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Doomsayer posted:So, this is a really stupid question, but I'm having a tough time parsing all the readings and articles in the thread, so I'll just ask: precisely how hosed are we? Are we "just" red-alert-holy-poo poo-if-we-keep-doing-this-we're-doomed level, or has the apocalypse point pretty much already come and gone? Because I'll just start leaving all my lights on right now if that's the case. It's hard to predict, because climate is really complicated. Here's what we can say:
It's not too late yet. But the sooner we act, the more lives we save. Of course, leaving your lights on or turning them off makes no difference. What we need to stop climate change is massive, systemic change on the global level. I think the only way to do that is to have mass movements on the streets that lead to those changes.
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Sep 12, 2012 05:52
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slogsdon posted:Here's a small slice of how hosed we are: The value oil companies is based on about 4-5 times as much oil as we could burn and remain under an increase of 2 degrees Celsius. To not exceed the number, they would have to write off about $20 trillion in assets. It may be a typo or a missing word or something but I am having trouble extracting meaning from this, but allow me to see if I have it right: 1: Oil companies use tricky/bribed science to gin up a figure on atmospheric carbon that is something like 400-500% the value widely accepted by science as a 2C tipping point (say the actual point is 350ppm, the value the oil guys are pushing is 1400-1750ppm before we get on track for a 2C increase in avg temperature) 2: the reason they are doing this is that if they were to accept the truth and adjust production to fit into that 350ppm ceiling, they would need to take a 20 trillion dollar write off. Is this close?
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Sep 12, 2012 05:59
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The Entire Universe posted:It may be a typo or a missing word or something but I am having trouble extracting meaning from this, but allow me to see if I have it right: Part of the value of oil companies is based on oil they can profitably extract, but haven't yet. The value of that oil is ~$20 trillion. If that oil was burned, it would get us to over 1400 ppm of CO2, which is super very mega-bad. To instead keep us below 2C of climate change, the oil companies would have to not use that oil, meaning they basically lose $20 trillion. I hope I got that right and that makes sense.
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Sep 12, 2012 06:06
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The Entire Universe posted:It may be a typo or a missing word or something but I am having trouble extracting meaning from this, but allow me to see if I have it right: Nope. Part of the valuation of any company is their future revenues, which for oil companies includes future sales of oil that is currently locked in the ground. But, if you use this to value any oil stock, you assume the oil will be burned (otherwise it isn't sold). As per this report http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719?page=2 from the Rolling Stone, it is reported that the carbon content of this future oil that is already assumed to be burned by our current financial system will push us way way way past any tipping point. edit: to provide summaries, Rolling Stone reports we can output 565 gigatons of CO2 from July 2012 before total fuckage. However, the current stocks of oil companies and oil states, which backstop a lot of the current financial system assumes they can sell off oil that will be burned and will produce 2,795 gigatons of CO2. So you either need to physically prevent these groups from selling their oil or pay them off now. FORUMS USER 1135 fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 12, 2012 |
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Sep 12, 2012 06:35
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FORUMS USER 1135 posted:Nope. Part of the valuation of any company is their future revenues, which for oil companies includes future sales of oil that is currently locked in the ground. But, if you use this to value any oil stock, you assume the oil will be burned (otherwise it isn't sold). As per this report http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719?page=2 from the Rolling Stone, it is reported that the carbon content of this future oil that is already assumed to be burned by our current financial system will push us way way way past any tipping point. Welp, I was wrong. Thanks for the clarification!   jesus christ we're hosed the goddamn oil companies are the loving corleones of the political world we are so hosed gently caress
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Sep 12, 2012 08:04
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quote:So, this is a really stupid question, but I'm having a tough time parsing all the readings and articles in the thread, so I'll just ask: precisely how hosed are we? Are we "just" red-alert-holy-poo poo-if-we-keep-doing-this-we're-doomed level, or has the apocalypse point pretty much already come and gone? Because I'll just start leaving all my lights on right now if that's the case. I'll put it to you this way: Suppose that you are walking along the surf, and you suddenly come across a person facedown in the surf. They don't appear to be breathing. You're not sure if there's any chance you can save them, you don't absolutely know for sure how they ended-up facedown in the surf (but they're wearing a swimsuit, are wet, and in the surf, so you've got a pretty good idea), and Hell, maybe the only form of CPR training you have comes from watching episodes of Baywatch when you were 8. Do you say, "gently caress it, they're done for," and walk off? Or do you try to save them, even if you don't know if you can or how they got there?
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Sep 12, 2012 08:57
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The Ender posted:Do you say, "gently caress it, they're done for," and walk off? Or do you try to save them, even if you don't know if you can or how they got there? Haha, sorry, I didn't mean that I had literally written off the world. Of course I want to do my best to save the world, I was just curious as to the current extent. Even if we were 1000% hosed, I'd still want to do my best to control just how hosed we get. I'm just a bit behind on my reading, and was curious as to what the current status was, which has been answered very astutely, thanks everyone! The conclusion of seems like a pretty accurate one!
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Sep 12, 2012 20:19
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I don't want to alarm you but we are so hosed. Your only solace is that your chances of living and dieing a natural death without utter despair and depravity aren't totally written off yet by any means. If you have any sort of moral accountability to the future you might want to meditate on letting that go while you ride this mess out. Don't have children, unless you won't be able to save for retirement then consider children but just remember that it's a dick move bringing them into this cause they'll more likely feel the pain for sure. So so hosed
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Sep 12, 2012 21:19
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That Rolling Stone article is excellent. It's also really clarified something for me; the only hope of reducing the environmental catastrophe is through a carbon tax. Our monkey brains prevent us from understanding the totality of how our economic actions affect the world, but we demonstrably respond to price signals (as do our corporate leaders). It's also a simple enough solution that even our corrupt political systems can implement it. In some sense a carbon tax is inevitable, as eventual environmental disasters will make it politically impossible to oppose. As progressives, our goal is to make sure it's implemented as quickly and globally as we can.
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Sep 12, 2012 22:15
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They put 'Dinosaurs' on Netflix. Thank God there are some unaired episodes to tack onto Season 4 so the show doesn't end with them all dying in an environmental cataclysm.
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Sep 14, 2012 02:06
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quote:So, this is a really stupid question, but I'm having a tough time parsing all the readings and articles in the thread, so I'll just ask: precisely how hosed are we? Are we "just" red-alert-holy-poo poo-if-we-keep-doing-this-we're-doomed level, or has the apocalypse point pretty much already come and gone? Because I'll just start leaving all my lights on right now if that's the case. I personally think the apocalypse point has pretty much come and gone. The best thing you can do for yourself and the people around you is accept this fact, IMO. I base my belief on the stark reality that we have already activated a number of positive feedback loops that will cause our climate to continue on a significant warming trend, even if we were to completely stop using fossil fuels right this second. My admittedly amateur reading of climate science is this - the history of the Earth indicates that the planet has seen a number of stable climatic states (Ice Ages, warming periods, what have you). The Earth has shifted between these stable states due to all sorts of phenomena, some of them sudden changes like meteor impact. What we humans have done by using fossil fuels is basically caused the climate equivalent of a meteor impact, and now due to things like permafrost melt (one of those positive feedback loops I was talking about), the Earth is irreversibly shifting to another stable climate, but one that humans have never experienced before. I'm not saying the Earth is becoming some sort of Venusian planet that is untenable for all life or anything, but what we're headed for is something that we can only vaguely guess at, and the prognosis so far is not too good - we're on track for less arable land, less access to fresh water, rising sea levels, and a disrupted Jet Stream. At this point, global warming can't be stopped, reversed, or anything like that. Anyone who says that is lying, plain and simple. Right now, the only positive change humans can make is mitigation, and even that is limited. Unfortunately - and here is where my reading of this situation gets far too pessimistic for some in this thread - I think even mitigation is a pipe dream. We've talked a lot about the power of monied interests in this thread, and that certainly poses a big roadblock to anyone hoping to mitigate the effects of climate change. What I've come to realize, though, is that basic human psychology pretty much precludes us from doing anything about this problem. The end of fossil fuels pretty much means the end of consumerism and material wealth, and there is no way people are going to give those things up until they are forced to do so. Not because they are bad people, either, but just because materialism taps into so many deep-seated psychological tendencies - pleasure seeking, so on and so forth. We humans are wired to do these things, and materialism taps into them. Here is what I think the most likely scenario is - humans will give up fossil fuels either when they completely run dry or the effects of fossil fuel use become so problematic and untenable that no one can ignore them. No sooner. The latter will probably happen before the former, and if you're 30 or younger, you will probably live to see it. Will we see a radical restructuring and/or collapse of global civilization before the century is over? I think the answer to that is "almost certainly." Have we done so much damage that humans will go extinct over the coming centuries? That, to me, is the big question mark now.
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Sep 17, 2012 21:46
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Mixing our apocalyptic scenarios for a moment: one nice aspect of reaching a global peak in oil production is that it's unlikely we'll be able to pump out much of remaining fossil fuels in the ground. The big oil exporters are going to start depleting their fields before we can get at that sweet arctic crude, and hopefully global civilization will experience a cascading failure of organization much sooner. Not to say we may not hit 2C anyway, but our current economic organization has set us up to be largely self-limiting.
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Sep 17, 2012 22:35
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Are there any... things which could conceivably prevent a phytoplankton die-off, or is humanity doomed to spend it's last days living in the cramped confines of an undersea dome?
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Sep 17, 2012 23:01
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Wakko posted:Mixing our apocalyptic scenarios for a moment: one nice aspect of reaching a global peak in oil production is that it's unlikely we'll be able to pump out much of remaining fossil fuels in the ground. The big oil exporters are going to start depleting their fields before we can get at that sweet arctic crude, and hopefully global civilization will experience a cascading failure of organization much sooner. Not to say we may not hit 2C anyway, but our current economic organization has set us up to be largely self-limiting.
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Sep 18, 2012 08:41
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ErichZahn posted:Are there any... things which could conceivably prevent a phytoplankton die-off, or is humanity doomed to spend it's last days living in the cramped confines of an undersea dome? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization Introducing iron into the ocean would stimulate phytoplankton growth and help reduce levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The problem with this is that we don't know for sure what side effects will result from doing this at a large scale.
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Sep 19, 2012 05:51
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I'd like to point out that we aren't hosed. Dirt-poor people in the third world as well as habitat restricted animals are hosed. We'll just deal.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:01
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cowofwar posted:I'd like to point out that we aren't hosed. Dirt-poor people in the third world as well as habitat restricted animals are hosed. We'll just deal. We don't know that we will "just deal". For all of the theatrical skepticism that is leveled at the actual science of global warming it amazes me that unverified statements like this are allowed a free pass. Lets be clear; there is more scientific certainly that global warming is real and a serious threat than there is that rich people will be fine during its most acute effects.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:20
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What's everyone so worried about? I mean, worst case scenario you starve to death, and that's over with in a month or so. It's not like anyone here can change the future, so why bother getting upset about it? This whole thread just seems like an enormous amount of wasted thought and emotional stress. Forget the future, go do wheelies on a motorcycle or something while there's still gas to do it with.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:25
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lollynoob posted:What's everyone so worried about? I mean, worst case scenario you starve to death, and that's over with in a month or so. It's not like anyone here can change the future, so why bother getting upset about it? We, meaning people as a whole, can change the future. And if the future is going to suck if we don't do anything, we have a responsibility to do so. People need to tone down the dumb "oh no we're hosed WELP gg humanity nice run" and "yeah apocalypse is already here, might as well live/die with it" bullshit. First of all, observations and evidence don't support the claim that we're all irreversibly hosed, so calm the hell down. Second, carbon can be removed from the atmosphere, and infrastructure can be rebuild to be more efficient and emission free. Since there are solutions, there's hope. Stopping climate change isn't going to be easy, but then again, anything worth doing rarely is.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:59
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Carbon sequestration doesn't really seem to be off the ground yet. And we can't replace biodiversity (which we depend on). The inland migration as the seas rise is going to disrupt even more ecosystems and population is still growing. I just feel like the "We can still do this guys!" is Pollyannaish. The ecosystem is a network, and as the connections in that network trim down as species drop out of it, it becomes much less robust. A hotter planet means more energy moving in the system and more instability with extreme weather events. The planet and ecosystem has adjusted to slow changes before, but we're increasing the speed of changes and there is no guarantee that the rate of new speciation events is going to keep up. People aren't going to make the necessary changes before its too late. Even if we assume they would or could, what are those changes going to be and how will they be enforced? "No guys, we got this, it's gonna be all cool!" is just singularly unconvincing. What solutions that are available are either vague and ineffectual or terrible from a human rights perspective. There's nothing outrageous about the idea of over accelerating to a point where you won't bleed off that momentum before launching right off a cliff.
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Sep 19, 2012 15:44
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^^^  actually it might be "all cool" in some parts of the world because it's climate change, not warming Uranium Phoenix posted:We, meaning people as a whole, can change the future. And if the future is going to suck if we don't do anything, we have a responsibility to do so. I think we're all entitled to talk about this in the way that we see fit because dealing with what is basically a deliberate slow-motion apocalypse (for people, that is; "the planet" will do just fine) is a complicated emotional and social issue. Although you present fine options for combating climate change these will never be implemented, at least not in time. Because of this, to my mind, the environmental movement is a eulogy, a way for us to say, to posterity or to nobody in particular, "some of us knew." I also wouldn't consider humanity's term to be a "good run" unless you judge that by how quickly and efficiently we squandered a whole world.
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Sep 19, 2012 16:34
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Maybe if we kick off World War 3 we can rally big national projects for nuclear power and such  Destroy our enemies and claim the poles 
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Sep 19, 2012 17:54
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Yiggy posted:"No guys, we got this, it's gonna be all cool!" is just singularly unconvincing. Good thing I didn't say that, then! Yes, it's bad. No, we shouldn't all give up before even trying to stop it.
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Sep 19, 2012 20:05
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McDowell posted:Maybe if we kick off World War 3 we can rally big national projects for nuclear power and such You know who else started a world war by claiming the Poles? 
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Sep 19, 2012 20:05
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Evilreaver posted:You know who else started a world war by claiming the Poles? War...war never changes... 
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Sep 19, 2012 20:09
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Uranium Phoenix posted:Yes, it's bad. No, we shouldn't all give up before even trying to stop it. If all that's on offer are platitudes I'm still not hopeful. You're telling me it's not too late and I'm asking too late for what? For highly improbable mass action to improve our situation? There is no political will from the US for concerted efforts and large scale changes (even Obama is still pandering to west Virginia and coal states with his clean coal schlock). And China and India are unlikely to be leaders on this because they crave development. You might be right that it's not too late yet (which I disagree with, much to my chagrine), but that's not really relevant when it will very shortly be too late and we won't have any sort of mass effort by the time when it'll be necessary. Come on, guys, keep your chin up, there's still time to stand here with our finger in the dyke! Inertia doesn't matter, only Grit and Resolve! Until there are enough people the realize the direness of the situation, concerted action is not possible. Anyone who is still holding out on a technological silver bullet doesn't appreciate the direness of the situation and is only contributing to the inevitable pain. Maybe it can be mitigated, but I think we all have to be honest that even as a mitigated disaster the consequences will be terrible. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Sep 19, 2012 |
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Sep 19, 2012 20:17
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Has anyone ever fielded the idea of a purposefully induced nuclear winter? Just, I don't know, throwing up enough debris to buy us a bit of global cooling? I know there has to be a fine line between that and the end of every loving thing, but what else are we gonna do with all those nukes?
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Sep 19, 2012 20:53
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Nuclear winter is a little overblown, and detonating enough nukes to make a significant enough change would do a lot more harm than good(in more ways than one). If you want to increase Earth's albedo(reflectivity) cloudships are probably the best bet for that. I'm totally pro cloudship, but they'd probably be really pricy for something that only addresses a symptom of a larger problem, and only just, at that.
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Sep 19, 2012 20:57
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Hobo Siege posted:Has anyone ever fielded the idea of a purposefully induced nuclear winter? Just, I don't know, throwing up enough debris to buy us a bit of global cooling? I know there has to be a fine line between that and the end of every loving thing, but what else are we gonna do with all those nukes? Stratospheric sulfate aerosols will accomplish this without radiation. Have no doubt that someone will start spraying eventually, unintended side-effects be damned.
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Sep 19, 2012 20:59
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muike posted:Nuclear winter is a little overblown, and detonating enough nukes to make a significant enough change would do a lot more harm than good(in more ways than one). Im imagining steam-puck type coal powered dirigibles spewing out steam and smoke. Am I close? \/\/\/ They better be seriously goofy looking or Im not interested. bpower fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Sep 19, 2012 |
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Sep 19, 2012 21:01
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No, think more goofy looking boats that spew out water vapor taken from the ocean.
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Sep 19, 2012 21:03
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Hobo Siege posted:Has anyone ever fielded the idea of a purposefully induced nuclear winter? Just, I don't know, throwing up enough debris to buy us a bit of global cooling? I know there has to be a fine line between that and the end of every loving thing, but what else are we gonna do with all those nukes? This is a stone-cold retarded idea, and yes, people in this thread already have. Also, the nukes would do way more damage then climate change, I cannot emphasize how bad an idea this is. Aerosols (Sulfur or water), space mirrors, and painting a bunch of poo poo white are all better ideas.
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Sep 19, 2012 21:07
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Yiggy posted:Maybe it can be mitigated, but I think we all have to be honest that even as a mitigated disaster the consequences will be terrible. This is difficult to say with any real certainty because of the relative uncertainty of the models used. They all line up fairly well with the basic hypothesis (that anthropogenic climate change will cause increasing pressures on global populations), but there's no truly conclusive predictions as to the severity of the effects. Regardless of severity, it is absolutely, crucially important that efforts are continually made to mitigate, adapt, and reverse the effects of climate change. This is not the time for us to throw our hands up in the air. The issues facing the world are not issues of technology or research (because an absolute shitload has been done already with regards to this area), but of political will and action. Policy actions that can reduce the overall effects of global warming are more than possible, but require leadership and political will. Fundamentally, it is an issue of public perception: resources have not yet been mobilized sufficiently to convince voters of the severity of the problem before them. We do not know the level at which point our efforts will become untenable. We have guesses in the 2˚-4˚C range, but even these are based on imperfect computer modeling and on our incomplete knowledge of precisely how the climate functions and what feedback increasing warming will cause. To embrace nihilism - that there is simply "nothing to be done" based on present circumstances - is a terribly privileged position to take. It is a comforting position, because it absolves us of the responsibility of attempting to solve the complex and difficult problem at hand. It is also entirely the wrong position to take, because it only further contributes to to the conditions that have allowed things to get this far in the first place. To be blunt: There is plenty to be done. There is awareness to be raised, repeatedly and to as wide a base as possible, especially in North America. Opinion polls show strong support for climate change initiatives in countries such as China and Brazil, but little has been done to encourage political action. We are living in an age in which information is disseminated at an almost unimaginable rate, and through mediums that are no longer directly controlled by business interests. The potential to create effective community action is enormous, and is, quite frankly, the best hope for policy change. Our focus must be on the creation of a political and social climate that is focused around the collective future of our society, rather than our own individual desires. I do not in any way imagine that this is an easy task, but it is a necessary task. There is no magical technology that will solve everything, but there are combinations of policy initiatives, technological innovations, and adaptability strategies that, when combined, can help to significantly soften the blow of potential climate change. What is important here is that you are far more likely to see effective action at the local level than at the national level. Climate change policy in the United States, for example, has been driven largely on a state-by-state basis. Federal politics tends to have too many competing factors to make mitigation strategies tenable. The alternative is that we sit on our hands and embrace futility, which, frankly, is just as absurd as expecting a magical scientific discovery to save everyone. It will require far more than a piece of technology to mitigate the effects of global warming, but we are already developing (and have developed) policy that will aid the technological buffers in helping to reduce the deaths caused by climate change in the future. There are plenty of things in life that seem at the time intractable. The very idea that Europe could one day be devoid of kings with any real power would seem insane to anyone living before the early modern period. The abolishing of the trans-atlantic slave trade would have seemed untenable to anyone living in the 17th century. Civil rights for everyone, irrespective of gender, sexuality, or race, have been slow in coming but are increasingly accepted and welcomed in. None of these issues - absolutely none of them - were solved by the explicit actions of a government. They were solved from the bottom up: strident abolitionists; militant radicals; protestors and reporters; and everyone inbetween. If we do not grasp this opportunity by ourselves and propel it towards the national spotlight, then we can indeed expect to reap what we sow, and any disaster that shall happen in the next hundred years can be laid at our feet entirely. Any action is better than inaction.
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Sep 19, 2012 21:32
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Again, keep in mind that any reduction in light hitting the surface (land or sea) will result in less plant life, which will have a HUGE snowballing impact on global ecosystems.
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Sep 20, 2012 08:40
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The article it's attached to (http://energybulletin.net/stories/2012-09-20/arctic-death-spiral-new-local-shipping-and-drilling-pollution-may-speed-polar-war) doesn't contain much new information, but I thought you guys might enjoy this horrifying graph: Won't it be fun to tell the grandchildren about the days when there used to be two polar ice caps?
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Sep 20, 2012 13:36
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TACD posted:The article it's attached to (http://energybulletin.net/stories/2012-09-20/arctic-death-spiral-new-local-shipping-and-drilling-pollution-may-speed-polar-war) doesn't contain much new information, but I thought you guys might enjoy this horrifying graph:
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Sep 20, 2012 18:21
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Strudel Man posted:I don't understand this graph. Observations diverge from ensemble mean beginning in 1950? What is going on? Until about 2010 all observations were within two standard deviations of the mean (the upper and lower dotted lines), then in the last couple years the observations have gone far below our idea of a normal range (mean - std dev) at a much greater rate than predicted. (notice the space between the standard deviations increases as we move into the future) 
Mc Do Well fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Sep 20, 2012 18:54
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TACD posted:Won't it be fun to tell the grandchildren about the days when there used to be two polar ice caps? Hmmm, might be fun, if anyone lives long enough to listen to or tell this depressing tale.
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Sep 20, 2012 19:18
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lollynoob posted:What's everyone so worried about? I mean, worst case scenario you starve to death, and that's over with in a month or so. It's not like anyone here can change the future, so why bother getting upset about it? Tell that to the man on death row. His final fate is over within seconds, but he still will spend the 10-20 years waiting for it in a state where his every living moment is consumed by the terror of it. To put it bluntly, I dont want to die, and starving to death is a slow and horrifically painful experience. And no it wont be over in a month. Expect a good decade of everyone you love becoming unhealthy, unhappy, desparate and frightened. If the very worst case scenarios are true, we don't need to fear the afterlife anymore, hell will be visiting us on earth.
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Sep 21, 2012 02:00
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It struck me the other day, that the saddest thing for our species would be if this warp drive shenanigans the press has been jibbering about turns out to be true, and thus just as we're about to reach out and touch the stars, all babylon 5 styles, we loving kill ourselve because grey haired cunts in suits decided physics was a commie conspiracy and theres no reason to stop pumping CO2 into the air. "Humanity would have loved the twin moons of beta-voblapulon, had it lived long enough to see it. Instead it choked to death on a venus of its own design."
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Sep 21, 2012 02:04
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