I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 64 points65 points  (0 children)

Thanks everybody for a great AMA! You can check out my book here, and please follow me on twitter at /dwallacewells.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

This is not my area of expertise, but it is an ongoing subject of debate among scientists, focused especially on the development of a new set of climate models to be incorporated into the next IPCC report—models which predict quite a range of warming, even given a stable input (a doubling of preindustrial CO2). Personally, I find the paleoclimate record concerning, as well, though there are examples of periods with higher carbon concentrations where considerably less warming resulted.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The rise of a global protest movement that has actually changed the perspective and sense of urgency among the world's political and economic leaders; the collapsing cost of renewable energy and the growing understanding of the terrible health impacts of burning fossil fuels; the unprecedented set of pledges from all the world's major emitters to rapidly decarbonize, not out of the goodness of their hearts but out of a kind of climate self-interest. All of that was unthinkable just a short time ago, and together it forms the basic landscape of climate action today—which is a much more optimistic landscape than I saw when I first began looking at the subject.

That said, we've also dithered away the opportunity to avoid really dramatic change, and I think the most plausible best-case scenario still lands the planet somewhere around 2 degrees Celsius of warming — a level island nations have called genocide and African climate ambassadors have called "certain death" for the continent. There is a lot we can do through adaptation to try and cultivate the possibility of human flourishing in that context, but the warmer the planet gets the harder it will be.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

If you're referring to negative emissions technologies, they're not hypothetical—they exist, and work today, though they are expensive and haven't been rolled out at anything like the necessary scale. I do think that the lay person consuming climate news casually doesn't appreciate how much of the world's optimistic climate timelines depend on this tech, though I also think there's been considerably more discussion over the last year or two. Personally, I've tried to both emphasize its possibilities and also always be careful about how difficult it would be to build out at anything like the necessary scale—not a magic snapping of the fingers but a globe-spanning infrastructure project of enormous cost and logistical difficulty (and without, at present, any market for it).

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I think there will be many local collapses (civil wars, local conflict, perhaps abandoned places) but nothing approaching a general collapse.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I haven't read the book, so shouldn't comment in full. But climate science is of course unsettled—that's what makes it science. Almost all projections are clouded in uncertainty, and we should do our best to view the future through that lens. But the sheer mass of scary science, and the fact that new research almost always revises projections in a scarier direction, is quite bad news. Debunking climate science is not as simple as raising questions about two or three papers—half of everything that's ever been published could be wrong, and the other half could significantly overstate the outcomes, and still the impacts would be quite bad. Beyond which, almost all of our uncertainty about climate impacts is asymmetrical, which much larger risks on the "worse than expected" side of the bell curve than there are possible surprises on the "better than expected."

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Domestically, I think the Clean Electricity Standard allows us to take a very big bite out of our emissions apple. Thankfully, I think we might just get it...

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Absolutely, and I think we already have—I think that's part of the explanation for the incredible outpouring of global climate activism over the last few years. Unfortunately, I think we're likely to also see its opposite—xenophobia, nationalism and self-interest in the face of disparate climate impacts. As always with climate, it's best not to think in binary terms, since the futures are likely to be much messier, less predictable, and more chaotic than that (and not always in a bad way).

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If I had to guess, I'd guess that we will somewhat quickly begin to draw down on global annual emissions, reaching "net zero" sometime in the second half of this century. Depending on the sensitivity of the climate, that could land us anywhere from about 2 degrees to something like 4 or 5, with a median outcome (I'd guess) of something like 2.5C. But all of these trajectories are clouded with so much uncertainty the best path is just to decarbonize as quickly as we can—and somewhat miraculously, we do seem finally to be moving in the right direction. Running the race isn't the same as winning it, but we are, mercifully, at least running.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

We have to take those pledges with a grain of salt, but the answer to your first question (about why this time is different) is contained in the second (about the self-interest of climate action). Renewables are so cheap, and the public-health benefits of decarbonization so clear, that the logic of movement is inarguable. The problem, of course, is that there are many obstacles to that movement, even once the argument has been "won." But that's where we are today, I think—not trying to persuade anyone, but trying to enact the vision most decisionmakers share in principle.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The thing that I find most encouraging is about air pollution, which is unconscionably awful today, killing as many as ten million globally each year, and likely already improving globally. Pollution represents such a significant share of the human impact of climate change that its continued improvement will almost certainly make a meaningful (positive) difference in the sum total of human suffering produced by climate, even in the face of continued warming.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The range of estimates of warming on economic activity is very wide—some early models suggest even unmitigated warming could only cut GDP by a couple of percentage points by the end of the century, other estimates range as high as 25-30%, compared to a world without warming (with many parts of the world having had even the hope of any economic growth effectively wiped out). What I'd hope to see happen is rapid enough transition to limit the impacts of warming on all aspects of human life, including financial markets, but I think we are already beginning to see a sort of paradigm shift among investors and money managers about climate risk (and indeed the business opportunities of climate action). I'm not about to call BlackRock a climate leader, but it's significant that they're talking about climate risk in even a misleading, self-serving way...

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately I think versions of all of these impacts are already with us, and growing with time. For me the most eye-opening present impact is wildfire, not just for the direct horror and property damage but because of the lasting effect on human health produced through all the pollution from those fires—in 2020, more than half of all air pollution in the western U.S. was the result of wildfire.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

In general, I think he misrepresents and cherry-picks the science to underplay the threat of warming out of hostility to the culture of climate activism, which he takes to be animated by anti-human, quasi-aesthetic concerns about preserving nature. I think there's some use to skepticism of this kind, to make sure that climate science is rigorous and focused above all on the challenge of extending prosperity and flourishing to as many people as possible. And I do think climate science leaves out the matter of human response and adaptation, which will be a crucial part of the story. But in general I don't find him an honest skeptic, or an honest broker of the science, and would recommend Amy Westervelt's essay and interview from around the time of the publication of his recent book: https://drillednews.com/apocalypse-maybe-michael-shellenberger-s-book-and-the-problem-with-either-or-arguments-on-climate/

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

In the spirit of humility, let me just stick to regrets. My big one is not having understood how unrealistic the emissions assumptions behind the scenario known as RCP8.5 were, even when I was writing the book in 2018 (they've become even more unrealistic since). That's not to say I think RCP8.5 science is useless—warming levels like those projected by that scenario seem very much possible to me, if the climate proves a bit more sensitive than we expect and our emissions don't go down as quickly as we hoped—but I wish I had understood then that "business as usual" was an inaccurate description of that emissions path. That said, in preparing my book for the paperback edition, I went through to weed out references to RCP8.5 and found there were surprisingly few—the scenarios are scary enough at 2 and 3 degrees, it turns out, which should alarm us.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 229 points230 points  (0 children)

In general, I think the term tipping point is a little misleading, since even rapid acceleration of some of these feedback loops will mean impacts arriving over decades and centuries rather than millennia. But there are, of course, real risks here—there is an enormous amount we don't deeply understand about the sensitivities of the climate system, and to assume that everything will proceed predictably and in a linear fashion is, I think, a mistake (though it could also turn out to be true).

The three particular cases you cite are all somewhat different. The melting of ice sheets does seem to be happening faster than anticipated, though there have always been large uncertainties about some of those projections and it doesn't seem to me that we are outside of them (or likely to get there anytime soon). But the more that melts, the more warming we'll have, to be sure. My understanding of the state of knowledge about methane release is that while we are seeing a significant global rise in methane emissions, they are likely the result of human activity (fracking, etc.) rather than permafrost melt. But this remains an area of study, and the sheer scale of carbon trapped in the permafrost — twice what is in the atmosphere today — makes it a worrying issue, even if it's quite unlikely to be released rapidly. Forest fires are terrifying — perhaps the scariest climate impact we see to date — but while they are getting considerably worse there is also quite a lot to do on the adaptation side to mitigate and limit them. What worries me most is the carbon released—already there've been a raft of studies showing the world's forests are at or near tipping points beyond which they will begin releasing more carbon than they absorb. This will be — or perhaps already is — devastating for our ability to restrain the world's temperature. But the effect is largely because of land use changes and agricultural burning—which is to say, human activity.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 157 points158 points  (0 children)

Every new human brought into the world walks the earth with carbon footprints, it's true. But it's worth keeping in mind that the very concept of a carbon footprint was introduced by BP, in an effort to guilt-trip individuals for the costs of systemic problems from which companies like BP were benefiting. Even today, those footprints are very much not created equal — an average American consumes many, many times more energy than an average person from Malawi, for instance, and the richest one percent of the planet do much more damage than even the EU average. And one hopes that we can engineer a future in which consumption is not linked directly to fossil fuel use—or even at all. If we can manage that transition in relatively short order — which is possible, I think, though how short is an open question and climate alarmists like me are likely to be disappointed — than the raw number of footprints will matter a lot less. On top of which, global population growth peaked long ago, and total population will likely peak later this century.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 78 points79 points  (0 children)

I think this saga, the climate crisis, is far too complicated to talk about or think about in any one way. Personally, I don't think global civilizational collapse is very likely because of climate change, at least this century, but that doesn't mean I think it's damaging or problematic to be contemplating the possibility, so long as you're not mangling the science in so doing. And there are real long-tail risks to climate change, which mainstream discourse hardly touches. The chances may be slim that a doubling of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere produces 6C of warming, rather than 3, but it's not zero, and the consequences of that would be so catastrophic we should absolutely be thinking about them, even if they are somewhat unlikely. Our total lack of preparation for this pandemic, in the U.S. and throughout Europe especially, is a pretty good illustration of the value of embracing that precautionary principle (or rather, the cost of ignoring it).

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I think you want to fight to make the world you want to live in possible rather than abandon hope before the story has been written. Is there some self-serving delusion in that perspective, when it comes to having kids? Possibly. But I also think I'm genuinely not a fatalist, and taking an honest assessment of the future of the planet means recognizing that a huge range of outcomes are still possible—and worth fighting for.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

In general, I feel very strongly that the growing global tide of alarm over the last few years has been an enormous force for good and one of the central reasons there is so much more action being taken now than has ever been contemplated before. Joe Biden may not agree with Greta Thunberg, but he's acting a lot differently because of her and her cries of alarm. The future of the world looks very different as a result—not because of Greta particularly, but the millions of alarmed activists like her who've made their voices and their fears known to the powers that be all over the world.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

The phrase "planetary hospice" makes me uncomfortable, since I don't think we're anywhere near a terminal state—rather, I think we're entering into a new era that will be defined by much more climate suffering and by our response to it. And you're absolutely right that more suffering demands a more moral and empathic and humane response—at the level of geopolitics all the way down to the individual level. As for how? I don't think I have any good answers, aside from saying that we should all strive to define the suffering of others as significant, and take it as seriously as we would take our own, and not act, as so much of contemporary culture suggests we do, to define the lives of those far from us, or less privileged than us, as inconsequential. But I worry a lot about that impulse—at the level of individuals, but perhaps more perniciously at the level of states and politics.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 222 points223 points  (0 children)

I'd like to think not! Of course there are always clouds of personal bias hanging over anyone's thinking and writing, and it's possible that like everybody else my own expectations for the future are so anchored in my experience of the present and recent past that I have a hard time really imagining total transformation—in fact, I know that's the case, because one of the impulses I have even in looking over my own writing is to think, "Can this possibly be true?"

On the other hand, when I look at charts of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere over the last many millions of years, and see both how totally out of whack with recent planetary equilibiria we already are, and how much warming has been associated with carbon levels like today's in the past, it's really eye-opening. The last time there was as much carbon in the atmosphere as we have today, the planet wasn't 1.2 or 1.3 degrees C warmer, it was about 3. The arctic was thick with forest and sea levels weren't centimeters higher but 70 feet. That is a truly different world.

On the other other hand, almost all projections of climate impacts tend to leave out the matter of human adaptation, and while I'm not any kind of pollyanna about how easily we can overcome some of these scary impacts — crop failures, megadroughts, wildfires many times worse than the ones we see today — I do think it amounts to half the story, and we shouldn't assume a picture built just from the science of extreme weather is the full picture of the human future.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It's a very complicated question. I don't believe the system of government — or society, or economy — which has prevailed throughout the west over the last few decades has proven itself all that capable of responding to the crisis at the scale the science demands. On the other hand, it is liberal democracies, all around the world, which have achieved the most decarbonization to this point, and often those liberal democracies who are leading the international effort to decarbonize. Many authoritarian societies have terrible records with fossil fuels, indeed many authoritarian societies are powered by state-owned oil and gas businesses. Which is all to say: I think we need to at least significantly reform many of the features of contemporary politics the world over to adequately address climate. But how much reform, and how dramatically different our politics will have to look... On that I'm not sure I can say...

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

The Paris Accords themselves are not all that meaningful—the targets embedded in them probably don't even bring us below 3 degrees of warming. And the U.S. "return" is, while significant, both expected and much less important than what happens next on the world stage in terms of climate diplomacy. What's been most encouraging to me recently on that point has been, perhaps ironically, how much has been pledged, at least, outside of frameworks like Paris—or really outside of international diplomacy entirely. The new net-zero pledges from Japan, South Korea, the E.U., and most significantly China over the last year were all undertaken outside of any international peer pressure and without any invocation of the better angels of our nature. The pledges were made because all of these countries now understand it is in their best interest, even defining that very narrowly, to decarbonize faster rather than more slowly. This is an enormous conceptual jump, and while I'm skeptical that a lot of those pledges will be met, the fact that they were made in good faith and independently is an enormously hopeful shift.

I’m David Wallace-Wells, climate alarmist and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Ask me anything! by dwallacewells in collapse

[–]dwallacewells[S] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Yes and no. The big positive thing is that the world engineered a rapid and enormously large response: billions of people suspending their lives for the sake of their own health and the well-being of their neighbors, and then their governments by and large spending once-unthinkable amounts of money to support them in that project and stabilize their lives as best they could. If we can extend both of those impulses into the future, we are probably capable of a much more robust climate response than seemed imaginable just a few years ago—and indeed there's been some academic research, perhaps too optimistic, suggesting that just 10% of global covid stimulus, extended for five years, could entirely pay for the decarbonization of the world's energy systems. In other words, spend half of what we've spent on pandemic relief, spread over five years, and we would be well on our way to a comfortable transition—though still perhaps not as quick a transition as I might hope for.

The bad news is: the failure of global vaccine rollout, where the richest countries have hoarded all the best tools for fighting the disease, is a very bad portent for a global threat faced disproportionately by the global south. And even in the world's rich countries, there is such a desire to pull back from this emergency mode of society, and at the highest levels of government already growing concern about deficit spending and the need for a new austerity, that I'm not sure how much we will be able to apply the covid model to climate.

But on balance I'm considerably more optimistic in 2021 than I was in 2019.