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Global Investment Firm Warns 7.8 Degrees of Global Warming Is Possible (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A leading British global investment firm has a warning for its clients: If we keep consuming oil and gas at current rates, our planet is on course to experience a rise in global average temperatures of nearly 8 Celsius (14 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. This would make Earth basically uninhabitable for humans. Although this is the darkest scenario we've seen so far, there's reason for cautious optimism: the new projections point out that it's unlikely investors will simply ignore this risk, meaning that our present level of fossil fuel consumption could decrease. Still, by current climate research standards, this is a pretty wild number. It is four times as high as the "safe limit" for increasing temperatures caused by climate change, internationally recognized to be around 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Schroders, the British investment firm which controls assets worth $542 billion, released this forecast as part of a range of potential scenarios in its "Climate Progress Dashboard" in late July.
Antarctica Conglomerate shares split, in related news.
Gently reply
If we're on our way to a lethal +8C world, that's bad news. But the world is a reflexive system. If we kill ourselves off at +4C, say, human greenhouse gas production ceases, and (after a long lag) the world finds a new stable point without us. So there's a tendency for the world to self-correct. On the other hand, there may be positive feedbacks (tipping points) that push us all the way to a Venus scenario. The moral is, it's a complex non-linear system, and straight line extrapolations are almost certainly wrong when they go far beyond historical experience.
Fiat Lux.
Investment firms are neither notable climate experts nor are they noted for their devotion to selfless ethics. Follow the money. I'll bet that they have huge positions in "green" companies and/or renewable energy, and they are hoping to drive those markets higher.
Alternatively (or maybe additionally), they may think that this will get them more publicity than standard advertising, and hence a lot of new clients who believe that your investment strategy can save you from an uninhabitable planet.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I don't know about this particular investment firm, but investment and insurance firms are actually quite well equipped to think about risk, which is really what climate change is about from a financial perspective. They inherently need to be able to think rationally about climate predictions, assess the statistics/uncertainties behind them, and come to conclusions about where and how to invest in the long run. For example, what's the risk/reward for an investment firm to invest in an African company if there's an X% chance that company's location will be uninhabitable in 50 years? Or if climate change leads to social/political instability in the area?
For insurance companies, climate predictions tell them how much risk is involved in, for example, real estate purchases on the Florida coast as sea levels rise and extreme weather events increase in frequency.
For them it's all about probabilities - what is the probability that climate scientists are qualitatively right, and if they are, what are the chances of the particular predicted consequences being accurate (and how accurate). Actuaries crunch those numbers and advise their companies to make risk/reward decisions based off of them. One of the hardest parts about these predictions isn't the actual environmental impact, but the social consequences of it, which can have massive financial impacts.
In terms of what the companies know specifically about climate change, I'm guessing they have scientific consultant teams that provide the expertise they need.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Thank you for the thoughtful, rational reply. You guys don't seem unhinged at all.
And Cat videos.
Those are real.
Aren't they?
AREN'T THEY????!!!!!!
Please say they are!!!!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Mod Fail.
The AC is correct. Doomsday predictions do seem to be a one upsmanship game, as evidenced by this article and Algore.
The surest way to undermine your position is to make outrageous claims that can't be substantiated.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The more appropriate extinction event to compare with is the End-Permian Extinction. That was caused by essentially burning fossil fuels, because lava got in contact with much of the then-existing seams of coal.
Right now we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a faster pace than the volcanism did back then, and we are less likely to accidentally leave rich coal seams untouched.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
What you're seeing there in the 20's/30's is the dust bowl that wreaked havoc on the central US during that time (high heat, vast drought). It is really interesting to see that. But it was a regional effect. Globally the story is different.
A related important point was well explained recently by NYT: extreme high temperature events are increasing in frequency.
https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
It's 12 fucking paragraphs until the article admits the real prediction from the source is only 4.1 degrees. Which, by the way, comes from an (unweighted!) average of 12 different scenarios which aren't even described meaningfully, let alone are the methods for arriving at the numbers explained. The entire point of this seems to be to give people a scary chart to include in their powerpoint presentations.
Just the fact that there is zero attempt to assign any probability to any of the 12 scenarios to actually come up with a meaningful prediction tells me this is garbage compiled by someone with no clue.
I notice Slashdot is the latest science/tech site to fall before the coordinated onslaught of relentless, right wing Global Warming deniers. Sensible people hardly ever bother commenting on Global Warming stories anymore. And increasingly, summaries getting posted are drawn from stories several iterations removed from original sources.
Oh, well. Technology marches on, and thanks to China, the cost of solar is now so low we're only a few storage innovations away from watching corporations that have been funding GW deniers either adapt or crash and burn.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
What you're seeing there in the 20's/30's is the dust bowl that wreaked havoc on the central US during that time (high heat, vast drought). It is really interesting to see that. But it was a regional effect. Globally the story is different.
Really? I'd love to see that, because, just like this graph from teh American Institute of Physics pretty much all 20th century tempurature records have a big warming throughout the 203s and 30s, then switched to cooling through the 40s to mid 70s.
A related important point was well explained recently by NYT: extreme high temperature events are increasing in frequency.
https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
That is the claim, but the report the NY Times uses states the exact opposite. Look at that "leaked" report, and check page 287. The number of extreme high temperature days has not increased; it's the average lows that have increased. That raises the average, but if anything it points to a lessening of the extremes of tempurature. Lows aren't as low, and highs are slightly less high.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The point of the NYT article is that the data clearly says that hot weather extremes have been increasing and cold weather extremes have been decreasing. That's not really debatable, it's hard numbers.
I'm currently looking for global daytime temperature trends and will update soon. The US data, while interesting isn't necessarily speaking to global trends, and the warming/cooling trends are highly inhomogeneous. In fact the graph you point to specifically says that the Southern Hemisphere didn't see that cooling.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
It may surprise you, but people actually managed to build rather well working thermometers for well over a century now. Not in the milli-degree area but certainly good enough to see a change that surpasses a whole degree Celsius.
And another surprise: Places on this planet were inhabited by civilized people well over 200 years ago. And they still are. And maybe yours will be, too, one day.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Really, a claim with no evidence, no source, and only one sentence long gets a +5 Insightful? The mod groupthink is strong with this post.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
This isn't broken logic at all, they actually do think about all of those topics when it's appropriate. For example, a health insurance company does want to know what cancer research is going on, to assess what future treatments might cost, how likely those treatments are to result in permanent remission vs temporary, etc.
To be clear, they're not "running" anything. I'm not saying that they have in house climate scientists, or oncologists, or neuroscientists. I'm saying that they have the resources (e.g. through scientific consulting, literature studies, etc) to get informed about the current knowledge of topics that affect their investments, then make predictions based on that knowledge.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.