The issue with climate change is exactly that: change. Doesn't matter if it get colder, dryer, wetter, warmer than it used too. It is a huge undertaking to change the built environment to handle conditions that were once seen as exceptional. Houses, streets and waterways are normally replaced/adjusted on the scale of multiple decades or even centuries. Significant climate change is affecting areas everywhere on a single decade timescale. So infrastructure is now outdated much more quickly, and needs to be replaced/upgraded at a higher pace. This if hugely expensive and will lead to more waste and more emissions. And that is just for the built world on which we have a lot of influence. The natural world doesn't always have the ability to adjust; lots of habits are suffering and species are going extinct.
Sufficient impact to require rebuilding houses or other buildings on a single decade scale?
I cannot see that sort of rapid rebuilding anywhere I know. I live in a house that is about 60 years old. I have friends who live in houses centuries old. Not come across anyone who needs to change very much to cope with climate change, apart from things to reduce emissions (mostly installing heat pumps can be difficult)
The built environment also needs to handle a lot of variation anyway.
I can certainly see a drastic impact in some places: low lying land (I would be very worried if I was Dutch or Maldivian. I might be quite worried if I was living in Norfolk) , but its not everywhere.
Anyone living in a flood plane will have had to have made changes or not be insured.
Flash flooding is getting worse in the UK, partly because of climate change (look at how wet February was for south east UK) but also because a lot of urban areas are being paved over.
but to a throw away comment:
> installing heat pumps can be difficult
Yes, yes they can be, but also they also are not the cheapest way to save carbon.
Insulation makes a much bigger impact, that includes external wall insulation, and better glazing. its up to 2x cheaper.
There is crazy housebuilding and development in the UK. An entire housing estate was built where I used to live on land that is known to flood. They built pumps to offset it.
Nonetheless, very few places are affected with a decade. The vast majority of people live in places that will not be badly enough to need rebuilding any time soon.
I am hoping that this is a UK problem and the rest of the world is mostly not as crazy. Not that I have high hopes of that.
> Yes, yes they can be, but also they also are not the cheapest way to save carbon.
Cost effective solutions are not profitable, so are not backed by lobbying and marketing.
> Sufficient impact to require rebuilding houses or other buildings on a single decade scale?
Didn't Texas suffer a major snow storm a few years ago? The houses, electrical distribution network, people's clothes were unable to handle the situation and if I'm not mistaken there were deaths.
> The natural world doesn't always have the ability to adjust; lots of habits are suffering and species are going extinct.
To me this is the much bigger issue than us humans adapting. For us to adapt it demands a lot of labour, and associated costs, it will make life harder but it's doable.
Nature doesn't have this ability, animals can't get together in an assembly and find technological fixes to support them living in their environment when it changes, they either move to another area where they are adapted to (if it exists) or they die.
Precisely this. Earth's 'normal' extinction rate is often thought to be somewhere between 0.1 and 1 species per 10,000 species per 100 years. A mass extinction event is when species vanish much faster than they are replaced. This is usually defined as about 75% of the world's species being lost in a short period of geological time - less than 2.8 million years.
The current rate of extinction is between 100 and 1,000 times higher than the pre-human background rate of extinction. What we're going through will be an extinction event on a timescale and severity that will be closer to the Permian or Cretaceous extinction, which resulted in the species death of 95% and 78% respectively, and caused by apocalyptic scenarios; meteors and volcanos effectively suffocating the planet. Never before has a single species been responsible for such destruction on Earth.
I suspect humanity will survive whatever future is yet to come. I just hope we managed to preserve a substantial percentage of natural diversity through that process.
Yes, but mass extinction is the result of our greater land usage and resource overexploitation, not climate change (in that it would be happening even if climate change was not).
This also makes it harder for many species to adjust to climate change and habitat loss as it is much harder for them to migrate.
Not strictly accurate; it's the major part of it, but climate-change driven species loss is a real threat and at some point will likely outpace the rate of loss due to land/resource exploitation.
Ocean biodiversity loss is almost certainly harmed by overfishing and toxic run-off from rivers/lakes don't get me wrong, but it's also hugely impacted by rising sea temperatures. Ocean biodiversity increases exponentially with sea surface temperature up to about 20-25 C (68-77 F). Beyond that threshold, biodiversity drops off due to the limits of aerobic metabolism. Temperatures that make it hard for cold-blooded sea creatures to breathe have likely been among the biggest drivers for shifts in the distribution of marine biodiversity.
Desertification, caused partly by human agriculture and the removal of soil-retaining plant matter but mostly due to climate change, is also a major cause of species loss and it's occurring across much of the planet - especially Africa and Central Asia. Those animals that can't rapidly migrate to cooler/wetter climates are ripe for extinction.
I forgot about this and had a busy week, but yes you nailed it. The other commenters are also right in pointing out the obvious flaws of GDP with or without meaning to, but you understood the spirit of the comment.
I think the key part is reminding people that it’ll be worse if we don’t act. The work of adapting won’t be cheap but it’s positive work in the right direction, boosting GDP when it would otherwise be falling chaotically.
Not really. It means spending money rebuilding things just to maintain productivity is instead of investing in productivity multipliers.
It’s the difference between going into debt for medical school versus going into debt to pay the high interest your loan shark demands after you ran up gambling debts.
More ice melt => More fresh water in the Atlantic => cold surface anomalies in winter => sub-polar winter storms => heatwaves in Europe in summer
Mostly not predicted as models do not have fine enough grid resolution to show the movement of freshwater into the Atlantic, which happens via "narrow" channels.
Actually, quite a few of this is predicted just not with full certainty. One thing people forget is that Europe is very warm compared to most of Northern America which for the same latitude features much harsher temperatures in the winter.
Most of Northern Europe isn't like most of Siberia or Canada (e.g. Berlin where I live is at the same latitude as Newfoundland. Toronto is almost 9 degrees further south. Winters are mild here, summers quite hot and humid.
The reason for that is the gulf stream which works by hot water flowing towards the arctic, cooling down there and then flowing back. So, we get a lot of hot tropical sea water that keeps things warm. What happens if the arctic water has a lot less ice in it and warms up?
People have of course modeled that and one possible outcome is a mini ice age in Europe. Another possible outcome is accelerated melting of what remains of glaciers and return of some tropical flora and fauna that as evidenced by fossil remains, used to be common in Northern Europe. It all depends. Both have happened in the past. It's hard to predict based on a sample of one. And technically the dumping of epic amounts of CO2 in our atmosphere has not happened at this scale and speed before.
One thing is certain, summers are getting quite toasty in Southern Europe. It's slowly turning more arid, dry, and hot and it isn't that nice of a vacation destination because of it. 32 degrees Celcius is pleasant. 42 degrees just isn't.
and there's still a consensus forming, but he has the chops and he has a point .. there are comparisons to be made to the Pacific North West and being on the trailing edge (spin wise) of a large continental mass.
Both can be right. The heat budget of the NE Pacific ocean, without an equivalent to the Gulf Stream, may well explain the milder winters in Seattle, but the NE Atlantic's heat budget is still "goosed" by the Gulf Stream and mixing. The paper's argument doesn't engage that argument. It deals with atmospheric changes postulated as a consequence of freshwater anomalies caused by arctic melting.
Sigh, considering how bad journalists are at nuance - especially those that don't consider themselves as journalists but still wield the 4th Power of Broadcast - I can't wait (/s) until we have to "explain ourselves" about how it "contradicts" our previous meme about excess freshwater from melt being expected to at least slow down the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic, leading to a weaker Gulf Stream, and therefore a colder Europe (as emphasized to the point of ridiculousness in The Day After Tomorrow apocalyptic movie)... by "forgetting" the emphasis on summers.
Will at least be an opportunity to explain how Science actually works, and about chaotic systems I guess...
----
Still, one immediate question is how this impacts the rest of the year, since there's an (on the surface) obvious feedback loop here... (an answer to which might or might not be forthcoming...)
That depends on your definition of "nice". I'd prefer not to break 40C myself. The buildings here are absolute crap for dealing with heat too (eaves? shade? airflow? Who the hell needs that?)
Buildings in northern Europe are just not built for ventilation, AC and dealing with heat. It’s not a matter of looking, that’s just not how people build here (just like people in Israel don’t build building that handle cold weather well).
> Buildings in northern Europe are just not built for ventilation, AC and dealing with heat.
Luckily, because of the cold, buildings are well insulated so at least they can seek some cover inside. Granted, it won't reach 40C anyways, but at least houses are built properly over there so it helps a little.
It doesn't work that way, exactly because the buildings are well insulated they keep warmth for much longer during summer.
Back in July 2018 we had a month of hot weather in Stockholm (you probably experience it, saw in another comment you moved Sweden -> Spain), temperatures reaching 30C for multiple days and "tropical nights" (air temperature >= 20C during the night), even as a native Brazilian I could not bear how hot my house got, it wouldn't cool down during the night and the next day it'd heat up again. It got to a point where I couldn't sleep and there was a shortage of fans for sale, super basic fans were going for 100€ in the 2nd hand market.
No, it does work that way. The issue is that without AC our buildings will eventually get so warm insulation does not help.
Buildings would not cool down anyway during night in Stockholm due to the very short nights and Stockholm bring by a lake, we do not have cool nights. The only solution is insulation plus AC.
> It doesn't work that way, exactly because the buildings are well insulated they keep warmth for much longer during summer.
Goes both ways, doesn't it?
Lots of houses in Sweden have basement/cellar floors as well, and if you have good insulation, you manage to keep more of that below-ground coldness around, compared to if air blew freely through the house. At least that was my experience.
> you probably experience it
Fortunately not, moved away from my home country in 2012 already :)
At least in Finland modern apartment blocks are really the worst, much worse than 100 year old wooden houses. Usually they are built to maximize constructor profits, with bad floorplan that makes that any kind of airflow through the apartment by opening windows impossible. No AC of course, and concrete walls which preserve lots of heat.
This is already happening, but I don't know to what extent (especially over multiple countries), but we moved into our extremely well insulated house (thing 3 layers of glass) in the Netherlands mid 2020. Heating happens using a ground source + heat pump, cooling using just the ground source and passive pumping, ventilation is centralised and uses heat exchange.
During some 30/35+ waves of the last few summers we kept it below 23 degrees Celsius inside, even over many days of heat.
How do you handle light? I'm in Hilversum and the houses are just ovens.
Until recently I lived in Ireland and people looked at me like I had 3 heads when I talked about air tightness, deciduous trees in front of south facing windows, and eaves/awnings - the idea that you might not _want_ as much light as possible baffled the dinosaurs in planning.
I hope the Netherlands is better but I still see an awful lot of windows with no protection from sunlight. Eaves are perfect (and deciduous trees) because you can angle them such that you get light in the winter but shade in the mid-day summer sun.
I've spent few months in Andalusia and can't say their apartment buildings are better suited for heat than one I live in Poland. Yes there are more curtains and AC, but it is not related to the building, you can have them in northern apartment too.
As a person who moved to Spain (Barcelona though) from Sweden, I agree. Houses here have basically no insulation what so ever, unless they're built recently. During the summer, it's almost impossible to escape the heat unless you have AC inside. Meanwhile, in Sweden you can usually just enter any house and can be sure that there is at least is a temperature difference compared to outside just because of way better insulation.
At least in Israel apartments are much better ventilated than in Germany - there are usually multiple directions with windows (e.g. windows on 3 air directions, so you can open all the windows and get good circulation), a lot of apartments in Germany have only 1-2 air directions and the rooms are not setup for good air circulation. Also windows tend to be much bigger and open up more conveniently in Israel (in Germany because windows open inwards if you have anything on the way you can’t easily open the window, you have to first remove everything from the window sill - in Israel windows often slide or open outwards).
It’s subtle differences and when its super hot (40c) you need AC anyway, but upper 20s/low 30s still feel ok in a well ventilated apartment and not so much with one built for keeping the cold out (like in Germany).
It’s also much more common to have functional window shades (like these http://alumgo.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/6/7/14671210/7800745_or...) in Israel than in Germany. In homes I’ve mostly only seen the cheap kind of shades or curtains in Germany, and these aren’t very good.
Shutters and window shades can be added easily enough, and the high-mass of many buildings here gives decent heat inertia to keep things cooler during the day.
Yes, air source heat pumps (mini or multi split systems) in particular.
Unfortunately most houses in northern Europe are obsolete and plumbed for radiators so people tend to opt for systems that heat water instead of upgrading to something that offers cooling as well.
Here in Berlin I’d much rather the traditional 25c summers over the 35c+ summer of ’22 (fortunately ’23 summer was relatively mild and rainy). I do appreciate the mild winters tho!
- the risk of temp drops after plants started to sprout -> bad harvests
- snow is a great water reservoir, having the snow as rain leads to floods, results in lower ground water levels and droughts -> bad across the board and also impacting agriculture
- the permafrost in the alps is melting -> mountains litterally fall apart
And we see all that already for years now.
Edit: As rain goes rather quickly into rivers, and from there into the sea, it also compounds the fresh water issues mentioned in the article. Melting snow does so much slower, meaning it goes into ground water. Not having snow anymore really disrupts the water cycle in regions that had snow before.
There could still be a lot of improvement in both summers and winters in more north of Europe. And hopefully we could nuke something in some way that would balance out the sun so that summers wouldn't be constant light and winters completely dark. It is just depressing. It is unclear what our ancestors were thinking moving here. Probably forced.
So if you were ridiculously reckless and wielded enormous power, you could try to reduce Earth axial tilt so that there are no more seasons. Problem : this also makes the equator even hotter and poles even colder.
(With even more effort you could try to increase the tilt even more, I'm not certain about all the implications, but it seems to roughly swap equator and poles ??)
Without that kind of (did I mention reckless ?) power, our future instead seems to be of the opposite of what you are asking for : in a bad case scenario, we might end up the current Ice Age (that we lived in for the last 2.6 Ma, and which roughly corresponds to the oldest known tool industry that pretty much separates us from other animals), returning the Earth into its (more) normal state, which also involves the equators and maybe even the middle latitudes being uninhabitable for Humans and maybe even for mammals in general.
So we might face a bleak future where our descendants are trying to survive in weird jungles (?) of the Siberian coast and Antarctica, where, unlike the current jungles, summers are indeed "constant light and winters completely dark". I have some doubts about whether any civilizations can rise in these conditions...
I'd like to point out that Europe IS restoring local habitats and species, see e.g. brown bears and wolves, which used to be essentially extinct in mid/western Europe.
But I also think your argument is much weaker than it feels; why, actually, should the sins of your ancestors undermine your actions in the present?
Is it misguided if the Italians of today act againt slavery and human trafficking because slavery was tolerated in ancient Rome?
So in Russia there's this Pleistocene Park, which is a part of tundra where grazing animals are left to be in hopes of recovering the ancient arctic steppe landscape.
I hope they still exist and get some finance in the current polit-economical climate.
Nothing prevents the EU from buying a large amount of Indonesian lands (Brazil, etc) and making it a Orangutan paradise. Like a national park but this time actually international. I guess everybody will be happy, including Indonesia who will sell or rent out this land, and private property laws will prevent deforestation.
Instead of this EU just nags Indonesia that it should preserve its pristine nature instead of developing its economy. Stick is being waived and no apparent carrots. That looks highly hypocritical, given how European countries of the past absolutely devastated their lands for the sake of economic development. Even now, Norway is planning on killing every one of their wild boars[1]. I'm not sure how the effort to reintroduce wolves elsewhere compares with that plan. Reintroduce a couple dozen wolves, kill 2k boars?
Returning to the Californians, with their urban sprawl they've already wasted a large portion of landscapes in their state, taking advantage of the awesome weather they are having. When they start telling other people around the world how they should be living and developing lands, the only appropriate response is "stop lecturing us, provide material help instead".
Wild boars are neither endangered, nor are they native to Norway, so those do not detract from conservationist efforts in any way.
Buying land abroad is simply not a feasible approach to prevent deforestation, for multiple reasons:
1) Prohibitive cost: Foreign actor is not interested in owning like 5% of the deforesting countries total land area-- he wants to spend the money for preservation, not to become a titanic landowner.
2) No legislative/executive power: Naked ownership is insufficient in preventing deforestation especially in less politically stable nations.
3) Sovereignity: Do you honestly think that countries would just sell high single or even double digit percentages of their total land area to foreign governments? This is a political powder keg...
> Wild boars are neither endangered, nor are they native to Norway, so those do not detract from conservationist efforts in any way
That's exactly the spirit, right. The West will invent the rules, according to which it does not have to do anything (and be praised if it does something), whereas some other countries have to preserve nature on their own budget.
I don't think that Biosphere anyhow values orangutans more than it does boars.
I guess you could set up an entity in Indonesia with accordance with local laws and just pay for the privilege.
I can see that most of my comments are now flagged. That's why nobody in the world listens to what the West has to say anymore. There's no possibility of a discussion.
> That's exactly the spirit, right. The West will invent the rules, according to which it does not have to do anything (and be praised if it does something), whereas some other countries have to preserve nature on their own budget.
I don't think the boars vs orangutan distinction is very controversial; one of those is critically endangered, the other is basically an invasive species in Norway, and not even close to threatened.
If you make an effort to preserve biodiversity, spending money on the pigs seems very hard to justify, not matter what kind of rules you make up...
> I guess you could set up an entity in Indonesia with accordance with local laws and just pay for the privilege.
This is being done already (mostly by private entities), but it is quite ineffective/impossible on a government scale, and the goal is not to keep a bunch of zoos or animal sanctuaries, but to preserve species/habitat altogether.
I believe you underestimate how much e.g. the EU already pays or does for preserving biodiversity (like 20 billion € per year), so painting their efforts as purely "asking others to do the hard part/pay" is very disingenuous.
I think you are being flagged because your comments came across as somewhat pro-genocidal (paying perpetrators to not/stop commit genocide is a bit... out there).
So, following your logic, as a German I have no right to opposse genocide? Strange logic, to say the least. And using some climate engineering fantasy from a book as a basis for discusion, really?
Pay someone to not kill people they hate? What makes you think this works?
By the way, there is different way to read your Russian pro-verb. Talking about Russia, how much money do you think Putin wants ij exchange for not trying to conquer Ukraine? Or Nethanyahu and his rihht wing nutjob allies to not deplace every Palistinian? You have a ballpark amount at least?
One can call out Western hypocrasy without abetting, and excusing Putins actions. Or defend them. Or spreading propaganda and other falsehoods. You can do so, too. I know it.
Here in Lithuania we had one day below -20c this winter. Usually we have at least one or two weeks like that. Now the snow has melted and it's spring, feels around 6 weeks too early.
That applies in both directions and that was a response to someone saying it was warm in Copenhagen. I definitely do not doubt climate change but a warn winter in Copenhagen or a cold one in Oslo/Stockholm isn't climate, that is weather.
Same for Romania, or close to the record, anyway. I don't remember any month of February where we had 20 degrees Celsius in mid-February, and I'm in my 40s.
Depends on your definition of summer: if you apply your expectations from an August holiday in southern France to August in the UK, that is your fault!
Earths history has had many extraordinary climate changes, we already know of events like Permian–Triassic extinction.
I appreciate many people feel an obligation for humanity to minimise its effect on climate change, but the way I see it, change is constant. If we don’t cause an extinction event, earth will do it just fine without us.
The best result for humanity is if we get off this rock asap and improve our technology. The quicker we do this the better. If we have to ruin earth and its beautiful climate in the process, so be it.
> The best result for humanity is if we get off this rock asap and improve our technology. The quicker we do this the better. If we have to ruin earth and its beautiful climate in the process, so be it.
This is completely delusional; even if we nuked our planet with our complete arsenal as "efficiently" as possible, earth would STILL be more human-habitable than Mars.
