Listen now | Noah Smith & Brad DeLong, with Zeke Hausfather: Fifteen years ago "solar power" was going to be burning switchgrass in a closed-carbon cycle... Technology is the sauce... Global leadership will have to come from the arc of Asia facing the bullets, because the American century is over… It's possible to be increasingly optimistic about climate change and to recognize that we still have a huge way to go… If you want to see a coral reef other than with your VR goggles, start scuba diving now…
I have no idea why you think the primary impact will happen in a localized way, even an "Asian region" localized way.
One way to think of the Carbon Binge is that it's a literal binge and destroys capital; not just the doubtful capital of fossil carbon, but the fundamental biological capital of ecological diversity and disparity. Whatever survivors there may be shall be living in a poorer world.
Even the IPCC recognizes that 2 C of warming -- which they predict for 2050 -- renders agriculture doubtful. Anyone paying attention to simple indicators like the variance in hay prices is aware that 2050 would be asking a lot; the "rains at predictable times" requirement for agriculture is already going. Arctic amplification sure looks like it's happening; that involves predictions of 8 and 12 C temperature increases.
So far as I can tell, we're already well into agriculture failing. It's price swings, rather than unavailability, so far. It's not going to stay price swings.
I would characterize the global response to GW as each nation playing a prisoner's dilemma with the need to decarbonize and almost universally defecting. It has resulted in a global "tragedy of the commons".
The US might have had a lead role to play 3 decades ago, but the Republican antipathy to making any changes has long scuppered that. However, I don't think that Asia will be the driver as Brad thinks. Even here in California, where ostensibly we are a "green" environmentally conscious state, the reactionary forces maintaining destructive ag practices play out the global situation on a smaller scale - ie extracting profits until teh game ends for everyone.
One issue I had with teh discussion is that there was an unstated assumption that we could, possibly, fix the CO2 emissions issue with technology, reversing its atmospheric ppm towards pre-industrial levels. That cannot happen. Most of the CO2 has been absorbed by the oceans, acidifying it, but the removal of CO2 from the oceans is based on deep ocean current turnover - hundreds, if not a thousand years. IOW, GW is now "baked in" and removing the CO2 from the atmosphere is only a partial solution to the reservoir that needs to be reduced.
As for costs, just how expensive is it to either protect major ports (like Venice's lagoon barrier, or London's Thames tidal barrier). Again, California provides a large %age of the fruit and vegetables to the US, yet even modest sea-level rise will cause saltwater intrusion into the aquifers that many large farms are using to irrigate crops as the surface water declines. The "water wars" are hotting up in California.
lastly, species loss cannot be reversed, at least as regards resurrecting the lost species. Technology may allow resurrection after extinction, but we would need to rebuild who ecosystems for this to work well. Resurrecting a few charismatic megafauna and hoping their release into a protected area will rebuild a species is a tactic unlikely to work effectively. Will we have to wait 10-100 millennia for new species to replace them?
I have no idea why you think the primary impact will happen in a localized way, even an "Asian region" localized way.
One way to think of the Carbon Binge is that it's a literal binge and destroys capital; not just the doubtful capital of fossil carbon, but the fundamental biological capital of ecological diversity and disparity. Whatever survivors there may be shall be living in a poorer world.
Even the IPCC recognizes that 2 C of warming -- which they predict for 2050 -- renders agriculture doubtful. Anyone paying attention to simple indicators like the variance in hay prices is aware that 2050 would be asking a lot; the "rains at predictable times" requirement for agriculture is already going. Arctic amplification sure looks like it's happening; that involves predictions of 8 and 12 C temperature increases.
So far as I can tell, we're already well into agriculture failing. It's price swings, rather than unavailability, so far. It's not going to stay price swings.
Possibly the best Hexapodia yet.
I would characterize the global response to GW as each nation playing a prisoner's dilemma with the need to decarbonize and almost universally defecting. It has resulted in a global "tragedy of the commons".
The US might have had a lead role to play 3 decades ago, but the Republican antipathy to making any changes has long scuppered that. However, I don't think that Asia will be the driver as Brad thinks. Even here in California, where ostensibly we are a "green" environmentally conscious state, the reactionary forces maintaining destructive ag practices play out the global situation on a smaller scale - ie extracting profits until teh game ends for everyone.
One issue I had with teh discussion is that there was an unstated assumption that we could, possibly, fix the CO2 emissions issue with technology, reversing its atmospheric ppm towards pre-industrial levels. That cannot happen. Most of the CO2 has been absorbed by the oceans, acidifying it, but the removal of CO2 from the oceans is based on deep ocean current turnover - hundreds, if not a thousand years. IOW, GW is now "baked in" and removing the CO2 from the atmosphere is only a partial solution to the reservoir that needs to be reduced.
As for costs, just how expensive is it to either protect major ports (like Venice's lagoon barrier, or London's Thames tidal barrier). Again, California provides a large %age of the fruit and vegetables to the US, yet even modest sea-level rise will cause saltwater intrusion into the aquifers that many large farms are using to irrigate crops as the surface water declines. The "water wars" are hotting up in California.
lastly, species loss cannot be reversed, at least as regards resurrecting the lost species. Technology may allow resurrection after extinction, but we would need to rebuild who ecosystems for this to work well. Resurrecting a few charismatic megafauna and hoping their release into a protected area will rebuild a species is a tactic unlikely to work effectively. Will we have to wait 10-100 millennia for new species to replace them?