A question about climate change/global warming.

i wonder if this will get 1/1,000,000th of the coverage that the Climategate non-scandal received

hey my generation, you suck

In 2011, the largest chunk of respondents, 67 percent, said they aren't certain global warming is happening. Meanwhile, 23 percent were concerned or alarmed, and at the other end, 10 percent are not worried or don't believe it is happening.

excuse me for a second.

http://www.getgreatcodes.com/graphics/funny/16/funnypic171.gif

Political affiliation also mattered. Zero conservative Republicans were alarmed, while only 10 percent were concerned.

excuse me for a second.

http://www.getgreatcodes.com/graphics/funny/16/funnypic171.gif

Going to have to kill me some people

Climate scientist Michael Mann lets National Review Online and Mark Steyn know that they're facing a defamation lawsuit.

been so depressed since reading that McKibben piece

i'm really glad that his article is reaching a somewhat wider audience, but there wasn't much in there that was new, right?

not really, it's just the starkness of the math and the lack of progress/lateness of the hour

i confess that this isn't an issue that worries me, but maybe a pressing urgent fear isn't a pre-req for policy change?

why doesn't it worry you

lack of urgent fear hasn't worked out so well so far tbh

i kinda feel like if it weren't such an emotionally charged issue, people could accept pro-environment policy changes as just normal and sensible things to do.

ah yes, normal, sensible humanity

so eager to give up things that make their lives easier

I think I've already accepted that we won't change any of this and I'm just kind of preparing myself for living in a radically different world in 10, 20, 30 years.

i can easily imagine some really fucked up scenarios for 30 years out, biased toward sustaining the privileges of the developed countries and grotesquely unfair to poor people.

like, maybe in 30 years there will be children born with fins composed of billions of microscopic small ridges that will allow them to dissipate heat at an extraordinarily high rate, also they will be able to subsist on algae and alfafa, the only two viable crops farmed by humans then, or will we even be called humans? maybe heat-ans

^and everyone drinks their own pee, of course

naturally!

the best way to spur action on this front would be to outlaw air conditioners, imo

Especially scary combined with the growth in population. The LA Times just started a series on world population by 2050 - Africa will double (including 390 million in Nigeria, to the US's 400M), India will have more than China. I suspect the carrying capacity of the planet will prevent these projections from coming true.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/population/

Over 80 percent of the U.S. is now under drought conditions.

http://www.examiner.com/article/70-percent-of-people-u-s-now-believe-climate-change

gonna set up a kickstarter for my stillsuit company

from the LA Times article:

William G. Lesher, a former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said the brightest minds in the field haven't figured out the solution.

"We're going to have to produce more food in the next 40 years than we have the last 10,000," he said. "Some people say we'll just add more land or more water. But we're not going to do much of either."

Most of Earth's best farmland has already come under hoof or plow, and farmers are losing ground to expanding cities and deserts. Soil erosion, chemical contamination and salt buildup from irrigation are despoiling prime acreage.

Climate change will make all of these challenges more daunting. Higher temperatures and violent weather will stunt or destroy crops. Increased flooding will imperil millions living in low-lying regions. More severe droughts could displace masses of people, leading to conflict.

By 2050, the United Nations predicts, there could be as many as 200 million "climate refugees."

Despite these trends, population growth has all but vanished from public discourse.

OneOrdinaryCitizen at 7:15 AM July 23, 2012
Just one little problem with this article. How can falling fertitlity rates lead to a population explosion? In fact, world population growth rates have been falling since 1970. The current population growth rate of 1% per year is down from over 2% per year in the early 70s. While an additional 1% or 70,000,000 people per year is enourmous and presents many challenges, Nature has a way of dealing with populations that exceed the capacity of their environment.

once again, the inability for some people to understand subjects that require even a little bit of math/science education is such a limiting factor. the article explained, at length, with various analogies, why population could continue to rapidly grow even as overall fertility rates decline.

Well isn't this news just dandy?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/greenland-ice-sheet-thaw-nasa

also:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/earth-from-space-whats-floating-down-the-fjord-today-dear/260296/

been so depressed since reading that McKibben piece

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, July 23, 2012 11:57 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know what will cheer you up! you can watch this important discussion on environmentalism that the good folks at the American Enterprise Institute are hosting tomorrow!

Humanity once looked in the mirror and saw something precious, worth protecting and fighting for -- indeed, worth liberating. But now we are beset on all sides by propaganda promoting a radically different viewpoint: that humans are endangering the earth’s natural order.

“Merchants of Despair,” by leading thinker Robert Zubrin, traces the pedigree of antihumanist ideology and exposes its deadly consequences in startling detail. The book names the chief prophets and promoters of antihumanism over the last two centuries and exposes the worst crimes perpetrated by the movement, including eugenics campaigns in the U.S. and genocidal antidevelopment and population-control programs around the world.

Please join us for a lunch discussion of this important new book.

http://www.aei.org/events/2012/07/26/merchants-of-despair-radical-environmentalists-criminal-pseudo-scientists-and-the-fatal-cult-of-antihumanism/

there was a Sunday NYT opinion piece this week about how ppl simply can't imagine a drastically different world. until it arrives.

title was something like "we are all climate idiots"

Man, that's some spin. "Antihumanism" -- who could possibly find fault with THAT?

Zubrin's change in course from pro-Mars/Space Exploration guru to anti-climate change zealot is even more depressing to me! I have always been a huge proponent of getting into outer space.

if anything, climate change scenarios make me want to get off this stupid planet even more

http://haysvillelibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/how-to-live-on-mars.jpg

Mars wouldn't be so bad if we could get wifi there

also a NYT op today about interstellar travel not happening for centuries yet.

interplanetary travel's gonna happen a lot sooner. interstellar is a whole different ballgame.

can't remotely imagine us surviving to do interstellar.

not in our present form

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/a-climate-and-energy-stalemate/

The public is divided, with fervent minorities at either end of the debate and a broad crowd in the middle that believes that human activity is altering the climate but remains conflicted over what government, corporations and individuals should do about it. Attuned to the public’s ambivalence, both political parties and their presidential candidates are playing down the climate issue. Instead, what passes for an energy debate in the United States is rivalry over which party is more devoted to extracting oil and gas from the ground and the seabed.

Over the new few months, we hope to jump-start a discussion about energy and climate policy in the United States. We’ll have experts weigh in and welcome readers’ opinions on broad questions that may be neglected on the campaign trail.

Is climate change a real and present danger? Why does the United States lag behind many other industrialized nations in addressing it? Do Americans need to reduce their energy consumption? Should there be limits to where and when and how they drill for oil, frack for gas and mine coal? How far should regulators go in trying to reduce air pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases? Should the federal government subsidize alternative sources of energy like the sun, wind and biofuels?

FUUUUUCK YOOOOOOU JOHN BROOOOOOOODER

seriously, head-thumping-repeatedly-on-wall.gif, fuck you john broder

would stab

i can't WAIT to see the "experts" that he invites to "weigh in" on this important "debate", making sure to invite plenty of people from the American Enterprise Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute to provide balance. although who knows, maybe broder will make me shit my pants and bring in 98 climate scientists who were convinced that climate change is a real and present danger decades ago, vs 2 deniers who can't get their stuff published in peer reviewed journals and also happen to take tons of funding from big oil. that would be a accurate portrayal of the debate

i'm going to my happy place now

i'm floating in an ocean with sunglasses on, god exists, i have no job and don't need a job, elizabeth kolbert is the lead science writer for the new york times...

An electoral motive to redefine climate-change policy? naaahhhhhhh

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/24/six_weeks_to_save_the_planet/

u read salon too much, Doc. But I guess we all do.

6 percent of undecided voters (w/ a margin of error of...11) believe that climate change is the single most important issue for their vote

that 55% believe it is "one of several issues" (as opposed to 69% of democrats) says basically nothing. if elections could be won on this issue in 2012 we wouldn't need some poorly constructed poll to inform us.

The big news on climate change this year was the Arctic ice extent, and Americans had to turn on their ACs and pay more for meat, but buried as a page 16 story was the biggest human impact story of 2012 climate change, which was the failure of the Indian monsoon. When one considers how quickly Indian farmers are depleting their aquifers, things are likely to get pretty ugly there pretty soon.

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/pix/user_images/kd/highlights/glob_precipch_whbk_1920x1080.png

Scotland is going to get more rain?!

HEXIGTEN, China (AP) — Deep in the hilly grasslands of remote Inner Mongolia, twin smoke stacks rise more than 200 feet into the sky, their steam and sulfur billowing over herds of sheep and cattle. Both day and night, the rumble of this power plant echoes across the ancient steppe, and its acrid stench travels dozens of miles away.

This is the first of more than 60 coal-to-gas plants China wants to build, mostly in remote parts of the country where ethnic minorities have farmed and herded for centuries. Fired up in December, the multibillion-dollar plant bombards millions of tons of coal with water and heat to produce methane, which is piped to Beijing to generate electricity.

It's part of a controversial energy revolution China hopes will help it churn out desperately needed natural gas and electricity while cleaning up the toxic skies above the country's eastern cities. However, the plants will also release vast amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, even as the world struggles to curb greenhouse gas emissions and stave off global warming.. .

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/coal-gas-boom-china-holds-climate-change-risks