The University of British Columbia
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 10 months, 2018–2023
1:31:53 · 82K views · Sep 23, 2010
Historian and journalist Gwynne Dyer gives a long UBC talk on how climate change will reshape international politics. He covers food, borders, refugees and the possibility of unilateral geoengineering by affected nations.
HN recommends it as a sobering, still-relevant look at the geopolitical consequences of warming, including why official reports lag the data.
11 comments from Hacker News
Oh but this gets better! This is a great dissertation on how the GeoPolitics will play this little game out: this video - by Gwynne Dyer
Dr. Gwynne Dyer gave a talk, "Geopolitics in a Hotter World" – Sept. 2010 > So when the Hadley Centre put these numbers out they were incorporating (which the IPCC does not) the early impacts of positive feedbacks, as well as just how much carbon dioxide will we put into the air by 2060. First time that had been done, but it gives you a really frightening number…and then they did the map. Which is again, something that’s not normally done, and the consequence is we don’t have a lot of time. We’re in deep trouble. And the military know this; the military know this everywhere. > the rule of thumb is that you lose 10% of global food production for every 1 degree Celsius higher average global temperature. > So food becomes the critical issue and the countries most impacted are tropical and subtropical and this is where the geopolitics comes from. > “people always raid before they starve.” > There’s already a well established pattern: when you’re in deep trouble and you can’t feed your family, head north. > But the dirty secret is that you can only shut a border if you’re willing to kill people. > No government that cannot feed its population survives. > We’re going to go through the point of no return (and probably a good deal further) in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Almost certain. > And there is maybe a way to cheat: and that is geoengineering. > “we’ve crunched the numbers and we figure we could get one degree Celsius of cooling average worldwide ju
There's a video on YouTube, Gwynne Dyer -- Geopolitics in a Hotter World (2010) ( this video ), which very briefly touches on it IIRC. I'm talking about the bit that starts at 8m30s on the video, but I highly recommend watching the whole thing (or at leas the 1-hour talk part - the Q&A is practically inaudible for me). Basically, the IPCC doesn't publish studies - they study compilations of studies, every 4-5 years. And when they start compiling, they have a cut-off date at the very start and only use studies that have been both completed and have passed peer review from before that date. Meanwhile, the studies themselves have the same problem - they obviously can't start the study with incomplete data and update the data as they go. The studies need to start with data that finished before they started the study. And on top of that, they're necessarily a reserved body (Icd say "conservative" but that's ambiguous in politics) - IPCC is run by a bunch of governments trying to figure out the bare minimum of emissions reduction they need to commit to, to not be negligent - they don't want to hear bad news unless it's certain. The end result is that the data in the report is 10+ years out of date.
There's a fascinating talk from about eleven years ago: Dr. Gwynne Dyer – Geopolitics in a Hotter World – UBC Talk Transcribed (Sept. 2010) [LINK] video: this video Among other things he talks about is the possibility of unilateral geoengineering by some of the nations that will be feeling the effects sooner and more, uh, compellingly than others: > I talked–actually, the head of the Bangladesh Institute of Strategic Studies about this (you didn’t even know that existed, did you?). Well, there is one, it’s quite serious–run by a General, bright guy. I said, “have you heard about geoengineering?” and he smiled–seraphically–and he said, “Mmm. Yes. Your question?” > And I asked the question, “Do you think that this is something the Bangladesh government might want to do a little bit, before, let’s say, the US government or the Chinese government?” > He said, “yes it has crossed our minds.”–and then he stopped talking.
Geopolitics in a Hotter World – UBC Talk Transcribed (Sept. 2010) [LINK] Video this video Long, good, hard to summarize but I'll try: Things are worse than publicly talked about; there are a few options (geo-engineering). "People always raid before they starve." - - - - We have the solutions already. Cut-n-paste from a comment yesterday, apologies if you've seen it already, I think it's worth it: For practical advice on what to do I recommend Toby Hemenway's videos in re: Permaculture [LINK] Especially "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" and the sequel "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture". Permaculture is a school of applied ecology (the word itself is a portmanteau of PERMAnent agriCULTURE) that has adherents and practitioners world-wide. It's not the only form of regenerative agriculture either. See also [LINK] Oceanic 3D farms! And now they are building reefs?