Earth Barreling Toward 'Hothouse' State Not Seen In 50 Million Years, Epic New Climate Record Shows (livescience.com) 228
[I]n a new study published in the journal Science, researchers have analyzed the chemical elements in thousands of foram samples and found that Earth is barreling toward a hothouse state not seen in 50 million years. Live Science reports: The new paper, which comprises decades of deep-ocean drilling missions into a single record, details Earth's climate swings across the entire Cenozoic era -- the 66 million-year period that began with the death of the dinosaurs and extends to the present epoch of human-induced climate change. The results show how Earth transitioned through four distinct climate states -- dubbed the Warmhouse, Hothouse, Coolhouse and Icehouse states -- in response to changes in the planet's orbit, greenhouse gas levels and the extent of polar ice sheets.
The zig-zagging chart (shown above) ends with a sobering peak. According to the researchers, the current pace of anthropogenic global warming far exceeds the natural climate fluctuations seen at any other point in the Cenozoic era, and has the potential to hyper-drive our planet out of a long icehouse phase into a searing hothouse state. "Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural climate variability, we can see that the projected anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that," study co-author James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections for 2300 in the 'business-as-usual' scenario will potentially bring global temperature to a level the planet has not seen in 50 million years." (The IPCC is a United Nations group that assesses the science, risks and impacts of climate change on the planet.)
The zig-zagging chart (shown above) ends with a sobering peak. According to the researchers, the current pace of anthropogenic global warming far exceeds the natural climate fluctuations seen at any other point in the Cenozoic era, and has the potential to hyper-drive our planet out of a long icehouse phase into a searing hothouse state. "Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural climate variability, we can see that the projected anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that," study co-author James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections for 2300 in the 'business-as-usual' scenario will potentially bring global temperature to a level the planet has not seen in 50 million years." (The IPCC is a United Nations group that assesses the science, risks and impacts of climate change on the planet.)
Buy Land In Antartica! (Score:3)
Golden investment opportunity, in soon-to-become tropical paradise!
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Almost all of it has already been claimed with the exception of Marie Byrd Land, a pie-shaped piece between the parts that have been claimed by Chile and New-Zealand. Note that while it has not been claimed, there usually are some humans there. Also note that you can claim all you want but your claim won't be recognized and thus is effectively moot. Nobody would stop you from moving there, though :)
Drill baby, drill! (Score:2, Funny)
Re: Drill baby, drill! (Score:2)
And you'll be the first against the wall, when the riots start.
Bring out the guillotines!
Re: Drill baby, drill! (Score:2, Insightful)
First against the wall are always...
Are always those who're a threat to the leadership - like Stalin's purge of his Officer Corps.
A current example will be the incarceration of these "protestors," once they've served their (astroturfing) purpose.
Re:Drill baby, drill! (Score:5, Insightful)
Thereâ(TM)s still money to be made. Fuck the plebs! We are all going to die someday anyway!
I know this was said in jest, but every generation that carries on the "meh, fuck it" mentality, is getting closer and closer to birthing the very generation they're fucking over.
We're already there politically, which speaks volumes as to the actual danger to humans.
Dear Liza.. (Score:3)
And I think that we can put up all the wind poles we want and cover the landscape with solar panels, but it still won't be enough if we don't address the hole in our energy bucket: population.
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...it still won't be enough if we don't address the hole in our energy bucket: population.
Governments address that problem every day through policy. Why do you think deadly products that are very effective at killing, are legal?
We've carved up this planet into countries. And each of those countries have a finite amount of resources. Resource management is the responsibility of every government. Population Control is key component of that responsibility. One way or another, you better be sustaining a reasonable death toll. The morally acceptable way of doing that is through policy and leg
Wait a minute (Score:5, Funny)
This can't be true, I went out yesterday and it was quite cold. There was also snow on the mountains in the distance.
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Ah, Senator Inhofe, nice to hear from you. Don't drink the bleach...bad for you.
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I think you meant that as a sarcastic joke. Being 2020 and the nature of things, I can no longer tell anymore.
Global Warming/Global Climate change, is recording the net temperatures all around the world. Averaging all the numbers and comparing them to previous years and data points.
Now if you take all these data points over time, and graph them, you see an upward trend. Yes sometimes there will be a datapoint that will be lower than the previous year but if you trend them out you see it is moving upward.
Y
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Well, actually it is not quite true. Whilst we most definitely are heating up the planet at quite a quick rate, the assumption that we would continue to do so for an extended period is quite unrealistic. There is a point where we so damage our environment our ability as a society to continue to do so will be crippled as society collapses. During this phase, much fire and smoke will be generated as we as societies degenerate and engage in wanton aimless extended conflict and due to the level of toxic polluta
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Whether what you say will come true or not, I am shivering thinking about living in your head. Change, and I mean human change, takes time and education. Man will combat this and the trees will continue to grow and crops will be harvested and some may die. But your bleak picture and 3 meters of sea level rise is something from a movie.
Thanks for the helpful link (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for the link to "Log in to view the full text".
Re:Thanks for the helpful link (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for this Donnie must be kicked out (Score:3, Insightful)
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I remember back in the 80s when 'Reagan'was proclimed to be the main problem.
He was the main problem. It's not the 80s any more. Now someone else is the main problem. Time moves on, but you haven't.
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I remember back in the 80s when 'Reagan'was proclimed to be the main problem.
Dull. Do your politicing someplace else.
Of course you do. Anti-science ignorance loving Republicans are the problem.
Re: Just for this Donnie must be kicked out (Score:2)
Go farther with your argument: Since respiration produces CO2, if you don't off yourself, you're a hypocrite?
Being a hypocrite doesn't make an argument wrong. Especially given that society makes it next to impossible not to be a hypocrite in this particular regard.
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Being a hypocrite doesn't make an argument wrong. Especially given that society makes it next to impossible not to be a hypocrite in this particular regard.
That's an excellent point, and I agree wholeheartedly. However, being a hypocrite, while not making your argument wrong, does make it quite a bit harder to win the debate. That is probably a big part of the problem. Most people on the "green" (very imprecise, but I don't have a better term) side of the issue appear to be operating under the mentality that "in order to save the world, everyone must change their lifestyle.... except me, because I'm special." I respect people who do what they can to stand
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And if you have any wood, well...you are just making things worse since trees mitigate C02.
Quite the contrary there. If you burn the wood then you'd be making the problem worse, but wood used as a building or manufacturing material is safely sequestered carbon.
There are multiple distinct problems here (Score:5, Informative)
There are multiple distinct problems here. One of the biggest and most underappreciated is a major part of what this article is talking about. Given enough time and if it happens slowly enough, life can adjust to temperature changes. But our repeated pumping of massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere is causing that change to not just happen but happen rapidly, much too fast for life to evolve. Humans might be able to change our behavior faster because of our basic intelligence, but even that will be at that the cost of trillions of dollars, especially in terms of the damage to coastal cities from rising sea levels. And areas with less resources, like much of Africa, which are just really starting to be developed, may be absolutely devastated. And these aren't the only negatives of climate change; there are other issues like increased ocean acidification from CO2. There are some places which will see some positives, like Russia having more usable farm land as its permafrost melts, but by and large the results are going to be far more damaging by probably multiple orders of magnitude.
So, what can you do as an individual? There are three things one can do, personal, political, and charitable.
At a personal level, you can reduce your carbon footprint. This can include eating less meat; meat production involves a lot of CO2 production compared to most other foods. You can get solar panels for your house or get better insulation for your house. You can turn the heat down more during the winter and use the AC less when it is hot. All of these things can not only help the environment, but they save you money. If you can, avoid buying a car, or go car less. Unfortunately, given COVID-19, public transit right now is not very safe, so I can't reasonably recommend using it (as I would at other times). If you must by a new car, please strongly consider buying either an electric or a hybrid. In most of the US, they are better in terms of CO2 than an ICE. There are some areas which are still coal heavy like West Virginia where this may not the case, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html [nytimes.com] but for the vast majority of the US, as well as pretty much all of Europe, an electric car is a clear winner. Even in places where coal generation is high, a hybrid is still a better option than a conventional ICE.
At a political level, you can support candidates who favor system environmental change. In the US, this mostly means supporting Democrats. While there are some Republicans who have strong environmental records, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christie Todd Whitman(former governor of New Jersey and George W. Bush's EPA head), they've been largely run out of the party. The current US Republican administration has been incredibly bad about environmental issues. George W. Bush's administration had a mixed record, but this one is actively rolling back all sorts of environmental regulations. Finally, one can engage in charitable giving. Right now, in the short-term, the way to offset the most carbon per a dollar spent is arguably Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/ [coolearth.org] . By some estimates it takes around $15 to $20 to Cool Earth to offset the carbon of a coast-to-coast plane flight. My spouse and I regularly donate to Cool Earth when we travel to help offset carbon use (obviously that's mattered less during COVID but when things are more normal travel is a major contributor to CO2 production). More long-term issues center around solar and wind power (I unfortunately don't know any good charity for nuclear power.) The two best solar charities in general are Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/ [everybodysolar.org] which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters, and the Solar Electric Light Fund which gets solar
Re:There are multiple distinct problems here (Score:5, Insightful)
There are multiple distinct problems here. One of the biggest
...is the utter failure at math. From the article: "...saw temperatures up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above modern levels..." and "...with surface temperatures averaging about 40 F (4 C) above modern levels." These are temperature differences, not absolute temperatures. The "+32" factor in Centigrade-to-Fahrenheit conversion falls out; one degree Celsius is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. So a rise of 16 C is 28.8 F, and a rise of 4 C is 7 F, not 60 and 40 F respectively. With this level of fundamental inaccuracy, I shudder to think at what other, less obvious, mistakes, half truths, and lies appear in the article. For example, the graph shows a temperature projection under RCP 8.5; this is widely described as the "do nothing" scenario, when it is more correctly cast as the "burn all the coal as fast as possible" -- the 2011 paper in Climatic Change by Keywan Riahi et al. shows a graph that presumably shows coal production increasing to 2100, but makes no reference to the fact that the production indicated in the graph exceeds known coal reserves.
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Grid Alternatives (Score:2)
(https://gridalternatives.org/) is another charitable solar installer, for low income home owners.
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not only that, the graph is sooo tiny that you don't see anything but the worst-case predictions in the fan of assumptions. You'll note the bottom part of the future is blue. The kind of colour used that you won't notice because you're looking at the more obvious red bit that suggests the planet will be 20 degrees hotter.
Its bunkum science solely made to mislead, just like that old hockey stick graph.
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The world population is going to grow by at least 50%.
The UN population projections predict at most 11.2 billion by 2100 https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/ [un.org] and that's their most extreme estimate. A population growth of 50% will eventually happen, but not any time soon. Even developing countries have their population growth slowing down https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth [ourworldindata.org].
It may well be that we're past the point of no return. But the more we slow things down, the more time we have to figure out solutions like geoengineeri
Re:There are multiple distinct problems here (Score:4, Interesting)
Much of this population growth is in Africa [weforum.org] and it may not be as damaging as population booms elsewhere. [hbr.org]
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Billions will die over the next century anyway, no? A huge part of the problem is population, and a major cause of that population is birth to death rates. Therefore, just like a diet, you can focus on one or both; increase deaths or decrease births. The increasing of deaths will happen naturally if no action is taken. Wars, famine, disasters. Decreasing births seems to be the sane option. And yet, many countries actively oppose funding of birth control or even birth control education, such as the USA
Re:There are multiple distinct problems here (Score:5, Insightful)
If you aren't willing to vote for people who will help with this, the other two prongs are still options. And I agree that the "Green New Deal" wasn't a good idea at all. It had little to do with climate change, and was much more about getting other things that the left wanted. Much more "New Deal" than "Green" https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aocs-top-aide-admits-green-new-deal-about-the-economy-not-the-climate [foxnews.com] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/15/the-trouble-with-the-green-new-deal-223977 [politico.com]. But that's not the "Democratic" agenda in general. Joe Biden's climate proposals are focused very explicitly on climate issues.
I will never vote Democrat even if that means the world of fire. I can deal with nature. I can't deal sitting by and watch every Democrat controlled city up in flames by riots and morons wanting to defund the police.
That's an amazing statement. Aside from the fact that the vast majority of protesters are peaceful, and that cities are generally doing fine (with Portland being a notable exception, largely due to rich white kids apparently wanting to play revolutionary). Outside a right-wing news bubble, actually living in one of the major cities and you'll see that there's no real problem here.
There's nothing reasonable or pragmatic being offered by the Democrat party that I could stand behind until the radical left-wing is eliminated from politics.
Neither the extreme left or the extreme right will be eliminated from politics. And right now, the extreme right has a lot more power than the extreme left in terms of actual sway in their party. There's good reason the extreme left is pissed at Biden; he's a centrist and a moderate. Similarly, he recognizes the need for things like nuclear power for dealing with climate change. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48-years-democrats-endorse-nuclear-energy-in-platform/#293881985829 [forbes.com].
But this is to a large extent besides the point. Climate change is a massive problem and it needs to be dealt with, or one will have far, far worse problems than even what is happening in Portland right now. If people like Christie Whitman were still in the Republican party it would be one thing. But they aren't welcome. And this is a problem which is a severity far beyond any minor political squabbles.
Re:There are multiple distinct problems here (Score:5, Insightful)
Any plan to save the environment has to be an economic plan. Any plan to decarbonize our economy is necessarily going to destroy or radically alter a whole bunch of industries. You can't just put all those people out of work, turn them out on the street and say, "sorry about that, but it's for the planet. Good luck!". They will vote you out of office and replace you with someone who will roll back all your reforms and double down on supporting the sectors employing the people that got them elected. i.e. we'll be worse off than before.
That means any "green" plan needs a massive DPW-style employment program to go along with it so that the disruption doesn't destroy the average working stiff. That's all the green new deal is. And it's not really a plan at this point, more like an extended mission statement. The details will have to get hammered out in actual legislation.
Re:There are multiple distinct problems here (Score:5, Insightful)
Decarbonization will happen naturally. The petroleum and coal reserves will either run out or create so much greenhouse gas that human life will be forced to shrink or disappear. It's far better to decarbonize on our own terms in a sane manner.
Re:You aren't voting for people that help either (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you willing to vote for Trump? Because CO2 emissions fell a lot more under Trump than Obama. But somehow you'll just pretend that is not the case, and vote Democrat.
CO2 emissions this last year have fallen worldwide, not due to any new technology but due to COVID https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x [nature.com]. That's not an acceptable way of reducing CO2 levels. In fact, your other comments are not accurate. Obama heavily supported natural gas https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2020/12/31/president-obamas-support-for-americas-shale-oil-and-natural-gas/#10541e7c1883 [forbes.com]. The rest of your comment falls into the category of general smears and statements which are more rhetorical than factual.
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There's nothing reasonable or pragmatic being offered by the Democrat party that I could stand behind until the radical left-wing is eliminated from politics.
That'll be a difficult accomplishment as long as they have the support of a majority of the populace of the country.
Do tell us your ideas for their elimination though.
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Also: taxpayer subsidies to farmers is Socialism (government picking winners and losers in the free market). Note that there is no Radical Left Wing in American politics, Bernie is a right wing Liberal.
That's not socialism. Farm subsidies are social welfare. Social as in something done for the good of society. Social program != socialism. Socialism is the workers own the means of production. A worker-owned co-op is socialism. A communal farm where everyone splits the crop is socialism. Socialism is extending democratic principals to the workplace. It's not a synonym for any social program you happen to disagree with.
Bernie calls himself a democratic socialist, but he's more of a social democrat (n
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Bernie is a communist. There's nothing right-wing about that. Can your revisionist bullshit!
That is nonsense. Sanders is very slightly left of centre, and in the libertarian rather than authoritarian direction. Yes, he's on the left, unlike the claim from GP, but to call him a communist is laughable.
Re: There are multiple distinct problems here (Score:2)
Since you don't know who are the ones being violent, or what refunding means, I don't think much of your opinion.
We're probalby screwed. The question is: How hard? (Score:4)
For starters a little memo from the methane front: Methane Clathrate Gun Hypothesis. [wikipedia.org] This is nightmare material. If only 30% of this hypothesis alone is true, we're in deep trouble.
We're probalby screwed either way. The question is: How hard?
I like to think of it in 3 levels, named after Cyberpunk(y) novels or films that display a world similar to the screwage-level.
Screwage Level 1 - "Snowcrash / Walkaway"
The ecosystem as we knew it is decimated, but has reached a new equilibrium that is habitable for humans and many fauna and flora. Temperate climate zones have shrunk an moved towards the polar circles, wast swaths of humanity have died miserable deaths but modern human civilization has survived and can benefit from a quasi-post-scarcity economy, robots, AI and all the other nice SF stuff. Humanity is actively pursuing ways to roll back climate change and regrow fauna and flora, perhaps with the use of modern sophisticated genetic engineering, nanotech or some smart and feasible idea some Elon-Musk-type has come up with.
Screwage Level 2 - "Bladerunner (2049) / The Windup Girl / Soylent Green"
The ecosystem is FUBAR. Certain fauna and flora still exist and can live in the open, but the diversity we knew is completely gone. Cockroaches are doing fine though. Humanity has caused an ecological tilt that has pushed us across multiple states of possible sustainable equilibrium. A quasi-modern civilization still exists, high tech is around, but life in general is a depressing misery for most, with large swaths of the human population depending on "calorie megacorps" or corporations serving clean air and water or artificial supplements. Knowledge and science wasn't lost, but rebuilding of the ecosystem using high-tech is nowhere in sight, humanity is scraping by. The earth isn't recognizable to anyone from today.
Screwage Level 3 "Mad Max / 'Eden' Manga / 'Scary Simon Stalenhag Picture with alien thing in destroyed city'"
It's over. Modern civilization is lost, most humans are dead. A few survive for 2 or 3 generations in some habitat setups. If humans and sustaining fauna and flora survive they are thrown back to early bronze-age at best. The eco-equilibrium is maybe livable, but modern society as we know it is a source of myth if anything.
What bugs me is that dimwits all around don't see the problem, even though we've known it since the 70ies. I'm 110% sure we have to hit the brakes and go into hard reverse within the decade to avoid level 2 or 3. Level 1 might already be inevitable, but maybe we can turn that one around too or at least mitigate the effects.
Spread the word! Let's get into damage-control ASAP and get this fixed.
I don't want the current ecosphere to go down like that!
We can do this!
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I see you're referencing popular culture works to relare to 'the problem' to try to make sense of it. How does 'Hogan's Heroes' (1965) fit into your scenario. And what about Gilligan?
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The above reply is why I'm convinced that "Screwage Level 2" is the absolute best we'll be able to do.
It was fun while it lasted....
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I see you're trying to critique him for using popular culture works to relate "the problem" by using a straw man. How does deliverance fit into your daily life?
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And what about Gilligan?
A three-hour lifespan.
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Gilligan's Island has it right. Stop driving, have a vegan lifestyle, and if you need to power something then you have to start pedaling. And they've managed to keep their birth rate at 0% as well.
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Nurturing your young is way too liberal! They should learn to fend for themselves fast, not be a bunch of literal cry babies.
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So what's your proposal? Let's assume you're right, what do you do about it? Note that you will never get people to go along with "kill large numbers of people" or most types of population reduction. They will also not go along with "low/no tech, refrigeration, electricity, transportation, etc". Those seem to be the two common suggestions, and they will not fly. That doesn't mean I want to see nothing at all happen, but if you want people to do something, they have to get something out of it. And nebulous t
Some good news: Emissions heading below RCP8.5 (Score:4, Interesting)
Fortunately, our emissions are already quite a way below the worst "RCP8.5" scenario shown in the graph.
RCP8.5 is often called "business as usual" in the press, and elsewhere, but is actually more like "burn all the coal you can find, as quickly as possible" - RCP4.5 is more like the current "no-policy/little-further-innovation" scenario (even in countries which are trying to push no-longer-economic coal fired electricity generation for political reasons).
See e.g. "Arguments over RCP8.5" https://peakoilbarrel.com/argu... [peakoilbarrel.com]
Hopefully we can push things below RCP4.5 and closer to RCP2.6...
How it is still possible some underestimated feedback will kick in, and push the actual outcome closer to the RCP8.5 model shown (even with reduced emissions), but this is not expected by most climate forecasters at present. At least from a "what-we-are-doing-about-it" perspective, we've improved from an "F" around the turn of the millennium to a "C" today.
Re:Some good news: Emissions heading below RCP8.5 (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, our emissions are already quite a way below the worst "RCP8.5" scenario shown in the graph.
Are they really? This just came out:
Not only are the emissions consistent with RCP8.5 in close agreement with historical total cumulative CO2 emissions (within 1%), but RCP8.5 is also the best match out to midcentury under current and stated policies with still highly plausible levels of CO2 emissions in 2100. [pnas.org]
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I don't think that's true. Citation?
In other words (Score:2, Interesting)
Looking at the chart in tfa, what the article really shows is "at the worst conceivable case, the earth is returning to a temperature state more reflective of the bulk of its history"...but that probably doesn't carry the message of panic you're aiming for?
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
Humans have been around about 300,000 years. Go back 1 million, and few or no existent species would have been around. Go back 5 million, and you've got a climate that no existent species has ever dealt with. So that's enough for an ecological disaster that will rip up every ecosystem on the planet.
And this goes back 50 million.
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Given the pace of technological development, that's more than enough time to turn things around. Or for civilization to collapse and leave nobody in a position to care.
Re: In other words (Score:2)
Based on current spending, yes we will. You can't develop tech for free.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Funny)
This is a big deal for humans.
If you aren't one, please report to the prize desk to get your Turing award.
Unless you're just one of the lizard-people, in which case, go eat a grasshopper or something. The humans are trying to have a conversation here.
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Neat! Humans haven't existed on Earth for the "bulk of its history".
Think of the children (Score:2)
Please Bring the Global Cooling Scientists Back (Score:2)
There is a simple antidote to Global Warming. Just bring Ewing and Dunn back from retirement:
https://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/?single=1
http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
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2300? (Score:2)
We have plenty of time to adapt to such a slow change or completely reverse it. In a time frame of centuries it's not hard to start building CO2 scrubbers or algae tanks or some such techonolgy... build new houses further inland to evade sea level rise, or whatever. People move around all the time, if you create an economic incentive then 5 or 10 years are enough to completely gentrify some place or tear everything down to build hotels. In that timeframe we can genetically manipulate crops to live with less
Unexpected bonus (Score:2)
There are people and organizations - well meaning simpletons to active disinformation organizations - who seek to deny AGW. They couch the arguments in the same terms the covid anti-mask, anti-protective efforts are couched. BUT, with POTUS admitting he misled the public initially to downplay the covid reality, for whatever reason, and so many people latching onto the officially disseminated arguments downplaying covid, and now realizing they were chumps for doing so, that may make them realize they may al
Exactly how does one "barrel"? (Score:2)
I mean, I've heard of planking and batmanning but barreling doesn't exactly conjure a consistent image. I have the same puzzlement about why shots always ring out.
It's normal that it is unseen (Score:2)
Who would have seen it 50 million years ago?
They were all at the beach, I guess.
this could be the death of us (Score:2)
you can see the same thing written clearly in the archaeological records, over and over again, cities grew too big, resource collection became too intensive, the surrounding land became a dust bowl and barren.
we have now done this to the whole planet.
how (unprintable) ignorant can a species be?
if we do not fix this, this very soon, we die.
will anyone even notice this reply?
or care?
human population leading to species collapse (Score:2)
Environment vs Economics (Score:2)
The real argument here is cost.
Environmentalists want everything switched out to "greener" technologies and systems and all evidence shows these kinds of drastic steps really are necessary to stabilize or reverse the trends.
But there is a significant cost to embracing this kind of "all in" change. We can't just talk about electric cars, for example, without realizing the whole infrastructure needs to change to maximize the advantage of them, the cost to assist poor folks who cannot afford to purchase a new
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Don't let depression make you a monster.
Re:If it kills off all humans... (Score:4, Insightful)
That has got to be the dumbest idea I have ever heard. You're basically saying, "We need to DESTROY humanity to SAVE humanity!"
KYS
I'm not sure why you think that's the dumbest of all ideas. It might be wrong, I think it's a tad hyperbolic (and I wonder how he came by the 93% number..), but it's not entirely wrong. The Earth is not capable of sustaining of an infinite population. I think we're already well over what this planet is capable of housing in comfort, and every year we use more of the resources available, shrinking that number further.
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Bender, is that you?
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Humans are one of the most adaptive species on the planet. By the time humans went extinct there wouldn't be much else left.
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Humans are yes. Human civilization is incredibly delicate.
All those Mayan ruins down in Mexico? The Mayans themselves survived (as a group, individually not all of them). The birds and trees barely noticed anything happened. But the civilization went kaput.
Re:Almost as if the climate... is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Person usually dies after 80 years or so. Shoting oneself in the head only exacerbates the process.
Yeah, and it would hurt like a bitch too. After all, that lead shot put ain't light, and your arm is only so long...
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Of course the climate changes.
Of course long after we're gone, the Earth will still be doing her thing... and she'll get back to her natural cycle rather than us short-circuiting it by pumping sequestered carbon sitting in cold-storage directly into the fucking atmosphere, and her life will get back to adapting to change that happens slow enough to actually be adapted to.
How the fuck were you moderated insightful? Is it because the fuckwits read your post as "T
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Long after we are gone, Earth will still be doing her thing, with whatever life forms she has.
I'm a George Carlin fan too, but the point of that isn't to point we don't need to care, it's to point out our environmental marketing sucks. It's not about saving the Earth, it's about saving the humans. And the Earth doing its thing, with lifeforms other than our descendants, isn't a good thing. I don't know about you, but I want humans thriving on Earth, on Mars, humans thriving everywhere we can manage to get to. I'd like to make sure we survive, and to do that, we have to ensure our environment continu
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If a corporation can be a person then the Earth is definitely one. The Earth spits forth life therefore is alive. You are made from the materials contained in the Earth hence life from life.
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The Earth spits forth life therefore is alive.
I don't recall that from geology OR biology class
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If a corporation can be a person then the Earth is definitely one.
Corporations were granted charter by fiat, and so we declared the human.
The Earth cares little for any charter we may give it, so your attempt at being funny here was just dumb.
The Earth spits forth life therefore is alive.
It most certainly does not.
You are made from the materials contained in the Earth hence life from life.
Ah yes, in the same way that the graphite in my pencil is alive.
You don't really believe the shit you wrote, do you?
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if we cannot fix this (Score:2)
it is better we not survive.
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The one thing we can say for sure about 2300 is that 2020's "current trends" will have been irrelevant for centuries.
If 2020's "current trends" lead directly and inevitably to 2300's "current climate" then... no. Just completely no. That's not how this works. That's not how ANY of this works. The future is created THROUGH the past. Time is a continuum, not a series of unrelated events. Thinking like yours is how we came to this pass in the first place.
Re: IN 300 YEARS?!?! Did nobody tell them that... (Score:2)
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...another hockey stick...
Yes. There are dozens of these [google.com]. It is curious that no matter who studies the issue, no matter what data or methods they use, they all come to the same conclusion.
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If it were an emergency we would not be doing early shutdowns of nuclear reactors in perfect condition because they were 'slightly unprofitable':
I have to ask..
What the *fuck* have you seen of our system that makes you think that?
Because from where I'm standing- if I were a dispassionate observer (which I'm getting pretty fucking close to) I'd argue if it were an emergency, the corporate powers that be would double down and make sure they could burn every last lump of coal until they had the solution to market.
Voter suppression (Score:2)
Ice at the polls.
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i second the question
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Have you ever heard of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"?
This hyperbolic nonsense doesn't help "raise awareness". It just makes it look like you don't know what you're talking about.
Spell out the short, medium and long term impacts with language that has an appropriate tone for those impacts and you'll likely get more response. Maybe not the response you're looking for, but if that's the case, then what you are looking for is more politically than scientifically motivated.
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There are none, because his ignorance is better than your evidence.
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half a good answer, thank you.
i speak for all life on this planet, not merely human.
we have done immense harm.
and so (Score:2)
they end.