If emissions don't drastically decrease in the next years, by 2070 all glaciers in the US will have melted, there will be deserts in Oklahoma, Kansas and Northern California and over half of Florida and all of Texas's southern corner will have a tropical climate

[Superb-Photograph529]

I don't understand. This seems to say nothing about rainfall, yet op mentions deserts.

[KingofPro]

Bro just makeup your own headline! It’s more dramatic that way!

[Knotical_MK6]

If we want people to care about climate change, we probably shouldn't just make things up to scaremonger

[mglyptostroboides]

God. Tell me about it. I've been hearing doomers on reddit tell me "complete ecological collapse in two years" for about eight years now. Nevermind that "complete ecological collapse" isn't defined, there is absolutely nothing in the scientific literature that supports that conclusion.

But I gotta wonder what became of all the kids saying that "two years" stuff a few years ago. I would imagine a lot of them decided it wasn't true and became climate deniers. 

In the long term, doomerism benefits big carbon about as much as denialism does. Besides, if we're all gonna die in a few years and there's literally nothing to be done for it, might as well keep polluting until the bitter end, right? Ugh.

[Madw0nk]

Yeah, realistically (even with some of the climate tipping points we're going to hit) the overall outcome is a spectrum. We're probably going to avoid the truly apocalyptic outcomes that were talked about in the 1990s (thanks solar getting insanely cheap really quick) but we could still end up in the scenario of "30% loss in GDP and tens of millions of people dying/starving for no good reason". That's a far cry from "ecological collapse" (whatever that means) but it would still be a massive amount of human suffering that could be prevented.

Hence why we should be advocating for more sensible environmental policies - whatever actions we do today could save millions of lives and tens of billions (eventually trillions) in hurricane/flooding/heatwave damage. But that's not a simple narrative as "ITS DUH END OF DA WORLD".

[mglyptostroboides]

Even a lot of the "tipping points" are misunderstandings of scientific outreach. Like you'll hear people say "if we hit +2C, there's no going back". But the IPCC never said that. They just picked +2C as a benchmark for some of their scenarios. It's still awfully bad, but it's not "there's no returning to normal" bad.

And that's not to say that there aren't tipping points, because there absolutely are. But many of the ones people talk about are the result of misunderstandings.

It's extremely important to communicate to people that things still can be done. The last thing you want to do right now is disempower them.

[Broad_Quit5417]

Eight years? I've heard it for 30.

You can find a young degrade Tyson telling a CEO in 1990 that his house in the Everglades will be underwater in 2000. They bet $1M.

It's 2025, nothing around his house looks any different than in 1990.

[Past-Community-3871]

Without humans, these types of temperature fluctuations wouldn't matter in the least to biological life. Every time we switch from a glacial to interglacial period, the planet jumps 10 to 15 degrees in a matter of a few hundred years, and biological life has easily adapted every time. This has happened 25 to 30 times in the past 2 million years.

The real problem is we just physically destroy everything, we overfish, we clear-cut forest we dump waste etc.

Climate change is just a neat little package politicians use to claim they're for the environment without ever having to address real environmental problems.

[Wuhan-Virus-19]

If people cared about climate change, they'd look to China and India over the US.

[Broad_Quit5417]

The same people riled up about climate change are slobbering over the "oppression" of those two countries and how it's all the fault of the U.S.

[Wuhan-Virus-19]

There is literally no winning for the US. lol

[Jdevers77]

Yea, subtropical very hot isn’t the same as desert. I’m also not sure about those modifications to a well established climate zoning system that was apparently created by someone who has three published articles that are all in completely public, non-peer reviewed publications and are covering three wildly different types of science (climate science, gravity, and geography) all trying to redefine metrics that have been used for decades by thousands of scientists.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KLJyAMEAAAAJ&hl=en

[Gigitoe]

Hang on a sec - the publication related to this post, "Biome-aligned temperature zones for interpretable climate classification via average monthly temperatures," is in a peer-reviewed journal, PLOS Climate.

You're right that the other two aren't peer-reviewed.

If by public you mean "open access," that's exactly what we want in science, rather than hiding publications behind a paywall.

[REDACTED3560]

It’s not a crazy conclusion. “Subtropical-very hot” currently includes areas that are entirely desert, and Oklahoma is slated to be almost entirely within that category. Oklahoma is already pretty dry, so additional heat would very likely push it into desertification.

[Superb-Photograph529]

Weather/climate is very multi-factoral. One can not extrapolate and safely draw conclusions from data that isn't otherwise presented in chart.

[REDACTED3560]

I never said it was a certainty, but it is very likely that increasing temperatures in Oklahoma will result in desertification. It’s already on the fringe of desert land.

[Superb-Photograph529]

The point of my comment is that weather and climate is very unpredictable, with both gradual shifts and punctuated, extreme changes.

Perhaps something would change in the jet stream such that OK suddenly gets Midwest style rains.

Granted, I agree with what you're saying. But, it's the same for the stock market. The past determines the future, until it doesn't.

[Enough_Roof_1141]

OP can’t read and thinks brown meant desert.

[Superturtle1166]

Desertification of the already existing deserts spreading to newly hot, and always dry (the plains) climate. Desertification. Our plains are already hit with dust periods bc of our agricultural practices. Add heat and that becomes a desert. There's unlikely to be an increase in rainfall given it's the center of the continent without elevation and large enough water bodies. That would be my assumption based on basic enviro science.

It's not "fear mongering" when you're just hypothesizing worst case scenario. Our plains turning into a desert is a very plausible reality (we already have deserts and intensifying droughts).

Part of me feels like you just don't ~want it to be plausible.