Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Oh, is that all.

Sanpaku's link seems to be here

need to poll everyone's favorite timeline event. leaning toward 'local group finishes merging,' which would have to mean a local supergroup.

Either Laptop Dissolving at 100k or The Big Rip at 20 billion.

All matter is torn apart by the expansion of the universe. All distances become infinite - not good.

Pick your biblical plague:

‘Blob’ of warm Pacific water may intensify drought; threatens ecosystem
Red crabs swarm Southern California, linked to ‘warm blob’ in Pacific
Purple blob creatures invade California beaches
Toxic algae bloom might be largest ever

December 2014 record warm
Global oceans also record warm for 2014
2014 Earth's warmest year on record
Janaury 2015 second warmest on record
February 2015 second warmest February on record
March 2015 and first quarter of year warmest on record
April 2015 fourth warmest on record
May 2015 was warmest May on record
March–May and year-to-date also record warm

I thought I'd be inured to this by now, but I've a strong urge to assume the fetal position.

On the other hand, if our descendants are still around then it should be straightforward to create some artificial ring systems

Assumes humans will acquire ever-increasing amounts of cheap, readily-available power without inadvertently using that power to destroy every ecosystem on earth through ineptitude, greed and mismanagement. Long odds.

That won't happen. With just 2.3% annual growth in energy use, Earth reach boiling temperature on Earth in [400 short years](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/). Far more likely that we eek along with the 500 or so million it will be possible to support after the Big Melt and with extensive phosphorus recycling, and with luck someone a few millenia down the line will invent the autonomous self-replicators we'd need to exploit solar energy on Mercury or volatiles in the trojans. Without some sort of autonomous self-replicators, exploiting any off-world resources is a fool's errand.

I highly recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Water Knife." It's fiction, and a thriller, but it's an impressively imagined near-future where dwindling water supplies have turned the American southwest into a capitalist/cutthroat nightmare of water rights, militias, mass migration and black market economy. Really dark and horrific at times, but rooted in a frightening plausibility.

+1. Bacigalupi has been one of the better Cli-fi authors, though sometimes capturing a post-apocalyptic atmosphere outweighs characterization in his work. The Water Knife is set in a plausible noirish world of US Southwest states struggling for vital resources barely within constraints of Federal oversight. Only the fixation on physical copies of 130+ year old documents strained credulity.

His distant climate change in Thailand novel The Windup Girl and his two young adult novels Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities are also vignettes in a shared awful post-industrial universe, and all fairly good. Don't bother with Zombie Baseball Beatdown or The Doubt Factory which were outside his milieu, though the latter was well intentioned. He hasn't written his masterpiece, yet.

http://www.thenation.com/article/179461/new-abolitionism?page=0,0

300 forest fires in Alaska.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIO6XtPUMAAZpdY.jpg

p sure this is a screenshot from civilization

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hqupaQI59Qk/Tdc6GBK_NrI/AAAAAAAAAKg/tB4ygx7XifQ/s1600/Windows+XP+Mode+-+Windows+Virtual+PC_2011-05-20_22-54-56.png

A better shot:

MODIS satellite imagery of Alaska from 23 June 2015 showing infrared-sensed fire hotspots (red) dots from 260+ wildfires. Fire crews are currently working only about 15% (three dozen) of these fires.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/MODIS-Alaska-wildfires-6-23-2015.jpg

When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job (Esquire)

great article, thanks for posting

But climate change happens gradually and we've already gone up almost 1 degree centigrade and seen eight inches of ocean rise. Barring unthinkably radical change, we'll hit 2 degrees in thirty or forty years and that's been described as a catastrophe—melting ice, rising waters, drought, famine, and massive economic turmoil. And many scientists now think we're on track to 4 or 5 degrees—even Shell oil said that it anticipates a world 4 degrees hotter because it doesn't see "governments taking the steps now that are consistent with the 2 degrees C scenario." That would mean a world racked by economic and social and environmental collapse.

"Oh yeah," Schmidt says, almost casually. "The business-as-usual world that we project is really a totally different planet. There's going to be huge dislocations if that comes about."

But things can change much quicker than people think, he says. Look at attitudes on gay marriage.

And the glaciers?

"The glaciers are going to melt, they're all going to melt," he says. "But my reaction to Jason Box's comments is—what is the point of saying that? It doesn't help anybody."

As it happens, Schmidt was the first winner of the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union, and various recent studies in the growing field of climate communications find that frank talk about the grim realities turns people off—it's simply too much to take in. But strategy is one thing and truth is another. Aren't those glaciers water sources for hundreds of millions of people?

"Particularly in the Indian subcontinent, that's a real issue," he says. "There's going to be dislocation there, no question."

And the rising oceans? Bangladesh is almost underwater now. Do a hundred million people have to move?

"Well, yeah. Under business as usual. But I don't think we're fucked."

Resource wars, starvation, mass migrations . . .

"Bad things are going to happen. What can you do as a person? You write stories. I do science. You don't run around saying, 'We're fucked! We're fucked! We're fucked!' It doesn't—it doesn't incentivize anybody to do anything."

starting to think about moving north tbh. montana seems like a good option.

But things can change much quicker than people think, he says. Look at attitudes on gay marriage.

dude i...waht?

he's referring to public attitudes/political will re: climate change

hah, ok. the more immediate reference as pasted appears to be "there's going to be huge dislocations if that comes about," which made it scan to me as "no biggie, people can move across continents in the face of famine, look at...gay marriage!"

that probably wasn't a good portion to c+p (the whole thing is worth a read), i found it interesting to see gavin schmidt walk the line between reality and not wanting to alienate people with doom

i haven't finished reading it yet, but the encyclical from the pope is really worth the time:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/269022055/Laudato-Si-the-Pope-s-encyclical-on-the-environment-and-climate-change

i am seriously contemplating buying some land in the upper peninsula. who's with me?

Can you get iPhones shipped there?

i feel mostly ambivalent about climate change

the one thing it's convinced me to do is to never have children

denmark sounds nice

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

Can you get iPhones shipped there?

― Jeff, Wednesday, July 8, 2015 5:12 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think you have to smuggle them inside a pastie, but yes.

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 7:09 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um. really? is the latter that incomprehensible in 2015? like yeah in the grand scheme the planet being fucked is a bigger problem and spells greater doom for humankind in the medium to long run. no question. but "racial inequality" can mean getting directly screwed over in countless ways in the here and now. not least, facing the possibility of being murdered by police, or having that happen to people around you. of course people would care much more about that.

no, that makes sense.

i phrased my sentiment poorly. i meant to say that i think it should be more visible, cared about and included along that axis. environmental / life care is a piece of the intersectionality puzzle. it affects us all in the long term but is definitely having / has had immediate effects on native americans and others who are disadvantaged not only by class and race but location, removed from the global economy, subject to environmental degradation, etc.

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 7:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

there's maybe more hope for changing one than the other

also ambivalent in the sense of the "guess this will be the thing we die from" sense, not the "who cares if the temp is rising" sense

so does anyone know yet what year this is all going to get so bad that i can blow off work/bills and start hunting/gathering?

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, July 3, 2013 4:15 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p much. i mean it seems like such an inevitability at this point and the things you'd need to do (basically become self sufficient & independent of a monetary economy), plus the fact that we are one of the few countries where guns are plentiful, and the thought of having to become a brutal warlord eating bugs and defending my property by killing others seems so so so so bad, i'd rather just die.

yeah don't really see this being avoidable barring some crazy terraforming shit (which a. no one will agree on and b. will be too unpredictable for the rich countries to consider worthwhile trying)

just as well i'm old

guys tony stark totally wants to terraform, and won't eat bugs (but will devise a way for _you_ to eat bugs, don't worry).

the human capacity to compartmentalize / rationalize / full-on ignore a climate charging headlong toward the inimical is absolutely fucking amazing and maybe related to that dynamic right when waking up every morning, forgetting altogether in the first five or so minutes of the day, hours of bizarre dreams / horrific nightmares? get in the shower, get dressed, get to work, where heavens forfend caring about such nonsense might get you known as a weirdo

the human capacity to compartmentalize / rationalize / full-on ignore a climate charging headlong toward the inimical is absolutely fucking amazing

this is so true, and it's astonishing and depressing at the same time. like pick a metaphor for blind stupidity and that's humanity right now. i mean we persist in trying to find more of the fuel that's destroying the ice in areas where we must destroy ice to find it.

i can feel ambivalent about my own death, but much less so for some reason about us just wiping huge swathes of the planet away - part of our humanity is the sense of others coming afterwards. i tweeted that esquire article yesterday and some stranger who follows me rt'ed it with the comment: "good news here, the victim lefties are losing heart"

i mean, how can people deny this?

boiling frog effect?

i can't find a reason to care about this stuff.. i mean, we're all dying... do y;all believe in some god that will reward you for saving mankind? yeesh

no but no matter how blasé i am about my personal existence and no matter how much comedy misanthropy people throw around i still think the extinction of the human race would be a tragedy and a net deficit to the universe

i dont' think there's any chance the human race will go extinct

but it will probably get pretty medieval for a while

i suspect total extinction is unlikely too, but there's room in what we know for that to be very wrong

i think the optimistis view is that the weather is gonna change pretty severely in the next 50 y0rs but as long we have enough oil (lol) & other fossi fuels to shuttle around resources and food and stuff (read - to the west and other prosperous nations) then things won't go too far bad

Medieval for a while may be permanent - an article around (maybe on this thread) about how a lot of how we got here is based on taking stuff from the ground that isn't there any more because, well...

if peak oil is real sure

"getting here" is largely the problem so a society using different tech with a qualitatively different way of life is not exactly a nightmare to me

i thought this part of the article was pretty lol

http://i.imgur.com/WEhwvIf.png

basically the changes required, if brought up in the US prez race, wd literally bring accusations of Soviet-style communism. From Democrats.