Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

that is pretty fucking bad

we're so fucked

all this shit reminds me of my great-uncle, who didn't believe in saving for retirement, because the rapture would have happened by then

last I checked, he's in his mid 80s, still doing some sort of work, and has some deadbeat kids

PLAN NOW BECAUSE YOU MIGHT NOT MERCIFULLY DIE BEFORE THINGS GO TO SHIT

...isn't that exactly what the antichrist would say in this situation?

more proof of the forthcoming rapture

more than 50% of the earth's species would go extinct

yes but how many of those are just beetles

already 50% extinct iirc

god must be pissed cause that's like 150k species right there?

Would the parable of the flood (not THE Flood), and the poxy fule sending away would-be rescuers because God would provide, be of any use for the pious?

tbh i don't think there are actually that many people who actually don't worry about global warming because of their belief that a rapture will save the day. unfortunately my dad is one of those people, but it's not too common from what i can tell. and there are some good books that lay out lots of christian arguments for doing something on climate change, citing the role of humanity as steward's of God's creation, etc. i wish my dad was that kind of christian. but i think it's easy to expend too much energy on the subset of rapture/global warming people because at least they have some sort of tangible, coherent reason for why they're not paying attention to hordes of scientists warning that we're about to be in deep shit. it may not be a reason that makes any sense to me, but at least it's something besides apathy and shrugging shoulders, and so it's easy to focus on it because at least there's something to attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugRhP2QS94s

So in short, Obama is stupid and unserious because he promised to stop the rise in the oceans that isn't happening because Al Gore is fat. But Obama is also weak and incapable because he didn't stop the rise in the oceans that isn't happening--but actually is happening because New York is drowning. Mayor Bloomberg can point to Obama's lack of success in this area, of course, since he endorsed him.

christ, this is depressing on so many levels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAuRrmSUQ08

I am dealing with global warming by never having kids and by drinking a lot so I will die early of cirrhosis of the liver

A man, a plan, a fatal disease.

not directly related to global warming (it's about nuclear winter) but i think re catastrophic environmental shift + survival of humanity it's relevant:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/11/nuclear-winter-and-human-extinction-qa-with-luke-oman.html

LOL comments box, the first guy says

Interesting article, though the fact that Luke Oman gave a 1 in 10,000 probability on a question where model uncertainty is so obviously a problem does not exactly inspire confidence in him.

and then goes on to say "here are 10 things that aren't in your model" and then just ballparks 1 in 100 out of nowhere, based on things like, uh, doomsday bombs, human extinction cults, mountains of decaying bodies, and how modern humans are non-viable

Anybody gonna check out the 350.org Do The Math Tour? I'm going to the presentation in SF on Saturday. Looks like they just got the Mayor of Seattle to agree to divest the city from fossil fuels.

I am dealing with global warming by never having kids and by drinking a lot so I will die early of cirrhosis of the liver

Misread this as "clitoris of the liver." Now I know why everything feels completely amazing when I'm drinking.

bonnie tyler's total clitoris of the liver

misread that as "tyler perry's total clitoris of the river"

Warmer still: Extreme climate predictions appear most accurate, report says

Climate scientists agree the Earth will be hotter by the end of the century, but their simulations don’t agree on how much. Now a study suggests the gloomier predictions may be closer to the mark.

“Warming is likely to be on the high side of the projections,” said John Fasullo of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., a co-author of the report, which was based on satellite measurements of the atmosphere.

That means the world could be in for a devastating increase of about eight degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, resulting in drastically higher seas, disappearing coastlines and more severe droughts, floods and other destructive weather.

Such an increase would substantially overshoot what the world’s leaders have identified as the threshold for triggering catastrophic consequences. In 2009, heads of state agreed to try to limit warming to 3.6 degrees, and many countries want a tighter limit.

so at the risk of being a dick i'm gonna say this is all a done deal. unless some crazy technological breakthrough comes about, shit is fucked.

there is absolutely no way the usa or china or whomever voluntarily caps their shit minus cold fusion. that is the terrifying math.

i think i have to believe that humanity can pull this out thru development of alternative energy, or worst case scenario, man-made solutions to warming or i'd just be hopelessly depressed. obviously to be optimistic about this is to deny all the reasons to be pessimistic about humanity and its self-destruction, but to dwell on the likely scenario is really just debilitating and maybe even nihilistic.

Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

Marx thought that technology would ultimately undo Capitalism as it became cheaper to feed everyone for free than to charge them for the food. One hopes for a similar technological deus ex machina here. It's maybe appropriate that we rely upon technology to save us from our impending doom, as it's technology that brought us this mess, and arguably our relationship w/ teche that which defines our humanness. Can we save us from ourselves? I maintain optimistic that even if the worst forecasts come to pass, humanity in some form will survive. After all, we've survived catastrophic climate change in the past, but what a shame it would be to head back into the wilderness after everything we've done so far.

optimism*

like even if we were successful, somehow, in calling on government and industry to transition away from a bunch of shit that makes them money, there's still a certain level of long term climate change that's just inevitable due previous emissions. soooo...stockpile your spf50 i guess.

i gotta unbookmark this thread. it really never fails to bum me out.

oh humanity in some form will survive, i'm sure. it's only a few degrees and humans are pretty adaptable.

but not in the current layout at the current population. at some point, much like the ussr collapsing, what seemed inexorable will be laughable.

I'm w George Carlin/Morbz here. Climate change may be real but environmentalists need to change the conversation away from disappearing glaciers and predictions of sea water levels in 100 years and back towards the quality of air in your city and how many of your family members die from toxin-loving cancers.

it'll be terrible for the generation that lives through the shift, but due to the hedonic treadmill future generations will probably be as happy as we are today

and, you know, particulates in the atmosphere or whatever might work. i hope something does. but there is no will anywhere to reduce carbon emissions.

only newt gingrich had the vision to take us to HD 40307g.

Strange side-effect of the increase in ocean acidification: Ocean Acidification Research Suggests Return To Dinosaur-Era Underwater Acoustics

BTW, if this thread is knocking you down do not search on "ocean acidification." It gives me migraines. Off-the-record most oceano-climate guys agree that warming is already past the event horizon/"I did it 35 minutes ago" line, but that there is a fighting chance to turn the pH level around before it all goes to hell.

I'm guardedly optimistic. Sure, there will be no domestic political will in the U.S. until a major city dies (Cat 5 swamping Miami, Phoenix/Las Vegas running out of water). But the broad outlines of an initial climate deal are well understood: big cuts from developed nations over a couple decades, capping developing nations at current rates, a couple hundred billion a year sent their way to fund wind/solar/nuclear. I wouldn't be surprised at an overall peak around 550 ppm, with serious tipping point sequellae (like Siberian permafrost methane releases) averted only through some serious geoengineering. Loading 10 air force tankers with sulfur dioxide for 3 sorties a day is pretty damn cheap compared to letting the planet go off the rails for the full PETM scenario. Perhaps 50 ppm can be removed through Amazon reforestation and another 50 ppm via industrial scale biochar production. The rest we may just have to cope with for a few thousands of years.

I'm also very hopeful that the initial Moore's Law effect observed in solar energy will turn out to be predictive and we'll see a boom in solar energy akin to the recent computing boom. Not to mention that installing solar panels on every building in the United States would be enough work to keep America employed for years.

waiting for interstellar space-migration once we abandon mother earth, ready to be put into a deep slumber and checked in on occasionally by a robot helper

Yes but solar panel are SO AESTHETICALLY UNAPPEALING.

A New Yorker article from earlier this year on the guy developing an artificial leaf (absorb CO2, output electricity) has a terrifying explanation about how if we raised the standard of living for people in developing countries, they'd get set onto an inevitable course towards greater resource consumption, which of course leads to greater and greater energy demands == doom. That's why short of some radical geoengineering, I don't think that technology can really help, and also why capitalism is untenable (as we rocket towards 9 billion people).

I am dealing with global warming by never having kids and by drinking a lot so I will die early of cirrhosis of the liver

― 乒乓, Sunday, November 4, 2012 2:29 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

+ consume less resources

I think my continued gut reaction to climate change is: this is not the world I grew up in, this is not what they taught us in school

but I'm sure people felt the same way during similar (pardon the pun) sea-changes in our history

brave new world, people

if we raised the standard of living for people in developing countries, they'd get set onto an inevitable course towards greater resource consumption, which of course leads to greater and greater energy demands == doom

They are on an inevitable course already. If 'we' don't get into that market then China or India or somebody else will. Artificial leaf guy should be thrilled at the thought of beating old energy technology to the punch imo.

I think the doom calculations take into account advances like the artificial leaf? Because the story that they tell is that it can only provide so much energy for a certain standard of living; once societies surpass that point, fossil fuels become much more seductive.

NYer article here (paywalled, unfortunately).

i gotta unbookmark this thread. it really never fails to bum me out.

― Mordy, Friday, November 9, 2012 11:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

may have related this story elsewhere on ILX, but I have a friend who went and joined a cult after getting high one night and watching a documentary about peak oil

xp And of course I'm aware of the ethical hypocrisy of being a citizen of a developed country where I already enjoy the standard of living that's driving us off the cliff and suggesting that people living in poverty are the potential problem -- I'm just making an argument for utter DESPAIR.

Seems likely to me that human organizational and technological ability will prolong our global population collapse over the course of a century or more. This will, of course, prolong the period of environmental damage also. When the dust settles, there will still be hundreds of millions of humans, but our present cultures won't survive without major retooling.

Is contraction and convergence still something that people are pushing for? i know it's hugely idealistic, but at the same time it has always struck me as being by far the most equitable way forward.

No doubt some people are pushing for it, but not nearly enough to make it happen. Humanity's alliegance to social equality is superficial compared to their deep, fierce and abiding alliegance to themselves, their family and their tribe.

I do agree with that, but on the other hand our western societies still lurch torwards racial and sexual equality - at least the legislation for it is mostly in place even where our behaviour may lag behind - so maybe we shouldn't be too pessimistic on that front?

Racial and sexual equality don't really require any sacrifices on the part of the power structure, though. Giving up the SUV, on the other hand...