Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

actually we don't need to, individual is nothign compared to the corporate pollution being done, and it's something env orgs refuse to go after: the corps.

as in, the beef corps. its the cows and their feed farms that are destroying our planet and forests.

xp
well-informed co-op ladies aside, I think the logic of your preceding post is irrefutable!

a better example, probably, is the water rationing in california that was announced yesterday. if california would have heeded the calls for a reasonable policy over the past 50 years, that wouldn't be happening. but instead politicians, being human beings, prioritized the short-term over the long-term, and now the govt is forced to alter californians lifestyles in a very tangible way.

My in-laws live in California and I was shocked to see people watering their lawns in the middle of the day when I was there in February. Also relevant is that I believe none of those restrictions apply to agriculture...which is probably necessary given how dependent the world is on CA agriculture

do we have a thread devoted to the death of the oceans? just found out about microbeads and I hate everything right now

I think the logic of your preceding post is irrefutable!

thanks, but i doubt it's true. i haven't really read much on what the implementation of a price on carbon would do to food prices. it's inevitable that it would lead to an increase in the cost of meat (and other foods), but maybe not to a degree that would force significant changes in meat consumption (in fact, i'd guess that they'd design the carbon tax with the goal of NOT changing people's food consumption choices too much). i've been pretty depressed over the last few months so i'm not exactly a source of reliable wisdom right now, not that i ever was.

People will give up meat right after fossil fuels.

it's juuuuust beneath it on the to-do list!

but you still understand people murdering one another, right?

― Giant Purple Wakerobin (Aimless), Thursday, April 2, 2015 12:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf this is the only real solution to global warming

Good news is that climate change will lead to that!

defeatist and not true

religion is playing a part in overpopulation though

let's start by killing you

tsk tsk, dnktt

a glimmer of hope - i'm chatting with a few grist people and they don't think that a carbon price would have a significant impact on meat consumption.

and thinking about it, it's a moot point anyway because i can't conceive of a politician supporting a bill that curtails meat eating in any way. australia, during their short carbon pricing stint, excluded the agricultural (and transportation) sectors.

I suspect religion's role in overpopulation is actually quite small, compared to advances in medicine and production.

one more thing worth reading on food/environment:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/vegetarian-or-omnivore-the-environmental-implications-of-diet/2014/03/10/648fdbe8-a495-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html

I meant "it's just a terrible, terrible irony, that so many conservatives are terrified of the govt intruding in their lives, yet by fighting climate change action tooth-and-nail they're virtually guaranteeing that future for themselves" seemed irrefutable to me. like you said, disasters will necessitate increased role for gov't

oh, well THAT is irrefutable! :)

religion (abramics) play a HUGE role in the west's attitude to nature. The Bible tells man it can do what it likes to nature if it's in his own interest. Even in secular people these attitudes to nature found in the Bible, Hebrew, and Koran linger strongly.

I refute it thus! (bangs a walking stick against the pavement, glowers triumphantly)

xposts unless, of course, it leads to failed states, which would then be even more ironic because the same people who feared govt. intrusion would be found wishing for more of a govt. presence

in conclusion, *dives off a cliff*

I suppose the Assyrians, Hittites, Phonecians & Romans were highly mindful and reticent in their relationship with nature, going out of their way not to disrupt the balance of ecosystems. It took that nasty Bible to undo all their good work in that direction.

The Bible tells man it can do what it likes to nature if it's in his own interest.

of course, there are also ways to interpret it that lead to a pro-environment conclusion. my dad told me the other day that when people ask him what i do, he says "zach follows Genesis chapters 5 through 7, and tends the garden". putting aside that the garden tending part is in Ch. 2 (i believe), and also how frustrating it is that he won't just tell people what i do because he's embarrassed to tell his conservative friends who i work for, it does demonstrate that some religious people apparently find environmental inspiration in the bible. bill mckibben - a goddamn saint if one ever existed - is a really prominent example of that.

ty for that WaPo link Karl, that was exactly the kind of stuff I was wondering about w/r/t Cowspiracy. Mattresslessness, you might also want to check that out in terms of picking which meat to eat less of.

Man lentils are amazing -- someone should try to rebrand them so they're as hip as quinoa and kale

state of the art teaphuck ny times / wash post / j.chait etc. comment section trolling lately seems to be saying how awesome a warmer world will be. who pays these people?

Koch bros iirc

yes karl thanks for that link it was very enlightening!

lol yeah lentils are the best and cheap as hell

i am confident after the Katrina and Sandy "responses" that our Guvmint will handle an ongoing extinction event just fine.

To paraphrase Rumsfeld, you go to extinction with the government you've got, not the government you wish you had.

LOL @ ALEC

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/04/05/this-conservative-group-is-tired-of-being-accused-of-climate-denial-and-is-fighting-back/

more on vegetarianism/environment, this time with a focus on water:

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/10/8382165/the-environmental-case-for-eating-vegetarian-in-one-sentence

very good piece. somewhat confusingly on the almond issue, I just read this Mark Bittman piece linked to in the CA drought thread: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/opinion/making-sense-of-water.html?_r=0

heheh

But according to estimates by the Public Policy Institute of California, more water was used to grow almonds in 2013 than was used by all homes and businesses in San Francisco and Los Angeles put together. Even worse, most of those almonds are then exported — which means, effectively, that we are exporting water. Unless you’re the person or company making money off this deal, that’s just nuts.

http://i.imgur.com/ZbTlLWM.jpg

bittman knew that almonds aren't really nuts, but he couldn't resist

I seed what he did there

though agriculture is a surprisingly minuscule part of the state’s gross domestic product

I did not know this. Everything I've ever learned about american agriculture has been super confounding

CA has the largest GDP in the country

suck it, Texas

I was surprised not at the size of CA's GDP but rather that agriculture isn't a big part of it (only 2% according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California#Sectors). Seeing the other sectors' percentages, I am less surprised now but still.

how about a ridiculous thought experiment, because hey it's tuesday afternoon.

imagine we colonize another planet. the planet is earthlike, except that it's unoccupied and pristine and isn't a shithole. (don't worry about the practicalities of space colonization. just imagine it's almost like an earth-annex, or a newly discovered continent, that's easy to get to and develop)

do you think that we'd colonize in a deliberately sustainable way, net-zero energy consumption if possible, taking care not to obliterate local biodiversity and to avoid overpopulation? or do you think we'd just trash it? would the answer change if there were numerous new planets to colonize?

Use it up, find another.

Mars is a close as it gets to Earthlike in our solar system, and it appears there's practically no fossil resources (save widespread underground water) there. Everything else would have to be brought in, so to be viable, any colony would of necessity be the most sustainable human community anywhere. Think Biosphere 2, only with more severe consequences than everyone starving and gasping for oxygen for the last year of the experiment.

It's kinda fortunate for the universe that by the time we have technology to colonize other worlds, we'll likely lack the physical resources or collective will to do so in any appreciable way. After the heat waves, droughts, famines, diseases, wars and oil/phosphate shortages of the bottleneck century, our remaining descendants will have to hunker down around the poles for a few millenia while dying algae pull the excess CO2 at the surface down to the abyss. And it will be for all intents impossible to have a repeat of the industrial revolution for at least a few million years, as all the easily accessible fossil fuels will have been extracted.

didnt the diamond book collapse discuss pacific island populations where the canoes just *stopped coming* and presumably the last residents could only look out to see and hope someone came. they didn't. the end.

i'm also going with the "using up one planet after another" hypothesis until Keir Dullea goes through that Stargate.

@ Hunt3r

In Collapse, that was the case for Rapa Nui/Easter Island and the Greenland Vikings. Diamond's "islands are snow bubble Earths" thesis is most concisely conveyed in an essay he wrote for Discover magazine in 1995. Caveat!, The site that's from was an important contributor in 2001 to unremitting depression. On the bright side, I've now reached Kübler-Ross-ian acceptance.

the pope is going to publish an encyclical letter on climate change

In a sign of what can be expected in the encyclical, Cardinal Turkson, who authored an early draft of the document, suggested it was a sin for “humans to degrade the integrity of earth by causing changes in its climate”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/672de57c-edd0-11e4-90d2-00144feab7de.html#axzz3YnkIbuVg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CEyYVomWEAAaoor.png

it could have been so much easier.

Black line represents current emissions?

Annual emissions history.

2° C is no longer a realistic possibility (save a near term pandemic), and our children will be forced inject sulfates into the stratosphere to slow (but not change the ultimate magnitude) of the impacts and runaway feedbacks. I'm living in a future scuba diving destination.