Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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.

the problems seem to me insoluble under market capitalism, so Kiehl is right - to contemplate putting them right is to contemplate dismantling the way we live now

Wonder if there's lots of people trying to invent solutions so they can be the first people who can actually say they saved the planet.

There was that guy who (illegally) dumped iron shavings off of the Canadian coast to try to spur carbon-consuming algae growth.

Wonder if there's lots of people trying to invent solutions so they can be the first people who can actually say they saved the planet.

this is def happening

we'll see how successful anybody is, a combination of various approaches is going to be necessary, and huge amounts of money are going to have to be redirected from the carbon sector to better investments

I don't care about global warming but i do care about pollution. Global warming is mainly a convenient pro-business way to frame the very real and current problem of environmental pollution as something that MAY happen in 50-100 years and MIGHT raise the sea levels rather than focusing on the real-time effects of plundering the Earth, poisoning the population, water supplies, etc.

erm no

lol no it's not

???

Carbon/methane pollution is what's driving global warming, and its effects are already happening.

I don't even know where to begin with that formulation

xxp

tbh the problem with modern hedge fund and retirement fund-focused business, which most public companies are beholden to, is the push for immediate dividends and profits and no planning longer than five years out, which means even well-intentioned corporate leadership is pushed to do whatever it takes to make profits today, regardless of environmental impact

working in a business that definitely has strong environmental effects and a scientific/product research pipeline, it is insanely frustrating to have dipshits in suits trying to bleed profit out of a stone when you're just trying to get the blood flowing over here

When did so many people stop giving a shit about future generations, and what caused that? Like, even though I basically have no intention of having kids (see: this thread), I would still like to think that the people who come after me could have a habitable and not entirely shitty planet to exist upon. So it makes my brain seize knowing that people with actual progeny are able to make such terrible decisions and exist as if the future of the human race (along with any number of other species) isn't being ingraciously flushed down the toilet.

Not saying global warming is fake or not real, it definitely is. But imagine newspapers running stories about industrial pollution's effects on cancer rates or birth defects rather than lowering ice levels in Antarctica. There would probably be much more political will to fix things.

they do? industrial pollution is generally localized and highly publicized. look at the response to fracking, the mississippi river delta's nitrate levels, or any factory with known carcinogens in north america. there's plenty of coverage, but even when it's a problem that is going to effect many others, it's still seen as relatively local. communities are suing, the epa is seen as relatively defanged and it's become a struggle to get movement.

if you want to see what happens when long-term avoidance of ecological issues comes into play, look at what is happening near LA in areas where dustbowls have cropped up and people are finally being forced to deal with the empty watershed causing dust air pollution. or the lack of potable water in california and the large amount of press that is getting. or search google news for "hydrofluorocarbons" and see what's going on with those being banned.

there have always been people striving toward something _better_, it's just the understanding of by-products and effects of "better" have always been poorly understood. suburban sprawl generally was about families wanting yards and parks and schools that are "better" for their kids. the mass expansion and industrialization of american society post-WW2 was widely about looking toward the future where efficiency and wealth were prized. we wanted more time for family and entertainment and we got plastics and tv dinners.

"i still think the extinction of the human race would be a tragedy and a net deficit to the universe..."

hmmmm.....

it's hard to say, if we're all extinct, who is to judge?

dolphins don't have a rich oral culture talking about the good times before humans. maybe they do. it's probably kind of sad.

entire language of beeps and whistles all boils down to "stupid humans"

dolphins are pretty mean and probably would drown us all, one at a time, if they had a chance. bless em.

pfft dolphins, our real species enemy is the cephalopods. I for one salute our new cephalopod overlords.

whenever i watch olde tyme movies and t.v. shows - like now i'm watching hell on wheels - and they show those pristine landscapes and i know what happened because i'm from the future it just bums me out. so pretty. would be so peaceful without us. i love the christian native american on hell on wheels. "I don't think I have enough hate in my heart to be a Christian..."