Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

there was a nyer stat about 26% (iirc) of americans defining themselves as evangelicals, recently (xxxp)

hey Z S, sorry to use you as a lazy wikipedia substitute, BUT, is it correct that the limited action that was taken by governments after the discovery of the hole in the o-zone layer was actually effective? that stat always seemed slightly reassuring to me, because i couldn't believe that anyone did a lot, but the idea that some modest action was effective seemed promising.

these are some of the people in power in the united states. just so we are clear:

In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce surpassed both the Republican and Democratic National Committees on political spending; the following year, more than 90 percent of the Chamber's cash went to GOP candidates, many of whom deny the existence of global warming. Not long ago, the Chamber even filed a brief with the EPA urging the agency not to regulate carbon – should the world's scientists turn out to be right and the planet heats up, the Chamber advised, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations." As radical goes, demanding that we change our physiology seems right up there.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce is horrible for many reasons, not least of which is that they fool people into thinking they're an actual gov't agency!

Not long ago, the Chamber even filed a brief with the EPA urging the agency not to regulate carbon – should the world's scientists turn out to be right and the planet heats up, the Chamber advised, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations." As radical goes, demanding that we change our physiology seems right up there.

as cynical as i am about the intelligence of our conservative political leaders, i think that many of them really do understand the implications of climate change. as time goes on and denying climate change becomes more and more absurd - think about the first warnings about cigarettes and cancer in the late 50s, the loooooooong conservative battle against those scientists who were trying to save lives, and then the gradual, quiet acceptance of the facts in the following decades - the rhetoric will quickly shift to geoengineering "solutions", since by then it will be too late to actually effectively mitigate climate change by reducing CO2 emissions. hell, it's probably already too late NOW, when you take into account tipping points/feedback loops. anyway, they'll be happy to move straight to geoengineering, because that's a pro-business attitude that doesn't involve changing your own lifestyle.

http://adsoftheworld.com/files/sony.start_.new_.tunnel20.jpg

wait did ned just say that he made his peace with the destruction of the planet via an australian college rock band from the 80's?

sounds about right

You gotta start somewhere.

hey Z S, sorry to use you as a lazy wikipedia substitute, BUT, is it correct that the limited action that was taken by governments after the discovery of the hole in the o-zone layer was actually effective? that stat always seemed slightly reassuring to me, because i couldn't believe that anyone did a lot, but the idea that some modest action was effective seemed promising.

yes, the actions taken were relatively effective! but the experience is - cue negative nancy alert - unfortunately not very applicable to the problem of climate change. ozone depletion is primarily caused by the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Banning the use of CFCs in things like spray cans and refrigerators was relatively easy to accomplish, since there are chemical substitutes that could be used at a similar cost. and it was regulation that could be implemented quickly, from the top down, on industry.

climate change, on the other hand, is driven by the emission of greenhouse gases, primarily from burning coal and using oil. but the key is that the infrastructure required to deliver energy and car-centered transportation to the people is enormous. you can't change it overnight, and you can't do it in a way that consumers barely notice (like phasing out CFCs in spray cans). there are cleaner substitutes for coal and oil, of course, but the substitutes tend to be more expensive and will take a long time to replace to replace the existing infrastructure.

and also, there's just the sheer usefulness of fossil fuels. think about what a gallon of gasoline provides for you - it enables a weak, feeble human being to move a one ton automobile for 30 miles or so! imagine pushing that car! all from a gallon of fossilized ancient dead organisms! it's seriously amazing. and so incredibly cheap. $3 for access to superhuman powers. it's like playing videogames on god mode. people in underdeveloped countries understandably want access to oil and coal. again, all of this in contrast to CFCs, which could be eliminated without negatively impacting the prospects of a better life for anyone else.

xpost -- Said album was more of a vehicle and a lens, in that it builds up to a pretty harrowing ending. I don't know whether it matched my mood or enabled it, but I find it pretty inextricable in reflecting back, and anytime I encounter stories or concerns like this it's part of the soundtrack in my head.

If global warming is real, then why is it cold in winter? Huh? Fuck you, science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4MCRrsmzYU

The first six months of 2012 were the hottest on record. Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, takes a look at record warm temperatures across the county and the world and their connections to global warming.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2012/jul/11/weather/

The 'Dark Knight' shootings are terrifying and ppl will rightly be appalled by them but somehow climate change lacks the immediacy that would rightly make it that much more terrifying.

it's because what's predicted to happen has never happened before in human memory and so people just ignore it.

if you can scarcely conceptualize a threat then it's hard to motivate yourself to give up deeply ingrained habits and privileges to stop it.

i do wonder what sort of world the rest of my life will be spent in. will my neighbors and myself experience widespread privation? or will life in america just become marginally more difficult, with our wealth and technology insulating ourselves from the worst of it? will my diet change thanks to rolling food shortages? will we all simply die of malnutrition in 40 years?

3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

he sorta blows his math cred in the second sentence. that number is almost zero.

odds are expressed as a fraction of 1 iirc

agree. the odds are small, not large. an editor should have picked that up.

Dodgy formatting imo, should it be 3.7 x 10^99:1? Or 3.7 x 10:99? Or what?

more proof that this is all a hoax

Sorry, I've got my stupid head on and didn't read the sentence properly. Yes, it makes no sense as he has written it.

it makes sense it's just inaccurate. he shd've used odds against if he wanted to draw the stars comparison.

i mean, i knew what he meant, so it makes sense, and i squinted at the -99 index when i read it

so the warming deniers all think that its the sun's fault. the culprit is the sun. because the sun is in a warming cycle. who knows? maybe it is. kind of bad timing what with us also destroying the planet with carbon emissions.

it isn't.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-intermediate.htm

and in fact, over the last 30 years, forcing from the sun has actually shown a slight cooling trend, while global temperatures have steadily risen. global temperature used to be pretty correlated with the sun (for obvious reasons), until the latter part of the 20th century when the greenhouse effect really started to take hold. in other words, if there was no greenhouse effect, global temperatures would most likely have cooled slightly over the last 30 years.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Solar_vs_Temp_basic.gif

btw scott, and others who are interested, that website (skepticalscience.com) is a GREAT resource. it lists common arguments that people use (it's the sun, you can't rely on computer models, global warming will be good for people, etc) and then summarizes the science on the topic, organized by basic, intermediate and advanced levels of knowledge about the climate.

th eearth has a fever baby, and the cure is no mor ehumans!

ugh, why do i read through the comment section? why do i do this to myself? i tell myself that it's an opportunity to get a better sense of what people who don't really follow the issue closely actually think (at least if you can filter out the wingnuts), but even that is so frustrating. the very first one i see is:

well where I live its been a very mild summer, so dunno. The 3000 ish records broken sounds good, but out of how many reporting temerature change? How many reported record lows? to little info, to many ways the stats can be fudged.

i want to shake this person and say It doesn't matter what the temperature is where you live! it's global warming, not your town warming, and it's climate change, not weather change. and the record highs are piling up at a rate far exceeding the record lows:

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/images/temps_2med.jpg

or

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/record-high-chart.jpg

or

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wtz1uv3h7Ic/T2OLxtVncpI/AAAAAAAACrI/0H_mhLuIcaw/s1600/temp.records.031512.jpg

this whole thing seems like a tragedy in the strict sense, in that our collective failure to respond with sufficient speed to global warming is founded on some very basic cognitive biases that are very difficult to overcome.

speaking of which, training in interpreting statistics should be central to junior-high and high-school curricula.

or hell, elementary school curricula. as you learn math, you should also learn how it is applied, how it is represented in discourse, and how it can be manipulated/misused.

xpost
yeah, it's pretty much classic game theory here. on an individual level, everyone has an incentive to pollute and/or to not care, since the effect of one person living a zero-impact lifestyle really makes no difference on a global level, and it's less stressful to just continue living the way you want to, without any concern for the future. and on a industrial level, presently, it's cheaper and more profitable to use fossil fuels rather than clean energy alternatives (although that's quickly changing with some technologies). everyone has the incentive to create the worst possible outcome on a global level.

and of course, the traditional answer to that game theory dilemma is that policy/government must step in and shift the incentives. but politicians are playing their own terrible game, with the same terrible incentives.

no one gets votes for helping to prevent an amorphous future catastrophe.

i've been saying we need to tax CO2 emmissions for years, but yeah it's probably not going to happen

as a somewhat patriotic American it does upset me to see all this technology coming out of places like Germany and Denmark when I know that we have the intelligence and will and power to create a new economic and industrial revolution by dumping billions of bucks into renewable energy

Power definitely, intelligence possibly, will are you fucking kidding me?

or at least, we had the will; in the past when America's really wanted to get things done, it happens quickly, we need that wartime mentality back

there were some minor environmental things that were pushed through (minor enough that I can't remember what they are) under GWB's regime, if that's what you mean.

well where I live its been a very mild summer, so dunno. The 3000 ish records broken sounds good, but out of how many reporting temerature change? How many reported record lows? to little info, to many ways the stats can be fudged.

How does one even begin to reason with this sort of person? Even if you get them outside of "where they live" you still have to explain exponential change and other basic concepts to which they'll reply "to many ways the stats can be fudged".

yeah, it's a fool's errand. i used to respond to stuff like that all over the internet, and i don't think i ever succeeded in changing anyone's mind.

we have all the technology we need, frogbs. it's not about technology anymore, it's about manipulating the market to stave off disaster.

dipping back into the comments.

For everyone out there preaching denial and skepticism, it's because of you the planetary systems that have supported our civilization are crumbling, and you deserve any suffering that pursues. Unfortunately the millions of innocent bystanders - all the other living species that you share this world with will also suffer for your imbecility. May you rot in Hell eternally for your ignorance.

well, that's one way NOT to respond, i guess,

I just hope The Singularity occurs first and we merge painlessly into the computronium continuum.

i hope our new robot overlords properly configure their 0's and 1's to use a source of energy that won't become economically unfeasible to use in 20 years and won't cause the foundation of civilization to fall apart.

by the way, this is what happens when you actually try to engage:

hikerstud:

So is global warming responsible for the increase in mega earthquackes too?

kevin:

No... Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes are geological events, not climatic ones...

hikerstud:

Exactly so geolical events are more frequent and violent than ever before along with climate events so it points to many systems including the economic or manmade systems all being shaken at once. But this is old news for anyone at all educated about the most influential person to ever walk the earth....Jesus Christ...also known as Emanual God with us. Whoever falls on the Son for mercy will be broken of pride and blindness but whoever the Son falls on will be crushed to powder. He was a carpenter but he is now the King of Kings and will return to restore all systems thankfully soon but until then it will be a very rocky boat ride and many like myself will be killed in the persecution by the rest of mankind who do not want to hear about a supreme being.

hikerstud is stoked that someone took the bait on that one

i can see his studly hands clapping together in ecstasy as he sees that "kevin" has responded

global warming is the machines way of killing us off so they can have the planet

I was dj'ing a friend's wedding in Virginia a few years back, his dad very wealthy with a younger wife. I'll never forget the conversation; she was nobody's fool, and she fully accepted climate change. She just thought that it was foolhardy to believe that mankind's behavior had any influence or impact on it. I tried to take on the conversation, but by the end of the conversation I had a lot of sympathy; what's going on is easily understood from a scientific viewpoint, but almost incomprehensible otherwise.

Also will never forget these tweets:

Copenhgen=arrogance of man2think we can change nature's ways.MUST b good stewards of God's earth,but arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature [Palin Tweet, 12/19/09]

Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng [Palin Tweet, 12/19/09]

what do you guys think about the line of thought that people should just give up trying to change their minds and just press on the "MUST b good stewards of God's earth" option?

we have all the technology we need, frogbs. it's not about technology anymore, it's about manipulating the market to stave off disaster

right, and i'm not really sure what the next step is

i see so many copies of this in my line of work so i crunched some numbers.

Man-made global warming aside, new study projects mammals could face extinction in 250M years, more or less the amount of time since they first appeared
The immediate good news is that can all claim to be the peak of evolution

source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01259-3

Alfred Wegener playing the ultimate long game in exacting revenge upon his foes.

Step aside climate change and Red Giant Sun, I’m burning the Earth first. The Andromeda-Milky Way Collision is the end of show fireworks. Angry neutron stars yelling that you don’t have to go home to resist entropy but you can’t do it there.

JFC: https://kotaku.com/shell-big-oil-roadtrips-fortnite-map-collab-tiktok-ign-1850907435

lol kids are absolutely not gonna fall for that shit. they're just throwing money into a hole. good thing they have so much of it!

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/search-10-billion-missing-snow-crabs-scientists-eye-marine-heat-waves-rcna121449

When insurance giant AIG rattled the industry last year with an audacious plan to stop writing policies for some of the most heavily polluting fossil fuel projects, environmentalists and lawmakers showered the company with plaudits.

Like so many other large companies pledging to help the world avert climate catastrophe, AIG is finding that making such vows is easier than making good on them. The company is now a target of a Senate investigation into the insurance industry, led by lawmakers who warn that AIG and other companies continue to play a pivotal role in underwriting some of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel projects in the world — despite lofty climate promises.

...AIG, which declined to comment or share its response to questions about its climate pledge from the committee, is hardly unusual. Over the last year, Amazon retreated from an effort to zero out the emissions of half its shipments by 2030. Shell Oil dropped an ambitious initiative to build a pipeline of carbon credits through investment in forest preservation and other carbon-absorbing projects worldwide. And BP significantly scaled back its plan to reduce emissions by as much as 35 percent by the end of the decade.

As the planet heats up at an alarming pace, these turnabouts expose the shortcomings of leaving it up to voluntary corporate action to solve an existential crisis, said John Lang, the project lead at Net Zero Tracker, a group that monitors progress on corporate and government climate pledges.

“There is a massive credibility gap with these corporate targets,” he said. “We need more regulation. Otherwise, the dial just will not turn.”

...Lang’s group examined more than 1,000 companies that have pledges to zero out their emissions by 2050. It found that 38 of them — less than 4 percent — are doing the bare minimum required under the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The rest are not meeting the “starting line criteria” laid out by the United Nations, which calls on companies to track their carbon footprint across supply chains, immediately cut emissions, create a scientifically credible plan for using carbon offsets and report annual progress on meeting climate targets.

gift link: https://wapo.st/48470m1

nice to see some reporting on the failed commitments, rather than just the front-end coverage of corporate PR bullshit promises that have no enforcement mechanism.

Alaska's snow crab season canceled for second year in a row
https://www.yahoo.com/news/alaskas-snow-crab-season-canceled-002948381.html

“People are like, ‘Yeah, yeah, the world is going to end. But I’m still going to vacation on the Greek islands or the Bahamas.’”

Everyone at Davos should have been Mr. Choppy'ed years ago.

will bono be spared

no

the only thing pro bono will be mr choppy's defense lawyer

Mexico City running out of water.

https://news.yahoo.com/mexico-city-teeters-unprecedented-water-000337079.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/09/atlantic-ocean-amoc-climate-change/

Mexico City running out of water.

https://news.yahoo.com/mexico-city-teeters-unprecedented-water-000337079.html

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 1 February 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Last year it was Montevideo. All of these flashing points..

https://i.imgur.com/UXcvJqj.png

the solid black line is global surface ocean temperatures for 2024, so far
the gold line is 2023

the three dotted black lines represent the mean temps from 1981-2011, and then 2 standard deviations above and below that mean.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/skyrocketing-ocean-temperatures-have-scientists-scratching-their-heads/

Thanks, z. That article is a fabulous example of good science writing that doesn't dumb down its subject. And considering it describes a phenomenon I shall only experience in its third or or fourth order effects, it is still miserably stomach-churning.

https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_2150,w_3822,x_0,y_0/dpr_1.5/c_limit,w_608/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1710158341/Screenshot_2024-03-11_at_11.46.32_vwhvnz

In a drastic attempt to protect their beachfront homes, residents in Salisbury, Massachusetts, invested $500,000 in a sand dune to defend against encroaching tides. After being completed last week, the barrier made from 14,000 tons of sand lasted just 72 hours before it was completely washed away, according to WCVB.

someone tell ben shapiro about this real estate opportunity

“Nobody really anticipated that the Earth would speed up to the point where we might have to remove a leap second,” Agnew said.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/climate/timekeeping-polar-ice-melt-earth-rotation

*nerd in the back*

"....um i did, neeeheeeheee!"

Solastalgia (/ˌsɒləˈstældʒə/) is a neologism, formed by the combination of the Latin words sōlācium (comfort) and the Greek root -algia (pain, suffering, grief), that describes a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solastalgia

i think that's a new one for me? i can dig it. as a word.