Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

or hell, elementary school curricula. as you learn math, you should also learn how it is applied, how it is represented in discourse, and how it can be manipulated/misused.

xpost
yeah, it's pretty much classic game theory here. on an individual level, everyone has an incentive to pollute and/or to not care, since the effect of one person living a zero-impact lifestyle really makes no difference on a global level, and it's less stressful to just continue living the way you want to, without any concern for the future. and on a industrial level, presently, it's cheaper and more profitable to use fossil fuels rather than clean energy alternatives (although that's quickly changing with some technologies). everyone has the incentive to create the worst possible outcome on a global level.

and of course, the traditional answer to that game theory dilemma is that policy/government must step in and shift the incentives. but politicians are playing their own terrible game, with the same terrible incentives.

no one gets votes for helping to prevent an amorphous future catastrophe.

i've been saying we need to tax CO2 emmissions for years, but yeah it's probably not going to happen

as a somewhat patriotic American it does upset me to see all this technology coming out of places like Germany and Denmark when I know that we have the intelligence and will and power to create a new economic and industrial revolution by dumping billions of bucks into renewable energy

Power definitely, intelligence possibly, will are you fucking kidding me?

or at least, we had the will; in the past when America's really wanted to get things done, it happens quickly, we need that wartime mentality back

there were some minor environmental things that were pushed through (minor enough that I can't remember what they are) under GWB's regime, if that's what you mean.

well where I live its been a very mild summer, so dunno. The 3000 ish records broken sounds good, but out of how many reporting temerature change? How many reported record lows? to little info, to many ways the stats can be fudged.

How does one even begin to reason with this sort of person? Even if you get them outside of "where they live" you still have to explain exponential change and other basic concepts to which they'll reply "to many ways the stats can be fudged".

yeah, it's a fool's errand. i used to respond to stuff like that all over the internet, and i don't think i ever succeeded in changing anyone's mind.

we have all the technology we need, frogbs. it's not about technology anymore, it's about manipulating the market to stave off disaster.

dipping back into the comments.

For everyone out there preaching denial and skepticism, it's because of you the planetary systems that have supported our civilization are crumbling, and you deserve any suffering that pursues. Unfortunately the millions of innocent bystanders - all the other living species that you share this world with will also suffer for your imbecility. May you rot in Hell eternally for your ignorance.

well, that's one way NOT to respond, i guess,

I just hope The Singularity occurs first and we merge painlessly into the computronium continuum.

i hope our new robot overlords properly configure their 0's and 1's to use a source of energy that won't become economically unfeasible to use in 20 years and won't cause the foundation of civilization to fall apart.

by the way, this is what happens when you actually try to engage:

hikerstud:

So is global warming responsible for the increase in mega earthquackes too?

kevin:

No... Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes are geological events, not climatic ones...

hikerstud:

Exactly so geolical events are more frequent and violent than ever before along with climate events so it points to many systems including the economic or manmade systems all being shaken at once. But this is old news for anyone at all educated about the most influential person to ever walk the earth....Jesus Christ...also known as Emanual God with us. Whoever falls on the Son for mercy will be broken of pride and blindness but whoever the Son falls on will be crushed to powder. He was a carpenter but he is now the King of Kings and will return to restore all systems thankfully soon but until then it will be a very rocky boat ride and many like myself will be killed in the persecution by the rest of mankind who do not want to hear about a supreme being.

hikerstud is stoked that someone took the bait on that one

i can see his studly hands clapping together in ecstasy as he sees that "kevin" has responded

global warming is the machines way of killing us off so they can have the planet

I was dj'ing a friend's wedding in Virginia a few years back, his dad very wealthy with a younger wife. I'll never forget the conversation; she was nobody's fool, and she fully accepted climate change. She just thought that it was foolhardy to believe that mankind's behavior had any influence or impact on it. I tried to take on the conversation, but by the end of the conversation I had a lot of sympathy; what's going on is easily understood from a scientific viewpoint, but almost incomprehensible otherwise.

Also will never forget these tweets:

Copenhgen=arrogance of man2think we can change nature's ways.MUST b good stewards of God's earth,but arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature [Palin Tweet, 12/19/09]

Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng [Palin Tweet, 12/19/09]

what do you guys think about the line of thought that people should just give up trying to change their minds and just press on the "MUST b good stewards of God's earth" option?

we have all the technology we need, frogbs. it's not about technology anymore, it's about manipulating the market to stave off disaster

right, and i'm not really sure what the next step is

Hey lefties, Greens, Libtards, DemocRATS, and other haters of the human race..

Unite, YOU HAVE THE KEY… Please do us all a favor, Save the planet with ONE SIMPLE idea.. DON'T REPRODUCE! It's that easy! Let me guess, why should YOU curtail your lifestyle right? I bet more than half of these responses were written in air conditioned comfort, including the article itself! So please, DON'T REPRODUCE… and thanks for saving the world.. you'll go straight to heaven.. oh yeah,, you don't believe in that nonsense… sorry..

how do you respond to that?

donate to planned parenthood in hikerdude's name + address?

what do you guys think about the line of thought that people should just give up trying to change their minds and just press on the "MUST b good stewards of God's earth" option?

might be work for a few people, but not effective overall. the bible can be interpreted so many ways, it's pointless. i mean, the Quoting Relevant Scripture approach doesn't even work with really obvious stuff, like fundamentalists who are afraid of anyone who's not a WASP, and then you're like "what about those things jesus said about loving everyone and washing the feet of prostitutes", and the response is, in effect, "but.....i hate gay people"

governments could make solar energy...more profitable? tax oil and give so many breaks for solar and other alternatives that it makes more sense to get out of the oil business? i have no idea.

i don't mean using arguments from scripture, i mean just re-selling pro-environmental policy to fit their worldview.

Religion is one of the worst social viruses in modern history and it's usefulness is now outweighed by its detrimental 'retarding force'.

i mean just re-selling pro-environmental policy to fit their worldview.

There are, tbf, plenty of progressive Xtians in the world, they just don't shout as loud and double-down on every dumb thing they can.

it seems like children are rebellious if you hate liberals you shoudl say REPRODUCE beucase their kids will rebel and be conservaties

Menonnites know what's up

governments could make solar energy...more profitable? tax oil and give so many breaks for solar and other alternatives that it makes more sense to get out of the oil business? i have no idea.

governments regulate markets, that is what needs to happen. that's what cap-and-trade is based on, essentially. Put a price on carbon emissions. there's a ton of ways to do this. all of them will decimate the fossil fuel industry's profits.

the political problem with that is obvious

McKibben (the author of the article) is a progressive christian, he's written for numerous christian magazines, and i think he was the editor on a book of essays about christianity and environmentalism. he wrote an essay in harper's a while back (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080695) about how he believes the bible contains all sorts of prescriptions to protect the earth, and generally to do progressive things, but christians end up ignoring most of them. i'm sure he reads hikerstud's posts and slams his head on the desk repeatedly.

well presumably hikerstud enjoys hiking, so why not recast policy as protecting the hills he enjoys hiking so much from evil chinese smog?

The market as eschaton is also just verifiably stupid. Markets are powerful and liberal economics are generally good but there are always caveats. Nobody should be dealing in viruses unchecked or slaves and just 'cause there's a market for hitmen doesn't mean that we should condone it or encourage it with tax breaks. We have all more or less agreed over the last few centuries that certain things are best done by the State; nat'l defense, firefighting, police, etc... When man-abetted or not climate catastrophe starts to occur, to insist that it's a plot to kill the free market is as ideologically blinkered as any Stalinist and they seriously need to get kicked in the nuts for it.

The 'Dark Knight' shootings are terrifying and ppl will rightly be appalled by them but somehow climate change lacks the immediacy that would rightly make it that much more terrifying.

― sive gallus et mulier (Michael White), Friday, July 20, 2012 11:52 AM

im switching to solar panels #foraurora

Xpost well, there is a movement to introduce family planning and provide birth control to countries that are reproducing at unsustainable rates

Yes but there's still the matter of all this oil...

semen + oil = cactus?

is it a form of political insanity i have to hope that some of the worst case AGW scenarios realize themselves just to shame the deniers?

not that i'm leaving my car running to bring them about or anything

I don't like this arrangement
Your wild schemes are nothing but pipe dreams
I don't like this arrangement
And we can't win without the kid

We need somebody
Somebody to watch our backs
We need somebody
We don't care what they did
We need somebody
Somebody like the kid

lol took me a second to recognize that

just in case anyone harbors any illusions that obama might give a shit about global warming, he put out a new radio ad today in ohio that criticizes Romney for not loving coal enough.

and of course, the impact of coal isn't limited to the dominant role in plays in releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere - coal plants also causes thousands upon thousands of pre-mature deaths, heart attacks, hospitalizations and asthma attacks each year.

but whatever. get re-elected. when people are wondering why the fuck we didn't do anything a few decades from now, they'll totally understand that he needed to get re-elected, no big deal

The ad quotes Romney in 2003 saying that he "will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people. And that plant kills people…."

Relevant to this thread, Bill McKibben (author of the article at top) commented "Romney says so many untrue things that it’s deeply ironic and deeply troubling when he gets attacked for one of the few straightforward and accurate charges he ever made."

more news from my alter ego, daryl doomburger:

http://www.climatecentral.org/images/sized/images/uploads/news/8-7-12_andrew_recordsratiographic-500x329.jpeg

Thanks to a record warm January-to-June period and intense, long-lasting heat waves during March, June, and July, the U.S. has passed an ominous milestone: with about five months remaining in the year, there have already been more record daily high temperatures set or tied so far this year than were set or tied during all of 2011. And 2011 had the second-warmest summer on record for the lower 48 states.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/more-record-highs-during-2012-so-far-than-all-of-2011-14768/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48578898/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/?__utma=14933801.819737031.1342482211.1344388830.1344475796.25&__utmb=14933801.1.10.1344475796&__utmc=14933801&__utmx=-&__utmz=14933801.1342482211.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)&__utmv=14933801.|8=Earned%20By=msnbc%7Ccover=1^12=Landing%20Content=Mixed=1^13=Landing%20Hostname=www.nbcnews.com=1^30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Earned%20to%20Mixed=1&__utmk=188209448#.UCMSp_aPXE0

The 'Dark Knight' shootings are terrifying and ppl will rightly be appalled by them but somehow climate change lacks the immediacy that would rightly make it that much more terrifying

And given that the Dark Knight shootings will lead to zero changes in gun control, what hope does the planet have?

Kim Stanley Robinson said in one of his novels "It's easier to destroy the planet than change capitalism one small bit."

The McKibben article has a real feel of a man realising all his work has been for nothing, and that we're all fucked.

That KSR quote is a lift from someone/something else but I can't remember who or what damnit.

Ah shit it's Zizek.

here's an article about how many managers of zoos aren't sure if talking about the underlying issue that threatens the viability of many of the animals IN the zoo is a good idea. it might be a bummer for people to hear.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Dr. Boyle noted, some zoos and aquariums made a big push to emphasize threats like the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer, the razing of rain forests by loggers and farmers and the overfishing of the Pacific. Electronic boards toted up the numbers of acres being cleared, and enlarged photographs depicted denuded landscapes.

Surveys of visitors showed a backlash. “For lots of reasons, the institutions tended to approach the issues by talking about the huge scale of the problems,” Dr. Boyle said. “They wanted to attract people’s attention, but what we saw happening over time was that everyday people were overwhelmed.” It did not help that a partisan split had opened in the United States over whether global warming was under way, and whether human activity was the leading cause.

At the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Brian Davis, the vice president for education and training, says to this day his institution ensures its guests will not hear the term global warming. Visitors are “very conservative,” he said. “When they hear certain terms, our guests shut down. We’ve seen it happen.”

Great job Brian Davis, vice president for education and training!

we've found that people don't really like education all that much, so i play a lot of minesweeper and drink my paycheck

the line between zoo and circus is very fine