re: 2018 was Earth's 4th hottest year on record

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Americans escaped the worst of it last year though; while the rest of the planet cooked, the U.S. experienced only its 14th-warmest year.

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Trump is Making America Cooler Again!!

LINK

From Slate in 2013. Looking at how developed economies see a slowdown in birth rate. The same dynamics doing it in America and Europe come into play down the road in places like sub Saharan Africa down the road. It's the source of the last upswing in population but as they modernize and get better education the rate is expected to slow there too.

If war and famine were the reason they will stop growing, you'd of seen rates slowing there in the past two decades. They aren't.

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Well, there may come a point where humanity will have to adapt for awhile, but the Earth as a whole will be fine.

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...isn't that the whole point of this discussion?

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But it snowed last week.

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CaptainRetard is what your name should really be.

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Looking at how developed economies see a slowdown in birth rate.

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Yep. Developed countries see a slowdown in birthrate with a rise in education and female employment.

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The same dynamics doing it in America and Europe come into play down the road in places like sub Saharan Africa down the road.

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Here’s the thing though, the first world has a very real interest in keeping that 3rd world just that. The 3rd world.

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It's the source of the last upswing in population but as they modernize and get better education the rate is expected to slow there too.

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Once again, we have a very real interest in not allowing them to reach first world status.

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If war and famine were the reason they will stop growing, you'd of seen rates slowing there in the past two decades. They aren't.

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War and famine will only get worse as the population continues to rise. They can’t feed their people as it is yet the birth rate continues to climb. Hungry people are desperate people. Desperate people are destructive people. Destructive people don’t improve their position in life.

They’re in a cycle they won’t beat.

Sure it was

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Scary stuff

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scientific questions for you. Has the Earth always had polar ice caps and widespread glaciation at high altitude? Has the Earth ever had much higher concentrations of CO2 and still experienced ice ages? When the Earth is warm, how has life performed? Did it thrive or dwindle? How about when the world is cold?

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Wow.

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China invested more in renewable energy last year than any other country. They're currently investing 3x the amount the US is. Currently they are heavily dependent on coal but they are actively trying to change that.

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There is no current plan that would have a meaningful impact on the Earth's climate in the next century, even with perfect compliance - which I can assure you is impossible.

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There are consequences that will be costly, even if we don't do dick about carbon emissions. Bangladesh has millions of people in very low lying areas, sea levels rise enough and you're talking resettling millions. Miami is already dealing with coastal flooding on clear days when the tides are high, and unless Miami is going to move inland (quite costly and talk about some property value losses on the coast) then they'll have to spend to mitigate the impacts. Hurricanes may not be more frequent, but there's research to suggest the ones that get the right set up will strengthen faster and be stronger than with a cooler background, leading to potentially more spending for just that disaster relief. Not to mention the economic hit of a natural disaster and you know...the loss of life.

The point in all of this is, we're going to pay to either slow down emissions today or pay more in the future to deal with the inevitable consequences.

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True, but a certain airhead in Congress thinks were all doomed in 12 years.

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The report she is citing reads pretty dire fwiw. I can't blame her for sounding the alarm but we're all doomed in a decade isn't true. Reacting will get more challenging and expensive the longer the can is kicked down the road.

The piece I want to see people like AOC actually address is exactly what to do and how to spend to improve the situation. You can't just make China and India stop burning fossil fuels. It's economically and politically impossible, gotta have btus to develop. The money should be poured into r&d for more efficient engines, chemical processes (fertilizer production sucks up some energy), agricultural methods to require less water and fertilizer (scary GMOs!), carbon capture tech, modern nuclear power. A modest carbon tax to act as an incentive to move toward implementing these efficiencies.

None of this works if the new "green" tech is too expensive for countries like China or India to ever adopt and that's where the west can actually make an impact. Human ingenuity is the only possible solution.