The World May Already Have Crossed a Series of Climate Tipping Points (theguardian.com) 341
The world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is "an existential threat to civilization," they say, meaning "we are in a state of planetary emergency." From a report: Tipping points are reached when particular impacts of global heating become unstoppable, such as the runaway loss of ice sheets or forests. In the past, extreme heating of 5C was thought necessary to pass tipping points, but the latest evidence suggests this could happen between 1C and 2C. The planet has already heated by 1C and the temperature is certain to rise further, due to past emissions and because greenhouse gas levels are still rising. The scientists further warn that one tipping point, such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost, may fuel others, leading to a cascade. The researchers acknowledge that the complex science of tipping points means great uncertainty remains. But they say the potential damage from the tipping points is so big and the time to act so short, that "to err on the side of danger is not a responsible option." They call for urgent international action. "A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping could still be under our control to some extent," they write. "The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action -- not just words -- must reflect this."
The End of World + a new Joan of Arc (Score:2)
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Is real estate in Alaska is a good deal?
Only if it's on stone, and not in the path of a future glacier if the weather int flips around to negative. Build not your house upon the melting permafrost. Also, it helps to be gay or female but not both, because there's a severe woman shortage up there.
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Is real estate in Alaska is a good deal?
Well, given that the Obamas recently spent millions to purchase a mansion in the Hamptons right on the Atlantic coast, it seems pretty clear that they don't consider the threat of sea level rise that President Obama was flogging left, right and center as part of his 'climate crisis' agenda to be much of a risk, despite all of the predictions of six or more feet of sea level rise by 2100. Makes you wonder how much of the rest of the anthropogenic climate change agenda is posturing, driven by the desire to ex
About right (Score:5, Insightful)
-Ok, we knew but it’s not a big deal
-Ok, it’s a big deal but there’s nothing that could be done about it
-Ok, we could have fixed it but it’s too late now so let’s keep doing it anyway {— you are here
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"Party on dudes!" - Bill and Ted.
Re:About right (Score:5, Insightful)
-Ok, we knew but itâ(TM)s not a big deal
-Ok, it seems to be a big deal. Let's switch from fossil fuels to nuclear to prevent it. What? You don't want us doing that? I guess you don't really believe it yourself then.
-Ok, we could have fixed it but you keep opposing nuclear. So either you don't really believe it and we can keep going, or you'll eventually come around and we can just switch to nuclear. {â" you are here
FTFY. Remember, nuclear doesn't have to be the end solution. All we need to do is switch to it to give ourselves millenia instead of decades before ecological disaster, and during the time it buys us we can develop renewables and battery technology at our leisure. And when those are to the point where they can handle base load, they can replace nuclear.
nuclear as fast as possible (Score:2, Insightful)
Gen IV nuclear is safe and cleaner than manufacturing billions of square meters of solar, and wasting land on thousand and thousands of acres of wind and solar farms. Nuclear probably is the end solution actually, it also need to be the current solution.
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During the lifetime of any /. reader: fusion will never be net positive in energy (or costs). Magnetic confined fusion will probably only work in star ships as we probably need gigantic big reactors.
Antimatter reactors will never exist: the antimatter has to be produced first. It is he same problem as with hydrogen. Antimatter would b a nice storage, if it could be handled, and useful nearly everywhere, but: it is not easy to create. Expect a 1 permille conversion of energy to antimatter, probably less.
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X will never ever happen because of Y
If everyone else in the world listened to people who speak like you did, we would have no airplanes, we would have no computers, we wouldn't have most of the things we have right now, and might not even have invented the wheel or learned to use fire. What's next? You going to say "Oh, well, science has discovered everything useful already so they should just stop researching things, it's a waste of time and money" next?
Stop being ridiculous. "X is impossible!" is absolutist nonsense and is anti-human. "Cha
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That and the fact that we don't want certain countries to have it at all. You can't solve a global crisis with technology that you want to keep out of the hands of much of the world.
To me that is an even more fundamental problem with nuclear power being a magic bullet to fix our emissions than its poor economics or waste problems are.
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If that were the case, then orbital rings [wikipedia.org] would be the solution.
(they're a pretty awesome solution)
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What is it with this "nuclear" fetish? The numbers do _not_ add up.
It's technology worship by people who think that the most impressive technology must be the correct answer, and who think they're too smart to fall for religious cultism.
Indeed. Basically irrational quasi-religious worship of a symbol for "power".
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Well, personally I have been watching this development for something like 30 years now and your analysis is pretty much spot-on.
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You forgot:
- Ok, but the others have to reduce their CO2 output first.
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Also "but we're not as bad as China (anymore, if you count right)."
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How long should the passengers of the bus be allowed to "debate" before telling the driver to slam on the brakes ? A mile from the cliff ? A hundred yards ? A dozen yards ?
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When do you think debate should be outlawed? Today? Yesterday? Last year? A decade ago?
Re:FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
You can continue the debate about the likelyhood of a future global catastrophy and still decide to start doing something about it now, before it is too late.
But no. People like you just want to use "debate" as an excuse for doing nothing, not changing anything about your way of life, and hoping that you won't have to suffer the consequences of your inaction before you die. And fuck the children and grandchildren.
Oh, well... (Score:2)
Then I don't have to do anything about it. Buh bye.
See Holocene climactic optimum (Score:4, Informative)
Look that up on Wikipedia. They have a nice graph. We are still not as warm as we were 6000 years ago.
"Out of 140 sites across the western Arctic, there is clear evidence for conditions warmer than now at 120 sites. At 16 sites, where quantitative estimates have been obtained, local HTM temperatures were on average 1.6±0.8 C higher than now. "
The previous interglacial was warmer than the Holocene. Life failed to end. However sea level was 6 meters higher.
The Pliocene climactic optimum was even warmer. There was no ice cap on Greenland, but sea level was 25 meters higher.
So life will be fine, but tell the kids that ocean beaches should be visited, not lived on.
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The danger is that the current temperature rise is a lot quicker than it was in the paleontological past.
No, that's not the danger. Faster change will be tough for many organisms to survive, but that just means that new ecological niches will open up and it will be a great opportunity for an explosion of speciation. Life will be just fine. The end result of the K-T extinction was a more vibrant and diverse global ecology.
Human civilization, on the other hand, is more fragile. That is the danger. We're not at risk of destroying "the planet", we're at risk of destroying ourselves. Or, even if we want to
Miami 6000 years ago? (Score:3)
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The claim is not that life on earth will end. Your logical fallacy is "moving the goalposts". The claim is that the situation will be bad for humans. Nobody gives a fuck if the cockroaches and tardigrades will be happy.
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Life will be fine. Civilization is a lot more delicate.
These people,,,, (Score:2, Insightful)
That is to say they are a doomsday cult. They've been incorrectly predicting world-ending "tipping points" for years now.
Global cooling, global warming, supposed extreme weather cycles that didn't happen either, take your pick.The only thing they've been consistent about is being WRONG.
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You are essentially incapable of separating wild claims and solid scientific results. Pretty pathetic. Here is a hint: It matters what process the predictions are generated by.
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Global cooling was clearly not a fringe idea in Europe.
It has even been used to push nuclear power plants instead of coal and petrol one which would have brought us into an ice age because the smoke would have caused global cooling.
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It has even been used to push nuclear power plants instead of coal and petrol one which would have brought us into an ice age because the smoke would have caused global cooling.
What a surprise. Nuclear power is always sold using lies. Remember "too cheap to meter"? How about "clean"? You can just add "scientists say coal plant smoke will cause global cooling" to the list of nuclear playboy deceptions.
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So you admit your previous comment that global cooling was never more than a fringe idea was bullshit? What do you think that does to your credibility? Son.
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So you admit your previous comment that global cooling was never more than a fringe idea was bullshit?
Reading comprehension is not your strong suit, is it? It was a fringe idea among scientists, which was blown out of proportion by nuclear playboys in order to fraudulently promote nuclear power — like all promotion of nuclear power. It was always a fringe idea, but the nuclear lobby convinced people like you that it was mainstream in order to promote their other lies, for profit. That's fraud, and you ate it up. Now you're attacking me in order to justify your susceptibility to obvious lies.
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How can it be a fringe idea if it is mainstream? It's a fringe idea that everyone knows about? Is water being wet a fringe idea? Do you think the sky being blue is a fringe idea?
Reading comprehension doesn't appear to be your strong suit either, kiddo.
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Reading comprehension is not your strong suit, is it? It was a fringe idea among scientists, which was blown out of proportion by nuclear playboys in order to fraudulently promote nuclear power â" like all promotion of nuclear power. It was always a fringe idea, but the nuclear lobby convinced people like you that it was mainstream
How can it be a fringe idea if it is mainstream?
It was never a mainstream idea among the only people qualified to determine whether it made sense as an idea. So the answer is, it wasn't. Because the only claim that matters would be that it was a mainstream idea among scientists, and it absolutely never was. Global warming is, and you're trying to create false equivalence between the two in order to justify your ignorance. All that does is ram home the depth of that ignorance.
You're fucking ignorant, so there's no reason why anyone should give two shits a
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What's your point? Burning high sulphur, high particulate, coal could cause net cooling. One of the geoengineering anti-global warming suggestions is to spray sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere.
The problem with burning it on the ground is that the acid rain, emphysema and widespread crop failures are considered undesirable.
The sky is falling... (Score:2)
US oligarchs (Score:5, Informative)
1) the US is the ONLY country in the developed world where climate change is under "debate"
2) 85% of conservatives reject global warming
https://www.esquire.com/news-p... [esquire.com]
Corporate oligarchs gain and maintain their wealth by harvesting and / or burning carbon. These same oligarchs have purchased the US GOP leadership and engaged in a decades long game of war on science. Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon, and former Trumpkin lackey, admitted Climate change was real, caused by man, and research done by Exxon going back to the 1970's indicated so.
Tillerson stated in court: “We knew it was a serious issue and we knew it was one that's going to be with us now forever more,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Though Tillerson denied engaging in misinformation. (cough, bulls*it,cough)
The bottom line is that till the US changes how elections are funded, the planet is phucked.
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"The bottom line is that till the US changes how elections are funded, the planet is phucked."
Oh, voters are supposed to change things? You just said 85% of the conservatives believe that the current climate change crisis is a hoax, so you expect them to vote for giving up plane travel, giving up their cars, riding buses and trains, giving up most of their hobbies that require transportation to places public transportation doesn't go, going to bed at 8 PM because the public transport all stops about then a
Re:US oligarchs (Score:5, Insightful)
In China and India, there seems to be no debate, but I get the impression that neither of these two countries (though you might argue that India is not developed) is making sufficient efforts to reduce emissions.
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SHH. We don't talk about India and China in these threads. And we certainly don't talk back to the self-appointed doom-sayers. Their word is law. And their word says that only white people burn fossil fuels and drive cars.
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Most of China is also not developed. Otherwise, they'd emit a lot more CO2.
U.S. has done its part already. (Score:2, Insightful)
The U.S. is also one of the places that has greatly exceeded climate goals, so who cares if we actually follow the spirit of the scientific method instead of joining in the cult full-bore?
Re: U.S. has done its part already. (Score:2)
Tipping Point, I double dare you (Score:2)
Say Tipping Point one more damn time!
"may already have" (Score:2)
There is no may.
When your fuel gauge reads below the red, and your car coughs and splutters to a halt, your fuel tank "may" be empty?
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your car coughs and splutters to a halt
But it's a Tesla. Odds are it stalled because they didn't bring enough nuclear plants on line to charge it.
Runaway global warming seems very unlikely (Score:2)
If the climate is so unstable that our contribution could kick off true Venusian runaway global warming then it compounds the miracle of our existence to unbelievable levels.
At most we are kicking off a big oscillatory period during which industrial human civilization will cease to exist.
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If the climate is so unstable that our contribution could kick off true Venusian runaway global warming then it compounds the miracle of our existence to unbelievable levels.
There is no great pumpkin, but there is a great filter.
Whining (Score:2)
Can you understand why people get so annoyed when you bring this subject up? All you do is sit there and scream "You need to do something!"
So what do you want people to do? People can then talk about what could be done. Can we move past this already?
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Do you know what it's called when someone keeps pointing out a problem without offering a solution? Whining.
That's funny, we keep offering solutions, and denialists keep saying "we can't do that".
Can you understand why people get so annoyed when you bring this subject up?
Yes, because they don't want to make any changes, so they'll make any excuse to avoid having to do so, for example "you're whining".
Can we move past this already?
We'd love to, but denialists are still pretending the problem doesn't exist [esquire.com]. That's why we're continually stuck on trying to convince people that there's a problem.
But let me just point out something about your comment...
Do you know what it's called when someone keeps pointing out a problem without offering a solution? Whining. [...] Can we move past this already?
You're whining.
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That's funny, we keep offering solutions, and denialists keep saying "we can't do that".
Where? What should I do? Vagueness here is exactly what I'm talking about. Surely some compromises could be made. Discussions could be had. But right now, you're pushing people away from that. You just want to stand on your soap box and say that your side is right and the other side is wrong. That is getting us nowhere. We need to move on from freaking out.
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Where? What should I do?
You should attempt aviary copulation with a ventrally rotating toroidal fried pastry, you disingenuous douchebag.
You just want to stand on your soap box and say that your side is right and the other side is wrong.
You just want to make stupid excuses in order to derail the argument. If you really wanted to know this stuff, a) you would have been listening all the times we told you before, b) you wouldn't vote for candidates who deny global warming, and c) you'd fucking google it, instead of posting to Slashbot.
Re:May have.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterpoint: May not have.
But do you want to risk it?
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Absolutely they do. They've lost the severity gamble before and they'll do it again and again, failure is very much an option for the climate denialism death cult.
Re:May have.. (Score:5, Informative)
I suggest reading Nature, arguably the most reputable scientific journal. Anything published in Nature will have passed a rigorous review process. Sure, the review process isn't perfect, but it is still damn good.
Funnily enough, the Guardian story is based on this Nature article [nature.com]. Yes, it is a commentary article, but it is well referenced. If you could find evidence of corruption by politics, a flaw in their reasoning, or data that casts doubt on their conclusions, you would have no problems being published in Nature, and would have an instance career in academia. Strangely, that never happens.
face facts (Score:4, Insightful)
the guy you are responding too could not give less of a shit about the facts and is the more likely the pure embodiment of politics over facts.
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Indeed. That person is just trying to muddy the waters and apparently does not care one bit about actual facts.
Re:May have.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything published in Nature will have passed a rigorous review process.
The article you linked to in Nature is an opinion piece, not a study. Even the title of the article makes clear it's an opinion.
Furthermore, having myself been a peer reviewer, I can say your trust in the peer review process is incorrect. You should think of peer review as a low pass filter, filtering out the worst papers, rather than a verification that the study is correct.
If you could find evidence of corruption by politics, a flaw in their reasoning, or data that casts doubt on their conclusions, you would have no problems being published in Nature
Now you are just closing your eyes. Finding a flaw in the reasoning of a paper, even a serious flaw, doesn't mean you will be published, it means the paper will get a retraction. Furthermore there is politics all throughout the establishment of science.
That doesn't mean science isn't a useful tool. Science is a very useful tool, but you can't close your eyes when you use it.
Re:May have.. (Score:4, Informative)
The article you linked to in Nature is an opinion piece, not a study. Even the title of the article makes clear it's an opinion.
It's a peer-reviewed opinion.
Furthermore, having myself been a peer reviewer, I can say your trust in the peer review process is incorrect. You should think of peer review as a low pass filter, filtering out the worst papers, rather than a verification that the study is correct.
Except that Nature has a 93% rejection rate. This isn't some Elsevier garbage.
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It's a peer-reviewed opinion.
Why do you think that?
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Actually, "commentary" in Nature (which is what this is) is written and commissioned by Nature's editors [nature.com]. I would expect them to be based on peer-reviewed research. Do you have some evidence which suggests otherwise?
Re:May have.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have some evidence which suggests otherwise?
To begin with, you have to wonder what it even means to peer review an opinion piece.
I might have been too harsh, though. Certainly this is a more serious written piece than something you would find in the New York times, and should be treated as such. You shouldn't just ignore it, because the author probably has an opinion worth listening to.
My point was that you shouldn't blindly believe it. The author doesn't seem to want that.
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My point was that you shouldn't blindly believe it. The author doesn't seem to want that.
I don't want that either. I want people to be informed. But I'd settle for them believing it.
Re:May have.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Can any one explain the vast climate changes in the distant past?
Yes. They were due to changes in atmospheric composition and/or atmospheric dust.
It's easy to understand once you admit there's only one heat source in the solar system and it really doesn't vary much.
Next question?
(Should be: "Is dumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere a good idea?")
Re:May have.. (Score:5, Informative)
And then you take the measurements of the atmosphere as reported around 1900 (e.g. take an old textbook printed in 1900) and compare it with actual values.
You will note that the Carbondioxide content of the atmosphere has strongly increased, from 270 ppm in 1900 to 410 ppm today. And then you can calculate how much additional Carbondioxide you would need to achieve that (700 billion metric tons). And then you can calculate how much Carbon (e.g. coal or oil) you would need to generate 700 billion metric tons: about 270 billion metric tons. Divide that by the number of years since 1900, and you get about 2.5 billion metric tons of Carbon. Currently, we mine about 1 billion metric tons of coal, and about 4.9 billion metric tons of crude oil per year.
Are those numbers corrupted by politics?
Re: May have.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are trying to make an argument. That's quite different
Have you factored in the earth's natural CO2 absorbing qualities? No.
Do I have to? Why? I don't have to. Apparently, the CO2 content is increasing. Thus all absorbing capabilities of the Earth aren't enough, at least for now.
Have you factored in that plants would thrive in higher CO2 concentrations? No.
Again: Why should I have to? (I am no plant, by the way.)
Did you factor in that the said thriving would result into higher quantities of CO2 being sequestered into biomass? No.
I don't have to. See above. Plant's biomass can't keep up with the increasing CO2 content of the atmosphere right now.
Do your numbers take into account the amount of CO2 escaping the atmosphere as it diffuses into the upper atmosphere? No.
I don't have to. CO2 is heavier than most of the other gasses in the atmosphere and will sink down. CO2 content in the upper levels of the atmosphere (above 30 km) is nearly nil. We know that planets like Venus and Mars have atmospheres with 95% CO2 since billion of years, thus CO2 will not disperse in outer space.
Since you bring up 1900 as a baseline, does your evidence of temperature increase your numbers are predicated on take into account that most people burned wood and coal for heat, cooking, production at that time and prior?
The wood people are burning is seldom older than 100 years. It consists of CO2 which was in the atmosphere less than 100 years, thus after the year of 1900. Thus we can keep it out of the calculation.
Re: May have.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care if plants in one million years' time will have sequestred all the additional carbondioxide. But I do care if my grandchildren will be worse off than me. It's not the million years, I fear. It's the next decades.
Sure, Life on Earth will survive Global Warming just fine. It overcame the last big extinction event 65 million years ago. But every land animal heavier than 1 kg died out. I am heavier than 1 kg. My children are and my grandchildren will be. Thus I care.
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I want data and opinions that aren't corrupted by politics.
That's easy, just stop listening to people who say it isn't happening.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Whenever I see these questions (Score:2)
I'm all in on the Green New Deal, not for the "Green", for the "New Deal". It's 10 million good paying, middle class jobs.
There's studies coming out of the University economics depts that show for every 80 "good" jobs (enough money to live off of with a single job in a 2 income household) there's 100 "shit" jobs. We're sliding back into the "Nastry, Brutish, Short" style of life. The GND would put a stop to that, hopefully long enough for stuff like UBI to take over.
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Re:May have.. (Score:5, Informative)
Well that was the stupidest thing I've read in a while.
" If ancient man could handle that then why can't we?"
You do know they call that period the "Dark Ages" right? A period of economic collapse, drought, destruction, famine, plague, and war.
You want to live through that? Well maybe not you, because the odds on any particular person at that time weren't great. But some will survive somewhere.
Also:
"a 2.5 deg C drop in just a year, and we warmed up over 3.5 deg C in a few hundred years"
A volcano went off, put a bunch of stuff in the atmosphere. And then it stopped. So while it disrupted the weather, and it took a while for the dust to settle (literally); things could and did return to 'normal'. Today we're not allowing the "dust to settle" as it were; we're just pushing more and more every year.
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Not a sensible counter point though.
"Coin may land on heads: counter, coin may land on tails".
"Sun may rise tomorrow: counter, sun may not rise tomorrow".
The latter counter uses the same form of logic as the former, but is a fairly silly counter because the sun will rise tomorrow till long after we have both returned to dust.
There are two counters which make sense here. First is that the "may not" possibility is fairly high; for instance, "if I cross
Interstellar mode go. (Score:2)
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Counter-counter-point: The article says we might not have "control of the climate". This is technically true, since we never had control of the climate.
In addition, we will not get control of the climate in time, as geoengineering on the scale needed is not possible fast enough. Sure, if the human race would put all other conflicts aside, remove greed, arrogance, stupidity and egotism _and_ put the smartest and most capable people in charge and made this project the primary, driving force for all of humanity, we may have something in 50 years that actually has a positive effect within 70 years or so. But how likely is such a situation to arise anytime soon
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Private Frazer?
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So where's your sandwich-board then?
Accurate article... but then what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an accurate article, but one for which the appropriate response is unclear.
Yes, we do know that there do exist "tipping points" in climate: points where, if we pass them, some mechanism kicks in to release further greenhouse gasses and contribute further to warming. We know this because these are the effects that amplify small forcing into the advance and retreat of glaciers during an ice age.
But we don't really have a good idea where these tipping points are. And the article clearly states that: we know the tipping points are there, but we don't know exactly what the point is. And it's very difficult to estimate this, since it depends on a vast amount of information that is very difficult to measure, like exactly how much of what gasses are trapped in permafrost, and what amounts of permafrost melts to what depth at what latittude as a function of amount of incident forcing.
So a question-- which can't be answered by science, since it's a policy question-- is, what (if any) actions should we take against a possible problem that we don't know in detail? Do we go by the worst case scenario? If not, what?
These are hard questions.
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Even if we had a space elevator, and someplace useful to send people, we couldn't get the people off this mudball fast enough to save them. And we have neither.
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Indeed. Space is not an escape for this. We either make it on this dirtball for the next few 100 years or that is essentially it.
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One thing conservatives seem to be very good at: Refusing to take responsability for their own actions. It's ironic, since the base premise of conservatism seems to be individual liberty and personal responsability.
People aren't doing anything about climate change ? It's the liberal's fault for not getting their message across effectively.
We now have a pedophile, con-man, psychopath in the oval office ? Again, it's not the fault of the people that, you know, actually voted for him, but the fault of those pe
Re:You're not being effective (Score:5, Insightful)
We now have a pedophile, con-man, psychopath in the oval office ? Again, it's not the fault of the people that, you know, actually voted for him, but the fault of those pesky liberals who proposed an alegedly worse candidate against him,
Gotta part company with you there. It's both. The DNC and HRC teamed up to subvert the primary process so that the DNC could run HRC as the candidate instead of Sanders, even though polls showed that Sanders could beat Trump, and HRC couldn't. Why? Because they wanted to maintain the status quo more than they wanted positive change. Now we have Obama participating in "Fuck Bernie 2.0" where he's saying out of one side of his face that he will oppose Sanders as the democratic candidate, and out of the other side that he will support the democratic nominee. But he won't support the democratic process. Obama ran and won on "hope and change" and is now saying that Democrats have to run on centrism instead of hope and change, because that's the only way to get elected.
If you don't acknowledge that the DNC is part of the process that got Trump elected, you're part of the problem.
Re:You're not being effective (Score:4, Interesting)
You've seen the tip of the iceberg there. You will live long enough to see liberals blamed for not convincing the conservatives the global warming was real.
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I prefer a con man, paedofile, psycopath in power to any collectivist, socialist in there.
Better Russian than liberal, huh?
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How is it any worse than conservatives continuously calling liberals "thin-skinned", "snowflakes", "bleeding hearts", etc ?
How does it feel to be on the other side of the cattle prod, snowflake ?
reactionaries reacting (Score:2)
the reason you don't want to learn the factual is it's not being well marketed to you.... oh dear, that's problem, bad marketing for the truth.
the truth is for you to find out, not for me to force feed you. grow up. learn how to find the truth outside of advertisements... might be a good idea in general if you stopped begging to be hypnotized by "good marketing".
Re:You're not being effective (Score:4, Insightful)
There is still a trillion dollars in the ground. Burn the Earth, hell if they care. They making money.
The only virtue they have is money.
And the fault lies with you. Specifically, you're not being effective in getting your message across.
There's an old geek saying "it's not enough to be correct, you also have to be effective", that applies here.
What also applies is "Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain." (No, I am an atheist. But the sentiment still holds.) Hence assigning blame in the way you do is entirely unjustified.
What false facts? (Score:2)
Now, you could point to Al Gore, but while he was a bit of an alarmist he never actually said we'd all be under water by now. He talked about flooding and intense storms, and we're seeing that. If you live in large parts of Florida you can't buy hurricane insurance anymore. Nobody will sell it to you. This is after decades and decades of it being sold.
You're so close ye
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Growing and moving food around, moving people to and from work, everything that's going on is doing so the best ways we know how.
Literally all wrong. We're doing them in the most profitable ways we know how, not the most efficient or in the most ecologically responsible ways. Too many cars, not enough rail. Yes, every car could be replaced, if we used a mix of PRT, light rail, and HSR. Too much monocultural factory farming. Organic biointensive zero-tilth agriculture produces more food per acre using less energy input per acre, and preserves soil diversity. Every other industry I can think of is similarly engineered for profit over c
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You may not be able to do it while making a profit selling them whatever they want to eat in whatever season they want to eat it in
Do you want to tell Greta Thunberg that she can't have bananas for breakfast any more? Because I don't. The Amazon will have to be burned for plantations and the earth will have to boil before I face that sort of wrath.
Of course, with a little more global warming, she can grow her favorite tropical fruits in her back yard.
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Do you want to tell Greta Thunberg that she can't have bananas for breakfast any more?
Sure. She accepted that she can't fly everywhere, I'm sure she can handle having no bananas.
Of course, with a little more global warming, she can grow her favorite tropical fruits in her back yard.
With a little more global warming, she's going to have to live in a pineapple under the sea. Does that count?
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Do you want to tell Greta Thunberg that she can't have bananas for breakfast any more?
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is breakfast and fairy tales of eternal banana growth. How dare you!
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Trains and buses are hideously expensive, trains especially do not pay for themselves
Cars with ICEs don't pay for themselves. They produce literally tons of pollution that everyone in the world has to pay for.
And you do all that and what do you have, you're still emitting CO2 up the wazoo
The CO2 emissions from farming are from equipment, and from synthetic fertilizer production. Otherwise it fixes carbon.
This "crisis" does not have legs. Its going to self-cure
Yeah! Do nothing and it will all turn out all right! That always works!
Re: Um... Aren't we supposed to all die in 11 yea (Score:2)
Western nations are part of the problem. (Score:2)
We all have changes to make. Some nations have bigger changes to make than others, but nobody is doing all they need to do.
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"China is the world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over double the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States."
citation please: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China