A question about climate change/global warming.

Speaking from my own personal position in the energy field, I would tell any kid coming up who wants to make a shitload of money to get an energy engineering degree.

By now it ought to be clear that the best thing that could possibly happen to all non-human life forms on earth is for humans to experience a massive and immediate die-off of about 90% to 100%, without it being caused by a nuclear war. The chances of this happening on that scale and with sufficient speed, without a nuclear war, are so close to nil that you may treat them as being non-existent. The best remaining options among those with a non-zero probability all require a collective will and a collective sacrifice, driven ahead by foresight, compassion and perseverance.

iow, we're fucked.

Bathtub gin

I never touch the stuff. My stainless steel straw makes sure of that.

yeah I feel like an asshole for being completely, miserably hopeless about all this, because if we don't act as if there's hope we can't do anything - but yeah, we're fucked.

I think it was 2014 or 15 when it really sank in for me that the world was going away, and when I think back to 2014, and how much more we're feeling the effects of climate change now, it feels like a different era. It's all sped up so much in just seven years - where will we be in another seven? It's terrifying to think about. Feels like we're about to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and the only question is how close we are to the edge.

"The world-as-resource perspective not only depletes our environment of the raw materials we seek; it ultimately depletes it of meaning."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/our-planet-is-heating-up-why-are-climate-politics-still-frozen-colonialism-environment

Excellent article, I rate highly anything that cites Amitav Ghosh in the lede.

This part merges well with what's been said in this thread:

What Kate Aronoff shows, in her timely book “Overheated” (Bold Type), is that the “old-school” approach to corporate climate denial has given way to new, subtler strategies. Yesterday’s denialists insisted that climate change was a hoax, funding dodgy science and blitzing coöperative media outlets such as Fox News with industry “experts.” But under mounting public pressure many companies have withdrawn their support from denialist think tanks like the Heartland Institute...

“White Skin, Black Fuel” by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, of Scandinavia...shows how, in the political arena, arguments about economic rationality get woven together with hierarchical structures and the pursuit of domination, portending what it calls fossil fascism. In particular, its authors are struck by how the European far right has used the “funnel issue” of hostility toward immigration to promote hostility toward renewable energy.

They don't touch on the 'blame China' deflection but it's become so standard now among denialist trolls that I've seen, it's effectively like they're working from a script.

The article's naysaying about 'market solutions' and 'realism' is a bit heavy-handed given that the writers admit their proposed alternate solutions amount to a wish list. I don't really see the fundamental ideological opposition to carbon taxes. Barring a global communist revolution it looks like market-based economic systems are what we're working with, in which case taxation is basically the most consistently effectively method of the requisite wealth redistribution that will be needed to compensate for all the harm caused by the resource extraction industries and their financial backers.

Barring a global communist revolution it looks like market-based economic systems are what we're working with.

Capitalism and the global financial system are the only global powers extant. Any revolution capable of overthrowing them would take a very long time compared to speed at which the climate is shifting and that overthrow would be accompanied by a further period of chaos as society groped toward a new basis. We ain't got time for that.

at least justice can sometimes be served

Donzinger won indigenous clients a $9.5 billion settlement from Chevron for poisoning the Amazon. Now he's gone to jail after a US judge appointed a Chevron-linked private law firm to serve as prosecutor in a contempt of court case. (Federal prosecutors refused to try the case) https://t.co/G1tzD4902c

— ᴅᴇʀᴇᴋ ᴍᴇᴀᴅ (@derektmead) October 28, 2021

oh yeah this whole story is insane. the kind of thing we imagine happening in like equatorial guinea or angola, but not “here”

they cover this in the excellent Drilled podcast, several episodes iirc

you can start here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s5ep1-lockdown-ad-free/id1439735906?i=1000528536507

I'm already familiar with the main details but I will give a listen when I have some free time.

The whole thing is so galling, particularly in terms of setting a precedent. Courts are widely recognized as effectively the main mechanism for international environmental justice and even in domestic terms, when I took an environmental policy course our main focus was on the role of the courts. Now we're in a situation where this sort of judicial capture is given a pass, and meanwhile Trump in one term packed the courts, something like a third of current federal appellate judges were appointed by Trump. At least we have coal baron Manchin on 'our' side amirite.

In other news, and in re: the recent US House hearings which questioned executives from major fossil fuel firms, this looks like a pretty good overview of how badly Exxon CEO Darren Woods was lying when he said Exxon's public statements on climate change “are and have always been truthful” and that the company “does not spread disinformation regarding climate change":

https://theconversation.com/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-in-its-own-words-170642

And from Teh Grauniad, this list of America's 'worst climate villains' is worth noting.

From the second link:

In his own words: Woods once called carbon reduction standards “a beauty match, a beauty competition”.

BREAKING: Supreme Court agrees to consider limiting EPA's authority to curb greenhouse gases from power plants, will hear appeals from coal-mining companies and Republican-led states

— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) October 29, 2021

seems bad!!

"You see, the greenhouse gases from power plants have liberties and rights according the constitution..."

"Polluters are people too, my friend..."

it is very bad. and the first of probably many, unfortunately.

"elections have consequences"*

*also blatantly stolen SC seats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCnf46boC3I

if you want to know where the worst discourse is heading, once again lolico is ahead of the cunt-curve.

"The deal is this: Tuvalu sinks beneath the waves, there is even more flooding than usual in Bangladesh, and in exchange we get pharmaceutical medicine, TV, Reeboks, McDonald’s, air travel, computers, blogs, and all the other apparatus of modern life. That’s a no-brainer.+

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) November 2, 2021

jesus christ

Muh Reeboks. Muh Filet O Fish. "Tuvalu", lol.

__

When they put their respectable mask on:

Charles talking about “growing global population creating ever-increasing demand on the planet’s finite resources”.

There's a certain kind of person that loves talking about growing populations and climate change... #COP26 pic.twitter.com/JZ0CFoMmvc

— Josh Gabbatiss (@Josh_Gabbatiss) November 1, 2021

i didn't know who andrew lilico was and for a second i thought it was like an "accidentally left wing" post

xpost

Just in case the glaring smug hypocrisy of these inbred twits isn't obvious enough.

Report: Queen Elizabeth secured personal exemption from Scottish climate law

Guess the thing about the climate crisis, cause it's such a nebulous problem that we're all guilty of contributing to, is that one can use it project basically any of one's pet issues on to. It's all a matter of scale. Like cosmic insignificance.

Fucking royals.

crossposting this here

"Although carbon emissions have been increasing rapidly since the Industrial Revolution, it is no accident that 63 percent of all emissions have been produced in these past forty years. Pace the Davos set, these emissions track neither population growth nor consumption from developing states. Their path is unimpeded by the proliferation of eco-conscious marketing schemes, “corporate social responsibility,” and promises (and non-existent realities) of mystical techno-fixes. They track the return to and difficult maintenance of profitability.

As an interdisciplinary team led by chemist Will Steffen demonstrated, in terms of GHG emissions, ocean acidification, rainforest destruction, aquaculture depletion, global warming itself, and so on, climate change tracks not only cumulative GDP growth (as is widely discussed) but such conspicuous features of contemporary global capital as the increased use of telecoms, non-recreational transportation, and foreign direct investment (FDI), which moves from almost zero in the 1960s to trillions by the 2010s. Following Polanyi, they dubbed this “the Great Acceleration.” Such acceleration does not aggregate with population growth; perversely, the relation is inverted. Emissions, resource intensivity, and other climate measures are concentrated where end-point consumption is greatest, as many climate scientists now openly state, among the world’s wealthiest. In the global top wealth and income deciles, population growth is lowest or even negative. And as the rate of population growth is curbing globally, climate change continues its exponential pace. Many climate scientists today go further still, like physicist and social ecologist Julia Steinberger, in arguing the need to push past symptomatic criticisms of biophysical and economic growth towards the clear critique of capital as the “fundamental driver” of climate change."

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-extractive-circuit-singh-chaudhary

Remember how some people would say the worst effects of climate change are in the global South and that Europe wouldn't be affected like anywhere near as hard but in the last year you see things like European river levels dropping off. This is from Spain.

There’s drought - and then there’s a super drought! 60% of the Spanish countryside is bone dry. Groundwater eventually runs out - then what..Wheat and barley crops are likely to fail entirely in four regions- & summer yet to come. pic.twitter.com/91mz8sYopf

— Peter Dynes (@PGDynes) April 16, 2023

Global South is getting the worst of it for sure but we are going to see bigger effects in Europe pretty fast. All bets are off if water and food supplies are fucked.

Lol @ this climate scientist. Does he have a mansion on the hill with solar panels?

I hope I am wrong and others may see things differently, but I am expecting effective societal collapse by mid-century, and planning - for my partner and I and our kids - accordingly.https://t.co/ZkZyaR9uBh

— Bill McGuire (@ProfBillMcGuire) September 13, 2023

It all depends on what you imagine "effective societal collapse" looks like. If you imagine it looks like the zombie apocalypse, then 'planning accordingly' feels like a joke. If it looks like the breakdown of globalism, food shortages, crumbling infrastructure, electrical brownouts, an increase in regional wars, high unemployment, more poverty and scavenging, increased but not universal violence, corrupt police states flourishing, and other similar outcomes, then some measure of planning and adaptation cold be very helpful, if only to set correct expectations and strengthen one's mental resilience and skill set.

Yeah. I guess so. I interpreted this as the Wikipedia definition so I don’t understand his use of “societal collapse” to describe the possible consequence of a global problem. What society is he talking about?

FWIW, I think Damian Carrington, author of the article Bill McGuire quotes, uses the more accurate description: “extinction.”

Extinction at "mid-century" seems far too rapid by even the most alarmist standards, so whatever McGuire thinks "effective societal collapse" means, it feels like it's probably not "extinction". The physical fact of 8,000,000,000 living humans constitute a formidable barrier to extinction within a few decades from climate change alone.

"then some measure of planning and adaptation cold be very helpful, if only to set correct expectations and strengthen one's mental resilience and skill set."

Not sure what form this takes. Name things you can do on your own.

Agree "extinction" in twenty years is alarmist.

I don't know about extinction, and none of this is my area of expertise at all, but personally I'm expecting some form of collapse within the next 10-15 years. Considering how fast climate change has moved in the past decade, and how much it's accelerating from year to year, and how fragile all of our interconnected systems are, plus the potential for catastrophic events like the collapse of the insect population or the Gulf Stream stopping, it seems unlikely that we'll make it to mid-century with anything like the civilization we have now. Don't really see any way to plan for it, though. I haven't given much thought to saving for retirement because I don't expect to get there.

I feel that we will probably see in the next five years in the UK:

- Certain types of food shortages
- A fairly catastrophic flood event
- More 40 degree days, more deaths due to heat among the old and poor
- Potential energy crisis, affecting ability to fan and cool your space. So this affects everyone.

That last one is pure speculation. The first three are based on current trends.

Name things you can do on your own.

Learn how to sew and repair clothes.
Acquire some simple non-power hand tools.
Get to know your neighbors.
Practice walking longer distances than you usually walk.
Acquire a bicycle and know how to maintain it.
Know what you'd do in a catastrophic flood, fire, or similar event.
Keep thinking clearly.

all good suggestions, would also add farming/plant skills there

stolen from lucifer's hammer: get a hardcover copy of 'the way things work' and keep it in a ziploc bag

hardcover copy of 'the way things work'

Practical skills and tools are very worthwhile acquisitions, but for me the most important item on my list is keep thinking clearly.

As I understand the world, humans survive very poorly in the absence of a stable shared society of some kind. As the stability of our very large social organization breaks down and can no longer solve the immediate problems of survival, it will elevate the necessity of forming new, more reliable (if smaller and more local) social alliances and finding new modes of stability.

The more quickly the older social contract is shattered, the more drastically those new social compacts will be stressed and the more likely they'll atomize into smaller and smaller groupings. Having practical skills and tools will make things not just easier for yourself, but make you a far more valuable ally in any group you join, but thinking clearly in the face of those stresses will help even more.

One takeway from Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry For The Future that stood out to me was that even after millions of people dying in climate-related events, nothing really began to pick up until Crash Day - when in the 2030s 60 passenger jets are crashed by drones, then container ships and meat farming are targeted until in the 2040s air travel ends and meat eating declines.

i honestly didn't get past the first chapter, which is harrowing as fuck

It is harrowing as fuck, but the book is somewhat hopeful and offers some kind of pathway that isn't exercises in prepping and doomerism.

iirc that book makes a pretty convincing argument that "adaptation" to climate change will not be an option for millions and millions of people

KSR sounds amazing. Have to read that book.

I also didn't make it much past the first chapter, though I skimmed ahead some. It hadn't been that long since the heat dome in the PNW when I tried to read it, so it was all horrifyingly easy to imagine.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/15/spain-water-barcelona-farmers-tourism-catalonia-drought