Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

JBark: Jun 27, 2000; Good passwords are a good idea.

lasts years man posted:

Well it's not so much that I accept it, just that it's not as obviously inane as I expected. I mean he's not an expert, but he does link to articles by experts that at least seem authoritative. So that sort of threw me off. I mean I guess my question is something like a) is it really true that the global mean temperature has dropped since 2003? and b) is that at all meaningful or is it just some fluctuation within a larger trend?

I always like this answer to those specific questions. You can always find very short term cooling trends, almost always tied to El Nino/La Nina cycles. You'll always find the start date for the cooling trend moves forward every couple years. Back in the early 2000s, it was "it's been cooling since 1998".

# ? Aug 17, 2012 08:31

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# ? May 29, 2024 16:46

Uranium Phoenix: Jun 20, 2007; Boom.

lasts years man posted:

Well it's not so much that I accept it, just that it's not as obviously inane as I expected. I mean he's not an expert, but he does link to articles by experts that at least seem authoritative. So that sort of threw me off. I mean I guess my question is something like a) is it really true that the global mean temperature has dropped since 2003? and b) is that at all meaningful or is it just some fluctuation within a larger trend?

Here is a site that debunks common climate myths.

The planet has continued to warm. 1998 was a very warm year, but that doesn't mean the planet is cooling. It's a single data point that gets taken out of context in order to show later years are cooler, but NASA article with a nice graph of temperature. 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record (source). "Climate" is an average of many years of weather. We can safely say the climate is warming. It doesn't do so liberally, it dips and peaks. So for example, the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest in recent history, beating the 90s.
Climate change causes extreme weather, and that includes blizzards (basically, because of increased energy imbalances and increased precipitation). No reputable scientific body has claimed winters will disappear (they're caused by the globe's tilt, which isn't going anywhere). While glaciers and snowpack will gradually disappear in the coming decades, and the arctic will disappear in the summers in a few decades, no one has claimed it would happen immediately.
Climate change is caused by humans, in case he tries to pull that one. We know that due to analysis of radioisotopes of carbon in the atmosphere (natural carbon and burned carbon have different isotopes, so the proportion over time tells us the CO2 spike has human origins. Also, you can just look at the industrial records of setting huge amounts of fossil fuels on fire).
The Earth has indeed warmed in the past. And in the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum it caused a mass extinction in the oceans. It was the fastest spike of temperature we've found in the geological record, and it happened over ~20,000 years. Our temperature spike is happening in ~200 years. The speed and magnitude are the problems: we, and many other species, are going to have trouble adapting to climate change that fast.
There are some scientists who disagree with climate change. Don Easterbrook is one of them, and at the university he goes to, people don't like to talk about him. 97% of scientists do believe in climate change. That doesn't matter either, but what does matter is the evidence and observations support those scientists. As the IPCC report details. Now, the alternating periods of warming and cooling are the ice age cycles, and they're caused by Milankovitch cycles. Without human interference, we would be eventually heading into another ice age. But the amount of CO2 we've put in the atmosphere has changed that. Pretty much every simulation predicts that.

Most of the statements on that site are outright lies. Those that aren't either are an appeal to the authority of a single scientist (who's conclusion is not supported by evidence) or taking information out of context, or cherry picking data.

There are a great deal of people who are either on the payroll of the fossil fuel companies or are ignorant of the subject and make wild unsubstantiated claims. So for example, here's an article showing that. There's plenty more where that came from. There's a lot of financial incentive for fossil fuel companies to deny climate change, because if climate change is true it means the end to their billions of dollars of profit and a switch to different energy produces. It also threatens the world view of conservatives (that's a great article by the way).

Basically, the easiest way to do it is look at the first site I linked and use it to counter any of his claims. Anyone denying climate change will pretty much never admit defeat, they'll just move from claim to claim, constantly shifting goal posts hoping they can finally claim something you can't immediately refute. Suffice to say, they are full of poo poo and all evidence points to that. We can already see the effects of climate change with the recent droughts and extreme weather all over the world, and the gradual disappearance of the arctic ice.

Really, I can go on, but hopefully that's enough resources for you to (hopefully!) correct him.

Edit: Jeez that's a wall of text. Have some pictures!

Arctic Sea ice decrease (National Snow and Ice Data Center)

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Interactive guide with CO2, temperature data, ice data, and sea level data at NASA (awesome site!)

Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Aug 17, 2012

# ? Aug 17, 2012 08:38

AuMaestro: May 27, 2007

TheFuglyStik posted:

I'll refer back to my original question, in plainer terms: What is your solution? Saying "primitivism=bad" isn't the epitome of an argument. Present a viable solution if you want to convince people.

Vote for candidates who want to move the costs of externalities - such as issues of sustainability - onto the people who use resources. Avoid systems where environmentalism is considered a false consciousness that should or must be purged for the sake of ideological purity. When convenient, call out socialists when they try to conflate their twisted ideals with environmentalism.

None of this is particularly controversial or even non-obvious.

# ? Aug 17, 2012 18:07

Uranium Phoenix: Jun 20, 2007; Boom.

AuMaestro posted:

Vote for candidates who want to move the costs of externalities - such as issues of sustainability - onto the people who use resources. Avoid systems where environmentalism is considered a false consciousness that should or must be purged for the sake of ideological purity. When convenient, call out socialists when they try to conflate their twisted ideals with environmentalism.

None of this is particularly controversial or even non-obvious.

What do you do when neither of the major parties you can vote for take a pro-environmentalist stance, and the few, much smaller parties that do actually have a genuine environmentalist platform have no hope of winning (when they even can run a candidate) because the two major parties benefit from absurd amounts of money from corporate donations and systemic rules put into place to protect their power?

Not sure what you mean by the second and third sentence, could you elaborate?

The solutions to climate change are controversial and not obvious. That's because the problem is not scientific, or even an engineering problem (the answer to those problems are fairly obvious), but one of politics and economics. If there wasn't controversy over what to do about those, you'd be missing a lot of the debate from this thread.

# ? Aug 17, 2012 18:16

UP AND ADAM: Jan 24, 2007; by Pragmatica

I think socialism would be better suited to promoting sustainable practices (in an ideal situation) than capitalism, which is guided by the premise of a continually increasing consumer base and performing economic actions in service of a single principle- cost. It's entirely blind, and wouldn't the tragedy of the commons be better handled in a socialist system that is managed by a well informed, scientifically principled authority? I could understand the criticism that such a thing would never happen in this America, so move beyond such a fantasy like "we shouldn't be compelled to exploit nonrenewable resources everyday." But I don't understand how you can say socialism and environmentalism are opposed. Is it because of the waste used by maintaining the economic authority, or are you just basing it on the Soviet Union and China which had problems beyond their basic purported ideology? How is capitalism better suited to sustainability and environmental stewardship?

# ? Aug 17, 2012 18:30

TheFuglyStik: Mar 7, 2003; Attention-starved & smugly condescending, the hipster has been deemed by
top scientists as:
"The self-important, unemployable clowns of the modern age."

AuMaestro posted:

None of this is particularly controversial or even non-obvious.

In the United States, at least, it is. Hell, we wouldn't even sign on for Kyoto.

Our industrial system, which operates on a basis of profit, will resist taking external costs into account tooth and nail. As long as we have campaign donations and paid lobbyists, simply trying to vote against corporate interests is a losing battle. It's just not going to happen until we remove the influence of money in politics, and stop the revolving door of industry bigwigs getting into regulatory positions.

After we accomplish those things, then we might be able to convince enough people that making GBS threads where you eat might not be a great idea.

# ? Aug 17, 2012 19:09

Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

AuMaestro posted:

Vote for candidates who want to <b>move the costs of externalities - such as issues of sustainability - onto the people who use resources</b>. Avoid systems where environmentalism is considered a false consciousness that should or must be purged for the sake of ideological purity. When convenient, call out socialists when they try to conflate their twisted ideals with environmentalism.

None of this is particularly controversial or even non-obvious.

So the carbon tax that is a complete non starter? Or the carbon cap and trade that is just another Wall Street circle jerk?

Is a major push to create a nuclear/solar/wind power grid and put people to work twisted, evil socialism?

We're seriously hosed on this one.

Also gonna go Rove here and suggest we stop using "skeptics" - they are deniers.

# ? Aug 17, 2012 19:47

Sam.: Jan 1, 2009; "I thought we had something, Shepard. Something real."

AuMaestro posted:

Vote for candidates who want to move the costs of externalities - such as issues of sustainability - onto the people who use resources. Avoid systems where environmentalism is considered a false consciousness that should or must be purged for the sake of ideological purity. When convenient, call out socialists when they try to conflate their twisted ideals with environmentalism.

None of this is particularly controversial or even non-obvious.

Who are these candidates?

This article says that we can only burn 565 gigatons of carbon before the temperature increases more then 2C. Energy companies would have to write off $20 trillion worth of reserves for global warming to be stopped. With that much money at stake, they'll do anything within their power to make sure candidates willing to do something about global warming don't get elected, and prevent them from accomplishing anything if they do get elected. I don't see any way, short of a revolution, to get the US government to stop global warming, and there's zero chance of that happening any time soon.

# ? Aug 17, 2012 20:26

lasts years man: Jul 7, 2004; i have the neutron bomb

Uranium Phoenix posted:

words...

Excellent. This is just what I was looking for. I just had a weird "is down really up," sort of moment. Thanks for setting me straight.

# ? Aug 17, 2012 20:52

deptstoremook: Jan 12, 2004; my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your Aunt and Uncle in Bel-Air!"

AuMaestro posted:

If "industrial capitalism" is to blame and is so irredeemably bad that we have no choice but to find an alternative, then either we could reject capitalism in favor of deptstoremook's favorite environmental catastrophe disguised as an ideology, or we could reject industrial development in favor of some kind of stupid primitivist garbage. There's really nothing to say about it except for hyperbole and "dude, look at recorded history".

Hey man, it's cool that you don't like my posting but at least understand when I'm making a joke versus a serious well-reasoned argument (although my "racing cars off a cliff" metaphor is surprisingly apropos in the face of resource depletion).

At any rate I think anyone who looks at the premises and praxis of capitalism and industrialism over the last couple centuries and comes to any conclusion other than "yea this is loving up the environment right good" is probably delusional.

# ? Aug 17, 2012 23:29

Sargeant Biffalot: Nov 24, 2006

AuMaestro posted:

When convenient, call out socialists when they try to conflate their twisted ideals with environmentalism.

This is absurd, the vast majority of green parties with any kind of success are substantially eco-socialist, and red-green alliances are standard practice. Also the socialist wing of the green movement rarely tolerates primitivism, "anti-anthropocentrism" or malthusianism, all of which the liberal and "neither right nor left" brigade show a worrying tendency to flirt with.

I'm curious as to what anti-socialist greens you think have got a serious plan.

# ? Aug 18, 2012 02:05

The Ender: Aug 2, 2012; MY OPINIONS ARE NOT WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN SHIT

quote:

Also gonna go Rove here and suggest we stop using "skeptics" - they are deniers.

I prefer the word 'stubborn' when it comes to scientists like, say, Friis-Christensen, Lassen and Lindzen. They aren't deniers in the same way that Limbaugh or Hannity are deniers: they decided to draw a line in the sands of academia prior to the data becoming as good as it currently is and stubbornly refuse to budge from their positions, even after most of their colleagues accepted the most recent data and crossed the line.

It's maddening, but that's what often happens with well-tenured specialists. They start to think they know better than everyone around them.

EDIT: It's also worth noting, in defense of Friis-Christensen and Lassen in particular, that these guys went ballistic when their data was misused by right-wing ideologues. They're stubborn about accepting the new data, but they do not think it is acceptable to claim certainty about the climate or falsify old data. That's the difference.

The Ender fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Aug 18, 2012

# ? Aug 18, 2012 06:00

AuMaestro: May 27, 2007

deptstoremook posted:

Hey man, it's cool that you don't like my posting but at least understand when I'm making a joke versus a serious well-reasoned argument (although my "racing cars off a cliff" metaphor is surprisingly apropos in the face of resource depletion).

At any rate I think anyone who looks at the premises and praxis of capitalism and industrialism over the last couple centuries and comes to any conclusion other than "yea this is loving up the environment right good" is probably delusional.

Stop taking everything personally. I don't have a problem with your posting. It's your ideology that stinks. Socialism has no way of safeguarding the efficiency of production, and environmentalism is a false consciousness anyway. No amount of contemporary entryism into environmentalist groups is going to change that. The 'problem' with capitalism is that it allows industrialism and consumerism, which is something any alternative must also do. Socialism either fails to do that in the first place or succeeds with an even worse environmental cost.

# ? Aug 18, 2012 19:47

Your Sledgehammer: May 10, 2010; Don`t fall asleep, you gotta write for THUNDERDOME

AuMaestro posted:

The 'problem' with capitalism is that it allows industrialism and consumerism, which is something any alternative must also do.

Care to explain why industrialism and consumerism must be kept, or how they could possibly continue without ruining the environment?

# ? Aug 18, 2012 19:56

UP AND ADAM: Jan 24, 2007; by Pragmatica

Some pipe dream that defies historical reckoning or scientific principle, is my bet. I'd like to hear him too though.

# ? Aug 19, 2012 04:08

TheFuglyStik: Mar 7, 2003; Attention-starved & smugly condescending, the hipster has been deemed by
top scientists as:
"The self-important, unemployable clowns of the modern age."

AuMaestro posted:

The 'problem' with capitalism is that it allows industrialism and consumerism, which is something any alternative must also do.

Please back this up with some form of evidence, or at least a thought out line of reasoning that explains how this line of thought is air tight.

edit: In other words, answer what the second post above asked. If your answer is related to quality of life in any way, please back up how maintenance of 1st world standards of living will help those in the 3rd world, who have no access to our industrialized way of life, survive given the destruction of the very thing that keeps industrialization going. I've been turned around on the nuclear power issue, and I see where many other pro-industrialized culture folks in this thread are coming from, but his is the one questions I have yet to see an answer to.

I'm asking you to answer this, in your own words.

TheFuglyStik fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Aug 19, 2012

# ? Aug 19, 2012 10:02

UP AND ADAM: Jan 24, 2007; by Pragmatica

He could also be in flagrant denial, like respected intellectual George Will and preeminent (political) scientist Bj�rn Lomborg.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-why-doom-has-not-materialized/2012/08/17/fcf89ed6-e7fb-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_story.html

I hate you AuMaestro, you and everyone like you.

# ? Aug 19, 2012 23:31

Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

*Problem that is global and geological in scope*

"Come on guys we've been talking about this for a couple generations, stop being such chicken littles and get back to work!"

# ? Aug 20, 2012 20:37

UP AND ADAM: Jan 24, 2007; by Pragmatica

Economic scholarship is apparently immutable and the key to our modern wonders while the fundamental scientific principles like increasing entropy or conservation of energy are phased out like they aren't worthy of consideration in the real world. As people like George Will die off, though, I think there will be a greater acceptance of interdisciplinary modes of thinking, like ecological economics (encompassing thermodynamics, ecology, and economics), so we can actually understand how our economies work, rather than blundering around destroying the lives of peasants and wreaking havoc on natural systems on the guidance of fables and superstition.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 01:07

reggintaf: Jan 19, 2009; by Y Kant Ozma Post

AuMaestro posted:

Socialism has no way of safeguarding the efficiency of production, and environmentalism is a false consciousness anyway. No amount of contemporary entryism into environmentalist groups is going to change that.

What the gently caress are you talking about? Automation isn't an idea exclusive to capitalist societies, and that very much has to do with efficiency of labor.

reggintaf fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Aug 21, 2012

# ? Aug 21, 2012 01:25

Sir P. Grothsmore: Oct 25, 2011; Crush them communist scum. Crush them before its too late.

Regardless, the capitalist mode of production still exists under a socialist society. Socialism is merely a system which strives to restrict or control capitalistic expansion and development.

I have to agree with the folks saying we cannot live in a sustainable society under the current form of capitalism. In fact, the very fundamentals of capitalism are contradictory with sustainability. Capitalism revolves around constant growth and expansion, how is this infinite level of growth compatible with our planets finite amount of resources.

Post industrial revolution, the closest we have came to a completely sustainable and eco-friendly society was Cuba during the cold war. Trade sanctions placed on the country forced its inhabitants to adopt new methods of agriculture, and limit their use of non-essential commodities.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 16:43

Polo-Rican: Jul 4, 2004; emptyquote my posts or die

This month's WIRED has a really, really, awful & stupid cover article about how we're silly for worrying about climate change. It annoys me greatly.

The part of the article about climate change sounds like it was written by a middle schooler and doesn't cite a single fact or statistic:

WIRED posted:

So, should we worry or not about the warming climate? It is far too binary a question. The lesson of failed past predictions of ecological apocalypse is not that nothing was happening but that the middle-ground possibilities were too frequently excluded from consideration. In the climate debate, we hear a lot from those who think disaster is inexorable if not inevitable, and a lot from those who think it is all a hoax. We hardly ever allow the moderate �lukewarmers� a voice: those who suspect that the net positive feedbacks from water vapor in the atmosphere are low, so that we face only 1 to 2 degrees Celsius of warming this century; that the Greenland ice sheet may melt but no faster than its current rate of less than 1 percent per century; that net increases in rainfall (and carbon dioxide concentration) may improve agricultural productivity; that ecosystems have survived sudden temperature lurches before; and that adaptation to gradual change may be both cheaper and less ecologically damaging than a rapid and brutal decision to give up fossil fuels cold turkey.

The correct way to think about climate change isn't to go by the science, or to listen to denialists who ignore science, but somewhere in the middle, guys. :downs:

Also note that the second headline article is "Why Kittehs Rule the Internets."

edit: Oh, the headline article was written by a Wall Street Journal columnist. Neat. What's the point of this magazine again?

Polo-Rican fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Aug 21, 2012

# ? Aug 21, 2012 16:48

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Wired is the embodiment of the flaws in science journalism. It has a long history of being the edgy, exciting and frequently incorrect science periodical. I used to get Seed but it didn't have enough subscribers and only publishes on the web now. Scientific American and Discovery are supposed to be ok, but in general you want to steer clear of wired.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 17:12

Billy Idle: Sep 26, 2009

Um, doesn't the middle ground position, as far as scientific consensus goes, still have us totally screwed?

# ? Aug 21, 2012 17:26

Uranium Phoenix: Jun 20, 2007; Boom.

Billy Idle posted:

Um, doesn't the middle ground position, as far as scientific consensus goes, still have us totally screwed?

Pretty much.

All evidence I've read though says the IPCC worst case scenario low balled it, because we're currently beating it and right on the path for 6 degrees C or more warming in the next century.

But yeah, even if it is some sort of middle-ground 3-4 degrees C rise, that's still enough to drown several island nations and cause global catastrophic damage that will likely kill millions.

Edit: The tagline for the wired article ("Why the world won't end in 2012... or any time soon") is technically correct because the worst damage will take decades to hit. It's basically a strawman though: No one who knows anything about the issue claimed the world was going to end this year or next.

Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Aug 21, 2012

# ? Aug 21, 2012 17:33

Car Hater: May 7, 2007; wolf. bike.
Wolf. Bike.
Wolf! Bike!
WolfBike!
WolfBike!
ARROOOOOO!

Billy Idle posted:

Um, doesn't the middle ground position, as far as scientific consensus goes, still have us totally screwed?

I think the difference is something like shoring up your house and sealing it before hurricane season vs. being the sort of person who sits on the roof with a six-pack to watch poo poo go down.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 17:35

TheFuglyStik: Mar 7, 2003; Attention-starved & smugly condescending, the hipster has been deemed by
top scientists as:
"The self-important, unemployable clowns of the modern age."

Yiggy posted:

Wired is the embodiment of the flaws in science journalism. It has a long history of being the edgy, exciting and frequently incorrect science periodical. I used to get Seed but it didn't have enough subscribers and only publishes on the web now. Scientific American and Discovery are supposed to be ok, but in general you want to steer clear of wired.

Wired is the premier gloss rag for technology fetishists, and nothing more.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 17:35

HMDK: Sep 5, 2009; ...and they all pretend they're orphans, and their memory's like a train

TheFuglyStik posted:

Wired is the premier gloss rag for technology fetishists, and nothing more.

Yeah, it's "Look at all these cool thingies and gadgets!".
Followed by: "Oh, gently caress the science, it may be smart, but we're doing pop-culture stuff which is way cooler!".

# ? Aug 21, 2012 17:41

Midee: Jun 22, 2000

code:

Wired - Global Flash Mobs
Tired - Global Warming
Expired - Ozone Depletion

Can I work for Wired now?

# ? Aug 21, 2012 17:58

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

Polo-Rican posted:

What's the point of this magazine again?

This particular issue is something the shitworms can point at while getting all :smugdog:

over themselves.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 19:51

TheFuglyStik: Mar 7, 2003; Attention-starved & smugly condescending, the hipster has been deemed by
top scientists as:
"The self-important, unemployable clowns of the modern age."

HMDK posted:

Yeah, it's "Look at all these cool thingies and gadgets!".
Followed by: "Oh, gently caress the science, it may be smart, but we're doing pop-culture stuff which is way cooler!".

This old gem seems relevant as well. The text at the bottom right is pure comedy gold just fifteen years later.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 19:57

Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

The Singularity is going to happen any day now and I will be an immortal without all these meat problems.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 19:59

TyroneGoldstein: Mar 30, 2005

TheFuglyStik posted:

This old gem seems relevant as well. The text at the bottom right is pure comedy gold just fifteen years later.

I was a wired reader back then. So masturbatory. These guys really believed this stuff too.

Oh and also:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wired-Magazine-January-1998-Change-Good-/390425154090

Still have that one in a stack somewhere. So funny...and sort of tragic too.

# ? Aug 21, 2012 20:51

deptstoremook: Jan 12, 2004; my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your Aunt and Uncle in Bel-Air!"

We have that magazine in our office and I actually picked it up today and took 2 seconds to look for the cover article so I could get my righteous indignation for the day, but I didn't find it and satisfied myself by looking at the words "Why Kittehs Rule The Internet" on the cover. Thanks for summarizing the article. Teh.

# ? Aug 22, 2012 02:20

Vermain: Sep 5, 2006

Uranium Phoenix posted:

The tagline for the wired article ("Why the world won't end in 2012... or any time soon") is technically correct because the worst damage will take decades to hit.

More specifically: It's technically correct because the people who read Wired are not the sort of people who are going to be dramatically affected by climate change, and their world is thus not truly "going to end." It'll push up food prices and make life more uncomfortable, sure, but it's not as though their nation is going to be flooded or everyone in their country will die because of some mosquito-born superfever or they won't be able to afford food and will straight-up starve to death.

# ? Aug 22, 2012 02:32

Amaritudo: Jul 5, 2003; The Bitter Timelord

Vermain posted:

More specifically: It's technically correct because the people who read Wired are not the sort of people who are going to be dramatically affected by climate change, and their world is thus not truly "going to end." It'll push up food prices and make life more uncomfortable, sure, but it's not as though their nation is going to be flooded or everyone in their country will die because of some mosquito-born superfever or they won't be able to afford food and will straight-up starve to death.

Exactly. Food prices could double and we'd still be spending less of our income than we did a hundred years ago on food. The worst we're likely facing is having to take the bus and pay $6.50 for a loaf of bread.

# ? Aug 24, 2012 01:59

speaking: Dec 8, 2011

I have been able to gleam several things from this thread which I will now share. Hopefully this doesn't lead to nastiness as a result of my observations.

1. Things are simultaneously as bad as they are ever going to be and doing far better than expected in terms of the projected path of climate change its anthropogenic component.

2. There exists 3 kinds of Climate Change advocates (The nihilists who don't have feasible solutions, the bystanders who have little clue what is going on, and the activists who are apparently well-read on the data.

3. There seems to be a complete ignorance of possible geo-engineering solutions past the oft-mentioned "Aerosols". I saw one mention of the Great Plains shelter-belt and absolutely no mention of the havoc that the Army Corps of Engineers has caused via their sequestering and diversion of water, or the potential for the capture of fresh-water run off.

4. We are ending the life-expectancy of this current Western narrative (As someone so kindly pointed out in this thread), whatever happens next is going to be different. We have no real solution to a host of problems that would arise as a result of "sustainability" being humanities next major rallying call (Chief among them what will happen to the vast majority of the Muslim world when their teat is cut off from them or what havoc we will wreck upon Africa in order to preserve Western Culture).

5. There needs to be a solid recognition from those who are truly concerned about the human race's survival (And our symbiotic relationship with nature) that the next narrative cycle will deal with Politicians, Buearucrats and the established Aristocracy (I.E. the Academia, Institutions and Research Institutions). There will need to be a real recognition that they are the one's who are poisoning the well with the kind of selling points they have been providing (RADICAL CHANGE, EXTINCTION AND DESTRUCTION) for their solution to the warming trend (Which seems to be just more pointless Imperialism).

# ? Aug 24, 2012 09:01

UP AND ADAM: Jan 24, 2007; by Pragmatica

I don't think this thread is any sort of exhaustive survey of climate change politics and scholarship in America. If you're interested in geoengineering ideas, look some up on google scholar or a friend in university's credentials, or a pop-sci article somewhere.

On point 5, I don't doubt that most any information put through the lens of the popular media in today's world is refracted in order to further the western imperialist agenda (no sarcasm), but are you saying that the scientific consensus is flawed or biased in its predictions of the effects of climate change? The magnitude of the effects aren't known, but aren't the parameters that will be affected pretty confidently identified? Desertification, alteration of thermohaline circulation in the oceans, release of all that sequestered methane in whatever, for example.

Do you have some scientific objection to the basis for all these predictions? I think most people in this thread agree that it's hypocritical to expect to retain this standard of living in countries like the U.S., while making global steps towards sustainability- so why not embrace greater global cooperation, sharing techniques and labor with "developing" countries so they have these principles from the outset. What's your point is what I'm asking.

Eh, what are you talking about in most of your other points too. What are you getting at with (3), and (4) if you're alleging that there are issues with a call for "sustainability" you're going to have to add a few more details than a single compound sentence.

UP AND ADAM fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Aug 24, 2012

# ? Aug 24, 2012 09:24

a lovely poster: Aug 5, 2011; by Pipski

speaking posted:

I have been able to gleam several things from this thread which I will now share. Hopefully this doesn't lead to nastiness as a result of my observations.

1. Things are simultaneously as bad as they are ever going to be and doing far better than expected in terms of the projected path of climate change its anthropogenic component.

Can you explain this more for me? How can "things" be as bad as they are ever going to be? Climate change is accelerating and there's absolutely no reason to think it won't continue to do so. Not only that, we're far above the worst case scenario of emissions that have been laid out by the IPCC. Put simply, things aren't as bad as they are ever going to be AND things continue to be worse than the "worst case scenario" predictions put forth by the establishment.

# ? Aug 24, 2012 15:13

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# ? May 29, 2024 16:46

Illuminti: Dec 3, 2005; Praise be to China's Covid-Zero Policy

a lovely poster posted:

Can you explain this more for me? How can "things" be as bad as they are ever going to be? Climate change is accelerating and there's absolutely no reason to think it won't continue to do so. Not only that, we're far above the worst case scenario of emissions that have been laid out by the IPCC. Put simply, things aren't as bad as they are ever going to be AND things continue to be worse than the "worst case scenario" predictions put forth by the establishment.

I was under the impression that the IPCC's predictions have been consistently over what is actually observed, even if the trend is up. I can't find any graph showing this that isn't from some kind of frothing at the mouth non believer in global warming and at the risk of causing some gnashing of teeth here's one.

http://braincramps.net/?p=1292

Could part of the problem be that rather than trying to scare everyone into action with worst case scenarios and telling us what we're going to have to give up, if it does in fact seem like we have a longer timescale to sort stuff out it'd be better to recommend more gradual change, under the guise of cleaner air and oil independence and advancing energy science, than we are all going to burn.

# ? Aug 24, 2012 16:14

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

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