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2c of warming is predicted to threaten the extinction of a 1/3rd all living species, our target.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:17
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GlyphGryph posted:If you're the sort to teach your children the importance of climate change, than refusing to have children seems like it will only make things worse, since the people who do not care about climate change are obviously going to continue to have children. No, false and stupid. Adding more children is certain to increase environmental degradation, even if the parents are [or rather, claim to be] environmentally conscientious, since nobody improves the environment by existing. Even if we imagine that people exist who produce no environmental degradation, governments are compelled to provide infrastructure and services for them, whether these facilities are used or not. When a child is born, the government plans ahead for the increased schools, housing, roads, hospitals and everything else that will need to exist to cater for this person in the future, even if the parents will keep the child in a treehouse, gathering fallen fruit to survive and using wild mushrooms as medicine. In the short term, reduced fertility will no damage to -- let alone will it "destroy" -- "our economic and industrial base", since A. There is already excess labor, B. There are millions of people who would be happy to migrate to countries with labor deficits and to work with lower pay and poorer conditions than the locals, C. Automation can and would replace labor in the event that immigration did not cover any deficit, D. Reduced population means reduced demand, so less labor and resources are required to sustain the economy.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:18
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I hate to keep reverting to loving political cartoons but BETTER NOT PASS ANY LAWS EVER THEN, CONGRESS AGREES. What is the point of not trying? A selfish, complacent reveling in the continuation of your own (comparative) decadence? I feel like we're tripping into some kind of Kantian meta-discussion of whether Things are worth Doing.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:19
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Ol Standard Retard posted:I hate to keep reverting to loving political cartoons but BETTER NOT PASS ANY LAWS EVER THEN, CONGRESS AGREES. Of course things are worth doing. It's just that the outcome of good decisions now is no longer that we avert a major crisis for our species, it's that there is an Earth left after everything stabilizes that humans can still live on, besides in tiny hunter gatherer groups near the poles.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:23
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a whole buncha crows posted:2c of warming is predicted to threaten the extinction of a 1/3rd all living species, our target. It would threaten more but we've already killed them!
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Oct 17, 2016 20:24
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The Groper posted:We'll live in brotherhood of steel-style bunkers eating vat-grown yeasts before accepting extinction. There's no reasonable scenario where this happens either. Worrying about the literal extinction of the human race is silly, because the negative effects of climate change on economic growth will drastically reduce our ability to dump carbon into the atmosphere whether we like it or not. It's a fairly morbid thing to say, but the 2008 recession and drastic run-up in oil prices that happened beforehand probably did more to mitigate emissions than just about anything else we've done so far. A lot of economic power is concentrated on coasts and/or in areas seriously vulnerable to either droughts or more severe weather events. Even countries like the US are going to have to endure a lot of pain as people and businesses migrate away from areas that are too expensive to save. Industrialized civilization won't collapse because there's just no scenario where business as usual (as defined here in 2016) remains an option past around 1.5-2C. (unless, of course, we trigger some positive feedback loop that we don't fully understand and kill everything)
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Oct 17, 2016 20:25
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Trabisnikof posted:It would threaten more but we've already killed them! death is a natural process 
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Oct 17, 2016 20:28
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What scares me most is the unknowns, such as when the uk realised the co2 released annually by the soil countered all the efforts made to comply with kyoto.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:33
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Paradoxish posted:(unless, of course, we trigger some positive feedback loop that we don't fully understand and kill everything) What makes you think this hasn't already happened? Also, for the record, the collapse of civilization itself will probably add a few C.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:34
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Nocturtle posted:Does it really promote collective action? Can you estimate how much carbon emissions have been reduced by "discussing and promoting having fewer children and not flying around the world"? If you can't, then how do you know this discussion is having any effect at all? Yes, changing the behavior of a population both is and results in collective action. There is no discussion of having fewer children, so of course I can't put a figure on any effect that it could have had. On the contrary, increased childbirth is widely promoted, and the sum of "don't fly" versus "just $49 return plus taxes" is heavily weighted toward the promotion of flying. Individual action leading to collective (and consequential) results is easily accomplished by taxing the bad stuff and untaxing or subsidizing the good, but this requires unacceptable political action, just like any "actual solution" you can think of would. China's one child policy had demonstrable results, but required authoritarian action to implement, just as meaningful climate policy and action will. I will note at this point, since it's pertinent, that most environmental degradation is the collective result of individual actions. It's not Exxon that produces 5% of the world's CO2e, but the demand of the 100 million customers that Exxon serves (made up numbers). If the world's consumers reduce their emissions by 10% on average (trivially achieveable, even politically achievable, but also not enough, I know), not only will global emissions fall by close to 10%, but the amount of sequestration and/or geoengineering required will fall by some percentage.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:37
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Advocating voluntary depopulation is one of the dumbest ideas you can put forth. Just take a step back and think about what you're saying. Also just throwing out there again that collapsing civilization (what's going to happen if everyone stops having as many kids) is just going to warm the Earth, so there's no real gain to be had there. If you're willing to reduce everyone down to the per capita emissions of their country how can you possibly advocate individual action?
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Oct 17, 2016 20:41
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NewForumSoftware posted:Also just throwing out there again that collapsing civilization (what's going to happen if everyone stops having as many kids) is just going to warm the Earth, so there's no real gain to be had there. How does this work, exactly?
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Oct 17, 2016 20:47
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The Groper posted:How does this work, exactly? What do you think 7 billion people starving to death looks like? You think they wont burn those trees to keep warm? What about the nuclear plants that require active cooling or else they'll blow? Do we expect no nuclear exchanges? Also by the way, industrial civilization and all that pollution throws a bunch of particulates up in the air that actually cool us a great deal. Bad part is that the second it stops that cooling goes away. Not over years, days. (I'll find the paper on this, gotta do some digging - http://climate.nasa.gov/news/215/just-5-questions-aerosols/ decent overview) quote:Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have pumped more and more aerosols into the air, and this in turn has actually counteracted global warming to a significant degree. Using climate models, we estimate that aerosols have masked about 50 percent of the warming that would otherwise have been caused by greenhouse gases trapping heat near the surface of the Earth. Without the presence of these aerosols in the air, our models suggest that the planet would be about 1 °C (1.8 °F) hotter. In many ways continuing to pollute the atmosphere with all the aerosols we do is the only thing keeping us alive at this point.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:50
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NewForumSoftware posted:What do you think 7 billion people starving to death looks like? You think they wont burn those trees to keep warm? What about the nuclear plants that require active cooling or else they'll blow? Do we expect no nuclear exchanges? This post made me sad. Not because I know whether it is right or wrong, it just makes me sad.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:51
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Nuclear exchanges no, but conventional weapons at borders yes.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:52
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Potato Salad posted:This post made me sad. Stop caring about fixing it and start caring about what you want to get out of life, be it a family, doing something you love, etc. You just have to work through the process of detaching yourself from caring about something that honestly, we have no business even understanding. Yes, you will see the impacts of abrupt climate change kill millions IN YOUR LIFE. The only thing you can do is control what you can and learn to either avoid or enjoy the rest.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:53
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NewForumSoftware posted:Advocating voluntary depopulation is one of the dumbest ideas you can put forth. Just take a step back and think about what you're saying. The alternative to voluntary depopulation is going to be involuntary depopulation, so it's striking that anyone would consider it amongst the dumbest of ideas. If you sincerely believe that the Earth's population has to grow forever in order to maintain civilization, why be concerned with CO2? An ever-growing population would eventually cook the atmosphere just with waste heat even from just the energy transfer of 100% renewable energy.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:54
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Wakko posted:The alternative to voluntary depopulation is going to be involuntary depopulation, so it's striking that anyone would consider it amongst the dumbest of ideas. If you sincerely believe that the Earth's population has to grow forever in order to maintain civilization, why be concerned with CO2? An ever-growing population would eventually cook the atmosphere just with waste heat even from just the energy transfer of 100% renewable energy. Having children is so central to the human experience that without it, I honestly believe life isn't worth living. We don't know how it will be until humans go extinct. Maybe 50 years, maybe 500, maybe 5000, maybe 50000. As far as I'm concerned enjoyments of one life is relative more than anything else. Members of the Homo genus were plenty happy without anything we have today, and really the only people this is going to be horrific for are the people who were privileged enough to enjoy the brief period of human history where it wasn't the norm. I'm willing to admit you can call this selfish, but quite frankly until you show me a plan where it actually helps anything I don't really see the point. We're moving from an era where the Earth takes over what we've started. We literally can't stop the machine even if we kill ourselves today. (edit. For the record, I'm not saying have as many kids as you want, I think there's an argument to be made for the fact that anything above population replacement, ie 2, is unethical) NewForumSoftware fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Oct 17, 2016 |
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Oct 17, 2016 20:56
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NewForumSoftware posted:Stop caring about fixing it and start caring about what you want to get out of life, be it a family, doing something you love, etc. You just have to work through the process of detaching yourself from caring about something that honestly, we have no business even understanding. Yes, you will see the impacts of abrupt climate change kill millions IN YOUR LIFE. The only thing you can do is control what you can and learn to either avoid or enjoy the rest. Sorry, but I'll continue learning how to insert my franchise into local politics for the benefit of public health despite life sometimes being hard  So, in the nature of this thread's topic "What is to be done" and the Occam's Razor of expediency that entails, if we are to work the problem despite the monumental task ahead of us in any way possible, what if anything are you doing at local levels? This came up a few months ago, and since then I've started attending civic center events more (about three times a month) and have consequently gotten to chat up some local officials. I'm also looking for local green movements / rallies more but am still new at this and am kinda flinging arms wildly looking for connections. I trust it'll happen with time. Others?
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Oct 17, 2016 21:02
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Nice piece of fish posted:Absolutely. If we can preserve industrial civilization and scientific progress of some form (which I assume is more likely in developed nations than elsewhere), humanity will quite possibly persevere, though with a much reduced capacity for... everything. It means the death of most of us, though. Low-tier non-environmental physicist right here so take all this with some salt, but you're absolutely right in that entropy will always try to bend us over the barrel. Let's be supremely generous and assume away any resource constraints so that more power = more sequestration at a 1:1 rate. There's an initial discount because you're not going to build any of those plants without spending some of your carbon budget, let's be generous again and say it takes only 1 year to reach breakeven. We begin construction immediately. In the 10 years(again, super best case assumption) it takes to roll out our vast fleet of plants, we maintain 2016 emissions rates (assumption) as we build, and now, in 2027, we finally go online with phase 1. The problem is, we are now further into the future, with no extreme emissions cuts (on account of all the crazy building we've been doing) , and new emissions control has to be intense enough to reach carbon negativity once the sequestration is accounted. But the populace at large has become extremely invested in this moonshot project the world just spent a decade of effort on, and they expect it to allow them to maintain their lifestyle. Maybe it's this forum's pessimism, but that doesn't seem likely to work under politics as we know them. E; and if your assumption is this only STARTS when we hit the resource crunch, no, we're dead. Every cheap unit of energy you spend on the sequestration system is one that people cant spend now, so prices get out of control quickly Car Hater fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Oct 17, 2016 |
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Oct 17, 2016 21:06
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Potato Salad posted:Sorry, but I'll continue learning how to insert my franchise into local politics for the benefit of public health despite life sometimes being hard That's exactly what I'm telling you to do. Ignore the global collective action that will never come and focus on what you can change, your local community. It may sound harsh, but if your community isn't amenable I'd seriously consider moving to one where it is. Even if it's just a "Greener" city. The general attitudes of people, even if they aren't actively helping anything, make it a much more enjoyable experience to be alive. If you're going to take a pessimistic stance on collective global action you absolutely must take an optimistic one on your local surroundings.
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Oct 17, 2016 21:07
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Potato Salad posted:Sorry, but I'll continue learning how to insert my franchise into local politics for the benefit of public health despite life sometimes being hard I'm currently hunting for ecology / land conservation jobs to leverage my new qualification instead of my Need To Make Money like I have for the last decade. Also for the brief period my wife and I are living in NYC I'm taking advantage of her family's connections to bend the ear of whatever powerful people we have the good fortune to encounter about the gravity of climate/carbon issues and their intersectionality with literally everything. Both as a function of the job hunt and as a pseudo-evangelism to a class of people who generally exist and will continue to do so utterly oblivious to the discipline at large.
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Oct 17, 2016 21:11
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NewForumSoftware posted:Having children is so central to the human experience that without it, I honestly believe life isn't worth living. We don't know how it will be until humans go extinct. Maybe 50 years, maybe 500, maybe 5000, maybe 50000. As far as I'm concerned enjoyments of one life is relative more than anything else. Members of the Homo genus were plenty happy without anything we have today, and really the only people this is going to be horrific for are the people who were privileged enough to enjoy the brief period of human history where it wasn't the norm- So in other words for your own selfish enjoyment you are willing to create another human being who will most likely spend their short lift scrabbling a horrible hand to mouth existence and deal with likely being repeatedly raped and brutalized? I could never understand this kind of thinking. "I will protect my children". "My children will be better prepared". "My children will be the king of the castle". Thinking that you are better than everyone else is probably the most destructive mentality today. I was told I was "gifted" and better than others all my life by parents, teachers and therapists. It did nothing for me. It only made me complacent and anyone raised like this will too. Don't commit the horrible crime of creating more people who don't want to be here.
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Oct 17, 2016 21:18
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AceOfFlames posted:So in other words for your own selfish enjoyment you are willing to create another human being who will most likely spend their short lift scrabbling a horrible hand to mouth existence and deal with likely being repeatedly raped and brutalized? NewForumSoftware posted:I'm willing to admit you can call this selfish, but quite frankly until you show me a plan where it actually helps anything I don't really see the point. We're moving from an era where the Earth takes over what we've started. We literally can't stop the machine even if we kill ourselves today. I don't believe my children won't want to be here. It's rare I have someone call me out for being too optimistic but yeah, I don't understand how I'd be able to go on if I just accept that the only thing left to do is kill of humans as fast as possible. That's a non-solution in my eyes, even if it could possibly work (which I don't think it would) The implications of accepting depopulation as a valid strategy to deal with climate change are way too horrific to make it worth advocating for. NewForumSoftware fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 17, 2016 |
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Oct 17, 2016 21:21
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Placid Marmot posted:Yes, changing the behavior of a population both is and results in collective action. There's certainly a huge potential to reduce emissions in the US by limiting consumption, especially in the US. The problem is that we live in a capitalist society where the average person's economic activity is constrained by what they can afford, and carbon emissions makes things cheap. It would be nice if people virtuously decided to reduce their consumption, but that's not likely when they'ree primarily concerned with making ends meet. Also to exaggerate, this is what I think when somebody talks about individualized approaches to climate change mitigation: 1) Person makes an ethical decision, goes vegetarian/foregoes air travel/no children 2) ??? 3) Everyone else does the same thing, global carbon emissions are reduced by 60% If you're using your individual decisions as a means to start a discussion about reducing carbon emissions then you're participating in the political process and at least doing something (FYI the "Don't Have Kids" party is not going to do well at the polls). But there's no point pretending individual choices regarding consumption have any effect when there's literally billions of other consumers out there to average everything out. A collective approach is needed if we're actually going to try limit the damage of climate change, specifically using society's institutions to make carbon emissions expensive or illegal. edit: AceOfFlames posted:So in other words for your own selfish enjoyment you are willing to create another human being who will most likely spend their short lift scrabbling a horrible hand to mouth existence and deal with likely being repeatedly raped and brutalized? Honestly for the vast majority of people the answer is "absolutely yes". Especially in the context of climate change, where the impacts are nebulous and hard to evaluate. It's not the smartest answer, but there it is. Nocturtle fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Oct 17, 2016 |
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Oct 17, 2016 21:32
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Nocturtle posted:There's certainly a huge potential to reduce emissions in the US by limiting consumption, especially in the US. The problem is that we live in a capitalist society where the average person's economic activity is constrained by what they can afford, and carbon emissions makes things cheap. It would be nice if people virtuously decided to reduce their consumption, but that's not likely when they'ree primarily concerned with making ends meet. This is also an incredibly important and fundamental point that the vast majority of people don't make a connection to. It's not just like, driving a car or eating a food that affects your carbon footprint. It's the cumulative effect of fossil fuel-derived energy subsidizing every goddamn consumer good you are exposed to. And people don't have the opportunity to consider their consumption choices when, as you say, they're entirely occupied with continuing to provide their family with basic needs.
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Oct 17, 2016 21:37
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Placid Marmot posted:since nobody improves the environment by existing. So long as this statement is true, your argument is worthless. You realize that, right? I mean, we're lucky that's its blatantly, obviously false, but even aside from that it's completely and totally and inherently self defeating of your own argument. So long as you believe it to be true, there's no reason not to have kids either.
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Oct 17, 2016 21:40
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NewForumSoftware posted:Advocating voluntary depopulation is one of the dumbest ideas you can put forth. Just take a step back and think about what you're saying. I think you might actually be stupid. You'd better not mention to the "eco-friendly community" that you claim to be part of that you don't care about other people, by the way, and I would mark you as a person who positively should NOT have children, regardless of the impact on the climate. Nocturtle posted:If you're using your individual decisions as a means to start a discussion about reducing carbon emissions then you're participating in the political process and at least doing something (FYI the "Don't Have Kids" party is not going to do well at the polls). But there's no point pretending individual choices regarding consumption have any effect when there's literally billions of other consumers out there to average everything out. A collective approach is needed if we're actually going to try limit the damage of climate change, specifically using society's institutions to make carbon emissions expensive or illegal. Individuals make choices regarding consumption as a result of external influences. If someone decides to not fly, for example, it's because they have been influenced to do so by the current social/economic situation, which is not something that affects just that one person, but everyone. Whether social influences result in positive or negative changes depends on what the influences are and how they balance against each other. The social influences that encourage more flying are dominant now, so, on average, people will fly more; if not flying were encouraged more than flying more, then the result, averaged over "literally billions of consumers", will be that people fly less on average. GlyphGryph posted:So long as this statement is true, your argument is worthless. You realize that, right? Who are these magical people that improve the environment by grace of having been born? Your claim was that ecologically minded people not having children "seems like it will only make things worse", so you must believe either that each of their children will take more CO2 from the atmosphere than they produce, and/or that non-eco-friendly people will choose to have extra children to compensate.
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Oct 17, 2016 22:38
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Paradoxish posted:There's no reasonable scenario where this happens either. Worrying about the literal extinction of the human race is silly, because the negative effects of climate change on economic growth will drastically reduce our ability to dump carbon into the atmosphere whether we like it or not. It's a fairly morbid thing to say, but the 2008 recession and drastic run-up in oil prices that happened beforehand probably did more to mitigate emissions than just about anything else we've done so far. A lot of economic power is concentrated on coasts and/or in areas seriously vulnerable to either droughts or more severe weather events. Even countries like the US are going to have to endure a lot of pain as people and businesses migrate away from areas that are too expensive to save. If this is the reasonable outcome of climate change in a couple of decades, what is the harm? Like who cares if a different city became more important due to the death of another? It is our choices how we handle migration in the future that effects how many people suffer/die, just as it is now. So why waste our time and energy changing how people should live, and not changing how we embrace them when they come in the future? Its too hot? we have ac. it's too cold? we have heaters. Your city is flooded? We can get another port up in a couple of years. Like who fucken cares, making people more miserable today with your laws and treaties, instead of planning a better city for the future.
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Oct 17, 2016 23:14
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It takes a special kind of delusion to start with the failures of both the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols and forecast a non-6C scenario. The logical next step for climate deniers like computer parts and trabisniskof seems to be arguing for non action on the part of the West and preventing the third world from achieving first world developmental status.
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Oct 17, 2016 23:27
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shrike82 posted:It takes a special kind of delusion to start with the failures of both the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols and forecast a non-6C scenario. You realize that when you make baseless accusations like calling those who disagree with you climate deniers it only makes you look worse, right? But then again, evidence has never been your thing. Also the rest of your post is counter factual but who cares right?
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Oct 17, 2016 23:28
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Paradoxish posted:There's no reasonable scenario where this happens either. Worrying about the literal extinction of the human race is silly, because the negative effects of climate change on economic growth will drastically reduce our ability to dump carbon into the atmosphere whether we like it or not. It's a fairly morbid thing to say, but the 2008 recession and drastic run-up in oil prices that happened beforehand probably did more to mitigate emissions than just about anything else we've done so far. I was curious and looked up changes in emissions following financial crashes, and found this interesting Nature opinion piece. The main plot:  It's probably not surprising that the largest historical decreases in carbon emissions were likely due to economic crashes. The worst was the Savings and Loan crisis, by a completely unscientific analysis it looks like prevented almost a billion tonnes of carbon emissions. The 2008 financial crisis is closer to ~350 million tonnes. Here's another plot:  This one underscores the magnitude of the failure of the Kyoto protocols. Instead of reducing emissions the developed world actually increased carbon consumption after 1997, and the developing world's emissions exploded. Looking at that graph maybe there wasn't much that could have been done to prevent China and India's industrialization, but the west's refusal to reduce emissions certainly didn't help.
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Oct 17, 2016 23:30
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"Here is a plan that will decrease potential warming by a measurable amount, has the developed world act first and pay the developing world to do it. All with the consent of 190+ nations in a binding treaty. We need to do more like this." "You seem to be arguing for non action on the part of the West and preventing the third world from achieving first world developmental status because I can't read"
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Oct 17, 2016 23:32
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In a way it's kinda cool to see the evolution of climate deniers by the nature of argumentation. Most educate folks are aware that GCC is happening these days so arguing that it's not a thing doesn't work So they have to transition into talking about how the onus is on India and China to stop pollution and that the West is actually doing great. Look at Trabisniskof supporting coal and fracking and being anti nuclear while purportedly supporting collective action. Or the painting of voluntary depopulation as un-American. Pretty funny to see climate denialists practice their arguments here. You wonder whether you'll see public ads changing similarly.
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Oct 17, 2016 23:33
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shrike82 posted:Look at Trabisniskof supporting coal Quote me doing it or 
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Oct 17, 2016 23:35
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Femur posted:If this is the reasonable outcome of climate change in a couple of decades, what is the harm? This is absolutely absurd. First of all, the developing world isn't going to be nearly as resistant to the effects of climate change as rich countries like the US. They can't just "build new cities" and mass migration is going to cause an incredible amount of political turmoil, both in the countries that are affected directly and the countries where migrants flee to. More to your point, it's not actually fine if everything works out in the end for those of us lucky enough to live in the US. Some of the most vulnerable areas in the US are simultaneously the fastest growing and poorest parts of the country. The effects of climate change on the southeast US (and probably the southwest too, although in a different way) will ruin lives. We aren't talking about cities suddenly sinking underwater, we're talking about decades of extreme weather bleeding affected areas to death. Like, yeah, I suppose if you want to solve racism and drastically increase safety nets in the US we can probably weather the worst of what's to come with a minimum of actual human suffering, but somehow that seems more pie-in-the-sky than actual climate change solutions. Nocturtle posted:It's probably not surprising that the largest historical decreases in carbon emissions were likely due to economic crashes. The worst was the Savings and Loan crisis, by a completely unscientific analysis it looks like prevented almost a billion tonnes of carbon emissions. The 2008 financial crisis is closer to ~350 million tonnes. Yep, part of this is probably related to the tendency for oil prices to go up shortly before or during the early stages of US recessions. It's not a perfect 1:1 relationship, but it happened during the recession in the early 90s and it happened in '08. There probably would have been longer term effects from the financial crisis, but oil prices cratered a few years ago. What's good for the US economy is bad for climate change.
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Oct 17, 2016 23:56
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Looking at the differences in reaction to Katrina and Sandy, I don't think liberal climate change activists mind if poor slash minority Americans are Sandy murdered by the effects. If anything, it'll be good fodder for ads. The discourse is pretty much "too bad for the global south, you're going to have to eat it " - you can extend that to the American underclass.
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Oct 18, 2016 00:07
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Paradoxish posted:This is absolutely absurd. First of all, the developing world isn't going to be nearly as resistant to the effects of climate change as rich countries like the US. They can't just "build new cities" and mass migration is going to cause an incredible amount of political turmoil, both in the countries that are affected directly and the countries where migrants flee to. So you believe it is harder to get people to get along than it is to consume? i was under the understanding that we were social creatures. And i didn't say that there wouldn't be suffering, only that the suffering is more in our control than consumption. We can help them build new poo poo, rather then stop the from building poo poo so we can continue to be superior to them? this is a more noble goal than all these treaties that are useless and only enrich connected parties.
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Oct 18, 2016 00:47
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NewForumSoftware posted:Just because you're incapable of understanding that there is nothing we can do at this point. It occurs to me that this would be a fabulous segment to interleave footage of the real life effects (famine, refugee migrations, etc), but I haven't the time or skills necessary.
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Oct 18, 2016 01:12
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drat this thread got doomy and gloomy overnight. Let me offer a potential way where not everything gets totally hosed. So much of our economy and emissions are tied to electricity. If we can decarbonise our electrical grid that could account for about 65% (rough guestimation and also assuming all electrical vehicles). Nuclear power is an obvious candidate in how this can be achieved but it also has some issues and might not be the best long term solution, but it doesn't have to be. Fusion power is a pretty sweet idea. Sadly it always seems to be 20 years away from being functional. But it is a literally limitless source of energy without any waste products. It does work. We just need to get the engineering right. If we are generous and guess it will take 30 years to get the technology working and then take another 50 years to build as many of these drat fusion plants to replace all the nuclear power plants we built we do have a way forward to a decarbonised economy. That kind of puts us into the time frame of where are emissions can be at in 100 years time and then we largely have to deal with the world we have created without producing too many new emissions. There is also the thing that if the hopes and dreams of fusion are actually realized, with a virtually unlimited energy resource we can do just about anything. We could desalinate all the water we could ever need to grow food anywhere and so forth. I am super loathe to pin hopes on unproven technologies in lieu of actually reducing emissions (which always needs to be the priority) but I feel this thread needs a little bit of hope right this minute.
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Oct 18, 2016 02:24
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