Waitbutwhy put it well: “ 18,000 years ago, global temperatures were about 5ºC lower than the 20th century average. That was enough to put Canada, Scandinavia, and half of England and the US under a half a mile of ice”

That's not really helpful, when you think about it: Are the effects linear? How much ice would the US be under for temperatures of 1°C below 20th century average? A fifth of half a mile? No ice at all? And what does that imply for 2°C above? 0.2 miles of ice below the surface?

I prefer actual predictions of the effects, not bad analogies or useless data points.

Sure, it's unhelpful if you're trying to build a model or understand the science, but 90% of people aren't; and it's accurate –if unhelpful– analogies like this that get those people onboard.

The point is to show that the system is very sensitive, and that the folk wisdom of "2 C is just 2 C what's the big deal?" isn't valid.

Then why not just explain to people the predicted consequences of a 2°C temperature increase?

Yeah, I don’t mean to be disparaging but the average person doesn’t really seem to grasp this beyond: it’ll be slightly warmer. And in a cold European climate, most people seem to think that’s a good thing. Warm summers are enjoyable when you’re swimming in the sea and having barbecues in the park.

Maybe there should be more focus on the frequency and intensity of storms, floods, extreme heatwaves, etc.

Although to be honest if this is lost on people up until now anyway, what hope is there?

A significant number of people just don’t seem to care.

What is the thesis here, that storms are a new hitherto unknown phenomenon that are radically outside the human experience?

There has never been an era where humans didn't have to put up with horrific storms. It took Pompeii 4-6m of volcanic ash to stop humans picking up the pieces and carrying on.

I don't think a focus on "oh there'll be more storms" is going to cut it. We have to be ready for storms anyway, having more of them doesn't change the risk calculations all that much in my mind. I'd rather pay the taxes for a big well air conditioned community centre to deal with heat waves. It'll be cheaper than what gets wasted on sporting venues.

The thesis is you trade up. This isn’t about an extra thunderstorm or two, big storms are expensive and disruptive. More tropical storms become hurricanes. Category 1 hurricanes hit 2 etc, and what would have been a 5 hits harder and stays a 5 for longer.

It’s about more frequent forced evacuations, overtopped levies, and massive cleanup etc. Rising sea levels aren’t just larger high tides their also larger tsunami. Beyond that you just get more extreme events like heat waves in the Arctic, longer drought mixed with extra flooding, more hail, mudslides, bigger blizzards etc.

We’re looking at 100’s of billions in damages per year not simply adding a few AC to community centers. Though you’re also likely to have higher cooling bills.

This bothers me less than water shortages and desertification, as well as extreme high temperatures making certain areas uninhabitable. That's what will really lead to suffering on a wide scale.

I guess major coastal cities around the world becoming part of the ocean is bad too.

It's not the increased natural "disasters" that will really mess things up. It's some places becoming entirely uninhabitable, permanently displacing many millions of people.

> We’re looking at 100’s of billions in damages per year not simply adding a few AC to community centers.

The US government spends 7 trillion dollars a year. That isn't an alarming number.

Most of the cost from weather events isn’t born by the federal government. Looking just at extreme 1+ billion dollar weather events over the last 20 years averages close to 100 billion per year in the US. “The total cost of these 298 events exceeds $1.975 trillion.”

However, things are getting worse. “The 1980–2020 annual average is 7.1 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2016–2020) is 16.2 events (CPI-adjusted).“ https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/

Of course not all of that is based on climate change, but smaller storms also cost money for everything from snow removal to lost crops, and preparation for storms costs even more.

It's difficult to care about long-term problems like climate change, when you are struggling to provide for your family in the present.

That's some of it, although some others seem to emotionally reject any information about climate change, which is more concerning (especially when those people end up in positions of political power).

This year has proven that climate change isn't just a long term problem.

Manhattan was engulfed in smoke from the west coast. People were flooded out of their homes in Western Europe. And heat waves across the west coast lead to dozens of deaths.

I'm probably missing things happening in Asian countries due to consuming western media.

We can look at our response to Covid as a model for how we might respond to climate change slapping us in the face. If that is a fair comparison, I am worried.

> I'm probably missing things happening in Asian countries due to consuming western media.

You did, there were floods in India (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/23/india/floods-landslides-m...) and China (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148623/flooding-in-...).

I wonder if there exists a website that gathers reports of extreme weather events (floods, tornados/hurricanes, heat waves/firestorms) worldwide.

>I'm probably missing things happening in Asian countries due to consuming western media.

Tokyo Olympics, specifically the heat has been getting tons of coverage in western media. As a Tokyo resident I can't recall a summer this hot over the six years I've lived here. Floods in China have likewise received a fair bit of coverage. A few media outlets have managed to join the dots but they appear to be in a minority.

I don’t think our responses to COVID was only disaster. Big parts of them was disorganised and inconsistent. But in the whole they were also forceful, creating not only one, but several effective vaccines in a fraction of the time it usually takes, and making them available to billions of people. Also, suddenly, there are trillions of dollars made available to keep the economy afloat and reduce personal sufferings.

If the same scale of efforts were used to fight climate change, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Right now I’m just waiting for the natural disasters being big and frequent enough so people can’t deny what they see with their own eyes. After that I expect things to happen relatively fast. Maybe some oil and coal executives that have spend billions spewing lies will be found dangling from lamppost too, when people finally understand what happened. (I in no way condone the last part, it is merely meant as a way to express that some people probably will be very angry.)

> And in a cold European climate, most people seem to think that’s a good thing. Warm summers are enjoyable when you’re swimming in the sea and having barbecues in the park.

This is especially frustrating in the UK, where our existing warmth relies on the gulf stream; without it, our climate would be closer to others on the same latitude, like Canada.

The gulf stream is already being disrupted by meltwater from the arctic.

> This is especially frustrating in the UK, where our existing warmth relies on the gulf stream; without it, our climate would be closer to others on the same latitude, like Canada.

That is overstating the effect of the gulf stream. Canada and Russia have continental weather - they get cold because the interior doesn't have a huge heat sink in the form of an ocean surrounding it keeping it warmer (or cooler).

The UK is small and surrounded by ocean, with prevailing winds off that ocean. It isn't going to have a continental weather system if the gulf stream is disrupted, and it isn't going to suddenly have a climate as cold as canada. It may have unpredictable effects and may not be desirable, but we wouldn't suddenly be suffering from equivalently cold weather as the same latitude in Canada or Russia.

When I was a kid, that was what I believed in too. And that is what most people would say if they heard it for the first time.

What most people do not do while saying this statement is taking the context of the change in average temperatures around the world. What should be shown are graphics like this XKCD [1], which puts in perspective the average global temperatures in past 22,000 years. (spoiler: the last time Earth's average global temperature was 4 degrees below the average global temperature during the 1970s, the Earth was covered in sheets of ice). This is where we have well and truly allowed climate change deniers to take over and spread misinformation.

[1]: https://xkcd.com/1732

> They think I'm a crazy person when I mention the never-ending storms and lack of drinking water.

If you put it that way it's no wonder that they think you are crazy. Storms mean heavy rainfall that means more drinking water. What is your point, exactly?

That if you try to drink storm water run off, you'll die of diarrhea. A lot of the damage in Germany right now is polluted drinking water

Sure, but my point was that, among all the horrrific things that climate change is bringing, the OP picked two of them that seem to cancel out.

The two things happen in different parts of the world.