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68k posted:We need some more dissonance on this page: We'll see if they bungle it as badly as last time: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/the-wreck-of-the-kulluk.html?_r=0
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Jul 9, 2015 03:57
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Wanderer posted:So hey, dumb question. Not that things are great by any stretch of the imagination but, on the "brightside", I think we've established that Guy McPherson is a little wild with his predictions. You'll have to dig back in the thread for all that, though.
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Jul 9, 2015 04:17
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Your Sledgehammer posted:I'll just leave this here. I'll warn you that it's probably not what you want to hear, but it's worth it to read through the whole thing, whether or not you agree with the conclusions. I wasn't looking for help in coming to terms with the Grim Meathook Future, thanks. I was already pretty sure that civilization in 2100 will look like all the least fun parts of a dystopian science fiction novel if it's there at all. (It also genuinely annoys me to be lectured about the glory to be found in the peaceful acceptance of my inevitable demise by some boomer rear end in a top hat twice my age. Of course you're making your peace with dying, you prick; you're 64 and you can't conceive of a world that could go on without you.) I wanted to know if there was anything being done about methane clathrates, either in theory or in practice, since all I could find were people explaining what and where they were, and this: Trabisnikof posted:The Japanese have been researching ways to harvest clathrates for decades, since they're a resource poor island nation. However, I think the real answer is we just don't understand the processes at work well enough to even know if trying to do anything specific to the clathrates to reduce their impact the climate is worth it. ...was more what I had in mind. If you've got a link about it, I'd be interested in it; I saw someone mention in passing that Shell is hoping to drain natural gas out of the ocean floor near western Australia, but that was about as anecdotal as it can get (literally "my daughter told me" in a comments section). It'd almost make a good movie script: an energy company, joined by federal overseers and an international who's-who of climate scientists, is told that the future survival of the human race depends on their being able to quickly and cleanly suck the stored methane out of the ocean floor before it defrosts and kills us all. It's Armageddon except we already live on the asteroid. tmfool posted:Not that things are great by any stretch of the imagination but, on the "brightside", I think we've established that Guy McPherson is a little wild with his predictions. You'll have to dig back in the thread for all that, though. He does kinda come off like he gives all interviews with a revolver to his temple, doesn't he.
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Jul 9, 2015 04:19
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Wanderer posted:(It also genuinely annoys me to be lectured about the glory to be found in the peaceful acceptance of my inevitable demise by some boomer rear end in a top hat twice my age. Of course you're making your peace with dying, you prick; you're 64 and you can't conceive of a world that could go on without you.) Presuming that he's writing for an audience that's of the same generation as him, at least he's acknowledging "our kids and grandkids will hate us for this", because I got pretty pissed reading that. e: From another article quote:Last weekend in Montréal I piloted a new session entitled Seven Generations from Now: A Collective Improv. The invitation for the event was as follows: Hey, let's imagine how our descendants will actually be happy about the world we'll leave them, the world I won't have to live in because I'll be dead 20 years from now! Motto fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 04:38
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Motto posted:Presuming that he's writing for an audience that's of the same generation as him, at least he's acknowledging "our kids and grandkids will hate us for this", because I got pretty pissed reading that. Pretty much. Dressing up your abject fatalism in hippie bullshit doesn't actually make it anything other than fatalism, and ripping off the stages of grief to describe it is one of the sneakiest ways of dressing up one's own self-righteous conviction that I've ever seen. It lets him brush off disagreement as the result of the other person not being as progressed through the topic as he is. I'll freely grant that I'd be the guy with a bailing bucket on the top deck of the Titanic while it sank, so I'm philosophically opposed to this kind of thing on general principle. I couldn't not be annoyed by Pollard.
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Jul 9, 2015 04:52
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Wanderer posted:If you've got a link about it, I'd be interested in it http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/12/us-methane-hydrates-japan-idUSBRE92B07620130312 Wanderer posted:Pretty much. Dressing up your abject fatalism in hippie bullshit doesn't actually make it anything other than fatalism, and ripping off the stages of grief to describe it is one of the sneakiest ways of dressing up one's own self-righteous conviction that I've ever seen. It lets him brush off disagreement as the result of the other person not being as progressed through the topic as he is. To be fair he's right, it does get really old to talk to people who accept Climate Change and it's catastrophic consequences but then want to "well, we'll figure out because we always have" even if the data is suggesting a much different story (ie that we aren't adapting/changing policy quickly enough and the absurd amount of complexity involved in modern civilization has left it much too rigidity to adapt to the kind of progresses we're seeing begin to accelerate) tldr: http://news.noahraford.com/?p=48
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Jul 9, 2015 20:05
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Motto posted:Presuming that he's writing for an audience that's of the same generation as him, at least he's acknowledging "our kids and grandkids will hate us for this", because I got pretty pissed reading that. This is the root of the problem, too many descendants. The over population of the planet has consequences. Turning up the heat is one of them.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:20
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Dahn posted:This is the root of the problem, too many descendants. The over population of the planet has consequences. Turning up the heat is one of them. actually overpopulation has pretty much nothing to do with climate change and is just something the first world harps on instead of taking responsibility for all of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere they put there
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Jul 9, 2015 20:22
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down with slavery posted:actually overpopulation has pretty much nothing to do with climate change and is just something the first world harps on instead of taking responsibility for all of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere they put there He meant overpopulation of 1st worlders.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:27
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Salt Fish posted:He meant overpopulation of 1st worlders. same deal, it's not about the number of people, it's about the way they live as long as first worlders continue to say "emitting carbon has no cost" it's really hard to say population is a real problem
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Jul 9, 2015 20:29
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down with slavery posted:http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/12/us-methane-hydrates-japan-idUSBRE92B07620130312 That's good. The ideal situation would be to leave that crap in the ground, of course, but it's a bit of a load off my mind to hear that the technology exists to drain off the hydrates. down with slavery posted:To be fair he's right, it does get really old to talk to people who accept Climate Change and it's catastrophic consequences but then want to "well, we'll figure out because we always have" even if the data is suggesting a much different story (ie that we aren't adapting/changing policy quickly enough and the absurd amount of complexity involved in modern civilization has left it much too rigidity to adapt to the kind of progresses we're seeing begin to accelerate) I can get that. Magical thinking is frustrating, especially when it's coming from someone with eight kids in an idling SUV. I suppose I just perceive the direct opposite as equally magical and thus equally frustrating.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:37
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down with slavery posted:same deal, it's not about the number of people, it's about the way they live Here is a simple equation to understand why the number of people matters: (Energy use per capita) * (number of people) = total energy use
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Jul 9, 2015 20:38
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Wow, wrong thread. Sorry.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:40
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Salt Fish posted:Here is a simple equation to understand why the number of people matters: (Energy use per capita) * (number of people) = total energy use Pro tip: only the first one of those things matter. Do you know why? Because "energy use per capita" is incredibly variable and just throwing an average for everyone up there is completely pointless! You'd be better off figuring out how much energy use is needed minimum per capita and making judgements about the number of people we have based on that. "Don't have kids" isn't realistic advice to anyone, ever and even trying to slightly impact that via policy (see: China's One Child policy) is a recipe for disaster. Again, overpopulation is just a red herring spoken pretty much exclusively by first worlders who live in the countries that have emitted something like 95% of the CO2 added by humans in to the atmosphere. I always find it amusing that they put up big stories "CHINA EMITS MORE THAN THE US!!!" always given in terms of yearly emissions Now total up the US's emissions since 1900 and compare them to China's. It would be more or less impossible for the BRIC countries to emit as much CO2 as we did during our development.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:46
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Wanderer posted:I suppose I just perceive the direct opposite as equally magical and thus equally frustrating. no, the truth is not "somewhere in the middle" there's nothing "magical" about saying humans are animals susceptible to the same biological factors that we see all throughout the animal kingdom expand -> overshoot -> collapse is pretty much the story of every ecosystem ever when there's an abundance of resources, it's not crazy to say we're in the overshoot phase right now and that collapse is inevitable when it's exactly what we see in nature over and over again it's not a "direct opposite", there's nothing magical about applying basic biological principals to human behavior down with slavery fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 20:48
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down with slavery posted:no, the truth is not "somewhere in the middle" Let me rephrase: I consider "civilization will tear itself apart leading to complete human extinction and nothing we can do will stop it, so let's all be beach hippies until we die" to be approximately as magical as "somebody will come up with something to fix this, so let's go eat triple cheeseburgers in my running SUV," to overstate both perspectives for comedic effect. I'm interested in seeing what ways people come up with to try to fix or ameliorate the consequences of this society, and what it'll do to our culture going forward. I'll freely admit that some of that interest is a defense mechanism to keep me from opening a couple of major veins, but either way, I figure the collapse won't quite look like anyone expects.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:59
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For the guy wondering about shell drilling for gas off Australia: Yeah, they just built the biggest ship on earth (prelude flng) to serve as a floating extraction and compression platform. They have four more commissioned and being laid down. It cost $13.6 Billion. They're pretty fuckin serious about it.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:02
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Wanderer posted:Let me rephrase: Well yes, when you overstate them to be insane it's easy to dispute them. But that's not what that author is offering, there is no "civilization will tear itself apart leading to complete human extinction and nothing we can do will stop it" that it's your reaction to the ideas he puts forth says something in of itself.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:08
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down with slavery posted:Well yes, when you overstate them to be insane it's easy to dispute them. But that's not what that author is offering, there is no "civilization will tear itself apart leading to complete human extinction and nothing we can do will stop it" that it's your reaction to the ideas he puts forth says something in of itself. ...that's literally the "acceptance" stage of Pollard's "Second Denial." I'm almost quoting him.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:21
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Wanderer posted:...that's literally the "acceptance" stage of Pollard's "Second Denial." I'm almost quoting him. Find a mention of the inevitable extinction of the human species
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Jul 9, 2015 21:23
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down with slavery posted:Find a mention of the inevitable extinction of the human species You're right. I exaggerated his position in my first post and the "collapse of civilization" bit is in your post, not mine. Strike extinction, substitute collapse, then.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:33
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Of course, the next child you give birth to may be a supergenius who figures out how to eliminate global warming completely.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:33
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pathetic little tramp posted:Of course, the next child you give birth to may be a supergenius who figures out how to eliminate global warming completely. Nah, son, nanomachines. Gonna turn all the plastic into copper on a molecular level.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:35
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pathetic little tramp posted:Of course, the next child you give birth to may be a supergenius who figures out how to eliminate global warming completely. The best part about "not having kids" as climate policy is you get to smugly pretend that non-existant emissions were offset and thus pretend that you're helping while actually doing nothing to change the status quo. All you'd have to do is publish a CSR report and you're ready to be a coal company!
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Jul 9, 2015 21:38
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Wanderer posted:You're right. I exaggerated his position in my first post and the "collapse of civilization" bit is in your post, not mine. Yes, and like I said, saying that a collapse is inevitable is factually correct. That's what has happened, will happen and will continue to happen as long as we are stupid short-sighted animals, which I don't see changing any time soon. The mistake would be to predict a specific date in the near future. "Civilization collapsing", as you've pointed out, can mean a lot of different things. Complete extinction of the species is off the table as far as I'm concerned but pretending like this civilization is "different" from the ones that came previously is like an you predicting immortality because you haven't died yet. Well yes, it's hard to imagine the world without you in it, but people (civilizations) have come and gone and they will continue to long after we're dead. My suggestion would be to re-examine what you envision when you hear the words collapse
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Jul 9, 2015 21:41
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Trabisnikof posted:The best part about "not having kids" as climate policy is you get to smugly pretend that non-existant emissions were offset and thus pretend that you're helping while actually doing nothing to change the status quo. Thats a moronic strawman and you know it. You can as easily say "The best part about "not using a car/eating meat/flying" as climate policy is you get to smugly pretend that non-existant emissions were offset and thus pretend that you're helping while actually doing nothing to change the status quo.", making an effort to reduce your own emissions does not preclude agitating for wider structural changes.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:49
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khwarezm posted:Thats a moronic strawman and you know it. You can as easily say "The best part about "not using a car/eating meat/flying" as climate policy is you get to smugly pretend that non-existant emissions were offset and thus pretend that you're helping while actually doing nothing to change the status quo.", making an effort to reduce your own emissions does not preclude agitating for wider structural changes. Making an effort to reduce your own emissions and using that to justify your superiority is dumb though because making an effort to reduce your own emissions is pointless. The only thing that matters is the wider structural changes and if you think otherwise you are in denial. This is coming from someone who gave away their car and has drastically reduced their own emissions over the past few years to be left wondering "why" while the rest of the world hurtles towards oblivion. Answer: because we're short-sighted apes, this is what it looks like when 7 billion people look out for themselves simultaneously. down with slavery fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 21:51
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pathetic little tramp posted:Of course, the next child you give birth to may be a supergenius who figures out how to eliminate global warming completely. Or it could be double Hitler...
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Jul 9, 2015 21:52
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down with slavery posted:Making an effort to reduce your own emissions and using that to justify your superiority is dumb though because making an effort to reduce your own emissions is pointless. The only thing that matters is the wider structural changes and if you think otherwise you are in denial. If somebody does use that to prove their supposed superiority then their an idiot, just like they would be for anything else if their aim was justifying their superiority. I'm making the point that there is no dichotomy between wider structural changes and stuff you can do yourself, but too many people act like one precludes the other.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:56
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khwarezm posted:If somebody does use that to prove their supposed superiority then their an idiot, just like they would be for anything else if their aim was justifying their superiority. I'm making the point that there is no dichotomy between wider structural changes and stuff you can do yourself, but too many people act like one precludes the other. What exactly do you think people are doing when they drone on about overpopulation. Mentioning world population or the kinds of lightbulbs we use is a total red herring if you're having a serious discussion about reducing emissions and/or mitigating climate disaster.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:58
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khwarezm posted:Thats a moronic strawman and you know it. You can as easily say "The best part about "not using a car/eating meat/flying" as climate policy is you get to smugly pretend that non-existant emissions were offset and thus pretend that you're helping while actually doing nothing to change the status quo.", making an effort to reduce your own emissions does not preclude agitating for wider structural changes. No, stopping emissions now by reducing demand now, is a vastly more helpful things than reducing potential emissions that would be spread over a potential lifetime. The problem isn't that in a generation we're going to be loving over the climate, the problem is, we're loving over the climate now. Likewise, if I reduce my emissions now, those emissions actually don't happen. While I can promise for decades to never have kids (or never expand my coal mine) but as soon as I go back on my word, I can undo all the "good".
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Jul 9, 2015 22:00
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down with slavery posted:What exactly do you think people are doing when they drone on about overpopulation. I think people are worried and trying to seek any solution that might work. Overpopulation can be attractive because it based off a pretty simple concept (more people need more stuff to consume), has been a noted concern for a long time considering humanity's rapid population growth over the last two centuries and looks like an issue that can be solved with limited hardship since it usually entails things like 'educating women, providing easy access to contraception and improving people's economic position' that have been fairly successfully applied around the world and not the 'stick bayonets into people's wombs' that often seems to be what certain people think must happen. Obviously its not the whole story and per-capita consumption is much more important and still overlooked, but overpopulation isn't something to just throw out entirely.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:07
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quote:overpopulation isn't something to just throw out entirely. Sure it is because we're having a demographic CRISIS where we don't have enough children in most developed countries and there's already an incredibly cheap and easy answer: khwarezm posted:'educating women, providing easy access to contraception It's a non-problem brought up by white people who are scared of demographic shifts and taking responsibility for the actions of their ancestors, which ironically include using religion as a justification to not spread birth control to some of the places with the highest birth rates in the world.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:09
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down with slavery posted:Making an effort to reduce your own emissions and using that to justify your superiority is dumb though because making an effort to reduce your own emissions is pointless. The only thing that matters is the wider structural changes and if you think otherwise you are in denial. Not reducing your own emissions is a statement that "somebody else" needs to do it, whoever that is. When everyone shares that viewpoint you get our exact situation today. Society is a sum of its people's beliefs and actions. This is basically "there is no point in voting" as an argument but applied to climate change.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:17
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down with slavery posted:Sure it is because we're having a demographic CRISIS where we don't have enough children in most developed countries and there's already an incredibly cheap and easy answer: I don't understand why you keep injecting racism into everyone's statements. It honestly smacks of projection.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:19
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Salt Fish posted:Not reducing your own emissions is a statement that "somebody else" needs to do it, whoever that is. When everyone shares that viewpoint you get our exact situation today. Society is a sum of its people's beliefs and actions. This is basically "there is no point in voting" as an argument but applied to climate change. This is nearing the dumbest thing posted in the thread. I'm not going to bother diving in too deep but I never said anything about "not reducing your own emissions" so maybe let's just start there. My argument isn't "there is no point in voting" but "voting in of itself accomplishes nothing". Salt Fish posted:I don't understand why you keep injecting racism into everyone's statements. It honestly smacks of projection. Who's injecting racism into a statement? You don't think people who cry about overpopulation aren't speaking specifically about minorities in the developing world? Are they trying to get Japan's birth/death ratio to be even worse?
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Jul 9, 2015 22:20
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down with slavery posted:This is nearing the dumbest thing posted in the thread. I'm not going to bother diving in too deep but I never said anything about "not reducing your own emissions" so maybe let's just start there. You said "making an effort to reduce your own emissions is pointless" .
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Jul 9, 2015 22:26
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down with slavery posted:Sure it is because we're having a demographic CRISIS where we don't have enough children in most developed countries and there's already an incredibly cheap and easy answer: White people and Asian people are having a demographic crisis, and sorry, I consider that one of the least pressing concerns in my life at the moment for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure what your trying to get at but my opinion on the slowdown in births is that it shows how successful and unobtrusive birth control policies can really be, which is one of the reasons that I have little time for people who can only see 'one-child policies' coming from it. In any event if its cheap and easy why have such bile for it? Concerns about the demographic crisis ring hollow to me since there usually driven by fears that white people will be overrun by 'them dirty foreigners', or because of fears that contracting labor sources will undermine society and the economy, the first is just racist, while the second doesn't gel at all with the increasingly likely eventuality that most of those jobs will be sucked up by mechanisation anyway. I don't see the intrinsic worth in having much population growth in the world today, especially if some of the predictions of the future are correct then our kids will probably be living worse lives than us. quote:It's a non-problem brought up by white people who are scared of demographic shifts and taking responsibility for the actions of their ancestors, which ironically include using religion as a justification to not spread birth control to some of the places with the highest birth rates in the world. A 'non-problem'? Interesting perspective, I'm sure that you can speak for all the world's women to say that women's right to education is not really an issue in any parts of the world any more? Wait no, that's a big pile of poo poo, and also women's education correlates with much lower birth rates. Also there's plenty of white (and non-white) people all set and ready to deny people's rights for contraception and abortion, usually with non-white people suffering most. That is ongoing bullshit and must be opposed, if you agree with that then, well, you'll probably end up fighting overpopulation if you want to or not.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:30
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Salt Fish posted:You said "making an effort to reduce your own emissions is pointless" . Kind of taking it out of context there, I mean with regards to stopping/mitigating global climate change. There are all kinds of personal benefits to be gained by reducing emissions but the number that needs to move is society's emissions, not your own. Because your own emissions(specifically the ones you have control over) are miniscule... unless you're like the owner of an international shipping company or something. Money talks, individual actions don't. And if you're poor, your actions don't mean poo poo either in the context of our current crisis.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:31
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khwarezm posted:White people and Asian people are having a demographic crisis  This whole argument seems predicated on dumb poo poo.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:31
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