Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

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sitchensis: Mar 4, 2009

Rime posted:

Please See:

You don't get it, FourLeaf. The world is not a hugbox, it does not give a poo poo about your bushy tailed utopian fantasies. This is what humans have done to each other for all of recorded history, and it is what they will do to each other to the bitter end. Do you think we will change from our current foreign policy in the event of mass climate upheaval? The West is right now, today, bombing the gently caress out of states which have been thrown into unrest by prolonged climate change.

As for that piece of poo poo Borlaug: do you think it's better that hundreds of millions will now starve to death or die in utterly horrific conditions, after a lifetime of squalor and poverty, rather than tens of millions? They're going to die either way, the green revolution just kicked the can down the road and upped the death toll exponentially while also drastically harming the environment. You are either a dipshit or willfully ignorant if you can't see how utterly hosed up that situation is.

Quting myself, because even though I'm an optimist, even I can see the writing on the wall:

sitchensis posted:

So, uh, what do we do?

This is where things get thorny, because there are really only two answers to this question. And, in my opinion, it's starkly apparent which one we are choosing. I'll leave it up to you to decide which one you think that is.

Answer #1: Let the Fuckers Die

Oh sure, we will cluck our tongues, send our prayers over Twitter, maybe make a donation to the Red Cross, but generally speaking, we will just let the fuckers die.

The wealthy nations of the world will continue to calcify their borders, come up with even more elaborate and sophisticated surveillance methods, and withdraw from international obligations in order to sort out their own climate-change strategies at home (hey, those barriers to protect New York City from storm surges aren't free you know).

What seems like a surveillance state to us now will seem like a paradise of liberty and freedom to future generations -- if they are even aware of the kind of freedoms we had. Ultimately, we will keep the status quo going for as long as humanly possible, with maybe a few social-democratic changes here and there to keep everyone happy and well-fed in the lifeboats. Regardless, since we are all basically powerless to stop the inertia of our economic, social, and political systems, and since attempts to collectively come together to address potential reforms will likely be smothered-in-the-crib both online and in reality, we will simply have to be content to click the frowny face on Facebook that accompanies the article about the tens-of-thousands who died in Thailand during the most recent typhoon in order to register our impotent horror at what the world is coming to.

Internationally, we can expect to witness institutional and social collapse on an unprecedented scale in the developing world, but don't expect it to affect us. For the ones who try to escape, they will simply become part of the meat-grinder of human misery within their own borders. For the incredibly lucky ones who get within spitting distance of a wealthy western nation and don't drown in the process, they will either be detained in horrific conditions (see: Australia), or simply blown up or shot -- all outside the public eye, mind you. Maybe to try and soothe our collective guilt we will have some token efforts to accept a piddling amount of refugees through a 'humane' and 'fair' determination method -- possibly a lottery? Who knows.

In any case, I don't envision that we will see migrants being shot or detained on the borders of the inner core of privileged countries. We will leave the grisly duty of thinning the asylum claims to transit states like Hungary and Greece (or, in the case of North America, Mexico), whom I imagine we will start making some pretty sweet deals with in return for some, uh, discrete and 'enhanced' border security measures.

Pros: We will be fine!
Cons: Untold millions die and the planet becomes much more hostile to human civilization and for the love of god lets hope India and Pakistan don't duke it out!

Answer #2: We Do Something!

Armed with the knowledge that the best way to prevent a migration crisis is to make drastic efforts to strengthen and enhance the institutional capabilities of the most vulnerable regions of the world, humanity collectively decides to invest enormous resources into development programmes that allow global populations to mitigate and adapt in place for the effects of climate change.

I don't think I can over emphasize enough the scale of resources, international cooperation, and jurisdictional overlap that would have to occur under such a scenario. The actions necessary to coordinate for this would dwarf by several orders of magnitude anything seen during WWII. We would essentially be undertaking a generations long process with the following goals:

1. Ensure that almost all nations on earth have the capability to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change within the next thirty years;
2. Undertake this process in a way that does not repeat the mistakes of colonialism and respects national autonomy and diversity of populations;
3. Do all of the above in a manner that simultaneously reduces carbon emissions; and,
4. Ensure the process is uninterrupted, even if results will not be seen for half-a-century or more, and even if it may cause a slight material reduction in the quality of life for those living in the global north.

Pros: Humanity enters a golden age where nations and cultures deeply commit themselves to planetary stewardship for the benefit of all current and future generations!
Cons: We don't get new iPhones every three years and our taxes go up!

Uh...

Yeah, tl;dr we are so screwed. But hey, I hope this was informative for someone.

Edit: grammar and such

# ? Jul 4, 2017 15:24

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# ? May 14, 2024 15:30

Accretionist: Nov 7, 2012; I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Re: Media - Remake Elysium around Arctic Council nations.

Accretionist fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Jul 4, 2017

# ? Jul 4, 2017 15:54

Digiwizzard: Dec 23, 2003; Pork Pro

Rime posted:

As for that piece of poo poo Borlaug: do you think it's better that hundreds of millions will now starve to death or die in utterly horrific conditions, after a lifetime of squalor and poverty, rather than tens of millions? They're going to die either way, the green revolution just kicked the can down the road and upped the death toll exponentially while also drastically harming the environment. You are either a dipshit or willfully ignorant if you can't see how utterly hosed up that situation is.

This is painfully backwards. Increased efficiency is good, the problem is Capitalism works by diverting any efficiency into more and more growth. You could have had a situation where less farmers used less land to produce enough food to feed the same population. Instead we have one where farmers are encouraged to continually double their output to feed an ever growing population that can be funnelled into sweatshops.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 16:18

Rime: Nov 2, 2011; by Games Forum

Digiwizzard posted:

This is painfully backwards. Increased efficiency is good, the problem is Capitalism works by diverting any efficiency into more and more growth. You could have had a situation where less farmers used less land to produce enough food to feed the same population. Instead we have one where farmers are encouraged to continually double their output to feed an ever growing population that can be funnelled into sweatshops.

And which of those outcomes was obviously going to occur when Borlaug set his monster loose. We're not even touching on the environmental catastrophe from the intensive farming itself, mind, but just the human suffering which was inevitable to occur under existing socioeconomic systems. He knew his work would cause a population explosion, he knew it would require farming techniques which would sterilize the soil after a few decades of intensive use. He couldn't possibly have not foreseen this.

"Good Intentions in a broken system" does not absolve him from causing the lives, suffering, and deaths of several hundred million people who would otherwise not have existed. It was the worst kind of god-playing. :colbert:

Rime fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jul 4, 2017

# ? Jul 4, 2017 17:00

Conspiratiorist: Nov 12, 2015; 17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the ~~fifth~~ ~~sixth~~ some day

Naturally, future generations would just have to figure out how to use scientific advances responsibly.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 17:05

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Thread idea: let's identify a specific jurisdiction (probably somewhere in the US) where improvements to energy supply and infrastructure seem like an unrealized possibility, and work together to break down and define obstacles to this change, then see if we can come up with solutions.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 17:30

MiddleOne: Feb 17, 2011

Discendo Vox posted:

Thread idea: let's identify a specific jurisdiction (probably somewhere in the US) where improvements to energy supply and infrastructure seem like an unrealized possibility, and work together to break down and define obstacles to this change, then see if we can come up with solutions.

Passanger trains literally anywhere but the stretch between New York and Washington D.C.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 17:32

Hello Sailor: May 3, 2006; we're all mad here

a fuckwit with 20/20 hindsight posted:

And which of those outcomes was obviously going to occur when Borlaug set his monster loose. We're not even touching on the environmental catastrophe from the intensive farming itself, mind, but just the human suffering which was inevitable to occur under existing socioeconomic systems. He knew his work would cause a population explosion, he knew it would require farming techniques which would sterilize the soil after a few decades of intensive use. He couldn't possibly have not foreseen this.

"Good Intentions in a broken system" does not absolve him from causing the lives, suffering, and deaths of several hundred million people who would otherwise not have existed. It was the worst kind of god-playing.

"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things." - Norman Borlaug

Hello Sailor fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jul 4, 2017

# ? Jul 4, 2017 19:10

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Hello Sailor posted:

"Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things." - Norman Borlaug

Whatever helped him sleep at night.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 19:15

MiddleOne: Feb 17, 2011

Wow these quotes did not age well.

quote:

This issue is timely today not just because of the current food shortages but because greens are calling for vast sums of money to be spent to ward off future climate change. And just as money was diverted from agricultural research for environmental projects in the 1980s, there�s a danger that immediate problems in poor countries will be shortchanged by pursuing the long-term agenda of wealthy Westerners, as Bjorn Lomborg has been arguing. When I wrote about Dr. Lomborg�s proposal to focus less on climate change and more on problems like malnutrition and disease, he told me: �I don�t think our descendants will thank us for leaving them poorer and less healthy just so we could do a little bit to slow global warming. I�d rather we were remembered for solving the other problems first.�

Turns out those long-term agenda goals of wealthy Westerners were the short-term necessitates of literal billions of poor people around the equator. Whoops!

# ? Jul 4, 2017 19:35

ugh its Troika: May 2, 2009; by FactsAreUseless

Don't forget the many, many people who caught malaria because of the specious campaign against DDT.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 20:09

TheBlackVegetable: Oct 29, 2006

Utopia had it right - feed the world but couple it with a sterilization program.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 20:11

SSJ_naruto_2003: Oct 12, 2012

TheBlackVegetable posted:

Utopia had it right - feed the world but couple it with a sterilization program.

gently caress ethics, if you could sign up for a basic income that was contingent on being sterilized i would sign right the gently caress up. it would be a net good, probably

hell im getting that done anyways eventually

# ? Jul 4, 2017 20:48

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Conspiratiorist posted:

Naturally, future generations would just have to figure out how to use scientific advances responsibly.

Yes. Because believe it or not, scientific innovations don�t wait to happen until people have reached some pre-determined point of enlightenment. Scientific innovations are always at the mercy of the social and political paradigms that exist when they are developed. "Modernizing" agriculture was an extremely important group effort among dozens of nations; if Borlaug had died in the crib then it�s not as if the possibility of higher-yield agriculture would have been safely snuffed out. At most, you�d delay it for a decade or two, and now you have a new person to blame. The only constants are change, and the question of how humans choose to adapt to the unintended consequences of that change. Well in this case the answer is �We�ve completely loving failed.�

Borlaug is absolutely culpable, both for his assumption that yield increases alone would be enough to solve hunger without any regard for the surrounding political issues or long-term effects, and for his later move to outright climate denialism, but to place more blame on him than those responsible for our political and economic situation, and to actually lament that imminent famine was averted for millions of people is bizarre. It wasn�t inevitable that social democracy and labor organizing to overturn corrupt social structures would be trampled by neoliberal trade policies. It wasn�t inevitable that the world population would continue to explode despite the demonstrated success of 20th century government programs that promoted smaller families and provided free contraceptives in various developing countries. It wasn�t inevitable that parasitic corporate ghouls would take over government, cede all responsibility to, well, govern, and proceed to suck public institutions dry before loving off to their New Zealand bunkers. It wasn't inevitable that the most powerful country in the world would turn climate change into a partisan issue and accelerate the catastrophe. The majority of voters willingly chose those outcomes for decades, mainly because of cultural and racial resentments. We had the technological capabilities to address the crises that emerged after the Green Revolution; for political reasons we chose not to.

The focus on Borlaug as Satan seems very much like an attempt to absolve Western voters of any guilt for the atrocities that are about to happen. These refugees simply never should have been born; we are only setting things right as we stoically blow them apart at the border and sink their ships.

I knew there was a strain of environmentalism that embraced eugenics but I had no idea that it had become a mainstream view in this thread.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 23:25

Conspiratiorist: Nov 12, 2015; 17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the ~~fifth~~ ~~sixth~~ some day

Can we at least blame Midgley for leaded gasoline and CFCs?

# ? Jul 5, 2017 08:38

Mustached Demon: Nov 12, 2016

Conspiratiorist posted:

Can we at least blame Midgley for leaded gasoline and CFCs?

Man gently caress that guy.

# ? Jul 5, 2017 09:03

BattleMoose: Jun 16, 2010

Conspiratiorist posted:

Can we at least blame Midgley for leaded gasoline and CFCs?

He was only trying to help! With the CFCs at least.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 02:23

OhFunny: Jun 26, 2013; EXTREMELY PISSED AT THE DNC

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...omepage%2Fstory

Only 3 miles of ice is holding the Larsen C ice shelf to the Antarctic.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 03:59

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

So who's right? The Scripps lady or the Irvine guy?

# ? Jul 6, 2017 05:58

Notorious R.I.M.: Jan 27, 2004; up to my ass in alligators

Current Policy Status: Even the threatening sounding crap is erring on the side of least drama: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/world-has-three-years-left-to-stop-dangerous-climate-change-warn-experts

lol decarbonization in developed nations by 2050, we better enjoy our 3C of warming. I wonder how long it is before 3C becomes the new 2C. I'd set the over/under at September 2019 if I was gambling on it.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 09:03

9-Volt Assault: Jan 27, 2007; Beter twee tetten in de hand dan tien op de vlucht.

Lol Australia: Climate Change Authority loses last climate scientist

# ? Jul 6, 2017 10:06

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

ISIS CURES TROONS posted:

Don't forget the many, many people who caught malaria because of the specious campaign against DDT.

Lol, you're actually serious.

(The ban on large scale agricultural spraying of DDT saved millions of lives from malaria by preserving the effectiveness of DDT as an anti-mosquito agent still used in mosquito nets and so on. In some locations they almost wiped out mosquitos that were non-resistant to DDT.)

Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jul 6, 2017

# ? Jul 6, 2017 18:08

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Can someone explain why certain climate people have a hard on for self driving (ostensibly electric) cars?

Yeah, ideally it'll reduce human error and maybe reduce emissions but if it doesn't change consumption patterns or shift transportation design towards mass transit then what's the loving point? To say nothing of the economic disruption when a poo poo ton of people lose their (already lovely) jobs.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 19:17

ChairMaster: Aug 22, 2009; by R. Guyovich

It comes across as more realistic than getting people to use mass transit, which is ostensibly impossible in America. Redesigning every major city in America from the ground up to be livable without owning a car is the best solution as far as actual good being done goes, but it's also the least realistic option. They can't even get Miami to put any money toward preparing their city for it's destruction at the hands of rising sea levels, there's certainly no way to fix a problem so much bigger and more widespread than that.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 19:22

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

It's because they're electric.

Also it may lead to cars as services especially since we're already visibly moving into a rentier economy as wealth disparity grows.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 19:47

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

There's other cool stuff you could do with self-driving cars, like special grade separated lines for autonomous vehicles that allow high speed, jam free travel. It's not the full communist trains now solution but it's a hell of a lot more realistic than, as mentioned, getting cities that won't even try to save themselves from climate change to completely rebuild themselves around mass transit.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 20:09

Salt Fish: Sep 11, 2003; Cybernetic Crumb

Rap Record Hoarder posted:

Can someone explain why certain climate people have a hard on for self driving (ostensibly electric) cars?

Yeah, ideally it'll reduce human error and maybe reduce emissions but if it doesn't change consumption patterns or shift transportation design towards mass transit then what's the loving point? To say nothing of the economic disruption when a poo poo ton of people lose their (already lovely) jobs.

I think it's a somewhat clever way to break the fetishism of personal car ownership. Are people going to pay twice as much for a car that's half as efficient if they aren't piloting it?

# ? Jul 6, 2017 20:10

Rime: Nov 2, 2011; by Games Forum

Because technological "innovation" in that department is being driven by libertarian fucktard techbros who think they are "disrupting the system", and the people financing it are drooling at a hard return to serfdom via extracting rent from every aspect of daily life.

We're living in that grim cyberpunk dystopia friends, it's just very clean and sterile rather than gritty and decrepit.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 20:12

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Rap Record Hoarder posted:

Can someone explain why certain climate people have a hard on for self driving (ostensibly electric) cars?

Yeah, ideally it'll reduce human error and maybe reduce emissions but if it doesn't change consumption patterns or shift transportation design towards mass transit then what's the loving point? To say nothing of the economic disruption when a poo poo ton of people lose their (already lovely) jobs.

It's not really climate people driving that, it's folks who think it can be used to dominate other transportation sectors.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 20:35

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Rime posted:

We're living in that grim cyberpunk dystopia friends, it's just very clean and sterile rather than gritty and decrepit.

Just you wait until ten years old electric cars are part of the budget transport service package.

The overage fees when the five -year - past- MTBF battery pack strands you on the edge of the Colorado Desert are going to be very lucrative for your transport service provider.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jul 6, 2017

# ? Jul 6, 2017 20:35

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

so I know this is kinda uncharted territory but when Larsen C goes, will the resulting... state-sized iceberg just float slowly out to sea and melt? Is something that large affected in a directional sense by ocean currents?

The image of some poor suckers in the falklands looking out to sea and finding the entire horizon obscured by ice is darkly hilarious.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 20:52

Conspiratiorist: Nov 12, 2015; 17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the ~~fifth~~ ~~sixth~~ some day

Ol Standard Retard posted:

so I know this is kinda uncharted territory but when Larsen C goes, will the resulting... state-sized iceberg just float slowly out to sea and melt? Is something that large affected in a directional sense by ocean currents?

The image of some poor suckers in the falklands looking out to sea and finding the entire horizon obscured by ice is darkly hilarious.

It's going to fragment into a million pieces as it calves.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 21:04

TheBlackVegetable: Oct 29, 2006

Conspiratiorist posted:

It's going to fragment into a million pieces as it calves.

And I heard the bigger issue is it will release the glaciers behind it.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 21:05

Conspiratiorist: Nov 12, 2015; 17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the ~~fifth~~ ~~sixth~~ some day

Ice shelves are like corks that block/slow the flow of glaciers that feed into them; as the ice shelves themselves are floating ice, breaking off/up doesn't contribute to sea level rise directly but the glaciers they were blocking will start feeding directly into the ocean, increasing the rate of sea level rise.

Also note that this large calving doesn't necessarily mean the shelf is collapsing just yet.

# ? Jul 6, 2017 21:14

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!?

It occurs to me that I haven't mentioned this here... sometimes you still run into people that bring up 'the pause' but there's a wee problem with it. Mostly, this shows up in satellite data over a very specific time period.

For example, here's UAH v6.0 data (lower troposphere). Interestingly, if you look at it per decade, you see this:
1970s Mean : -0.284583 (1978 & 1979)
1980s Mean : -0.142167
1990s Mean : 0.00125
2000s Mean : 0.10425
2010s Mean : 0.223583 (through May 2017)

Also, this pattern shows up in other data sets... for example, radiosonde surface data going back to 1958, which shows a much larger change:
1950s mean: -0.05 (1958 & 1959)
1960s mean: -0.118
1970s mean: -0.13
1980s mean: 0.06
1990s mean: 0.185
2000s mean: 0.352
2010s mean: 0.739 (through 2016)

Curiously, this change seems to be accelerating since the 1990s when examined this way.

Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jul 7, 2017

# ? Jul 7, 2017 06:10

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

An interesting visualization:

https://twitter.com/kevpluck/status/880927276032028672

# ? Jul 9, 2017 02:40

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Party Plane Jones posted:

2 https://twitter.com/EricLiptonNYT/status/883834425087324161

gently caress! FUUUUUCK! gently caress!

AAAAAAAAGH!

gently caress

# ? Jul 9, 2017 03:21

JuniperCake: Jan 26, 2013

Arglebargle III posted:

gently caress! FUUUUUCK! gently caress!
AAAAAAAAGH!
gently caress

Yeah that happened in Arizona of all loving places. The people running for Corporation Commission last election were on payroll of the local utility company and campaigned as "Sustainable Solar". Of course they were republican and being a mostly red state they won rather easily. So yeah, solar is absolutely hosed here in potentially one of the best states for it.

Ironically Goldwater republicans are pro-solar but there are so few of them so it doesn't even matter.

# ? Jul 9, 2017 07:29

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!?

I'm so glad we allow monopolistic utilities to lobby government to kill competition.

# ? Jul 9, 2017 14:58

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# ? May 14, 2024 15:30

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

It's still the craziest loving thing, if you told people terrorists are gonna destroy Miami we would go to forever hell war over it, but tell them a bunch of businessmen are going to destroy Miami and they'll vote for them.

# ? Jul 9, 2017 16:12

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

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