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The New Black posted:We won't be threatened with extinction in our lifetimes, but I think it's in line with most projections that we'll be seeing some very serious impacts within my lifetime (i.e. the next sixty years or so). 'Extinction' is a red herring anyway, things will have to get incredibly bad before every human is wiped out entirely, with the remaining elite enclaves finally succumbing to a hostile environment they can't control. That would already be a completely different world to our own, so it's a distraction anyway. In the meantime, like you say, millions will die in a world where millions already die because of hunger, drought, disease, flooding etc. And this is in a 'stable' world, where we've had time to establish systems and defences and infrastructure that makes the best of things - the problem is too much wealth and productivity is being drawn off by wealthy and powerful interests, meaning vulnerable people are still vulnerable after all this time. Throwing massive environmental upheaval into the mix, requiring huge changes and everyone vying to maintain their current standards and access to resources, it's the vulnerable people who are going to come off the worst. That's the reality of 'maybe we can adapt'
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Sep 25, 2013 18:10
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Illuminti posted:Because adaption would be less traumatic than prevention? Especially if the estimates for the rate and amount of warming keep getting revised down This is unclear. It is made more unclear by the likelihood that effects will not be felt equally. It seems you are not persuaded that our current way of living on the planet is creating, or at least a major contributor to climate effect, so these will seem like two different issues to you. If you did imagine that for a moment, you might also imagine that the same enacted system creating climate effects is also creating global inequity. This means that this same enacted system is both creating effects for which adaptation will be needed, in which meaningful mitigation is currently impossible and the conditions under which many people will experience disproportionate suffering as a result. But since you are apparently in an early form of denial, (likely with some particular, sublimated attachment to some form of the propagandized rhetoric of 'way of life') masked as rationality or skepticism, it is impossible for you to meaningfully think about this. In your current condition no amount of data will serve to alter or even inform your espoused rationality one whit. Or in other words, 'traumatic' for who and what?
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Sep 25, 2013 18:18
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Sogol posted:
Well, the world runs on fossil fuels, and there's no "shovel ready" replacement to meet current energy demands. If the world cut off the use of those fuels at the levels that the most aggressive alarmists suggest is necessary (well I guess maybe the MOST alarmist would say the damage is already done and we're already doomed?), the resulting economic calamity and societal breakdown would result in catastrophes of biblical levels -- war, famine, disease. No one would escape the effects, although I guess those already living in the stone ages might take some satisfaction in seeing everyone else fall to their level, at least they would if they knew, but they probably wouldn't, since all forms of communication would be gone...
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Sep 25, 2013 18:47
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Finndo posted:Well, the world runs on fossil fuels, and there's no "shovel ready" replacement to meet current energy demands. If the world cut off the use of those fuels at the levels that the most aggressive alarmists suggest is necessary (well I guess maybe the MOST alarmist would say the damage is already done and we're already doomed?), the resulting economic calamity and societal breakdown would result in catastrophes of biblical levels -- war, famine, disease. No one would escape the effects, although I guess those already living in the stone ages might take some satisfaction in seeing everyone else fall to their level, at least they would if they knew, but they probably wouldn't, since all forms of communication would be gone... He is not talking about that. He is suggesting that we should ignore any efforts to mitigate climate effect because: 1- our modeling is imprecise and it is probably just a natural effect 2- adaptation would be less 'traumatic' than mitigation. I asked, for whom are mitigation attempts going to be more traumatic than adaptation attempts? Who would you need to imagine yourself to be, or be identified with in order to make such an assertion? Mitigation of course does not mean throwing some large 'off' switch someplace. It is amazing to me that people often get all 'chicken little' about the mere suggestion of changes involved in possible mitigation, while at the same time actively working to minimize the nature of our current condition. Stunning really.
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Sep 25, 2013 18:58
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Finndo posted:Well, the world runs on fossil fuels, and there's no "shovel ready" replacement to meet current energy demands. If the world cut off the use of those fuels at the levels that the most aggressive alarmists suggest is necessary (well I guess maybe the MOST alarmist would say the damage is already done and we're already doomed?), the resulting economic calamity and societal breakdown would result in catastrophes of biblical levels -- war, famine, disease. No one would escape the effects, although I guess those already living in the stone ages might take some satisfaction in seeing everyone else fall to their level, at least they would if they knew, but they probably wouldn't, since all forms of communication would be gone... That's just not true, there's no "magic power plant" but that doesn't mean there aren't systemic solutions. Its not about building enough wind/solar to replace capacity factor GW for GW, its about using all of our tools available to increase efficiency and decrease impact. The cost of switching to sustainable energy production is not that high and currently feasible. Check out the work by NREL: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/ that shows a high-renewables scenario that doesn't negatively impact economics. Or the new research out this week showing that in fact the saving from switching to renewables (in fuel costs) outweighs the relative capital costs. Or check out Reinventing Fire (http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFire), a pro-economic growth argument that we can resolve our climate impact while spurring positive growth. (Also I love your extreme hyperbole...really makes you seem willing to engage in a reasonable conversation  )
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Sep 25, 2013 18:59
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Well, I guess I'd just say, to me it's pretty hard to argue that, regardless of whether we're a few decades from waterworld or not, it doesn't make sense to mitigate air emissions and water emissions. Emissions aren't good, even if they aren't going to end the world.
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Sep 25, 2013 19:00
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Finndo posted:Well, I guess I'd just say, to me it's pretty hard to argue that, regardless of whether we're a few decades from waterworld or not, it makes sense to mitigate air emissions and water emissions. They aren't good, even if they aren't going to end the world. So literally the line for action is "destroys the world"? We should do nothing to stop harm unless it destroys us all! I mean, that's basically Godwinning yourself....
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Sep 25, 2013 19:01
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Trabisnikof posted:
Well, my hyperbole is scaleable.
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Sep 25, 2013 19:02
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Trabisnikof posted:So literally the line for action is "destroys the world"? We should do nothing to stop harm unless it destroys us all! No, you misread my post.... or rather, quoted it before my self-correcting edit.
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Sep 25, 2013 19:02
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nm
QUILT_MONSTER_420 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 19:04
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I'm putting my money on Green Stalin Resurrection, more likely than the other two at least.
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Sep 25, 2013 19:10
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nm
QUILT_MONSTER_420 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 19:12
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blowfish posted:Looks like I misread a thing For clarity there, we're measuring using a baseline of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Not just anthropogenic CO2, but all the CO2 in the atmosphere period. Human CO2 output is not the dominant factor in global CO2 concentrations, the cumulative amount is something like 25% anthropogenic. So present-day waste heat currently represents about 10% as much impact as present-day anthropogenic CO2. Multiply that by whatever conversion factors you want - x4 for your scenario, or 10x for the "America" scenario, assuming all new energy is nukes that don't produce any carbon. I do realize that first-world energy usage is leveling off, as are our birth rates, it's just important that it stays that way. Even if we get cold fusion tomorrow, we still have to deal with the heat somehow. And cheap clean energy would encourage further growth until the crisis is once again imminent. (I was trying to come up with a figure for cumulative human CO2 emissions, and apparently that's a denier thing that brings up dozens of essentially identical blog posts. I feel dirty now. I'm not even sure how increasing natural levels of a gas only by a third - on a planetary scale is even supposed to be a good thing.) Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 19:22
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Strudel Man posted:Jevon's paradox is not predictive, or at least not meaningfully so - it applies when the rebound effect from decreased cost is greater than the decreased usage from greater efficiency, but this is something that is not always the case, as the page itself explains. Jevon's paradox is certainly implicated if we consider energy production as a process that both consumes and produces energy. Advanced nuclear energy has an Energy Return On Investment of 50 (50 units of energy for every one unit spent producing it), while traditional oil has been dropping from around 35 in 1990 to around 10 nowadays. Renewables vary a bit, photovoltaic solar is 7 and wind is 18. Tar sands are like 3. That's sort of what we're dancing around here - typical high-efficiency sources of energy are pretty much producing at their limit or tapped out, and sources like tar sands are both extremely inefficient and probably also not scalable. Natural limits are preventing scaling, and going around them is extremely expensive. Nuclear provides a vast improvement in efficiency of marginal production of energy (given the planet's current energy production, how much energy it costs to produce one more unit). That makes using that extra unit much more desirable, so people are likely to consume more (or continue consuming at a high level). If you factored in carbon and deforestation and all those other impacts the difference would be even more stark. It is also centralized and compact, which makes it easy to integrate into our current grid. There are a huge number of measures of "efficiency" and nuclear is pretty high on all of them. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 19:43
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Paul MaudDib posted:(I was trying to come up with a figure for cumulative human CO2 emissions, and apparently that's a denier thing that brings up dozens of essentially identical blog posts. I feel dirty now. I'm not even sure how increasing natural levels of a gas only by a third - on a planetary scale is even supposed to be a good thing.) This "If I can show you are wrong about something then I don't have to feel bad about not doing anything at all."
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Sep 25, 2013 19:45
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Finndo posted:Well, the world runs on fossil fuels, and there's no "shovel ready" replacement to meet current energy demands. If the world cut off the use of those fuels at the levels that the most aggressive alarmists suggest is necessary (well I guess maybe the MOST alarmist would say the damage is already done and we're already doomed?), the resulting economic calamity and societal breakdown would result in catastrophes of biblical levels -- war, famine, disease. No one would escape the effects, although I guess those already living in the stone ages might take some satisfaction in seeing everyone else fall to their level, at least they would if they knew, but they probably wouldn't, since all forms of communication would be gone... You're making some pretty lovely assumptions about "those that live in the stone ages" in this post.
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Sep 25, 2013 20:33
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The New Black posted:Funnily enough though mostly developing nations are the ones pressing for action on climate change and its the industrialised nations who are fighting it. Most of the things you listed go beyond commonly accepted projections for the next 60 years, although things like "massive crop failures" are conceivable depending on what you consider massive.
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Sep 25, 2013 22:20
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Aside from the comment about "at least several degrees", I think most of his post is accurate. I don't know what you mean by "commonly accepted projections" but I don't think you're going to find any significant number of climate scientists disputing the fact that 1. We're looking at 2-3 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century on the lower end of possibilities 2. Major coastal cities will have to institute incredibly expensive plans to preserve their place along the coastline, and for many places in the world this is not an option (and thus, they will be abandoned) 3. Large tracts of farmland are going to be lost. Not only to salinization, but also changing rainfall patterns, larger swings in temperature, etc the availability of arable land is almost assuredly going to begin trending downwards in our lifetime, if it hasn't already. a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 22:44
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a lovely poster posted:3. Large tracts of farmland are going to be lost to salinization (among other issues). I think this is a hugely understated problem mostly because it doesn't affect most of the first world (although I believe it's a pretty big issue for Florida as well) but a great deal of the food production in southeast asia (one of those low-lying poorer areas he mentioned that is in the crosshairs of climate change) is in jeopardy as traditionally freshwater bodies salinate. Drought is a far more widespread and pressing agricultural consequence of climate change. It's also the cause most frequently referred to when predictions of crop losses are made.
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Sep 25, 2013 22:47
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Don't forget about ocean acidification.
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Sep 26, 2013 00:25
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The biggest issue I see with denialism is what is the end game? So we spend a certain percent of global GDP to stop climate change but it never happens so we are some decades behind where we could of been in global development. If we just ignore it and then it does happen well humanity is most likely hosed. It's gambling with the fate of humanity where the winnings are low but losing will cost everything.
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Sep 26, 2013 04:48
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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24261-world-wont-cool-without-geoengineering-warns-report.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|online-news#.UkOwYJIbDIVquote:Global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere's chemistry. This stark warning comes from the draft summary of the latest climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Pretty stunning. smh at anyone still arguing against nuclear, that mindset can only be resulting from an underestimation of the scale of the problem we face.
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Sep 26, 2013 05:15
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satan!!! posted:http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24261-world-wont-cool-without-geoengineering-warns-report.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|online-news#.UkOwYJIbDIV Pretty stunning that you can defeat your own point with the exact same statement you quoted. The draft IPCC report is saying nuclear can't solve the problems we've created.
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Sep 26, 2013 06:05
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Well, no. Nothing can solve the problem. At this point everything we can do is damage control.
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Sep 26, 2013 07:10
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a lovely poster posted:Aside from the comment about "at least several degrees", I think most of his post is accurate. Yeah, you're right I may have overstated the temperature rise, but I do think another degree is likely. And that new scientist article just posted says the draft summary increases their estimate of maximum sea level rise to 1m this century. I assume that's now taking into account the unexpectedly rapid melt of the Greenland ice sheet.
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Sep 26, 2013 07:53
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a lovely poster posted:Aside from the comment about "at least several degrees", I think most of his post is accurate. I don't know what you mean by "commonly accepted projections" but I don't think you're going to find any significant number of climate scientists disputing the fact that Yeah for some reason I thought he meant 3+ feet, looking back I don't know how I got that impression. Still I don't think city abandonment is that likely anywhere in 60 years, far from a certainty. In dry areas rangeland land is currently trending down but mainly because of human impacts more direct than climate change, I think agricultural land too. Of course there will be crop failures in the future but it is hard to say there will be more in a scenario with significant warming, because their frequency is driven not only by climate but also human variables likely to mitigate some effects. I think I've just developed a kneejerk against some of the more extreme nihilism that pops up periodically in this thread, The New Black's claims weren't as unreasonable as I thought at a glance.
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Sep 26, 2013 19:14
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Squalid posted:Still I don't think city abandonment is that likely anywhere in 60 years, far from a certainty. What would you define as city abandonment? New Orleans population still hasn't recovered from Katrina. I think we're going to continue to see migrations from the coast inwards as a result of major coastal disasters. Will New Orleans ever be taken off the map? Not in our lifetimes. Is the idea that it would have 10-20% of its current population in our lifetime reasonable? I could see a much better argument there. This is also going to be driven by the failure of cities as financial issues put more pressure on them as well. Detroit doesn't have it's problems because of climate change, but is very much dying due to the economic realities of this century. quote:In dry areas rangeland land is currently trending down but mainly because of human impacts more direct than climate change, I think agricultural land too. Of course there will be crop failures in the future but it is hard to say there will be more in a scenario with significant warming, because their frequency is driven not only by climate but also human variables likely to mitigate some effects. What human variables do you think we can control that would outweigh the changes we're going to see as a result of global warming. The idea that total arable land could ever go up in the face of climate change is something I've only seen put forth by conservative think tanks, is there any data to actually support that?
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Sep 26, 2013 19:22
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Squalid posted:Of course there will be crop failures in the future but it is hard to say there will be more in a scenario with significant warming, because their frequency is driven not only by climate but also human variables likely to mitigate some effects. This just isn't true, there are dozens of models which are dedicated to predicting drought frequency due to climate change and they're all predicting much dryer hydrogeology in most of the crop-growing regions that matter. Squalid posted:I think I've just developed a kneejerk against some of the more extreme nihilism that pops up periodically in this thread, The New Black's claims weren't as unreasonable as I thought at a glance. The science is incredibly bleak. If you spend any time talking to climate scientists or just reading between the lines of their work, many of them are privately predicting 5-7 degrees of warming and the end of organised global society if BAU continues another couple of decades. You can go look at the OP for a paraphrase of some of Kevin Anderson's work. Someone might be a nihilist if they deny that this matters, but arriving at the assessment just means you've looked at papers recently.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:38
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Paper Mac posted:The science is incredibly bleak. If you spend any time talking to climate scientists or just reading between the lines of their work, many of them are privately predicting 5-7 degrees of warming and the end of organised global society if BAU continues another couple of decades. You can go look at the OP for a paraphrase of some of Kevin Anderson's work. Someone might be a nihilist if they deny that this matters, but arriving at the assessment just means you've looked at papers recently. There is no research that supports "the end of organized global society", horrible human impacts? Yes. But the end of global society? No.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:55
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I'm not sure what the distinction you're trying to draw is.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:56
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'Climate change isn't as bad as people make it out to be, we're not all going to die horribly!'
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Sep 26, 2013 21:00
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Trabisnikof posted:There is no research that supports "the end of organized global society", horrible human impacts? Yes. But the end of global society? No. That's because "the end of global society" means things different to each of you. It's a hyperbolic phrase that only has shared meaning amongst the people who hold compatible existing views. It's basically shorthand instead of listing off the laundry list of gigantic issues that our current global socioeconomic system has no way of dealing with.
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Sep 26, 2013 21:10
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"The end of organised global society" means "the end of any possibility of an organised, institutional response to climate change". To me, that generally means "people somewhere will burn most recoverable FFs and we're going to 1000+ ppm CO2 equivs". It's a possibility that the failure of large institutional structures and global governance may actually make FF extraction too costly and difficult to continue emissions apace, so I'm not putting any money on where we stop emitting, but it's a pretty safe bet that at 7-10 degrees the human carrying capacity of the earth slips an order of magnitude or more, depending on feedback effects. Acknowledging this is for me the opposite of nihilism- it means that we have a gun to our head and we need to come up with very good answers to "what kind of a society do we want to live in" very quickly. My general assessment is that we're almost certainly getting at least 4-5 deg C above pre-industrial and maybe more, so I'm more concerned with local capacity-building than I am with transnational governance, but I think you need to look long and hard at the evidence one way or the other to decide where to best direct your efforts.
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Sep 26, 2013 21:21
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Paper Mac posted:"The end of organised global society" means "the end of any possibility of an organised, institutional response to climate change". To me, that generally means "people somewhere will burn most recoverable FFs and we're going to 1000+ ppm CO2 equivs". It's a possibility that the failure of large institutional structures and global governance may actually make FF extraction too costly and difficult to continue emissions apace, so I'm not putting any money on where we stop emitting, but it's a pretty safe bet that at 7-10 degrees the human carrying capacity of the earth slips an order of magnitude or more, depending on feedback effects. Acknowledging this is for me the opposite of nihilism- it means that we have a gun to our head and we need to come up with very good answers to "what kind of a society do we want to live in" very quickly. My general assessment is that we're almost certainly getting at least 4-5 deg C above pre-industrial and maybe more, so I'm more concerned with local capacity-building than I am with transnational governance, but I think you need to look long and hard at the evidence one way or the other to decide where to best direct your efforts. But many argue "the end of any possibility of an organised, institutional response to climate change" occurred when Kyoto failed, so that's a hard line to draw. I'm trying to make the argument that when people use meaningless (and wrong) platitudes like "climate change will destroy civilization unless we stop it soon" those arguments actually strengthens the deniers because they then lump the true damage in with "exaggeration of climate impacts". Hyperbole makes the true impact (significantly worse lives for most humans) more difficult to communicate.
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Sep 26, 2013 21:34
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Paper Mac posted:This just isn't true, there are dozens of models which are dedicated to predicting drought frequency due to climate change and they're all predicting much dryer hydrogeology in most of the crop-growing regions that matter. Drought frequency is not the only variable relevant to predicting crop failure. Climate change is likely to increase the risk of other dangers too, for example insect damage, but this too is affected by human practices. All I meant is that agricultural productivity is affected by human variables. a lovely poster posted:What would you define as city abandonment? New Orleans population still hasn't recovered from Katrina. I think we're going to continue to see migrations from the coast inwards as a result of major coastal disasters. Will New Orleans ever be taken off the map? Not in our lifetimes. Is the idea that it would have 10-20% of its current population in our lifetime reasonable? I could see a much better argument there. This is also going to be driven by the failure of cities as financial issues put more pressure on them as well. Detroit doesn't have it's problems because of climate change, but is very much dying due to the economic realities of this century. I did not say that arable land area will increase because of climate change, so I'm not going to support that claim. However most desertification happening today occurs because of bad management practices and can be prevented. Depending on the severity of drying, good management practices applied to land that is currently badly managed could restore land to productivity, even if precipitation decreases and evaporation increases in the future. I don't care enough to define city abandonment. I'm not sure climate change is going to increase the probability of the financial realignments that broke Detroit. Squalid fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Sep 26, 2013 |
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Sep 26, 2013 21:54
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Trabisnikof posted:But many argue "the end of any possibility of an organised, institutional response to climate change" occurred when Kyoto failed, so that's a hard line to draw. Kyoto was a failure of our current sclerotic institutions, not the end of any possibility of an institutional response. It might be too little, too late, but it's not like the door will be closed as long as we have a massively interconnected global institutional landscape. Trabisnikof posted:I'm trying to make the argument that when people use meaningless (and wrong) platitudes like "climate change will destroy civilization unless we stop it soon" those arguments actually strengthens the deniers because they then lump the true damage in with "exaggeration of climate impacts". Hyperbole makes the true impact (significantly worse lives for most humans) more difficult to communicate. The issue is that it's not clear that it's hyperbole. I agree that we should be specific and clear about climate impacts. So let's be clear: BAU scenarios are now across-the-board predicted to produce 7-10 degrees of warming by 2100. The IEA and WB acknowledge this. You can find any number of WB reports quantitating the damage from different warming scenarios- they generally don't bother with 7-10 degree scenarios because the damage is too extensive to bother putting numbers to. If by "destroy civilisation" you mean "end organised global trade, substantially destabilise or destroy the post-Westphalian nation-state framework of governance, ultimately result in a mass extinction event, and reduce the human population to a fraction of its current size", then yes, we can absolutely say that 7-10 degrees of warming is likely to produce these effects. Business as usual means we spike the planet's average temperature to the highest heights of the Paleozoic, not seen since- in two centuries! In any case, there are lots of other plausible scenarios that don't result in 7-10 degrees of warming, but I think we should be absolutely clear that attempts to maintain the status quo guarantee the failure of those attempts.
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Sep 26, 2013 21:57
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Squalid posted:Drought frequency is not the only variable relevant to predicting crop failure. Climate change is likely to increase the risk of other dangers too, for example insect damage, but this too is affected by human practices. Right, that doesn't make agricultural or hydrogeological systems more difficult to model because humans intervene in them. Decreased frequency and increased intensity of precipitation means increased probability of crop failure mutatis mutandis. We can also ask the question "is human intervention (irrigation/farming practices) likely to prevent or ameliorate the dustbowlification of the American Mississippi river basin" and the answer is generally "maybe ameliorate a little bit with dryland farming practices but probably not on an long-term or consistent basis". Water has to come from somewhere.
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Sep 26, 2013 22:01
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Paper Mac posted:Kyoto was a failure of our current sclerotic institutions, not the end of any possibility of an institutional response. It might be too little, too late, but it's not like the door will be closed as long as we have a massively interconnected global institutional landscape. I'm sorry but there's not a research consensus to support global economic collapse in a 7-10˚F (no one seriously argues for a 7-10˚C model) scenario. Look at this chart. This is all awful stuff we should prevent, but its not the collapse of the global economy.
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Sep 26, 2013 22:09
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm sorry but there's not a research consensus to support global economic collapse in a 7-10˚F (no one seriously argues for a 7-10˚C model) scenario. A1F1, which we're tracking at this point, takes us to 5 deg C by 2100 in the absence of any feedbacks and conservative assumptions about climate sensitivity. 7-10 deg C is usually a post-2100 scenario, not "by-2100" unless you postulate feedbacks, but there's sufficient fuels in the ground to take us there. In any case, I'm not sure who you've been talking to, but there's a consensus that 4 deg C above pre-industrial represents widespread disaster in terms of population health, social cohesion, etc. The 7-10 deg C warming scenarios I'm talking about are beyond imagination. We're in the process of baking in 4 deg C with our current emissions (over the next 10-20 years). Whether or not we get to 7-10 will depend on our emissions course over 30 years or so beyond that. Paper Mac fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Sep 26, 2013 |
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Sep 26, 2013 22:31
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Well no poo poo duh we're all toast in a business as usual scenario. If we get to a point where we can't grow unirrigated corn in Ohio I'll probably be more interested in what I can pillage from the smoking ruins of Pittsburgh than peanut yields per hector in Niger or w/e. However I disagree that adding human variables doesn't make systems less predictable. Especially when action may be contingent on large scale institutional action that is subject to the whims of a few individuals. The IPCC could produce a much more precise warming prediction if they could just replace the human economy nice, predictable CO2 making machines. One of the things that causes me a lot of anxiety is what even a plateau in global per capita agricultural productivity could do to tropical forests. I just can't imagine the governments of Indonesia or Brazil resisting domestic pressure to develop tropical forests without massive payments from more developed nations, yet the amount of carbon that would be released by clearing the Amazon represents a planetary death sentence, just as certain as burning all the oil shale.
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Sep 26, 2013 22:37
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