|
cowofwar posted:The most difficult challenge for climate change is that for most humans their happiness is based on consumption and their drive is fueled by desire for material goods. Most of this consumption and these goods are quickly forgotten and tossed aside for the next crumb. This creates a massive amount of carbon one way or another but this consumption is fundamental to our current economic model. Yeah, this is largely it. I've mentioned a reduced quality of life for first worlders in this thread a bunch of times, but what I really mean is just reduced consumption. There's no reason people can't be as happy (or happier) than they are now with less stuff and it's not like addressing climate change in meaningful ways means giving up the trappings of modern, technological society. There's a lot of social options that are only really painful if you absolutely refuse to live in a world that's at all different from the one we have right now.
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 17:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 01:51 |
|
|
We are seeing a trend of shifting from ownership to renting/sharing. Wherher it'a a result of financial reasons or no space in microcondos to store things, having communities rely on shared goods instead of all those people having the same disused stuff in their basement is a good start. Humans in general prefer to own but with infrequently used items and a well managed share then they get access to items in better shape, newer, maintained and cheaper. Also 2014/2015/2016 now officially top hottest years and all three years in a row.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 17:39
|
|
|
Feral Integral posted:I mean, you just explain it, why can't you talk to your significant other? Lol I know and if she does oh well, it'll save me a lot of money.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 19:23
|
|
|
SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Lol I know and if she does oh well, it'll save me a lot of money. You're quite a catch.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 19:41
|
|
|
More than 60 percent of primates are at risk for extinction
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 20:15
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:You can tell them that it's almost unequivocal that the oceans will be dead by 2050 Do you have a scientific source that says this explicitly? Or is this typical citing-science-but-non-scientific goon-connect-the-dots?
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 20:26
|
|
|
anonumos posted:You're quite a catch. I am allowed to be flippant in response to a thing I'm dreading or is that too hard for you to understand
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 20:39
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:Do you have a scientific source that says this explicitly? Or is this typical citing-science-but-non-scientific goon-connect-the-dots? Connect the dots between fish stocks crashing over the next 30 years, pollution trends, and ocean acidification not getting any better.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 21:03
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:Connect the dots between fish stocks crashing over the next 30 years, pollution trends, and ocean acidification not getting any better. Right so your personal opinion, not an actual scientific conclusion.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 21:10
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:Yeah, this is largely it. I've mentioned a reduced quality of life for first worlders in this thread a bunch of times, but what I really mean is just reduced consumption. There's no reason people can't be as happy (or happier) than they are now with less stuff and it's not like addressing climate change in meaningful ways means giving up the trappings of modern, technological society. There's a lot of social options that are only really painful if you absolutely refuse to live in a world that's at all different from the one we have right now. This is a key point. We've internalized so much crap from consumerist ideology and lovely business practices that we've lost awareness that planned obsolescence and low-quality high-volume low-price goods have become standard parts of everyone's daily lives. Our utilites and machines don't need changing out every 2-3 years. We don't need the next coolest shiniest gadget, and it's not a significant impact to quality of life to use the same appliances for a larger number of years. We don't need a gigantic car industry when the same needs can be serviced with a proper public transport reform. We don't need to travel huge distances to vacation, and air travel can easily be scaled back without terrible consequences. Automation can bring to life a lot of processes to make life simpler and of higher quality and help make it possible to source more things locally. If you get out of the mindset of consumerism, a high quality-of-life existence can easily be imagined without a new iphone every two years, and yet with a much much lower climate impact.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 22:15
|
|
|
ChairMaster posted:Not all nihilists are suicidal, some people do stuff just because they feel like it. I just don't like the idea of people wasting so much time and effort towards a greater good that cannot materalise when they could be putting that time and effort into making their own lives better instead. I completely agree with this notion. I'm not about giving up everything that makes a modern life worth living just so the feral children of our hosed future can grow mutant corn AND mutant tomato instead of just mutant corn. It's not a meaningfully different future, so I'm not going to fight for it. It's funny how people twist and warp this situation into a completely different one - we'd all be singing Kumbayaa if only ChairMaster and call to action would fight for the future! Y'all have already admitted that the future is inevitably going to be loving terrible, but when someone takes that idea to its logical conclusion, we're nihilists all of a sudden. But of course, not having more first world kids isn't the right kind of personal action to take. Of loving course. Paradoxish posted:Yeah, this is largely it. I've mentioned a reduced quality of life for first worlders in this thread a bunch of times, but what I really mean is just reduced consumption. There's no reason people can't be as happy (or happier) than they are now with less stuff and it's not like addressing climate change in meaningful ways means giving up the trappings of modern, technological society. There's a lot of social options that are only really painful if you absolutely refuse to live in a world that's at all different from the one we have right now. All we need is the destruction of capitalism as we currently know it! I'm sure the folks that benefit from the status quo will make these changes willingly. call to action fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jan 18, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 22:21
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:Right so your personal opinion, not an actual scientific conclusion. Well you see jelly fish are life therefore oceans can't be considered dead. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 22:22
|
|
|
I sort of think of this thread as the Theoretical Climate Science Thread, and the middle east thread of despair is for Applied Climate Science.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 22:44
|
|
|
The economic crisis thread is home economics 101.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 23:08
|
|
|
Forever_Peace posted:We got our city retirement board, which controls $240,000,000 in pension assets, to introduced a motion to divest from fossil fuels last month. They are currently doing their due diligence and will probably vote soon, and three of the five are probably on board with divestment. I'm not a member of the organization and can't take much credit here, but I went to their march on city hall and participated in their email campaigns to the retirement board - wasn't hard at all! Let me tell you, these guys are not used to being the center of public scrutiny - they take individual community input waaaaaay more seriously than national representatives. Just look for local "Divest" or "Fossil Free" groups in your city, state, or nearby university. Update: they just voted UNANIMOUSLY to directly tie a consideration of climate impacts of their investments to the fiduciary standard and will begin divesting their assets. A total win. What ended up being really critical (aside from the grassroots organizing and community pressure) was a letter from their portfolio manager. The group leading the divest campaign got a bunch of financial experts to address the long term risk of fossil fuel assets, and the retirement board asked their own guy a set of questions to verify the info. The response back was very supportive of extra consideration for risk of fossil fuel assets (one of the folks involved speculated that the guy was probably scared of losing his client if he appeared too unconcerned, considering the consensus the activists had lined up against him). Again, yay for little victories. =) I needed this on Pruitt confirmation week.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 23:09
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:This is a key point. We've internalized so much crap from consumerist ideology and lovely business practices that we've lost awareness that planned obsolescence and low-quality high-volume low-price goods have become standard parts of everyone's daily lives. Our utilites and machines don't need changing out every 2-3 years. We don't need the next coolest shiniest gadget, and it's not a significant impact to quality of life to use the same appliances for a larger number of years. We don't need a gigantic car industry when the same needs can be serviced with a proper public transport reform. We don't need to travel huge distances to vacation, and air travel can easily be scaled back without terrible consequences. Some of the gadget stuff was because Moore's law meant that the new model year laptop/smartphone was twice as good as last year's, year after year. Moore's law is dead now, so hopefully some of that attitude will change. I already notice that screen toughness and water resistance are more demanded in smartphones than they used to be. Though you also have to overcome the manufacturers doing planned obsolescence.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 23:11
|
|
|
call to action posted:All we need is the destruction of capitalism as we currently know it! I'm sure the folks that benefit from the status quo will make these changes willingly. I never said it was easy or even possible. In fact, I've got a ton of posts in this thread saying that I think reduced consumption is going to happen at the barrel of a gun as the worsening effects of climate change combined with long standing structural economic issues eviscerate economic growth. The point is that long, deep recessions are bad and will be lovely for basically everyone, even people who are reasonably comfortable right now. It doesn't have to be that way, but it will be. There's probably no option where you get to live the super comfortable life you were promised unless you happen to be really, absurdly rich. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Jan 18, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2017 23:16
|
|
|
Plenty of enthusiasts haven't upgraded PCs in years; the six-year-old Intel 2500k is still within 25% of more recent cpus in the real world at most with many games seeing little to (more rarely) literally zero benefit from 6700k or 7600k chips all running usually at a standardized 4GHz. Upgrading is done more for features or convenience. All my clients that ran on sub-4 year laptop replacement schedules -- legitimate in the 2000s but no longer something that really beats a fair cost-benefit analysis outside heavy knowledge workloads -- have added a year at least to their timelines. Save cash, don't needlessly throw out old laptops. TLC SSD endurance has come so far in four years that I'm basically comfortable with handing someone a laptop for five years or more right now, and that's assuming Intel does something crazy by 2022 that actually meaningfully alters performance. Sub-10W chips with awesome graphics capabilities and every virtualization hardware feature needed for the next generation of security functions to work are.......already here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 00:08
|
|
|
http://in.reuters.com/article/china-coal-idINKBN1511A2quote:China's energy regulator has ordered 11 provinces to stop more than 100 coal-fired power projects, with a combined installed capacity of more than 100 gigawatts, its latest dramatic step to curb the use of fossil fuels in the world's top energy market.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 11:07
|
|
|
Potato Salad posted:Plenty of enthusiasts haven't upgraded PCs in years; the six-year-old Intel 2500k is still within 25% of more recent cpus in the real world at most with many games seeing little to (more rarely) literally zero benefit from 6700k or 7600k chips all running usually at a standardized 4GHz. Upgrading is done more for features or convenience.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 11:16
|
|
|
Just a friendly reminder that climate nihilism is obedience to the status quo, yielding to a forty-year disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry that climate mitigation is too hard to bother pursuing. I will be in the streets this Saturday and I hope to see every one of you there too.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 17:13
|
|
|
Or, it is putting the dots together and seeing the almost certain outcome. Climate mitigation being hard or not is not precisely the issue at hand. We will not meet the Paris targets with the policies that are currently planned. I sincerely doubt that the Trump administration will come out with more severe emissions cuts and regulations. Even if he is removed from office in four years in a Democratic wave that lets proper policies be put into place, we will almost certainly have lost the chance to stay under 2C - a target which, as if it needs reminding, was calculated without factoring in any tipping points, indications of which we could be seeing right now in the Arctic. The next couple of years will show for certain. My basic point is that there are no re-dos, there are no mulligans, there are no second chances. It's now or never for meaningful large-scale change, and with all due respect going out and protesting is not going to create that change in the time we have left. Anybody who does not feel nihilistic about the climate is either underinformed or is still progressing through the stages of grief.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 17:24
|
|
|
Mozi posted:Anybody who does not feel nihilistic about the climate is either underinformed or is still progressing through the stages of grief. I suppose so. I guess it's up to each individual then. I still have my own sense of justice and what is 'right'. My gut still tells me it's 'right' to try and find a way out of this mess, even if it is hopeless. At the very least, it gives me some purpose and meaning. I mean I could stand around in the first class lounge and drink some cognac while I sob through Nearer My God to Thee, or I could lash together some planks and try to make a raft; either way, I'll be dead in the water. Should try to be useful at the very least, if only to keep to my own set of principles.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 17:37
|
|
|
Mozi posted:My basic point is that there are no re-dos, there are no mulligans, there are no second chances. It's now or never for meaningful large-scale change, and with all due respect going out and protesting is not going to create that change in the time we have left It could always get worse, even if we don't reach the targets that would be possible with immediate action, we should still work towards zero emissions. Even if we missed all goals to avoid it, we can still work to mitigate the damage.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 18:11
|
|
|
Mozi posted:It's now or never for meaningful large-scale change I get what you're saying, but this is extremely wrong. In a narrow sense it's true that maybe if everything went exactly right and everyone agreed we could "comfortably" transition our economy/society to zero carbon. It didn't happen in the past (obviously), and the current political situation makes it essentially impossible, as you note. But you seem to be saying that "meaningful large-scale change" would be futile in say, 2025? Or 2035? Or 2055? Of course sooner is better than later, and now would be best of all, but putting a hard limit (seemingly 2020, from your post) on when things are "too late to matter" is ridiculous. The longer the transition takes, the more painful it will be, and the less familiar the societies making it will be to us, but whether it really gets going in the 2020s or the 2060s or the 2120s doesn't really matter - those are still people, they deserve just as much of a chance as we have now. From our point of view they'll live in a blasted nightmare, with human possibility needlessly atrophied. From their point of view that will just be the reality of the world. In the same way that environmentalists in the 1950s would weep to see the current state of our world, but we just take it in stride. We know it could be vastly better, but we don't really waste time crying our eyes out that it was better in the past. We either do the work or don't. That's the situation of every human, past present and future. We can help ourselves (and those future people), so we should. Deciding in 2016 that ~*the line has been crossed*~ and (all possible!) future societies are doomed is an abdication of responsibility. It's a cynical and self serving thought. It's detached from reality. It is also, as Forever_Peace points out, obedience to the current system, which doesn't really care what you think (whether we're turbo-hosed or that magic technology will save us) so long as you do nothing. Massive action > small action > no action > advocating no action. You have a moral obligation, to yourself and to future humans, to move up this chain. In your own way, at your own pace. But in the right direction.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 18:28
|
|
|
I don't get the difference between what this thread is saying and "in 20XX, all life on earth will consist of cockroaches and Donald Trump's bloated corpse kept alive by a supercomputer in a nuclear bunker under the sea where once used to stand Mexico City, the end is neigh sell your babies and form sex cults". Well okay, nobody's calling for sex cults here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 18:39
|
|
|
Cingulate posted:Well okay, nobody's calling for sex cults here. They should. It's carbon neutral fun!
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 18:55
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:Yeah, this is largely it. I've mentioned a reduced quality of life for first worlders in this thread a bunch of times, but what I really mean is just reduced consumption. There's no reason people can't be as happy (or happier) than they are now with less stuff and it's not like addressing climate change in meaningful ways means giving up the trappings of modern, technological society. There's a lot of social options that are only really painful if you absolutely refuse to live in a world that's at all different from the one we have right now. Not really, quality of life is to a large part of function of wealth, and part of that wealth is in energy. High-energy services like access to heating and air conditioning, washing machines and dryers, and of course automobiles, are extremely important to quality of life and in developing societies they're among the first technologies adopted by emerging middle classes. There's really only so much blood you can wring from a stone and trying to aim for quality of life without wealth, including energy wealth, is always going to be a dead end. Luckily doing so is not necessary.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:12
|
|
|
Also, as a sort of side point, I highly dislike the focus on "reduced quality of life for first worlders". People spend all this time talking about how Americans and Europeans are going to have to tighten their belts and "learn to solve problems socially" but they're ignoring the vast majority of humanity that doesn't live in the first world and isn't happy with their situation. People don't like being subsistence farmers and escape every chance they get. They don't like lacking access to electricity, let alone modern appliances. To a large extent the energy efficiency of the third world is built on poverty of a truly unpleasant sort. So the flip-side of saying "first worlders will have to tighten their belts" is "third worlders will never enjoy the advantages of modern life", so it's not nearly as egalitarian an impulse as it sounds.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:23
|
|
|
It is relatively trivial to improve the lot of the third world dramatically without increasing their emissions a lot, especially since we know that improved living standards reduce population growth rates. The US uses ridiculously more energy per capita than the rest of the first world and is no happier for it. Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jan 19, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:27
|
|
|
Fangz posted:It is relatively trivial to improve the lot of the third world dramatically without increasing their emissions a lot. Agreed, inequities in energy distribution as well as food distribution have long been political problems rather than production problems. More progress in equitable distribution of either can be accomplished without falling back to the standby of throwing fossil fuels at the problem.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:30
|
|
|
Fangz posted:It is relatively trivial to improve the lot of the third world dramatically without increasing their emissions a lot, especially since we know that improved living standards reduce population growth rates. You don't reduce growth rates simply by raising living standards through something like food subsidies and health services. You do so by transforming societies, and a large part of that is moving away from subsistence agriculture and towards industrial production. It's not "relatively trivial" at all.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:33
|
|
|
Thug Lessons posted:You don't reduce growth rates simply by raising living standards through something like food subsidies and health services. You do so by transforming societies, and a large part of that is moving away from subsistence agriculture. It's not "relatively trivial" at all. It may not be trivial, but it is for absolutely sure not impossible, immoral or even difficult to imagine. The hurdle is as always political.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:38
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:It may not be trivial, but it is for absolutely sure not impossible, immoral or even difficult to imagine. The hurdle is as always political. I could say that same about increasing energy consumption to allow global industrialization while avoiding catastrophic climate. In fact I'd argue it's a hell of a lot easier and more practical than trying to create high standards of living without increasing energy consumption massively as well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:43
|
|
|
Thug Lessons posted:I could say that same about increasing energy consumption to allow global industrialization while avoiding catastrophic climate. In fact I'd argue it's a hell of a lot easier and more practical than trying to create high standards of living without increasing energy consumption massively as well. I have no idea what you are talking about or arguing for.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:47
|
|
|
Fangz posted:I have no idea what you are talking about or arguing for. Essentially, that low-wealth, low-energy consumption future is neither desirable nor necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 19:49
|
|
|
Thug Lessons posted:Essentially, that low-wealth, low-energy consumption future is neither desirable nor necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change. Define what 'low-wealth, low-energy consumption future' means here. I mean it's totally obvious that solutions to the problem will include a multiple approach of improved energy sources, increased efficiency, and yeah, recognition of the social cost of pollution when decision making. What issue do you have with this?
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 20:01
|
|
|
Forever_Peace posted:Just a friendly reminder that climate nihilism is obedience to the status quo, yielding to a forty-year disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry that climate mitigation is too hard to bother pursuing. I will be, but it's a women's march.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 20:09
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Define what 'low-wealth, low-energy consumption future' means here. Look at the discussion that spawned this. Paradoxish was arguing that the solution to climate change is going to require reduced consumption on the part of first worlders, and, as an unspoken corollary, a fairly strict ceiling on the development of the third world as well. If 1 billion people are consuming way too much, obviously you can't have the other 6 billion consuming at even a fraction of that level or else you end up with six Chinas. So a low-wealth, low-energy consumption future looks something like average global development at the level of Brazil (and frankly even that is optimistic). I don't think that's a desirable future, and you're only going to mitigate so much by pursuing the social solutions that Paradoxish is advocating.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 20:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 01:51 |
|
|
Thug Lessons posted:Look at the discussion that spawned this. Paradoxish was arguing that the solution to climate change is going to require reduced consumption on the part of first worlders, and, as an unspoken corollary, a fairly strict ceiling on the development of the third world as well. If 1 billion people are consuming way too much, obviously you can't have the other 6 billion consuming at even a fraction of that level or else you end up with six Chinas. So a low-wealth, low-energy consumption future looks something like average global development at the level of Brazil (and frankly even that is optimistic). I don't think that's a desirable future, and you're only going to mitigate so much by pursuing the social solutions that Paradoxish is advocating. Any solution to climate change will require limits to consumption. Otherwise even if you use technology to double the amount of consumption that you can sustainably support... Oopsy we'll just quadruple consumption. There has to be a deviation from the rule that given X available, we will consume X+1. I don't see how you arrive at this corrollary that any discussion of consumption limits on the west will lead to "strict" limits on the third world. Figuring out how to support 6 Chinas is a long way away from figuring out how to support 6 mega-Americas. Fangz fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jan 19, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2017 20:42
|
|