Climate Change Will Have Dire Consequences For US, Federal Report Concludes (cnn.com)

A new US government report delivers a dire warning about climate change and its devastating impacts on the health and economy of the country. From a report: The federally mandated study was released by the Trump administration on Friday, at a time when many Americans are on a long holiday weekend, distracted by family and shopping. Coming from the US Global Change Research Program, a team of 13 federal agencies, the Fourth National Climate Assessment was put together with the help of 1,000 people, including 300 leading scientists. It's the second of two volumes. The first, released in November 2017, concluded that there is "no convincing alternative explanation" for the changing climate other than "human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases."

The report's findings run counter to President Donald Trump's consistent message that climate change is a hoax. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted, "Whatever happened to Global Warming?" as some Americans faced the coldest Thanksgiving in over a century. But the science explained in these and other federal government reports is clear: Climate change is not disproved by the extreme weather of one day or a week; it's demonstrated by long-term trends. Humans are living with the warmest temperatures in modern history. Even if the best-case scenario were to happen and greenhouse gas emissions were to drop to nothing, the world is on track to warm 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit. As of now, not a single G20 country is meeting climate targets, research shows.

The costs of climate change could reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually, according to the report. The Southeast alone will probably lose over a half a billion labor hours by 2100 due to extreme heat. Farmers will face extremely tough times. The quality and quantity of their crops will decline across the country due to higher temperatures, drought and flooding. In parts of the Midwest, farms will be able to produce less than 75% of the corn they produce today, and the southern part of the region could lose more than 25% of its soybean yield. Heat stress could cause average dairy production to fall between 0.60% and 1.35% over the next 12 years -- having already cost the industry $1.2 billion from heat stress in 2010. Further reading: Climate Change Will Cost US Economy Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, Government Says in Sweeping Report (Reuters); Climate Change 'Will Inflict Substantial Damages on US Lives' (The Guardian); Climate Change Is Already Hurting U.S. Communities, Federal Report Says (NPR); Major Trump Administration Climate Report Says Damages Are 'Intensifying Across the Country' (The Washington Post); and Climate Impacts Grow, But U.S. Can Adapt, Says New Report (National Geographic).

Comments

All of these models take that and far longer

[Anonymous Coward]

These models are tested with far longer sets of data and against multiple sources of historic information e.g. tree rings, ice cores etc.
The facts are pretty clear, the climate is changing fast. It already entered a point of no return. Those are facts. Weather cycles show we should be in a cooling period but instead we are warming, so no that's not it.
There are other things besides cars/factories etc. such as the huge amount of livestock which increases methane emissions. Methane is far worse than most greenhouse gasses. There are a lot of things that need fixing to stop this disaster which is already showing its impact in droughts, wildfires and storms that are far more powerful than they should be.

Oil, gas and coal are heavily subsidized. Especially oil for which wars were fought and blood was spilled to keep its price ridiculously low. Green energy is already competitive even without government subsidies. Imagine what a pro-active push to green energy can do to the global economy... More people work in solar than in coal in the US today. There are only benefits to green policies.

Re:Difference between left and right

[fred6666]

It can't be reversed now even with major changes to carbon consumption (not that that would ever happen with both sides taking tons of cash from the energy lobbyists).

Nirvana fallacy. Just because a perfect solution doesn't exist doesn't mean reducing our CO2 emissions can't help.
It might be too late to avoid a 2C temperature raise. But let's avoid a 5C raise. And if it's too late, then let's avoid a 10C raise.

Re:If we don't stop lighting fires ...

[serviscope_minor]

Is that supposed to be some sort of argument?

When the data is against you, science is against you and reason is against you, I guess that's all that's left. Global warming is happening. Climate change is the result. Inventing silly quotes will not change reality no matter how much your political inclinations tell you that reality is wrong.

Re:Survival of the fittest baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

So... why should we really care?

Because it's expensive.

The costs of pollution outweigh the illusionary "savings" that you reap by not preventing or cleaning up the pollution.

Nobody gives a fuck about what's "natural." We care about the consequences to us. Comets colliding with the earth would be natural too, but if we saw one coming in, people would desperately want to Do Something about it, to minimize the damage. Fuck nature.

(Unless, of course, we are morally culpable for our stewardship of the planet. But that would presuppose some higher being..

Bzzt. You can be responsible to yourself, as well as other humans too. No mysticism, supernatural belief or paranormalism phenomenon are needed. All you need is the the plain hard reality of not wanting people to get away with doing bad things to other, innocent, unconsenting people. Even if you don't believe in Thor or Jehova or Quetzalcoatl, you would have reason to object to me dumping sewage into your home. And if you were inclined to use such language, you might even say I was "morally culpable" for the sewage that I unilaterally chose to put into your home.

Here's a well reasoned argument

[rsilvergun]

against climate change. I think we can all agree he makes good points.

Re:Choice

[slack_justyb]

you can choose to live a life not lived in fear

Well I think you're confounding finding with "fear". Science isn't here to make us feel great or feel fear, it is what it is. The total volumetric thermal energy in the atmosphere is increasing. The amount of energy that strikes the Earth from the Sun and reflects back into space is decreasing. This isn't a new feature, Example This increase was observed in 1949. The first order derivative of that change has been a positive one over the course of the last one hundred years and if the rate of change continues it will lead to a total average energy increase in the atmosphere of two degrees Celsius.

We were supposed to see that exponential growth in heating many years ago

We do see it. Heat waves that hit the middle east, rising sea levels, heat waves in Australia, receding ice shelf, decreased insect populations, ever increasing invasion of spices into regions where previous temperatures would not have allowed them to go. Heck I distinctly remember a year in December where I slapped a mosquito off my arm. It's just difficult to pinpoint any one particular affect of increasing temperatures because all of them are slow to see.

An especially clear example of this is todays NYT feature on Scary Global Warming

I distinctly remember the NYT graph, however it does give range and if you do look over at the website that provided data you'll see that there's a ton of assumptions that we could sit here for days picking apart. My particular region shows an increase anywhere between (min) 8 days and (max) 40 days of 90+ temperatures. But looking at the actual site that provided the data, you'll get a sense that it is indeed conjecture based on methods they feel are appropriate. But that doesn't negate the fact that temperatures will increase even in conservative readings of their data. Again, that's not a fear thing, that's a these are the numbers, this is what the trend looks like, deal with how you so please. But you do have to realize that NYT is obviously going to place some sort of "point" to their story.

We were supposed to see that exponential growth in heating many years ago, maybe even a decade at at this point

We are seeing it. For example, in my area falling numbers within wheat yields have impacted to a small degree acre to pound of flour numbers. Nothing massive here, maybe about 0.2% decrease in yields. However, thinking in terms of joules of energy versus the multitude of acres of wheat, it would take a significant increase in atmospheric energy to change the massive number of acres of wheat to change a 0.1% much less a 0.2%. Again, in the end product flour, it's difficult to see that translation because it's spread all over the place. And it is very, very important that I point out that FN is just one measure and not the end all be all of any debate. So I'm not saying that "Ah-Ha! I got'cha!" All I am saying is that it is "interesting" to see that. But I think that's also the insidious part of climate change is that it can change factors ever so slightly because the effect of climate are very wide ranging. So while exponential energy accumulation may not always in turn evolve into full on heat waves, it can also deposit the excess energy in other ways that in aggregate are near impossible to foresee, but they happen none-the-less.

I would LOVE to see a serious discussion on climate at some point

I'm not sold on that point. I feel you've made your mind up about the debate and rather just yell at how people are wrong rather than show where they are wrong. I'm even typing this and wondering what the hell is the point here con

Re:If we don't stop lighting fires ...

[jd]

Ok, sure.

http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrh...

Prediction: An increase in CO2 will result in net increase in global temperatures.

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital...

There's the global temperature

https://www.climate.gov/news-f...

Only the results over overlapping timeframes are relevant. As you can see, the prediction is matched with observation and has not been falsified.

Are you satisfied? Of course not! Because this was never about facts, this was about your fears that science might contradict something important to you.

It's worth observing

[jd]

That a recent study conducted on beliefs showed that most people who believed global warming was a hoax also believed in the New World Order, ancient aliens, that vaccines caused autism, that JFK was murdered by his own government and/or that their government was trying to replace them with muslims.

I'm honestly curious why we even bother to discuss things, in that case. I have no objection to you believing whatever you like, but as people like that most certainly DO object to me holding to my views, I see no benefit in bothering to debate things. No, I don't hold those conspiracy theorists in high esteem, but why should that bother them? If they were secure in their views, it would be irrelevant.

Does it really cause that much distress to anyone if we use solar rather than coal for power plants? You get exactly the same amount of power, or maybe more with solar these days. How is that interfering with your lifestyle? Does it really cause a problem to argue that Brazil and Indonesia should stop producing cash crops and replant rainforest? Wow, a few products you weren't even buying anyway go up in price by all of five cents. The agony. Let me see if I can shed a tear... wait... wait... sorry, no.

For crying out loud, it has bugger all impact on anyone here. Not even your 401K will be affected, since the stock brokers will all transfer together, causing the stocks they switch to to skyrocket in price. Ok, you might actually make quite a lot of money on that.

That's it. That's all the affect YOU will ever notice. You becoming a little bit richer, in a few years.

I mean. The tragedy of having more money to spend.

Re:It's worth observing

[jd]

We already have. More than 50% of the energy in Britain comes from renewables, about a fifth in the US. If we move the subsidies propping up coal to solar, we could have 100% generated by renewables within three Presidential terms. It's not difficult. Trump's removal of legitimate subsidies for an emergent technology in order to prop up coal will slow down the switch from coal to solar. Slow, not stop. It hasn't stopped, despite Trump's efforts to bankrupt the industry and finance a bankrupt, obsolete alternative.

It's that simple.

Solar is not difficult to mass produce and, with adequate funding to produce isotopically pure silicon (which we can now mass produce) along with the other mass-producible improvements to the energy output, the same number of panels produced can produce double the energy. Simple arithmetic would suggest you then need less than half the solar panels. (Lower transmission loss through fewer connections and less wiring.)

Since most people want solar heating, not solar electricity, to the home, it's trivial to have the government provide incentives to mass produce solar heaters (which don't require rare earths) and to encourage installation of those where they'd be of better value to the consumer, so as to conserve resources.

Reversing the taxes placed on solar power in Nevada and a few other States, mandating compensation, requiring all new homes have direct solar heaters or solar panels installed as part of the Federal building codes, and providing strong incentives to install (such as providing exactly the same subsidies to those selling solar energy to the grid as are currently provided to coal-fired power stations) would solve many of the problems.

I'm a fan of nuclear done right (waste contains radioisotopes that can be used to produce energy, so use them, sodium reactors can't have a meltdown, have superior efficiency and we have actually built those, there's no need to cut corners to save on costs since a good working reactor is cheaper than geoengineering by many orders of magnitude giving us plenty of margin). It takes ten years to build a reactor, although you can probably increase the parallelism to some extent.

If you go all-out on solar, and build a nuclear reactor in each State, then in ten years you should have ample power to completely eliminate fossil fuel.

I'd go further and build in each State the infrastructure and housing likely required for a fusion reactor, which I'd expect to be ready for construction in about ten years. If it isn't, you've housing that's more than adequate to house a fission reactor. Indeed, it should be of vastly superior grade. So, if fusion isn't ready, just build another fission reactor in each State. The modifications needed should be minor, if there are any at all. It's just a shell with easily maintained piping, generator and substation. (Since the subsidies for fossil fuel amount to $20 trillion a year, we can afford to go Manhattan Project on fusion for a ten year spree. If it can be solved at all, that should be more than sufficient.)

So in the worst case scenario, in ten years solar and nuclear are major players, with wind and geothermal next, and in twenty years solar and all forms of nuclear (regardless of whether that's just fission or not) have doubled capacity. That's 2030 and 2040 respectively.

Let's take that worst-case. We've doubled the energy from solar by capacity and again by efficiency. So, we're currently at 50 gigawatts, so that's 200 gigawatts. We subtract the 50 we currently have, since we're only looking at new capacity. 150 gigawatts. Since the US government official figures say that the current output is actually 50 terawatt hours, I am unsure exactly how the numbers are reached. But if we accept that both numbers are valid, then we end up with 200 terawatt hours of power, or 150 terawatt hours of increase.

The state of the art sodium reactors are 880 megawatts per reactor, which is 21120 megawatt hours per reactor. The best reactors out there have an output of 13

Re:Difference between left and right

[Freischutz]

It can't be reversed now even with major changes to carbon consumption (not that that would ever happen with both sides taking tons of cash from the energy lobbyists).

Nirvana fallacy. Just because a perfect solution doesn't exist doesn't mean reducing our CO2 emissions can't help. It might be too late to avoid a 2C temperature raise. But let's avoid a 5C raise. And if it's too late, then let's avoid a 10C raise.

By the time the temp increase passes 5C we are moving into great Permian extinction territory. By the time you get to 10C every life form heavier than 5 kg is likely going to become extinct ... at least that's what happened back then.