Assuming we need to worry about climate change in the short term, what are the best mitigations on individual level? What can a person do to prepare for climate change? Move somewhere less affected? Hoard money/resources?
Oh, sorry, I misread what you asked about. You don't want to do something against climate change, you just want to mitigate the effects on you.
Best thing is to avoid all those people who will migrate because it doesn't rain anymore in their place so they have to starve because of bad harvests.
I've might sounded selfish. Obviously reducing footprint is important, but there are several other factors one can't control. I'm interested in what is the best course of action if push comes to show.
Doing the right thing now, and preparing for the worst just in case are not mutually exclusive (a smart person can have more than one plan going at a time).
Aim for the level of life of a regular Indian citizen, or even better Bhutanese.
Invest in insulation of your home, learn survivalist skills (how to make a fire, make a shelter, grow food, treat disease, make medicine, etc.) prepare for a scenario where you have to live a nomadic on the go for a while, join a group of similar minded individual.
Or if you have the required kind of budget, follow the step of the ultra rich and buy yourself a piece of land in a remote place (new zealand is hot right now) and build yourself a bunker with enough ressources to live on your own for as long as necessary.
Basically you want to find a way to ride out the collapse of civilization and be equipped to rebuild afterwards.
These used to just be "normal" skills that people knew...funny how things have changed.
If global climate goes haywire, I would guess grain prices are first to go up, leading to instability in the poorest areas (qualitatively, the price of food seems to be related to regional instability).
On the short term I would guess the best guess is to have enough money to buy food, and live somewhere where there are strong governments that will mitigate problems to their constituencies on the short term (USA, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc)
If this starts to go badly, that is.
Currently we are running a global empirical experiment on what happens when we increase CO2 in the atmoshpere, and no one has any conclusive answer what will actually happen, given that Earht's weather is a highly complex dynamical system.
Will the clathrate gun explode? What happens then? Who knows! Roll the dice, enjoy the show.
Yeah, when we get to when it's too late.
Before you do that though, I would urge you to spend some more time looking into what people are saying on both sides. I did and it made me realize that there is a certain kind of "climate alarmist" fraction of the environmental movement that's a far cry from the more balances actual views and that they, unfortunately, are boosted by the media quite a lot probably because media likes catastrophes.
3 things I learned which made it click for me.
1) The so-called "climate deniers" aren't denying there is climate change, they aren't even denying humans affect the climate some degree. What they say is that climate is always changing and that the degree to which humans are affecting the climate isn't as clear as the most alarmist would like you to believe.
2) The 97% consensus is extremely misleading and you will find that the questions asked put the so-called climate deniers into the same bucket of the consensus because of what I mentioned in one. There is however not 97% certainty with regards to how much humans affect. The IPCC numbers are all over the map and they ex have to adjust the heat down over time. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.php?idp=29
3) You will not be able to get anyone to give you a straight answer when it comes to how much humans affect the environment and that's because there isn't any clear answers.
So educate yourself then decide what to do after that.
The deniers used to deny there was change ("it's cycles!"). Then they denied it was humans (it really is, attribution is getting good). They're denying it's bad ("CO2 is plant food!"); and once things get really in train, they'll be denying ever being warned by those mean old scientists.
Don't take my word for it, here are the latest numbers from the IPCC http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.php?idp=29
I don't know about you but I see a range, a wide range.
It IS cycles, it's always been cycles historically and the climate is always changing.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-1....
The discussion is not whether humans have an effect but how much. Again no certainty even closely resembling evolution.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-dizzying-science-of-climate-...
But you can take the same argument and turn it against the climate alarmist.
First, they said new york would be under water by now.
Then, they said the temperature was rising rapidly (but they had to adjust that claim down quite dramatically)
Then, they said the oceans are getting toxicated.
There is no clear consensus on this. We might or might not effect the climate more or less than we think.
But try and find any official number for how much humans affect the climate and you will be very dissapointed.
Science is not about certainty it's about testing hypothesis. The way climate scientist teste them is by using computer models. That's nowhere close to providing us with the scientific evidence and testability of gravity.
And evolution is a model, the best model we have to explain the evolution of species there is a lot of discussion inside of evolution.
Trying to close down any dissent or argument simply by saying there is nothing to discuss because science, is the most anti scientific thing you can do IMO.
The point I'm trying to make is that we've already taken steps to limit impact which is why the apocalyptic scenarios of yesteryear haven't come to pass.
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.
Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.
Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times. Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections.
In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly Professor Peter Wadhams "Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. "So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
And here is Al Gores predictions
The snopes articles says Al Gore sometimes inaccurately represented studies that predicted the timeline for an ice-free Arctic.
Not even close to your initial claim.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/06/flashback-abc-news-w...
Not sure what the point about whether new york or not. The general point was that there was alarmist claims as those I linked to in the previous post.
I was responding in the same style of the claims about what the so-called "climate deniers" had claimed. I could ask the same questions with regards to the claims about what climate catastrophe skeptics have said if I wanted to be that pedantic.
I am still waiting to hear how our decisions curved those predictions as you can't have it both ways.
jschwartz is trying to have it both ways. Both claim that we curved a catastrophe by our actions while questioning it was ever claimed it would happen.
This discussion illustrates the two major views debate back in 2007
Until now I've only see unsubstantiated bold claims, cherry picked provided evidence actually not supporting them when read and various logical fallacies attempts to get out of providing data supporting your point (You waiting for someone else to support their point is not proving yours, appealing to authority by linking to 1hour video debate, etc.)
I am not cherry picking anything. I giving examples as the only one in this thread btw. Go back and read the thread.
Where on earth am I appealing to authority? I link to a debate with two sides debating this very issue to prove a point which is that experts disagree about this which was one of my points. It's a proof of that. You on the other hand link to things and appeal to consensus, how is that useful for anything?
I literally gave you links not only to claims about New York being under water but other similar claims. The video is experts warning about the warming and the consequences being imminent.
So that critical thinking crash course you talked about, perhaps you should start by applying it to yourself.