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Trabisnikof posted:Well, I was saving this for after my coronation but: It's hard to take you seriously because you sound like you think we could actually fix anything.
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Sep 30, 2016 21:57
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TildeATH posted:It's hard to take you seriously because you sound like you think we could actually fix anything. And your pessimistic nihilism has very similar action outcomes as straight denialism. We can do so much, we're just not doing it fast enough or hard enough. But yes, I believe we will. Edit: because I just realized someone is going to take me to mean poo poo won't be bad, see my previous posts if you made that mistake. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 22:10
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Trabisnikof posted:And your pessimistic nihilism has very similar action outcomes as straight denialism. Yes, but it has the benefit of being true. I'm more invested in living in reality.
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Sep 30, 2016 22:18
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TildeATH posted:Yes, but it has the benefit of being true. I'm more invested in living in reality. 2RealForU
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Sep 30, 2016 22:21
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm not arguing if having kids is a good thing or not. Even within the framework that kids==bad, I'm arguing some specific things: You still aren't getting this. Drilling an oil well is bad for the environment. Having a child is bad for the environment. Having the option to drill an oil well but deciding not to is environmentally neutral. Having the option to have a child but deciding not to is environmentally neutral. Not having children does not help the environment, but having children is bad for it. quote:2. Even if you are completely above board in the set-asides and there actually is the potential for mitigation of future emissions, outside of a policy framework individual set asides (e.g. no kids til carbon-free or a/e) can be easily overwhelmed by other factors, e.g the horny teens. To extend the oil example, it doesn't matter if I'm not drilling more wells if my neighbors are instead. This makes no sense in either the oil well or the children situation. Assuming that your neighbor cannot access your oil field, you not extracting the oil means that that oil will not leave the ground, no matter what your neighbor does, and you not having a child will not encourage your neighbor to have one. More than that, the more people who decide not to have children, the less the societal pressure will be upon others to have children. quote:3. Other kinds of individual actions, such as pro-climate capital purchases can reduce emissions faster and for more individual (the entire family). Also the models of future emissions for capital are vastly more certain than the models for offspring. The carbon economy is changing so we can't be sure if future emissions will be as significant as emissions now. We can't be sure if emissions per capita will increase or decrease, so we should hedge by having more children. And what kind of pro-climate capital purchase more than makes up for the extra ~25* years of emissions that having a child generates? *~50 years, from my previous post, divided by two parents. quote:4. Finally, effort spent to move population control into the policy realm where it could see meaningful impacts is so challenging that we'd be better spent using those resources elsewhere. We've got a lot of things to tackle and I'd rather we spend effort now reforming *~*car culture*~* rather than *~*child culture*~* Your car will not generate as much emissions in your lifetime as an extra child will, no matter what car you drive. A child that is not conceived cannot drive a car.
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Sep 30, 2016 22:58
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The whole point is that if emissions per capita doesn't decrease we are all hosed no matter how much we decrease the birth rate.
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Oct 1, 2016 00:03
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Everything just circles back to nuclear and we can't make people stop being idiots about nuclear.
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Oct 1, 2016 00:07
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Trabisnikof posted:The whole point is that if emissions per capita doesn't decrease we are all hosed no matter how much we decrease the birth rate. The planet warms in response to the total amount of GHG in the system. In how much the planet is warming, emissions per capita, is an entirely meaningless concept. Emissions per capita is a great concept for comparing between other nations and how much GHG we can conceivably emit per person, reasonably. Its so obvious that fewer people will mean fewer greenhouse gas emissions, which is less bad for the environment. Virtually nothing we do can be described as "good" but its all colors of less bad. And considering the amount of emissions a person will produce during a lifetime, thats a lot of less emissions had they not existed, its a big number of being less bad. I absolutely agree that reducing emissions per capita is also a thing that needs to happen. A solution of lower population growth and fewer emissions per capita seems a metric tonne easier than a solutoin only consisting of fewer emissions per capita.
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Oct 1, 2016 00:39
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BattleMoose posted:The planet warms in response to the total amount of GHG in the system. In how much the planet is warming, emissions per capita, is an entirely meaningless concept. The issue isn't that we just need to lower emissions by some small %, we need to drop total carbon equivalent emissions by +50% in the medium term and more in the out years. How do population controls get us there?
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Oct 1, 2016 02:44
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Trabisnikof posted:The issue isn't that we just need to lower emissions by some small %, we need to drop total carbon equivalent emissions by +50% in the medium term and more in the out years. How do population controls get us there? It's a totally useless line of discussion. We can't even pass a carbon tax, and people are talking about mandating the number of kids people can have. That's definitely something that's going to happen.
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Oct 1, 2016 02:53
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What if the kids had solve the issues of climate change that would be pretty carbon negative
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Oct 1, 2016 05:02
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Trabisnikof posted:The issue isn't that we just need to lower emissions by some small %, we need to drop total carbon equivalent emissions by +50% in the medium term and more in the out years. How do population controls get us there? It makes it a great deal easier. Consider China, there are a lot less people emitting CO2 due to their child policy. That's less GHG and less warming. Like, its really hard to understand where we are losing you here in this discussion.
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Oct 1, 2016 05:06
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Banana Man posted:What if the kids had solve the issues of climate change that would be pretty carbon negative Apparently you've never met any kids in your life. Let me put it in perspective for you: Every baby boomer was once a kid.
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Oct 1, 2016 05:20
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BattleMoose posted:It makes it a great deal easier. Consider China, there are a lot less people emitting CO2 due to their child policy. That's less GHG and less warming. Like, its really hard to understand where we are losing you here in this discussion. Right and I am arguing that the effort and time spent to globalize that one child policy would both be huge and better spent directly dealing with climate. Reducing birth rates would have been more helpful 50 years ago, but it is too little too late now. One child policy has phased out in part because the costs of the policy on the society were underestimated and the marginal benefits declining. We need action faster than reducing the birth rate over the course of 40 years.
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Oct 1, 2016 06:07
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You're moving the goalposts. Your argument a few pages ago (and why I responded to you in the first place) was that deciding not to have children for the sake of the environment is worthless, but now your argument is that it's too hard to implement low birthrate policy (???) and that it's too late to bother anyway.
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Oct 1, 2016 08:51
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Trabisnikof posted:We need action faster than reducing the birth rate over the course of 40 years. Climate change is going to be a reality for CENTURIES. Its *extremely obvious* that fewer people mean fewer emissions. No one is suggesting only population control. Just the list of all the things you want to happen, just add population control. And we have a better suite of interventions.
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Oct 1, 2016 09:07
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It doesn't even have to be the hard line that the Chinese do. It can firstly involve actually teaching sex ed to high schoolers. Making contraception available absolutely EVERYWHERE (including plan B). Destigmatizing sex. And maybe some advertising encouraging 2 children families. And obviously making abortion legal and safe and socially acceptable. This isn't expensive and could make a big difference.
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Oct 1, 2016 10:08
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Placid Marmot posted:You're moving the goalposts. Your argument a few pages ago (and why I responded to you in the first place) was that deciding not to have children for the sake of the environment is worthless, but now your argument is that it's too hard to implement low birthrate policy (???) and that it's too late to bother anyway. It's more that there are two discussions: Is an individual offsetting emissions when they choose not to have a child? Is population control an effective climate change policy? My opinion is that there are serious confounding issues to calling the decision to not have a child an offset (thus making it a pro-climate action) and serious implementation and efficacy issues with population control as climate change policy. If you think not having children is climate neutral and that we have bigger fish to fry than population policy then we probably agree.
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Oct 1, 2016 19:27
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That is an incredibly pedantic and unimportant distinction without a difference (for electing to have a smaller than average carbon footprint). I'm not trying to engage in an argument here or anything, just wanted to say that.
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Oct 1, 2016 19:48
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It's too late for any population limiting policies to have any effect, either. The real answer is that we're well and truly on greased skids toward massive climate change and it's going to cause untold suffering to billions. Nothing Exxon or Chinese parents can do can change that now. Population control policies would have made a difference, back when anything could have made a difference, as would... Investment in nuclear Carbon exchanges Reduction in coal Stricter policies on conspicuous consumption Authoritarian red greens (ha! Red Green) But even a God Emperor of mankind installed literally tomorrow would have a hard time putting the brakes on this freight train.
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Oct 1, 2016 19:55
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TildeATH posted:It's too late for any population limiting policies to have any effect, either. The real answer is that we're well and truly on greased skids toward massive climate change and it's going to cause untold suffering to billions. Nothing Exxon or Chinese parents can do can change that now. Population control policies would have made a difference, back when anything could have made a difference, as would... Nah There's a big difference between a 600-700 and 1200 ppm world and our action now could be the difference.
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Oct 1, 2016 20:16
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Squalid posted:Nah We should aim for a 10% CO2 world. Death is certain.
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Oct 1, 2016 20:20
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykm3GI1oTnQ
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Oct 1, 2016 20:37
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TildeATH posted:It's too late for any population limiting policies to have any effect, either. We are committed to massive climate change at this point. But climate change is an issue that is going to last for centuries. Actions today will still have long reaching consequences.
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Oct 2, 2016 02:24
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Why are you guys so gloomy, we've still got the Futurama approach of countering global warming with nuclear winter after all. After one properly executed MAD nuclear exchange I'm sure our GHG emissions would readily drop to pre-industrial levels.
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Oct 3, 2016 02:31
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So what I have gathered from this thread so far, geoengineering is literally the only possibility left at this point if we want to prevent substantial warming, and our options for accepting the warming and trying to deal with the consequences are all pretty terrible for anyone outside the first world or near the equator?
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Oct 3, 2016 18:18
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GlyphGryph posted:So what I have gathered from this thread so far, geoengineering is literally the only possibility left at this point if we want to prevent substantial warming, and our options for accepting the warming and trying to deal with the consequences are all pretty terrible for anyone outside the first world or near the equator? Also Geoengineering is risky and expensive, and has a good chance of not working, or loving things up worse. Good times. Drunk Theory fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Oct 3, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2016 18:20
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GlyphGryph posted:So what I have gathered from this thread so far, geoengineering is literally the only possibility left at this point if we want to prevent substantial warming, and our options for accepting the warming and trying to deal with the consequences are all pretty terrible for anyone outside the first world or near the equator? But also that things can get worse and while mitigation and adaptation can't prevent substantial warming it can prevent worse substantial warming. Drunk Theory posted:Also Geoengineering is risky and expensive, and has a good chance of not working, or loving things up worse. Good times. Also even if it works, geoengineering will likely still only manage some of the effects, even if we dump something in the atomosphere, it won't magically un-acidify the ocean
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Oct 3, 2016 18:53
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GlyphGryph posted:So what I have gathered from this thread so far, geoengineering is literally the only possibility left at this point if we want to prevent substantial warming, and our options for accepting the warming and trying to deal with the consequences are all pretty terrible for anyone outside the first world or near the equator? It depends on what you consider "geoengineering." There are a lot of procedures that could be undertaken on a widespread level today, but we aren't sure what the side effects would be. You could de-carbonize the oceans relatively easily with powdered olivine, as dumping that into seawater would theoretically calcify the carbon and turn it into limestone (?), but you'd need a fairly large effort to do so and it's only theoretical. You could turn all the atmospheric carbon into nanotubes, but then you have a shitload of nanotubes lying around and you've just covered a bunch of the landscape with now-useless atmospheric filter systems. After that you get the really pie-in-the-sky options, like iron seeding or solar deflection. We have options. We don't have political will, or the international unity required to truly act. It's possible that our hand will get forced in the very near future, but it's equally possible that we're going to get hit with enough economic troubles to make environmental issues difficult to respond to or predict. We live in interesting times.
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Oct 3, 2016 19:06
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GlyphGryph posted:So what I have gathered from this thread so far, geoengineering is literally the only possibility left at this point if we want to prevent substantial warming, and our options for accepting the warming and trying to deal with the consequences are all pretty terrible for anyone outside the first world or near the equator? I feel like a broken record for how often I post this, but climate change is going to be bad for people living in the developed world too. Some of the fastest growing and most economically active areas in the US are extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and the movement of people and business away from those areas is going to be a long, slow, and painful process. The urban landscape and economic center of the US is likely to look a lot different fifty years from now. Things are going to be drastically worse for people living in poorer, more vulnerable regions, but we're well past the point where climate change is mostly an issue for the third world. This is a global problem that's going to affect everyone. We do have options beyond geoengineering, though. The reason geoengineering gets brought up so often is because a lot of geoengineering proposals are eleventh hour kind of things that might conceivably be funded by wealthier governments once they realize "oh gently caress, we're being economically trashed by this problem that we've been kicking down the road for decades." Most other mitigation efforts require major policy shifts yesterday, and there just doesn't seem to be the political will for it. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Oct 3, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2016 22:06
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Squalid posted:Nah It's a weird person who's in a car speeding towards a brick wall and says "i'm not worried, between now and the time we hit the wall, better airbag technology might be developed"
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Oct 3, 2016 22:14
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call to action posted:It's a weird person who's in a car speeding towards a brick wall and says "i'm not worried, between now and the time we hit the wall, better airbag technology might be developed" Could be worse, I could hit that wall at 200mph.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:30
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call to action posted:It's a weird person who's in a car speeding towards a brick wall and says "i'm not worried, between now and the time we hit the wall, better airbag technology might be developed" It's more you're saying "we can't slow down enough!!!" and other people saying "it is still worthwhile trying to apply the brake!" Basically this: TildeATH posted:Could be worse, I could hit that wall at 200mph.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:52
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call to action posted:It's a weird person who's in a car speeding towards a brick wall and says "i'm not worried, between now and the time we hit the wall, better airbag technology might be developed" You can stomp the brake. You can buckle your seatbelt. You can brake and buckle your seatbelt. Or you can deny that the car's moving at all.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:18
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Life will continue in many forms so you might as well not make it as terrible for the next few dozen millennia as you can possibly imagine.
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Oct 4, 2016 14:20
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Trabisnikof posted:But also that things can get worse and while mitigation and adaptation can't prevent substantial warming it can prevent worse substantial warming. The geoengineering seeming like the only solution left, even the mitigation at this mostly seems to fall into "investments from decades ago finally paying off" and "first, all we need to do is invent magic mind rays suddenly turning humans into properly enlightened aliens" level political fantasy. What are the actual mitigation options being pursued right now that actually have a chance of helping in the future, beyond green energy?
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Oct 4, 2016 14:58
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Mozi posted:Life will continue in many forms so you might as well not make it as terrible for the next few dozen millennia as you can possibly imagine. We should bioengineer intelligent lizard people and leave them the secrets of rocketry/spacefaring so that our new hothouse planet has a headstart
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Oct 4, 2016 15:05
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GlyphGryph posted:Yeah but it seems like we are already at the limits of what we can actually accomplish mitigation wise, especially politically, and while some of those trends are positive its a small consolation. Any time you see solar or wind energy being installed and coal taken offline, or a carbon tax implemented, or a fracking site blocked, or even insulation installed in a house to save on energy, that's mitigation. Right now, mitigation is small scale, but there's a ton it can do to grow. And we absolutely have to pursue mitigation (which is to say, reducing current and future emissions) because as another posted earlier, there's a huge difference between "bad" with 600ppm and "oh gently caress" with 1200ppm CO2.
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Oct 4, 2016 15:08
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It's worth pointing that even in the US there's been progress on emissions. Here's a nice graph from the EPA:  Maybe it's too little/too late but there was a significant drop in carbon emissions per capita and per GDP over the past decade. It will be interesting to see if the recent collapse in oil prices results in higher emissions.
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Oct 4, 2016 15:35
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Nocturtle posted:Maybe it's too little/too late but there was a significant drop in carbon emissions per capita and per GDP over the past decade. It will be interesting to see if the recent collapse in oil prices results in higher emissions. Actually it's too little too late because we've done hosed up a long time ago but at least there's some progress.
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Oct 4, 2016 16:15
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