Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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..."

I'd probably be okay ("okay") with the ultimate extinction of the human race if all of the other living species were able to survive whatever wiped us out.

on earth or

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Id4whitehouse.jpg

Whose to say it hasn't happened before?

maybe aliens are just WAITING to start fresh and re-stock their zoo with other cooler animals that they have collected elsewhere.

they might have had bets on how long it would take us to wreck everything.

Considering that tardigrades can survive exposure to the vacuum in space and can withstand temperatures just above absolute zero and can be boiled in water, life in some form will surely persist, no matter what we do. But in the meantime, we've been taking out a chunk out of the biosphere with the current, ongoing mass extinction, of course.

This is a completely random personal note, but I'm in a depressive state right now, and it's weirdly comforting to think about the extinction of humanity.

Maybe global warming is just Earth's way of burning off pests that are effing it up for everything else. Like the Weapons in Final Fantasy VII.

tardigrades are so incredible, can't believe I'd never heard of them before Cosmos

This is a completely random personal note, but I'm in a depressive state right now, and it's weirdly comforting to think about the extinction of humanity.

― :wq (Leee), Thursday, July 9, 2015 1:02 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

take it to the depression thread.

feel like a few rules for this thread are in order, 1) no saying 'i don't care about global warming', 2) no jacking off to tech magic bullets unrelated to how reality works, 3) no telling us how much the thought of mass extinction soothes your mood disorder. ta!

While I'm certainly no misanthrope and I have a lot of affection for many of its individual members, it's hard for me to deny that homosapiens are kind of a garbage species. I'm sure the entirety of earth's other species would also find that hard to deny, had they an anthropomorphic ambassador through whom they could share their collective feelings.

remember what this guy said that time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4

"The planet is fine, the people are fucked."

the earth + plastic. love that part.

Yeah if anything this thread is an antidote to warm (sorry) feelings about the human race.

One can't help watching the whole overpopulation/unsustainable growth/resource shortage/greenhouse emissions story for several decades of adult life without some misanthropy seeping in.

Hern WM. 1993. Has the Human Species Become a Cancer on the Planet? A Theoretical View of Population Growth as a Sign of Pathology. Current world leaders, 36(6), 1089-1124.

http://i.imgur.com/1KEJu12.gif

Etc.
Hern WM. 1999. How many times has the human population doubled? Comparisons with cancer. Population and Environment, 21(1), 59-80.
Hern WM. 2008. Urban malignancy: similarity in the fractal dimensions of urban morphology and malignant neoplasms. International journal of anthropology, 23(1-2), 1-19.

take it to the depression thread.

feel like a few rules for this thread are in order, 1) no saying 'i don't care about global warming', 2) no jacking off to tech magic bullets unrelated to how reality works, 3) no telling us how much the thought of mass extinction soothes your mood disorder. ta!

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Thursday, July 9, 2015 3:18 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuck off

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/my-global-warming-epiphany#.dsgyXRNg1

Wise words:

A simple trick one of my bosses at the Pentagon had taught me: He called it the nut test. I have tried it a dozen times or so in interviews, on scientists and skeptics of all sorts, and it quickly reveals whether you are getting a straight argument.

I was interviewing a chronic critic of global warming studies, particularly the 1998 “hockey stick” one that found temperatures in our century racing upward on a slope that mirrored a hockey blade pointed skyward. He argued vociferously that the study’s math was all messed up, and that this meant all of climate science was a sham.

I listened, and at the end of the interview, I gave him the nut test.

“What are the odds that you are wrong?” I asked, or so I remember.

“I’d say zero,” the critic replied. “No chance.”

That’s how you fail the nut test.

I had asked a climate scientist the same question on the phone an hour before.

“I could always be wrong,” the scientist said. Statistically, he added, it could be about a 20% to 5% chance, depending on what he might be wrong about.

That’s how you pass the nut test: by admitting you could be wrong.

Indeed