, but they do appear to be correlated.
Also just because 50% have 1% of the wealth, doesn't mean they don't contribute towards the wealth of the other 50% of people holding 99% of the wealth. For example, your boss gets the majority of the profit, but they couldn't run the company by themselves.
So honest question of Rich people are 90% of the economy and climate change won’t impact them much then is a huge climate change cost really a possibility?
He's a political scientist, not a climate scientist but he seems to be working backwards from the agenda of "climate change is a liberal hoax" vs "we have a serious problem and need serious solutions to it".
I'd read it if I felt like there's valid knowledge to glean (i.e., ok, so what are the best thing to do) but not to put money in a denier's pocket.
I mostly found the book enlightening because it was a calm, rational voice amidst the constant stream of the-world-is-ending-by-fire/water/drought/heat/cold news that my tech bubble sends my way.
I didn't find anything in the book about liberal hoaxes. Rather I found the author to be diligently addressing a topic they find to be quite serious. Their argument is not against climate change (they very much acknowledge we have to address it), but against what they view to be ineffective (i.e. very costly, not gonna do much to affect temperature rise) policies.
A good portion of the book is dedicated to the author's ideas for more effective ways to deal with climate change in the long run, like pumping a lot more money into R&D, looking into nuclear more, helping developing nations shed climate-aggravating technologies faster, drafting local "adapt to the climate" policies, etc. The author is in favor of a carbon tax. Another idea explored is how making the right growth-promoting improvements in developing countries during the next 20 years could enable them to deal with climate change better over the subsequent 50 years (vs short-term growth-slowing policies that might look great during elections, but don't do much to move the needle by 2100).
I read the article you linked and found it hard to interpret it as anything other than a hit piece with an almost hysterical focus on painting the book and its author in the most negative light possible. It was quite a contrast from the book where the author makes their criticisms in the vein of "I think we can do better".
I agree that civil dialog is always preferable, but there's plenty of it out there that is polite in tone however anything but such in content. Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson come to mind.
I'll read the link I shared (again) to compare and contrast, as well as look for other reviews.
I'm in the camp that is terrified of what Climate Change has in store for us, and I want to understand it to understand what is truly scary versus what is being ginned up. While the media loves to get us excited I have to say that this time they're justified from what I know so far.
Question for the crowd: I read HN often but rarely comment, so I'm curious what I did wrong in my comment to merit the downvotes.
I was initially excited to see someone asking a question about a topic that I had _just_ read a book on (I also discussed the book for a few hours in a book group). It seemed like sharing that was a goodwill thing to do.
You're not supposed to say it out loud when you're concern trolling. We've had the other side non stop from every politician and all media for decades. Even the 'left' politicians only do the bare minimum most watered down measures after decades of public pressure and ironclad science and not even that if there's a remote chance it could hurt their donors.
Solar is cheaper than any other option after ten or twenty years of serious investment. Initiating the cost drop has been an option for at least fifty and possibly 100 (as the first commercial PV panels were a technology with good cost efficiency and 5% energy efficiency and were produced decades before the photoelectric effect was discovered -- the creator thought they were thermoelectric initially) years simply by not actively propping up fossil fuel interests at immense cost and instead putting a fraction of that money into renewables.
Cars are the single biggest dead weight loss in any economy by orders of magnitude. Families are spending upwards of 30% of their income and a quarter to half of their productive hours on being able to participate in cities or towns that were intentionally demolished and rebuilt to make them unlivable without one at immense cost. Building walkable towns, trains, and density in place of cars reduces commute times, reduces deaths by hundreds of thousands per year and avoids millions of injuries and illnesses in a country the size of the US.
Without enforcing car ownership, land can be used much more effectively and housing can be far cheaper without dedicating more of a town's land to the car than the residents.
Then there are the trillions spent on destabilizing and invading countries with fossil fuel reserves to ensure they will sell it for a pittance only in USD and not give their workers livable conditions.
Insulation (and sharing 1-3 walls with your neighbors) is an unmitigated benefit to everyone, and all it would have needed is minor policy change.
Inaction could lead to no society or economy to speak of.
These reports are not grounded in science, and the science includes potential outcomes that, driven by continued inaction, create an environment where humans and other creatures and plants struggle to live.
With the new "climate/inflation/healthcare" bill the plan calls for
investing in green power as well as increasing fossile fuel production.
I have read several news articles that claim this is the new normal and
it is realistic. Given the energy shortage now, and countries restarting coal, restarting gas, and restarting nuclear it is the reality on the ground now.
Of course, most goals set in Paris and Glasgow are shot to hell.
If this spreads to other nations, we need to recalibrate what type of goals
we set.
was
It’s laughable that people still think this is something that human intervention can stall without the entire planet going back to a Neolithic lifestyle.
The focus needs to be developing ways to mitigate the impact. Climate is never static. One major geologic event can do more climate harm than hundreds of years of human industry.
Commercial whaling probably did more climate harm than anything we’re doing now because it broke the iron cycle that is vital to plankton blooms
71 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] thread“Inaction will lead to an ice age costing $X by 2020”
meanwhile there’s another thread here about a “Contrarian VC” investing in climate change…
If I move a shovel full of dirt to the same place in my backyard every day for 20 years, I'm going to have a big pile of dirt there.
It's the same for climate. If we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, physics says we're going to warm the planet. It's a more complex system than the dirt pile, but no reasonable person thinks some unknown unknown is going to randomly overturn that and cause an ice age (other than possibly nuclear winter).
We can see the warming signal from CO2 in history and we can reasonably project the future as well, if current emissions continue.
Not that I disagree with your general point, But this is why prediction is tricky, because unexpected flooding and your prediction is false.
This is completely false. We are not interpolating with climate science, we are extrapolating. That is why the variance in the models is so wide (and expands rapidly). That variance, also, only applies to the known mechanisms: when a new important factor shows up, that can cause the predictions to be very wrong. This happened with ocean acidification in the early 2010's - the climate models had predicted increasing temperature, but it didn't materialize because the oceans were absorbing a lot more CO2 than we thought.
In your example, an earthquake, a tornado, a flood, a strong storm, another person stealing your dirt, or even a heavy wind can make your projection false. You can keep doing the same thing, but you will have no idea how big that dirt pile will be 20 years from now.
But > 10 years out, unpredictable technological innovation (either improvements to decarbonization tech or other tech that would make a lack of decarbonization irrelevant) would almost certainly change the path we're on to a point where projecting the current path isn't useful. To that point, Deloitte's finding of "insufficient action" on climate change couldn't possibly take into account actions happening today that could build toward useful climate change solutions if their only concept of action is applying existing tech to the problem.
I know it doesn’t show on co2 concentration yet.
Solar, wind power, batteries, EV are all on exponential growth curves.
In 10 years we will be in a much different place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
There is good reason to believe it isn't over and a glacial period will return.
I'm betting we overshoot +3c by a fair bit. Given how little progress has been made (emissions are still _accelerating_), I'm at least pleased to see some resource that doesn't merely talk about +1.5c. We've passed that point already. The IPCC's 6th report estimates that if we merely burn the GHGs that are easily accessible via our existing mines, oil rigs, etc, we're headed to +2.5c.
I really hope that Deloitte's report here does some good by giving financial numbers to people who only care about the numbers. (But I doubt it. Very few people with ANY decision-making power will be alive in 2100. "Why worry? I'll be dead.")
But 2021 was the biggest (full year) of emissions ever, more than covering the 2020 decrease. I don't know of any resources that track quarterly emissions, so I don't know if we can see whether 2022 is on-pace for another record year. Perhaps the price of oil reduced usage enough to reduce emissions this year compared to last, but I won't hold my breath.
GHG emissions are dropping year-over-year in developed nations, and developing nations will follow. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb...
In other words: you are both right.
2000 to 2020 seems like a steeper line upwards than 1980 to 1990, but yea, since 2011, it does seem we've rounded the corner.
I will adjust my belief. Thanks.
In 50 years we will have a massive population collapse, the US have been below replacement level for 50 years. China is even worse.
Prepare yourself to see massive employees shortage getting worse and worse.
The only thing keeping population aflot is longevity extension but 80yo don’t produce or consume much.
I can't find any serious prediction of imminent collapse.
The result is that it’s not apparent when you look at population. But aging is having a massive effect on the economy, the job sector, etc.
At some point it’s going to collapse, but because we have been below replacement for a long time it’s not going to stop anytime soon.
Look at Japan, Italy to see what is coming (they are a bit ahead) Last year japan lost 800 000 of population. At some point the japanese culture will disappear if they don’t start having babies (really not happening at the moment)
I heard that in Japan they sell more adult diaper than baby diapers...
So we have more living people but they are older and older. At some point it will fall unless we find more and more way to extend lifespan. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-by-gdp...
The presence of many degrees of freedom does not make them all equally influential.
For climate in 50 years... Where humans will be. Consider that the internet was at the beginning 20 years ago.
Where was solar and EV 20 years ago.
I am bullish on human creativity, much less so on Deloitte and the governments.
What I _never_ see costed is the other side - what negative cost will the climate policies have on GDP? I imagine that number to be far greater.
For example: Great, you increased fuel tax and got less people driving. Now people can't get to work, deliveries are now too costly, the cost of living increases because even basic items like food need to be transported to the store, with costs given directly to the consumer.
The single most concerning thing is that no politician appears to be doing these calculations. There is no open discussion about viable climate policies that don't crush the middle and working class into poverty.
The book explores the cost of: doing nothing to fight climate change vs doing everything to fight climate change vs doing something in the middle that optimizes global GDP (the book uses GDP as a "human welfare" metric).
My biggest take away from the book is that regardless of global temperature increases through the end of the century, global GDP is still projected to grow A TON. But because of the temperature increase, global GCP will grow _slightly_ less (like a few % less) that it otherwise would have. The wrong policies could cost GDP growth more than the temperature increase will.
Developed countries are quite well equipped (as in they're rich enough) to be able to adapt to the changing climate as needed. They can buy air conditioners, build dikes, choose not to build houses in areas prone to climate disaster, etc., all if which is insanely cheaper than attempting to reduce global temperature (though that's not an argument against any attempt to reduce global temperature). Making under-developed countries richer allows them to stop doing the "worser" things that aggravate climate change and make their populations unhealthy (like burning wood for a lot of their energy needs).
(This comment is just an elaboration on the arguments in the book I mentioned—not me being an expert.)
I don't think anybody here (even the author of the book presumably) is suggesting that they are cause and effect, but they do appear to be correlated.
Also just because 50% have 1% of the wealth, doesn't mean they don't contribute towards the wealth of the other 50% of people holding 99% of the wealth. For example, your boss gets the majority of the profit, but they couldn't run the company by themselves.
Probably somehow very few on hn.
Sooo we should probably even stop talking about it I assume?
Anyway you are aware of people/scientist saying things like 'much earlier than expected '?
We still don't know if the current scenarios will hold.
There should be a general sense that sustainability should benefit all of us.
Investing in long term topics should benefit us all as well.
I have a conscience others as well.
Also the economic version of it: mass migrations, labor shortages, unstable countries are bad for people in a service oriented society.
The riots in USA can be a typical symptom.
Of course USA is a bad example due to it being normal of having gated communities but other countries do not have that as extreme.
He's a political scientist, not a climate scientist but he seems to be working backwards from the agenda of "climate change is a liberal hoax" vs "we have a serious problem and need serious solutions to it".
I'd read it if I felt like there's valid knowledge to glean (i.e., ok, so what are the best thing to do) but not to put money in a denier's pocket.
I didn't find anything in the book about liberal hoaxes. Rather I found the author to be diligently addressing a topic they find to be quite serious. Their argument is not against climate change (they very much acknowledge we have to address it), but against what they view to be ineffective (i.e. very costly, not gonna do much to affect temperature rise) policies.
A good portion of the book is dedicated to the author's ideas for more effective ways to deal with climate change in the long run, like pumping a lot more money into R&D, looking into nuclear more, helping developing nations shed climate-aggravating technologies faster, drafting local "adapt to the climate" policies, etc. The author is in favor of a carbon tax. Another idea explored is how making the right growth-promoting improvements in developing countries during the next 20 years could enable them to deal with climate change better over the subsequent 50 years (vs short-term growth-slowing policies that might look great during elections, but don't do much to move the needle by 2100).
I read the article you linked and found it hard to interpret it as anything other than a hit piece with an almost hysterical focus on painting the book and its author in the most negative light possible. It was quite a contrast from the book where the author makes their criticisms in the vein of "I think we can do better".
I'll read the link I shared (again) to compare and contrast, as well as look for other reviews.
I'm in the camp that is terrified of what Climate Change has in store for us, and I want to understand it to understand what is truly scary versus what is being ginned up. While the media loves to get us excited I have to say that this time they're justified from what I know so far.
I was initially excited to see someone asking a question about a topic that I had _just_ read a book on (I also discussed the book for a few hours in a book group). It seemed like sharing that was a goodwill thing to do.
You're not supposed to say it out loud when you're concern trolling. We've had the other side non stop from every politician and all media for decades. Even the 'left' politicians only do the bare minimum most watered down measures after decades of public pressure and ironclad science and not even that if there's a remote chance it could hurt their donors.
Solar is cheaper than any other option after ten or twenty years of serious investment. Initiating the cost drop has been an option for at least fifty and possibly 100 (as the first commercial PV panels were a technology with good cost efficiency and 5% energy efficiency and were produced decades before the photoelectric effect was discovered -- the creator thought they were thermoelectric initially) years simply by not actively propping up fossil fuel interests at immense cost and instead putting a fraction of that money into renewables.
Cars are the single biggest dead weight loss in any economy by orders of magnitude. Families are spending upwards of 30% of their income and a quarter to half of their productive hours on being able to participate in cities or towns that were intentionally demolished and rebuilt to make them unlivable without one at immense cost. Building walkable towns, trains, and density in place of cars reduces commute times, reduces deaths by hundreds of thousands per year and avoids millions of injuries and illnesses in a country the size of the US.
Without enforcing car ownership, land can be used much more effectively and housing can be far cheaper without dedicating more of a town's land to the car than the residents.
Then there are the trillions spent on destabilizing and invading countries with fossil fuel reserves to ensure they will sell it for a pittance only in USD and not give their workers livable conditions.
Insulation (and sharing 1-3 walls with your neighbors) is an unmitigated benefit to everyone, and all it would have needed is minor policy change.
Of course, most goals set in Paris and Glasgow are shot to hell.
If this spreads to other nations, we need to recalibrate what type of goals we set. was
The focus needs to be developing ways to mitigate the impact. Climate is never static. One major geologic event can do more climate harm than hundreds of years of human industry.
Commercial whaling probably did more climate harm than anything we’re doing now because it broke the iron cycle that is vital to plankton blooms