Climate Change and the History of Our Species

nsacpi

nsacpi

Expects Yuge Games
This niche within climate science is something I've been interested in for a while. It is only tangentially related to the current policy debate regarding climate change. But I think having some historical perspective on this is actually helpful. Among other things it suggests maybe we are focusing too much on prevention and too little on mitigation. I'm a bit of a climate change fatalist (perhaps informed by the historical record). It's going to happen. It's probably too late to avoid. There is a lot of uncertainty about how much warming we will get and how effective the proposed policy measures will be. Our species has a long history of adapting to climate change.

I hope everyone will enjoy today's reading assignments:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/86470/how-climate-change-shaped-human-migration-out-africa

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6314818/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event
 
I’m also a bit of a fatalist about it, in that I think the horse is pretty much out of the barn, and mitigation is going to be necessary. On the other hand, I think it’s worth exercising some caution on that score, as it’s easy for people to use that view as justification to just go balls-out on extractive industries.
 
Julio3000 said:
I’m also a bit of a fatalist about it, in that I think the horse is pretty much out of the barn, and mitigation is going to be necessary. On the other hand, I think it’s worth exercising some caution on that score, as it’s easy for people to use that view as justification to just go balls-out on extractive industries.
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taxing fossil fuels at a higher rate is good policy on other grounds (and will allow us to reduce other taxes) and as an ancillary benefit will help some on climate change...so there are some things I think should be done...but the alarmism is something that I find objectionable for a variety of reasons...

but to return to the topic of this thread...how about that century long drought that wiped out the Ancient Kingdom of Egypt and other civilizations
 
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I dont believe in wrecking the economy to fight climate change but we should be doing everything possible to switch to renewable energy. We desperately need to get away from gasoline vehicles. It should be treated as a national security issue because we end up financing our enemies for oil.
 
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The video this clip came from is in the tweet thread and is pretty good overall, but damn this clip killed me.
 
mqt said:
[tw]1134537636159393792[/tw]

The video this clip came from is in the tweet thread and is pretty good overall, but damn this clip killed me.
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I'm confused why we're not seeing price changes in real estate that reflect this reality
 
Sheldon Whitehouse
‏Verified account @SenWhitehouse

Totally bogus. All this Koch crap begins and ends with climate denial,

to protect their license to pollute for free and have us pick up the tab.

The rest is all window dressing for suckers.
 
land value in Santa Barbara - Malibu with the risk of fire and earthquake continues to rise
the Gulf Coast of Florida / Alabama as well

measuring climate change / environmental damage by real estate markets seems a fools errand
and is besides the point
 
I think that developers and big investors are starting to price in risk in the most vulnerable areas. I also think, capital being capital, they’re also banking that a big chunk of that risk will be socialized. And those most vulnerable areas have seen, according a couple of university studies, about a 7% depression in prices compared to similar but less cc-exposed properties. So it is happening, albeit slowly.

My—admittedly spitballed—take is that individuals’ real-estate choices aren’t necessarily rational, banks aren’t ready to give up easy money (and banks never **cough2007cough** make mistakes in this area), big investors see themselves passing the bag before the **** hits the fan, and the federal government is not helping accurate risk-pricing with its poorly deployed flood insurance program.
 
It is normal and healthy to make sure a new mom is told her baby will soon be dead thanks to climate change

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Two days before ExxonMobil goes to court Wednesday, facing New York state accusations the oil company misled investors about climate change, a team of researchers released a report Monday outlining the company and the broader fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign of deception, and its success at confusing the American public.

...




“For 60 years, the fossil fuel industry has known about the potential global warming dangers of their products. But instead of warning the public or doing something about it, they turned around and orchestrated a massive campaign of denial and delay designed to protect profits,” said Geoffrey Supan, a researcher in the department of the history of science at Harvard. “The evidence is incontrovertible: Exxon misled the public.”

...

The report suggests that while the disinformation campaign was successful in confusing the public and slowing a government response to a danger oil company scientists had identified as far back as the 1970s, such campaigns can be stopped.


https://www.latimes.com/environment...-companies-exxon-climate-change-denial-report
 
fig1.gif


The top chart is the last 5 million years. Humans separated from chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, about 6 million years ago.

The bottom chart is the last 800,000 years. Humans separated from Neanderthals between 600,000 and 700,000 years ago. Note the ice age about 640,000 years ago. This climatic event is probably one of the factors that caused the lineage that led to modern humans to become geographically and genetically isolated from the lineage that led to Neanderthals. Their lineage adapted to the colder climates of Eurasia. Our lineage stayed in Africa and/or the warmer parts of Southern Europe and the Middle East.
 
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