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TildeATH
Oct 21, 2010

by Lowtax

Hello Sailor posted:

Maybe the furries/otherkin/etc have just gotten even weirder.

Who wants to gently caress a Climatic Optimum! I'm ready baby and hot for you, especially if you're an Atlantic Conveyer or North Atlantic Oscillation!

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TACD
Oct 27, 2000

TildeATH posted:

Who wants to gently caress a Climatic Optimum! I'm ready baby and hot for you, especially if you're an Atlantic Conveyer or North Atlantic Oscillation!
I'm El Niño, let's get nasty ;-*

StabbinHobo
Oct 18, 2002

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

LLSix posted:

I was raised in a Republican family and I just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" for the first time. Man, they really did a thorough hack job on him. I grew up thinking he was a fringe lunatic but I found Al Gore a reasoned and thoughtful speaker.

Is there anything in the movie that isn't accurate?
yes, it turns out he was far too calm and optimistic

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug
54 Degrees Celsius / 129.2 Degrees Fahrenheit in Kuwait

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug
From Brexit, to Clexit:

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...nge-with-clexit

quote:

With Brexit, the Leave campaign won the vote, and the UK economy is already feeling the consequences. As Graham Readfearn reported, a new group called “Clexit” (Climate Exit) has formed in an effort to similarly withdraw countries from the successful international climate treaty forged last year in Paris. As the group describes itself:

Brexit was Britain’s answer to the growing over-reach of EU bureaucracies. Clexit is our answer to the push for global control through climate hysteria.

Clexit leaders are heavily involved in tobacco and fossil fuel-funded organizations, in what’s become known as “the web of denial.” The group’s president is Christopher Monckton, whose extensive misunderstanding of basic climate science was revealed in a thorough debunking by John Abraham, and who insists that President Obama was born in Kenya, among his many controversial and conspiratorial public statements. Its vice president is Marc Morano, who began his career working for Rush Limbaugh and is essentially the real-life version of the character Nick Naylor from the film Thank You for Smoking. Its secretary is Viv Forbes, who has been involved with coal industry for over 40 years and is associated with many fossil fuel-funded groups.

With feedback from the rest of the group’s members, Forbes prepared Clexit’s summary statement, which is full of myths and misinformation about economics, energy, laws, and climate science. It includes this expression of compassionate concern over the plight of low-lying island nations that are being engulfed by rising seas:

Some of the biggest supporters of the Paris accord are small oceanic nations seeking welfare through handouts to save them from baseless predictions of rising sea levels, even though actual changes in sea levels are tiny and not unusual.

The fact is that sea level rise in Tuvalu has been effectively zero since accurate measurements commenced in 1993, on tide gauges set up by the Australian government

This purported fact is actually a fiction: the tide gauge data show the rate of sea level rise in Tuvalu since 1993 is 4.3 mm per year, which is faster than the global average of 3.4 mm per year. And Tuvalu is only one among the many small island nations facing the loss of their homelands at the hands of global warming-caused sea level rise.

However, when it comes to energy use, Clexit’s compassion for developing countries becomes even clearer yet:

For developing countries, the Paris Treaty would deny them the benefits of reliable low-cost hydrocarbon energy, compelling them to rely on biomass heating and costly weather-dependent and unreliable power supplies, thus prolonging and increasing their dependency on international handouts. They will soon resent being told to remain forever in an energy-deprived wind/solar/wood/bicycle economy.

The problem with energy from burning fossil fuels is that it’s only “low-cost” if we ignore the tremendous costs of the damages its carbon pollution causes via climate change. Poorer countries are particularly vulnerable to those costs, both because they lack the wealth and resources to adapt to them, and because they tend to be located in already-hot geographic regions near the equator.

There’s a reason why 95% of expert economists agree that we should cut carbon pollution. Of course, the Clexiters deny that carbon dioxide is a pollutant:

Carbon dioxide is NOT a dangerous pollutant – it is a natural, non-toxic and beneficial gas which feeds all life on earth.

However, this was long ago decided in the courts. In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that the State of Massachusetts had legal standing to sue the EPA for its refusal to regulate greenhouse gases, specifically because Massachusetts showed that it was being harmed by global warming via sea level rise encroaching on its shores. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

In response to the Supreme Court decision, the EPA issued an endangerment finding concluding that, based on the available scientific evidence, carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare, and must therefore be regulated as a pollutant.

The Clexiters deny that vast body of scientific evidence. In addition to sea level rise, their summary statement denies the major role of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s greenhouse effect, that current global temperatures are hotter than they’ve been in over 2,000 years, the dangers of ongoing climate change, that most climate scientists were predicting global warming in the 1970s, and so on.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that the Clexit group denies basic climate science, since the only climate scientist on their committee is Ole Humlum, who has done some very shoddy research on fossil fuels and carbon pollution. The group effectively asks that we all reject the conclusions of 97% of climate science experts and 95% of economics experts, in favor of the myths and misinformation propagated by their fake experts. Perhaps, as top Leave campaigner Michael Gove said:

people in this country have had enough of experts

Gove also pushed to remove climate change from school curriculums, before backing down.

Fortunately, given the high level of global concern about climate change, Clexit faces a much tougher road to success than Brexit, because a Clexit victory would be a disaster for the rest of us.

KaptainKrunk
Feb 6, 2006


Why withdraw from an agreement that is in no way legally binding?

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

KaptainKrunk posted:

Why withdraw from an agreement that is in no way legally binding?

The point isn't to withdraw. These jerks don't really believe they can succeed in leaving. They just want to throw sand into machinery that doesn't work too well at the best of times for the simple pleasure of being able to say "I told you so" when it grinds to a halt. Just look at how they reacted when they actually won the Brexit vote.

This thread has been very useful in helping me to understand the behaviors and motivations of people who propose courses of action that can only end in disaster.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

TildeATH posted:

Anthropogenic, you idiot.

Anthropomorphic climate change is really mad at us for peeing on it's lawn.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Nevvy Z posted:

Anthropomorphic climate change

I never expected to have an actual reason to use this: :furcry:

Rodatose
Jul 8, 2008

corn, corn, corn
Debate & Discussion: You have a constitutional right to be a dumbass › Anthropomorphic Climate Change: greenhouse gases and doghouse asses

VectorSigma
Jan 20, 2004

Transform
and
Freak Out



Mother Nature is having hot flashes and wants her kids to move out already for cryin out loud.

Evil_Greven
Feb 20, 2007

Whadda I got to,
whadda I got to do
to wake ya up?

To shake ya up,
to break the structure up!?
Larson C deathwatch.

quote:

The crack in Larsen C grew around 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) in length between 2011 and 2015. And as it grew, also became wider — by 2015, yawning some 200 meters in length. Since then, growth has only continued — and now, a team of researchers monitoring Larsen C say that with the intense winter polar night over Antarctica coming to an end, they’ve been able to catch of glimpse of what happened to the crack during the time when it could not be observed by satellite.

The result was astonishing.

The rift had grown another 22 kilometers (13.67 miles) since it was last observed in March 2016, and has widened to about 350 meters, report researchers from Project MIDAS, a British Antarctic Survey funded collaboration of researchers from Swansea and Aberystwyth Universities in Wales and other institutions. The full length of the rift is now 130 km, or over 80 miles.
:v: but ice in Antarctica is increasing!

Fansy
Feb 26, 2013

I GAVE LOWTAX COOKIE MONEY TO CHANGE YOUR STUPID AVATAR GO FUCK YOURSELF DUDE
Grimey Drawer
I have a friend who is depressed about the environment to the point of being a doomsdayer, and can't go 20 minutes without mentioning what the end will be like. It's to the point where she is no longer saving for retirement, as she believes the economy will collapse from climate disaster relatively soon. She's also been giving away her money to close friends, which I don't feel comfortable taking.

I don't know much about global warming, but I assume many of you do. Should I push her into getting some therapy and a financial planner, or is she simply being realistic?

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Fansy posted:

I don't know much about global warming, but I assume many of you do. Should I push her into getting some therapy and a financial planner, or is she simply being realistic?

As an apparently not very poor first worlder, she's completely overreacting and will likely not live to experience more than slight discomfort. Push her into therapy and if she insists on giving you money then don't spend it and give it back to her when she calms down I guess?

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

Fansy posted:

I have a friend who is depressed about the environment to the point of being a doomsdayer, and can't go 20 minutes without mentioning what the end will be like. It's to the point where she is no longer saving for retirement, as she believes the economy will collapse from climate disaster relatively soon. She's also been giving away her money to close friends, which I don't feel comfortable taking.

I don't know much about global warming, but I assume many of you do. Should I push her into getting some therapy and a financial planner, or is she simply being realistic?

I'll agree with what blowfish said and add to it.

1. A lot of despair comes from a perceived lack of autonomy. People really don't like feeling powerless, but climate change is really good at getting people to feel powerless when they understand the magnitude of that. One fix for that is activism. If she can get involved with a group making a difference, she'll feel more in control and less existential dread.
2. The economy isn't going to collapse to the point where giving away money/not saving for retirement is a good idea--at least, not any time soon (read: multiple decades). There might be another recession in the next few years, but that's not likely to be because of climate change; it's more likely going to be because of the systemic economic problems that caused the last one. Again, giving away money doesn't logically help her (and if she thinks its not going to help her, why does she think it'll help others?)

One cannot predict years, never-mind decades into the future. You simply can't. So there is no "being realistic." We can guess that things will get really bad, mostly in climatically vulnerable places in the next few decades, but only if things keep going the way they're going. That's why acting to change the way things are going right now is so important.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

Fansy posted:

I don't know much about global warming, but I assume many of you do. Should I push her into getting some therapy and a financial planner, or is she simply being realistic?

Yeah, your friend's actions aren't the actions of a healthy individual thinking rationally. You should probably remind her that the only situation where saving money doesn't make sense is some kind of complete and total collapse of the monetary system, and that's not happening in any first world nation no matter how bad climate change gets. Like, even if everything goes to complete poo poo, she's still better off having savings than not. Making sound decisions now is probably the best thing she can do if she's actually worried about the future.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


blowfish posted:

As an apparently not very poor first worlder, she's completely overreacting and will likely not live to experience more than slight discomfort.

I've been dealing with similar feelings, and as selfish as this is it's a huge gelp. Thank you.

eNeMeE
Nov 26, 2012

Fansy posted:

Should I push her into getting some therapy
Do this and make sure, to the best of your ability, that it happens. Giving stuff away is a bad sign and the global warming thing may just be an excuse for something else.

TildeATH
Oct 21, 2010

by Lowtax

Fansy posted:

I have a friend who is depressed about the environment to the point of being a doomsdayer, and can't go 20 minutes without mentioning what the end will be like. It's to the point where she is no longer saving for retirement, as she believes the economy will collapse from climate disaster relatively soon. She's also been giving away her money to close friends, which I don't feel comfortable taking.

I don't know much about global warming, but I assume many of you do. Should I push her into getting some therapy and a financial planner, or is she simply being realistic?

Buy horrible climate destroying poo poo with her money and then blame her and when she freaks out say "I learned it by watching you! Okay! I learned it by watching you."

Evil_Greven
Feb 20, 2007

Whadda I got to,
whadda I got to do
to wake ya up?

To shake ya up,
to break the structure up!?
Oh, I forgot, the Crystal Serenity is sailing the Northwest Passage right now. This is a 820ft long cruise ship with a 25ft draft.

Here's their current progress - Ulukhaktok, on the west coast of Victoria Island as of this post. They haven't shown much in the way of sea ice along the way.

They plan to arrive in New York City by September 12th and left Seward, Alaska on August 16th, so they're a good ways along already. Looks like the south route is pretty clear this year, too.

Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Aug 28, 2016

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Kavak posted:

I've been dealing with similar feelings, and as selfish as this is it's a huge gelp. Thank you.

:roboluv:

Batham
Jun 19, 2010

Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground.

blowfish posted:

As an apparently not very poor first worlder, she's completely overreacting and will likely not live to experience more than slight discomfort.

This can't be understated enough. If you don't live in India, China or North Africa, you'll very likely have little discomfort at most in your life. China already has massive population issues that are only going to get worse, India is already facing severe droughts (mainly due to piss poor management and planning) and North Africa is all kinds of hosed up already.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?
That actually depends a lot on where you live in the US. Like, Miami is probably legitimately in the trouble and there are parts of the US that will face real water shortage issues that are likely to have pretty major economic effects. Loss of water front property (or expensive programs to mitigate losses) is going to have a real and nontrivial impact on people too. We're not immune to the effects of climate change just because we're in a rich nation. The major difference is that we're more likely to be affected economically.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Paradoxish posted:

That actually depends a lot on where you live in the US. Like, Miami is probably legitimately in the trouble and there are parts of the US that will face real water shortage issues that are likely to have pretty major economic effects. Loss of water front property (or expensive programs to mitigate losses) is going to have a real and nontrivial impact on people too. We're not immune to the effects of climate change just because we're in a rich nation. The major difference is that we're more likely to be affected economically.

Then you look at how readily people are ignoring the flooding in Louisiana right now, in places that have never had flooding before...

TildeATH
Oct 21, 2010

by Lowtax

CommieGIR posted:

Then you look at how readily people are ignoring the flooding in Louisiana right now, in places that have never had flooding before...

He said the first world, dumbass.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

TildeATH posted:

He said the first world, dumbass.

drat it, I can't keep track of all our third world hell holes that we've created in this first world country.

A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

Fansy posted:

I have a friend who is depressed about the environment to the point of being a doomsdayer, and can't go 20 minutes without mentioning what the end will be like. It's to the point where she is no longer saving for retirement, as she believes the economy will collapse from climate disaster relatively soon. She's also been giving away her money to close friends, which I don't feel comfortable taking.

I don't know much about global warming, but I assume many of you do. Should I push her into getting some therapy and a financial planner, or is she simply being realistic?

Hi. I have a degree in environmental science, as in an actual degree with my name on it from a credible university. A lot of my degree was talking about climate science - for example, learning to read IPCC reports, land policy, CO2e gases, using Arcmap to project things like sea level rise. However, my degree largely focused around the politics of climate change, but also the politics of land usage. I can tell you, from being close to the facts, that we're hosed, twelve ways to Sunday.

Let me summarise it down (and ignore a lot of detail but whatever) like this.

1. As is, the climate is changing. Our most moderate climate scenarios in the '90s projected this change would take several centuries.
2. As we got into the '000s, we realized that our unbelievably bad worst case scenarios were way too conservative.
3. As we entered the 2010s, we realized that the climate models that we projected that said that climate change (with concomitant wild temperature changes, changes in weather, and massive sea level rise) wasn't going to happen over the course of several centuries, it's happening inside the course of a human lifetime.
4. The political sectors of the various large industrial countries understand, on a background level that things are Gonna Get Bad, but they're still tied up in a silly political narrative pushed by corporate interests (who, by the way, have been aware this may be happening since the 1960s) that there's a 'debate'. Additionally, a lot of countries like to believe that their natural environments work like some kind of trust fund, that can be drained and then replenished nicely - which is a neat little fiction ( pushed by neo-con morons) that's also happens to be totally wrong. The resulting loss of species in these nations is currently beginning to majorly bite these nations in the rear end. See China's endless flooding for example - it turns out that willy-nilly destroying floodplain habitat to build more industrial parks with paved roads is really piss-poor land use.
5. Tl;dr Things are Gonna Get Bad. Real Bad. The countries that are in the best position to do something, anything about this are too focused on other extremely unimportant poo poo. There have been some rays of light - for example, a lot of nations in Europe are powering themselves purely through renewable sources (which are also bad, but that's a discussion for another post), but the vast majority of what I see, from the Paris treaty to the Kyoto policy is a whole lot of talking and extremely little tangible action.

So, your friend honestly has every right to talk doom - because we are doomed if we continue down the current path. I wish, sincerely, that there was some other way to dress it up with a bow, but if humanity doesn't start loving doing loving anything, we are collectively going to experience climate change with our pants around our ankles, bent over and getting hosed in the rear end by climate change.

Nice piece of fish
Jan 29, 2008

Ultra Carp

A White Guy posted:

Hi. I have a degree in environmental science, as in an actual degree with my name on it from a credible university. A lot of my degree was talking about climate science - for example, learning to read IPCC reports, land policy, CO2e gases, using Arcmap to project things like sea level rise. However, my degree largely focused around the politics of climate change, but also the politics of land usage. I can tell you, from being close to the facts, that we're hosed, twelve ways to Sunday.

Let me summarise it down (and ignore a lot of detail but whatever) like this.

1. As is, the climate is changing. Our most moderate climate scenarios in the '90s projected this change would take several centuries.
2. As we got into the '000s, we realized that our unbelievably bad worst case scenarios were way too conservative.
3. As we entered the 2010s, we realized that the climate models that we projected that said that climate change (with concomitant wild temperature changes, changes in weather, and massive sea level rise) wasn't going to happen over the course of several centuries, it's happening inside the course of a human lifetime.
4. The political sectors of the various large industrial countries understand, on a background level that things are Gonna Get Bad, but they're still tied up in a silly political narrative pushed by corporate interests (who, by the way, have been aware this may be happening since the 1960s) that there's a 'debate'. Additionally, a lot of countries like to believe that their natural environments work like some kind of trust fund, that can be drained and then replenished nicely - which is a neat little fiction ( pushed by neo-con morons) that's also happens to be totally wrong. The resulting loss of species in these nations is currently beginning to majorly bite these nations in the rear end. See China's endless flooding for example - it turns out that willy-nilly destroying floodplain habitat to build more industrial parks with paved roads is really piss-poor land use.
5. Tl;dr Things are Gonna Get Bad. Real Bad. The countries that are in the best position to do something, anything about this are too focused on other extremely unimportant poo poo. There have been some rays of light - for example, a lot of nations in Europe are powering themselves purely through renewable sources (which are also bad, but that's a discussion for another post), but the vast majority of what I see, from the Paris treaty to the Kyoto policy is a whole lot of talking and extremely little tangible action.

So, your friend honestly has every right to talk doom - because we are doomed if we continue down the current path. I wish, sincerely, that there was some other way to dress it up with a bow, but if humanity doesn't start loving doing loving anything, we are collectively going to experience climate change with our pants around our ankles, bent over and getting hosed in the rear end by climate change.

- Dr A White Guy, Phd.

I'm kidding. I'll take it on faith for once that you have the qualifications you say you do, I'd just love to see someone do a Phd on exactly how hosed we are and word the dissertation like your post.

I don't doubt that you're correct, but I'd like to ask you to be more specific as to what definition of "doomed" you're operating under.

Like I've been harping on previously, we're unlikely to see the kind of action needed to mitigate (mitigate, not prevent, because that ship has sailed) climate change without an accompanying change in political structure/ideology (the death of consumerist capitalism and its influence on politics at the very least), which will no doubt lead to big upheavals, chaos and so forth. Possibly war. Most likely war. Which, with nukes, is the biggest danger I can see of an actual doomsday happening.

Humans are fairly robust and adaptable creatures, and while I don't know what kind of society we will have after the worst effects become apparent, some form of society will most likely live on.

My worst case scenario is:

- Billions die from starvation brought on by climate change-induced massive crop failiure and drought, together with the end of fossil fuels to use in agriculture machinery and the end of cheaply available phosfate /phosphorous(no cheap artificial fertilizer anymore). Gradual is catastrophic. Sudden collapse is much, much worse.

- Massive starvation increases political instability as masses of people do anything to aquire food. Emergency services are overwhelmed, and no army can stop an entire country of starving citizens running amok. Wars begin over scarce resources/arable land and water. This gets worse the less gradual starvation is.

- Wars escalate and become regional, then continental. Literal world war. Nukes fly. Curtains.

Obviously, I can't know that any of this will happen. Based on the facts available right now, about the agricultural practices we currently employ and the dwindling resources they require coupled with climate change possibly rendering large swathes of farm land unusable, and how people usually respond to a life-threatening situation/resource scarcity, I can't see that ending well under most circumstances.

The big unknowns are that I don't know how people really will react, how gradually the situation will develop or if we find alternatives to avoid this kind of neo-malthusian catastrophe. I also don't know that wars will really begin and that nukes will fly, but based on how close we've come in the past and the relative proliferation of nuclear weapons, I'm again not very happy about the odds.

That's how I see the situation developing if we don't do anything to prevent it. I would love to be reassured that I'm wrong, though.

A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

Nice piece of fish posted:

- Dr A White Guy, Phd.

I'm kidding. I'll take it on faith for once that you have the qualifications you say you do, I'd just love to see someone do a Phd on exactly how hosed we are and word the dissertation like your post.

I don't doubt that you're correct, but I'd like to ask you to be more specific as to what definition of "doomed" you're operating under.

Like I've been harping on previously, we're unlikely to see the kind of action needed to mitigate (mitigate, not prevent, because that ship has sailed) climate change without an accompanying change in political structure/ideology (the death of consumerist capitalism and its influence on politics at the very least), which will no doubt lead to big upheavals, chaos and so forth. Possibly war. Most likely war. Which, with nukes, is the biggest danger I can see of an actual doomsday happening.

Humans are fairly robust and adaptable creatures, and while I don't know what kind of society we will have after the worst effects become apparent, some form of society will most likely live on.

My worst case scenario is:

- Billions die from starvation brought on by climate change-induced massive crop failiure and drought, together with the end of fossil fuels to use in agriculture machinery and the end of cheaply available phosfate /phosphorous(no cheap artificial fertilizer anymore). Gradual is catastrophic. Sudden collapse is much, much worse.

- Massive starvation increases political instability as masses of people do anything to aquire food. Emergency services are overwhelmed, and no army can stop an entire country of starving citizens running amok. Wars begin over scarce resources/arable land and water. This gets worse the less gradual starvation is.

- Wars escalate and become regional, then continental. Literal world war. Nukes fly. Curtains.

Obviously, I can't know that any of this will happen. Based on the facts available right now, about the agricultural practices we currently employ and the dwindling resources they require coupled with climate change possibly rendering large swathes of farm land unusable, and how people usually respond to a life-threatening situation/resource scarcity, I can't see that ending well under most circumstances.

The big unknowns are that I don't know how people really will react, how gradually the situation will develop or if we find alternatives to avoid this kind of neo-malthusian catastrophe. I also don't know that wars will really begin and that nukes will fly, but based on how close we've come in the past and the relative proliferation of nuclear weapons, I'm again not very happy about the odds.

That's how I see the situation developing if we don't do anything to prevent it. I would love to be reassured that I'm wrong, though.

I don't know how much I buy the 'surface depletion equals wars' hypothesis. For example, Fresh water resources have been maxed out (as in, you can't collect or pump anymore) in several parts of the world for years. In only one area, I can think of major internal conflict going on, and that's because that area is fuuuucked for water resources (Yemen). If anything, resource depletion or maximization of yield seems to have led to far more cooperation between states. However, I can say this:

1. Sea level rise is going to be massive. The sea is going to come up 8 meters (possibly a lot more if Greenland melts too) in my lifetime. Massive amounts of perfectly good arable land are going to go under the waves. Freshwater rivers where major cities draw their drinking water are going to have salt water penetrating much further up them in the next several years.Just from the situation in Oceania, I can guess that a lot of people are going to be forced to find a new home. This is going to cause major unrest, just like any movement of migrants. Look at the Syrian migration crisis, and then understand that truly is the tip of the iceberg:v:.
2. Social unrest is going to become problematic as various areas of the world cease being as productive or habitable as they used to be. I don't think there's any areas of the world that are going to become outright uninhabitable, because those areas that are going to get the worst of the warming are already downright awful (middle east, especially).
3. The process of climate change is accelerating. As permafrost melts and methane that's trapped in layers of frozen soil begin to be released, the rate at which we see new phenomenon will increase. Methane is roughly twice as bad (ie 'warming' if that makes any sense) as CO2. If all the methane on Earth were released into the atmosphere at once, we would be looking at an extinction level event. I don't think anything as dramatic as that will happen, but it's gonna get bad.
4. The big thing that I think is going to really push things to happen will be the slowing down of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf stream takes heat from the Caribbean and pushes it north into the North Atlantic, across the way to Europe. Europe is roughly as far north as Quebec. Without the Gulf Stream bringing heat to that part of the world, it would experience a lot more severe climate. Take a look at this map. You'll notice the anomaly in the North Atlantic as actually being colder than average. Yes, where everywhere else in the world, glaciers are retreating, the glaciers in Iceland actually advanced last year. I suspect this is what may happen, but that's based solely upon my own observation, and not on rigorous modelling.

I've also not noted a host of other issues like the collapse of the biosphere, deforestation destroying economies, rivers, ecosystems, and the lives of everyone on the planet, and the big one that scares me even though I know very little, ocean acidification. Essentially, what will happen in the next twenty years is going to be a process of people fleeing to other areas of the planet because the areas they're used to living off of will no longer be as sustainable. This will drive tremendous social tension in areas of the world that have enough land to be buffeted from the effects of climate change. While I don't think nukes will start flying willy-nilly because people will start hating each other, I fear we're going to see waaay, waaay more repressive governments. Geo-political tension will be driven in part by climate change (as we suspect it already is, in Syria).

Dazzling Addar
Mar 27, 2010

He may have a funny face, but he's THE BEST KONG
it really cannot be overstated how much chaos the displacement of millions of people who live along threatened coastlines is going to cause. even if everything else about climate change was actually just people screaming about the sky falling, this factor alone is enough cause for serious concern about the future of the geopolitical landscape. we are already seeing the havoc caused by displacement due to war and economic downturn. when you've got people coming in who literally cannot live under any circumstances anymore in their homes because they are 30 feet under salt water, the need for migration becomes even more dire, and the backlash against it is only going to get worse. the middle class are not going to be magically immune from the inevitable upheaval because they've got enough money to afford air conditioning and two cars.

how you want to cope with this is your own business. it's somewhat early to be giving your money away, since we probably have a solid decade or two before things go really sour, but if that's what helps somebody find solace, i'm not going to tell them that they're wrong.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

A White Guy posted:

1. Sea level rise is going to be massive. The sea is going to come up 8 meters (possibly a lot more if Greenland melts too) in my lifetime. Massive amounts of perfectly good arable land are going to go under the waves. Freshwater rivers where major cities draw their drinking water are going to have salt water penetrating much further up them in the next several years.Just from the situation in Oceania, I can guess that a lot of people are going to be forced to find a new home. This is going to cause major unrest, just like any movement of migrants. Look at the Syrian migration crisis, and then understand that truly is the tip of the iceberg:v:.
Citation for 8m in a few decades? All the things I've read have indicated that while it may go up a lot, it will also take quite a while (i.e. we're unlikely to see more than maybe 0.5-1m of that in our lives) to go all the way up.

quote:

I've also not noted a host of other issues like the collapse of the biosphere, deforestation destroying economies, rivers, ecosystems, and the lives of everyone on the planet, and the big one that scares me even though I know very little, ocean acidification. Essentially, what will happen in the next twenty years is going to be a process of people fleeing to other areas of the planet because the areas they're used to living off of will no longer be as sustainable. This will drive tremendous social tension in areas of the world that have enough land to be buffeted from the effects of climate change. While I don't think nukes will start flying willy-nilly because people will start hating each other, I fear we're going to see waaay, waaay more repressive governments. Geo-political tension will be driven in part by climate change (as we suspect it already is, in Syria).

Yeah, but that, again, is a problem of the poorest 3/4 (:v:) of the planet while in the west we'd mostly be complaining about losing beachfront property and stuff getting expensive, and maybe going full rear end in a top hat and closing borders. Sure, heat waves in summer might kill people with heart disease a bit earlier and importing a higher proportion of food because agricultural yields go down with water sucks, but not enough to actually endanger a middle class or rich first worlder.

Acidification is also a problem, but studies on that are hard and the extremely strong effects reported in short term experiments don't seem to carry over to longer term stuff (i.e. many organisms can adjust over months or years even though they'd die if you suddenly change the pH by the same amount).

A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

blowfish posted:

Citation for 8m in a few decades? All the things I've read have indicated that while it may go up a lot, it will also take quite a while (i.e. we're unlikely to see more than maybe 0.5-1m of that in our lives) to go all the way up.


Yeah, but that, again, is a problem of the poorest 3/4 (:v:) of the planet while in the west we'd mostly be complaining about losing beachfront property and stuff getting expensive, and maybe going full rear end in a top hat and closing borders. Sure, heat waves in summer might kill people with heart disease a bit earlier and importing a higher proportion of food because agricultural yields go down with water sucks, but not enough to actually endanger a middle class or rich first worlder.

Acidification is also a problem, but studies on that are hard and the extremely strong effects reported in short term experiments don't seem to carry over to longer term stuff (i.e. many organisms can adjust over months or years even though they'd die if you suddenly change the pH by the same amount).

Hrm, maybe not 8 meters in my lifetime. The last IPCC report was projecting .8 to 1.2 meters in a century. But, understand this - Every time, our very worst projections have ended up being too conservative.

If the Greenland ice sheet melts (which it is doing. VICE did a thing on it, and the natives are astonished at how rapidly the ice is retreating), our projections are going to rapidly change. If Antarctic ice sheets also start calving off, so much more freshwater is going to be introduced to the system. Secondly, take into account that you have less to worry about the sea level passively rising - that's actually fairly easy to mitigate. You have a lot more to worry about from storm surges and king tides. The Eastern seaboard and the South got a taste during Hurricane Sandy. It's going to get much worse.

The West (ie, USA) has a lot to fear from climate change. Many of our agricultural regions are going to be majorly affected by it, chiefly California. Not only are large tracts of land going to go under the waves, precipitation in the West is projected to continue to decrease through out the century. The drought that California is experiencing may actually become the new normal.

blacksun
Mar 16, 2006
I told Cwapface not to register me with a title that said I am a faggot but he did it anyway because he likes to tell the truth.

A White Guy posted:

Hrm, maybe not 8 meters in my lifetime. The last IPCC report was projecting .8 to 1.2 meters in a century. But, understand this - Every time, our very worst projections have ended up being too conservative.

If the Greenland ice sheet melts (which it is doing. VICE did a thing on it, and the natives are astonished at how rapidly the ice is retreating), our projections are going to rapidly change. If Antarctic ice sheets also start calving off, so much more freshwater is going to be introduced to the system. Secondly, take into account that you have less to worry about the sea level passively rising - that's actually fairly easy to mitigate. You have a lot more to worry about from storm surges and king tides. The Eastern seaboard and the South got a taste during Hurricane Sandy. It's going to get much worse.

The West (ie, USA) has a lot to fear from climate change. Many of our agricultural regions are going to be majorly affected by it, chiefly California. Not only are large tracts of land going to go under the waves, precipitation in the West is projected to continue to decrease through out the century. The drought that California is experiencing may actually become the new normal.

There is a big difference between 'IPCC states 0.8 - 1.2m, but our estimates have historically been too conservative' to '8m in our lifetimes'.

As someone with 'a degree in environmental science, as in an actual degree with my name on it from a credible university' maybe you should be a little more sure of your words instead of doing what the reactionary-right accuse people involved in climate change doing, which is exaggerating.

EDIT: My annoyance got the better of me and I used language I shouldn't have. Seriously though, if Arkane saw this he would have a world of ammunition for his bullshit.

blacksun fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Aug 30, 2016

Nice piece of fish
Jan 29, 2008

Ultra Carp

blowfish posted:

Yeah, but that, again, is a problem of the poorest 3/4 (:v:) of the planet while in the west we'd mostly be complaining about losing beachfront property and stuff getting expensive, and maybe going full rear end in a top hat and closing borders. Sure, heat waves in summer might kill people with heart disease a bit earlier and importing a higher proportion of food because agricultural yields go down with water sucks, but not enough to actually endanger a middle class or rich first worlder.

Acidification is also a problem, but studies on that are hard and the extremely strong effects reported in short term experiments don't seem to carry over to longer term stuff (i.e. many organisms can adjust over months or years even though they'd die if you suddenly change the pH by the same amount).

Oh, in our globalized society, the problems of 3/4ths of the world is a problem of 1/1th of the world. "Stuff getting expensive" can vary by orders of magnitude depending on how well globalized trade is affected by instability and loss of industrial/agricultural capacity. If the stuff that's getting real expensive is food, the west will most definitely suffer as well.

Also, "closing borders" is not realistic. It's not actually possible to stop mass migration once it reaches a certain threshold without actual literal genocide along an entire border. I hope we won't be willing and I doubt we will be able.

A big problem I see, is that particularly agricultural collapse can come relatively suddenly. Crops are seasonal, and if enough areas have one very bad season, there's no nation on earth that has enough food stored to last us until next harvest. Food would get expensive over a few months and then it'd just not be there anymore. We wouldn't even have warning signs (that we wouldn't ignore) until after the harvest and reports start coming back of unexpectedly low yeilds.

A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

blacksun posted:

There is a big difference between 'IPCC states 0.8 - 1.2m, but our estimates have historically been too conservative' to '8m in our lifetimes'.

As someone with 'a degree in environmental science, as in an actual degree with my name on it from a credible university' maybe you should be a little more sure of your words instead of doing what the reactionary-right accuse people involved in climate change doing, which is scare-mongering.

On the contrary, there's little difference, largely because our projections aren't nearly as accurate as we hope they are. Positive forcing (ie, phenomena compounding on phenomena) has an odd habit of rendering what we project to happen hilariously off-kilter. That's the point, for as much as we know about the way the climate works, our most wildly liberal projections have been entirely too conservative. The worst case scenario that we thought would happen, ended up being so far from the truth that we had to move the goalposts of what we think is bad.

I could expand upon the magnitude of our ignorance in regards to the variety of aspects of climate change that are happening right now, but it would be lost on pedants such as yourself. :thumbsup:

Forever_Peace
May 7, 2007

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Ahahaha holy gently caress.

Either you are still in college or you graduated a few months ago because you are a walking Dunning–Kruger effect as bad as any undergrad I have seen or taught.

Forever_Peace
May 7, 2007

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"Hi I am a Scientist*, but I don't actually believe in science so here are some numbers I made up that all of you should join me in assuming, because only a mouthbreathing pedant has a problem with bullshit."

*not actually a scientist

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Forever Peace, do you know what the following four letters are?

IPCC

I got into this thread 5 months ago not knowing about or having actually read documentation on climate change. This is as someone who worked as a high performance computing engineer in a large atmospheric science lab. I buckled down and read IPCC AR5's summaries and a dozen-ish component publications.

I suggest you do the same.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


I generally find that the numbers being thrown around here do actually have some substance, and that the assumption being made is that you've done your homework.

This isn't a "debate with deniers" thread (usually), but rather a policy / don't-be-sadbrained thread. A debate thread would see maaaaaany more references to publications in the IPCC report pool. Actually, they have to be pulled out quite frequently whenever Arkane is in here too.

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Forever_Peace
May 7, 2007

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I am not a denialist, that's not my motivation here.

I am an actual scientist, with a PhD, who doesn't condone bullshit.

I have read the IPCC, and Beyond Growth, and subscribe to Nature Climate Change (for a number of years now), and have marched in divestment protests etc. I know it's bad. That's not a license to show disdain for science.

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