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Want to save the planet? Have a go yourself.

I know! In the link, I thought you’d maybe opted for the mining mission to Mars, as that possibly wasn’t the best answer. : )
 
1.5 degrees and ten spare points.

BUT,

The truth is that we are already into irreversible climate change and the Arctic is likely ice free in 2023. At which point the climate of the Northern Hemisphere will change so much that the grain belts of Ukraine, Canada and the US will suffer massive crop failures and the year after all the food producing areas in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres will fail.

I would be surprised if there are any humans or indeed any mammals still alive within five to eight years.

Nice game though.

For myself, I shall not be about to see the end days. When Northern Hemisphere grain harvests fail, I shall not wait about for the subsequent civil unrest.

George
 
I recall reading that something like only 100 companies worldwide are responsible for 70% of CO2 - until that's sorted, no amount of washing clothes at 30degC rather than 40 or insulating my home is going to make as much difference as reining in those that actually produce the most.

FWIW I got to 1.48degC with 1 point remaining. Put me in ****ing charge, STAT...! :)
 
What do you mean by the Arctic? The entire polar ice cap can't possibly melt in that short a time.


I don't think it's quite that grim.

I have never wanted to be wrong on anything more than on this. But you do not have to be a way out eco-warrior or into reading and believing crank theorists to know that the IPCC is not less optimistic about the irreversible trend in man-made climate change than me.

Whether the Artic ice disappears entirely [during the summer] in 2023 is a scientific possibility and a certainty within five to ten years. The earliest it became a possibility was this year's summer though it has not happened, but with annually decreasing ice minima it is going to happen. According to the current trend it will happen well within a decade. Then the Northern Hemisphere weather and climate will be unhinged in a way so far only hinted at, and the following year the global climate will follow.

Unfortunately, this certainty has been known of for decades and yet we still see annual increases in greenhouse gas pollution. To me the idea that politicians will address this soon enough has long since passed us by. Can anyone imagine Modi, Xi, Bolsonaro, Putin, Johnson or even Biden actually doing anything quickly enough to avert this? The answer is that the CO2 already put into the atmosphere already will take centuries to work itself back out, and during that period the climate will continue to warm, even if we were to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions this year.

Already parts of the world are too warm for healthy living, and each successive year has brought about temperature records, both averaged and instant over the last thirty years. India has banned grain exports because unprecedented weather has brought about the probabity of the harvest being as bad as fifty per cent of the normal average. Ukraine faces the most difficult harvest in half a century or more. There is every chance even in 2022 and 2023 that millions of people will starve as a result. The world stands perilously close to an absolute shortfall in food for humans.

I suspect that good people would like to believe it not that grim, but I fear I may be being over-optimistic thinking we have till 2030 for the mass extinction to include all human and mammalian life. In fact all life except perhaps a few single cell organisms in the deepest oceans ... possibly.

I don't expect these posts to endear me to anyone, but I hope they may give some pause for thought. And people may be kinder in the time we have left to their fellow human beings and other life forms.

Best wishes from George
 
Whether the Artic ice disappears entirely [during the summer] in 2023 is a scientific possibility and a certainty within five to ten years.
Are you including Greenland in that? Sea ice melting doesn't raise the water level, so that's much less catastrophic.
 
No I am not so much worried about the immediate effects of melting ice on sea levels as such, but the albedo effect where the ice reflects the radiation of the sun, and the liquid water absorbs it and warms, thereby making the return of the ice later and ultimately smaller each year even without the influence of further atmospheric warming. It is already a positive feedback loop that is irreversible.

Without continuous ice in the Arctic the implications for the weather patterns we know today are catastrophic.

Without stable and known weather patterns [within the normal limits taken from the recent and not so recent past], growing the food the human race requires is going to become impossible. When people have nothing to lose, that veneer of polite behaviour we may think of as civilisation will break down into lawlessness as the strongest and most criminal steal what they need from the weakest in society. It will "not" be a nice thing to witness.

George

PS: Norwegian Polar Institute article on the albedo effect.

albedo
 
1.44 C of warming and 23 points left. Won all the awards but we have no coral reefs left...
 
1.42 and 17 points spare. Letting old people opt for assisted suicide and enforcing a one kid per family rule did the trick.... ;)
 
The game imposes a budget constraint on tackling climate change.

If we are going to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to remove the constraints
 
The game imposes a budget constraint on tackling climate change.

If we are going to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to remove the constraints
Where do you suggest we obtain an unlimited budget?
 
Where do you suggest we obtain an unlimited budget?
In a country in which the government issues it own currency, and cannot therefore run out of that currency, you first need to ask what the constraints on government spending actually are?
 
In a country in which the government issues it own currency, and cannot therefore run out of that currency, you first need to ask what the constraints on government spending actually are?
You've heard of this thing called inflation, right?
 


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