this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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Shouldn't we put more weight into your friends opinion?
Another person replied to me with a list of things that are a constant in our world. Except 'collapse of civ' which is exactly the kind of conclusion I'm raising doubts on as there isn't as much to support it. Again, focused on regional impacts and not places that are going to be obliterated.
Another person said 'wait till permafrost melts'. This is already baked into models, it's not expected that all permafrost is going to melt everywhere.
Idk. I'm eagerly waiting for AR7 and I'm regularly checking in on a few places. I'm aware of the narrative that IPCC leans towards conservative estimates or is overly optimistic. Internet forums don't seem to offer much to this conversation and it's mostly people echoing what they already believe. I'm not seeing any exceptions to that norm here in this thread.
The few places:
An article/search topic that swayed me a while ago:
I expect that geoengineering is going to happen on a larger scale, it would be counter to how people operate to not pursue that option.
That's not the effects I'm talking about - what we were talking about specifically was water shortages, across the US we've drained aquifers that will need centuries to build back up. Another fun side effect is crazy sinkholes
Droughts and lack of snowpack obviously play into it, but across the Western states it's already a critical problem - and we've done very little to address it. We don't have a plan, and the problem isn't going to fix itself - wild ideas like water pipelines across multiple states have been proposed, we could provide drinking water in tankers temporarily, but ultimately this just buys a bit more time. This is a right now problem - we've been rationing and talking about this future problem since I was a child, but water needs have only gone up
As for other similar issues happening right now - wildfires across the continent, massive floods everywhere, massive crop failures in China and India, Spain turning into a desert, algae blooms killing already depleted fisheries, deadly heatwaves, polar vortexes, bigger and slower hurricanes hitting places unprepared for them - the list goes on
It's a right now problem. It affects the vulnerable first, but it's already touched all of us in one way or another. But what happens when the sinks in salt lake City run dry? What happens when someone's house is burned down in a wildfire, twice? What happens when the power grid of Texas keeps going down every heat wave or cold snap?
People who can move will move. People who can't will die in place or become climate refugees when things get bad enough. It will be just inconveniences and news of distant tragedies until somewhere hits a tipping point - hopefully you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time, but even then you'll feel the aftershocks
I'm familiar with all of that. I spent a lot of time on /r/collapse until it went completely off the rails. Crop data is available online - output in Asia is still increasing. I'm not sure if you looked at my sources but outside of social media that horrific doom narrative is not prevalent.
You know how we had SARS, and bird flu, and swine flu, and MERS? And every time scientists rang the alarm bell, but it turned out to not be a big deal? It's because they knew COVID was inevitable - they knew the sketchy meat markets were a huge vector for a coronavirus to cross the species barrier.
COVID could've been much worse, but it certainly affected everyone. It also probably could have been prevented, or at least delayed
These smaller, regional problems are warning signs. A lot of people are dying from them already, but if we don't take them seriously they're just going to get big enough to have global effects. Not in the next century, in the next decade
Are we going to go extinct from climate change? I don't think so. Are you going to die from climate change? Probably not. Will someone you know die from it? Possibly. Will it negatively impact your life? Absolutely, it already has, and it will keep doing so in interestingly obvious ways
One thing to bear in mind, is that the draining of the water tables in the western U.S. is completely artificial, as in we could easily refill them with correct management. The issue is a crazy, CRAZY amount of water (inefficient flood irrigation farming accounts for 75% of water use out west) is wasted on growing alfalfa for export, or almonds, and farmers are able to do this due to water rights from 100 years ago.
If we just stopped the farmers from wasting water alone, we'd have enough water to replenish and drastically refill our aquafers.
We could. It's a totally solvable problem - until it isn't. If an aquifer is dry and you're already rationing the water, what can you do? Presumably ship in enough water to keep people alive, if not to sustain commercial needs too
Which is going to drain water from somewhere else, and what if they're having the same issue? Take it from further. Salt lake City was looking into the idea of building a pipeline from the Mississippi, and I'm sure someone is looking into building a fleet of water tankers and checking if there's profit to be had
Now, where's the part in all this where we take back water rights? Where's the part where we start to fix the problem?
Realistically the rubber will need to meet the road at some point, and the wasteful alfalfa and almond farmers need to be cut off straight up, because there's no way a handful of wealthy farmers is going to be prioritized over a city of hundreds of thousands if that city is seriously considering trucking in water.
Exactly what I mean. It's a problem, a big one, but is my 'city going to run dry' as OP said it would? Is my Mom going to starve to death? When? For how long?
I think I'm a bit over the doom posting and I'm bummed that this community doesn't actually have anything new to contribute. It's the same stories from reddit brought over here. It's just people repeating things they read on the internet. Oh well! Not my problem.