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The Groper posted:Thread title should just be "Overshoot: are we going to do anything about it?" at this point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IUxK_0WLbg Nuclear winter is our only hope.
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Aug 21, 2017 19:19
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I'm personally hoping for an incredibly contagious and staggeringly deadly pandemic that can only be cured through extremely expensive or otherwise limited therapy. I'd like to see where people's convictions actually lie, if we have to publicly make decisions about which lives actually matter and are worth saving when there isn't enough room for everyone in the future.
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Aug 21, 2017 19:44
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm personally hoping for an incredibly contagious and staggeringly deadly pandemic that can only be cured through extremely expensive or otherwise limited therapy. We already know this song and dance from rare diseases. In a private system everyone without assets gets to die and in a public system anyone with a too rare condition can get denied treatment due to it being deemed unreasonably expensive from a societal perspective. Politicians decide who gets to live and die every day, the decisions are just sufficiently abstracted enough from the outcome that you don't notice. gently caress, the US kills tens of thousands annually by the stroke of its international security policies, why would you care tomorrow just because a disease becomes the cause? No one gave a poo poo about ebola before it seemed like it might spread west-wards. No one still gives a gently caress about AIDS in the third world because through HIV-medicine we have eliminated the possibility of it ever threatening us back home. There is nothing that can't be justified if you abstract and rationalize enough.
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Aug 21, 2017 20:07
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Mozi posted:I was only calling for releasing the smallpox virus, please don't twist my words. multi resistant bubonic plague or bust
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Aug 21, 2017 20:50
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm personally hoping for an incredibly contagious and staggeringly deadly pandemic that can only be cured through extremely expensive or otherwise limited therapy. It sounds like you're jonesing for some good ol' fashioned white supremacy!
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Aug 21, 2017 21:40
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Flowers For Algeria posted:It sounds like you're jonesing for some good ol' fashioned white supremacy! Well, it'll be plain old "better us than them", just with an uneven distribution of resources 
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Aug 21, 2017 21:49
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Flowers For Algeria posted:It sounds like you're jonesing for some good ol' fashioned white supremacy! I suspect that the long term effects of global warming, antibiotic twilight, resource depletion, etc. are likely to play out as a slow motion version of the horror plague, but on a long enough timeline that people who wish to do so will be able to deny having to make concrete interventions about who lives and dies.
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Aug 21, 2017 22:29
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm personally hoping for an incredibly contagious and staggeringly deadly pandemic that can only be cured through extremely expensive or otherwise limited therapy. I kind of understand the bolded part but drat that's ugly. And we may already be beyond the limits of what the earth can take. Not Venus or Mars yet but well on our way.
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Aug 21, 2017 22:48
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call to action posted:Does anyone following this still think we have until 2100 or even 2050 before there's widespread flooding-related destruction? 2100 is used as a benchmark and the climate models are typically run until 2100 so its a time period that we have data for and can compare between all the climate models. Also our models don't model sea level rise, its a crapshoot, no one can say with any confidence how stable the ice shelves on Greenland or Antarctica are. They could disintegrate much quicker than expected or the seas might continue to just rise by 1mm/year.
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Aug 22, 2017 04:40
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm personally hoping for an incredibly contagious and staggeringly deadly pandemic that can only be cured through extremely expensive or otherwise limited therapy. p. hosed up to specifically want all the poors to die. I wonder at what point climate scientists switch from worrying about how to slow/stop climate change and start worrying about how we(humans) survive through it. At what point do we go gently caress it and pave over the earth and cram as many people as we can into bio domes? Doorknob Slobber fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Aug 22, 2017 |
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Aug 22, 2017 20:54
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Doorknob Slobber posted:p. hosed up to specifically want all the poors to die. Huh... never? This isn't some one-time event that we're dealing with; it's a continuous process. It's not a gunshot that you go 'well drat, it sucks, but if I can't dodge the bullet I might as well figure out how to patch up the wound.' This is the scene from Robocop where the gang are taking turns shooting up Murphy.
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Aug 22, 2017 21:10
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Doorknob Slobber posted:p. hosed up to specifically want all the poors to die. We're already doing this, except the bio-domes are metropolitan slums and the "paving over" is the conversion of vast surface volume to agriculture at the expense of every other living thing on the planet. We'll keep stacking the mouths up until nature takes the problem out of our control.
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Aug 22, 2017 21:24
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Doorknob Slobber posted:I wonder at what point climate scientists switch from worrying about how to slow/stop climate change and start worrying about how we(humans) survive through it. At what point do we go gently caress it and pave over the earth and cram as many people as we can into bio domes? Those are different questions for different kinds of scientists and researchers are already asking those questions. Climate scientists will keep modeling our increasingly hosed up climate and social scientists and engineers will keep using those models to figure out how we survive. And the humanities will try to keep us sane while while we live.
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Aug 22, 2017 21:26
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Conspiratiorist posted:
Yeah, what I'm saying is, at what point do scientists start thinking about plans to protect humanity? People like musk want to be on mars before he dies or is killed by an AI or whatever and even with climate change earth is probably still a better option than mars so if Mars is feasible, at what point do scientists go gently caress it? Right now scientists are still mostly in "This is happening, do something about it." mode. I'm wondering when actual planning for the future where we're all dying of climate change mode kicks in.
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Aug 22, 2017 23:44
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Those are the ones getting into permaculture
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Aug 23, 2017 00:13
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The Groper posted:Thread title should just be "Overshoot: are we going to do anything about it?" at this point. Humans achieved overshoot maybe... 50,000? 100,000? years ago. The overshoot calculations we use to study animal population don't really apply to humans because we're far more adaptable than any other species ever to exist, so it's at best a metaphor.
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Aug 23, 2017 20:05
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Thug Lessons posted:Humans achieved overshoot maybe... 50,000? 100,000? years ago. The overshoot calculations we use to study animal population don't really apply to humans because we're far more adaptable than any other species ever to exist, so it's at best a metaphor. How do you mean? I'd say humans have overshot and collapsed in nearly every environment we've ever been in at one point or another, and now we've taken the party world-wide. e: They looted, they raided, they held whole cities for ransom for fresh supplies of cheese crackers, avocado dip, spare ribs and wine and spirits, which would now get piped aboard from floating tankers. The problem of when the drink is going to run out is, however, going to have to be faced one day. The planet over which they are floating is no longer the planet it was when they first started floating over it. It is in bad shape. Car Hater fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 22:36
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 Alaska's thawing soils are now pouring methane into the air (which then converts to CO2)
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Aug 23, 2017 22:42
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R I P EARTH 4.8 BYA-2018
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Aug 23, 2017 22:50
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enraged_camel posted:
What's funny is Alaska is now emitting an amount equivalent to a THIRD of ANNUAL commercial domestic carbon emissions... and it's not at ALL accounted for in the IPCC models.
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Aug 23, 2017 23:14
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Choo Choo motherfuckers. Extinction train is here ta roll ya. 
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Aug 23, 2017 23:27
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enraged_camel posted:
Every time I read something like this all I can think is well, yeah, here's why planning for anything other than the worst case scenario is actually a really bad idea.
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Aug 23, 2017 23:35
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This thread is nice. Every few weeks I slide into the comfortable embrace of western consumerism and start dreaming of owning a house and having a family. Then some news comes out and I remember that we'll be living The Road in 25 years and that I should stop lazing about like a Roman.
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Aug 23, 2017 23:56
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I generally try to keep an optimistic outlook, but holy poo poo what can you even do in the face of something like that? Imagine what we're still not aware of, and what will be overlooked or missed as resources are siphoned away from the scientists doing the depressing work of trying to keep track of how fast we're setting ourselves up for catastrophe on a global level. The EPA is being gutted and sold to the highest bidder, China is by all accounts fudging their numbers, India is raring up to drill baby drill, the Amazon is being clear cut, oceanic dead zones, dying coral reefs, collapsing food chains, widespread death & devastation in Africa and the Middle East exacerbated by climate damage...I just don't know. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 00:01
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Well, at the very least it's a good thing that our government is making plans and taking measures to ensure that even in a critical scenario we will give as many people as possible the best chance of survival, I'm sure.
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Aug 24, 2017 00:03
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Look out for number one, because nobody else is
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Aug 24, 2017 00:58
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Oh god, here we go again. edit: the day the planes stop flying ima come knockin for your AA batteries, bitch. better be ready Chadzok fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 01:13
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It's funny watching the reaction to the methane clathrate gun hypothesis slowly change from year to year, from "Experts believe this to be highly unlikely" to "While it is known that large amounts of Methane is stored in the Permafrost, it is so deep it would likely take thousands of years to thaw out" to "oh Jesus oh gently caress oh god no please no no no"
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Aug 24, 2017 02:07
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Jesus Christ this thread is terrifying lol holy poo poo.  I thought we had at least three or four decades. This is going to get ugly fast, isn't it? Telephones fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 02:44
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Digiwizzard posted:It's funny watching the reaction to the methane clathrate gun hypothesis slowly change from year to year, from "Experts believe this to be highly unlikely" to "While it is known that large amounts of Methane is stored in the Permafrost, it is so deep it would likely take thousands of years to thaw out" to "oh Jesus oh gently caress oh god no please no no no" It seems like we've been reading about the Siberian GIANT UNLIKELY HOLES IN THE GROUND for years now. I'm not a climate scientist (thank Marx) but it has been sort of worrying.
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Aug 24, 2017 02:53
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Land-based permafrost, also in the Siberian arctic, was estimated in 2013 to release 17 million tonnes of methane per year – a significant increase on the 3.8 million tons estimated in 2006, and estimates before then of just 0.5 million tonnes.[10][11][12]Telephones posted:I thought we had at least three or four decades. This is going to get ugly fast, isn't it? Limits to Growth predicted rapid collapse beginning around 2020 and all the evidence indicates its right on the money.
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Aug 24, 2017 03:10
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Reminder that by 2030 the US alone would have to overcome the following problems in order to avert disastrous collapse:
Time to make America great again. Digiwizzard fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 03:33
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we are heading for a massive extinction event, yes. it is a few centuries in the future and will be caused by a combination of equatorial regions becoming uninhabitable, the desertification of farmland, and ecosystem collapse at the microbial level that will devastate crops. none of us are going to see that. we'll see the start of it. what i'm expecting in the next few decades, which most of us will see, is a pandemic that spreads through livestock. obviously that's a pretty conservative guess because we've already had swine and avian flu, and our international agricultural system is apparently custom designed to create big reservoirs for disease, full of stressed malnourished perfect hosts with no immune systems, and then spread infected animals all over the world in as little time as possible. i'm choosing not to worry about geological-level threats like methane bubbles, for the same reason i'm not worried about celestial threats like asteroids. a chunk of rock from space could smash the earth like a fishbowl before i finish this post, and a methane bubble from the siberian permfrost could turn the planet into venus by the end of next year. but the chance of that happening is low, and if it does happen there is absolutely nothing i can do about it. nobody reading this thread can do anything about it either. it's good on an intellectual level to be aware of those threats, it instills a sense of humility, but if they are at the forefront of your mind all the time all they're going to do is paralyse you with anxiety. we joke about suicide being the most ethical option right now, but it should go without saying that it's not. the last thing the planet needs is people who know what's actually going on removing themselves from the global think tank that is going to save us. i know it's hard when you're depressed, but the most useful thing you can do, personally, right now, is to choose one of the many existential threats facing us and think about how you, personally, right now, can start working on it. for example, i am dedicating my life to working in the national park system and maintaining and enriching the few pristine ecosystems that we have left. when our food bowls collapse, which they will, the national parks will be able to support a limited amount of agriculture to protect the population. i am working on developing an integrated system of crops and livestock that makes use of australia's natural processes instead of fighting them - the traditional european method of just obliterating great tracts of natural vegetation and filling the torn-up soil with wheat is working less and less effectively every year, and we will eventually hit a point where pumping the earth full of chemical fertilisers is just not going to make up for the loss of the microbial kingdoms that allow flora to live in this incredibly harsh environment. while working in agriculture i'll be monitoring biosecurity, and will be focusing on under-utilised species that will weather any livestock-based pandemics that may break out over the coming years. i'm probably not going to come up with a cure for whatever disease ends up loving us over in the end or anything grand like that, but i can absolutely lay the groundwork in my lifetime to make sure there's a segment of australia that will still be habitable for both humans and animals in a few hundred years when the earth has reached its hottest point. the secret is to start small. right now i'm growing native desert trees in pots in my backyard, and saving up for a few acres of land somewhere remote. as the drought intensifies and ageing farmers flee the inland, farms are getting cheaper and cheaper. within about two years i hope to have ~50 acres undergoing rehabilitation. i can't really plan any further than that because these changes are happening so fast that climatologists can't keep up with them, but it's not unthinkable that in ten years i could have a thousand acres. if i met up with five or six people who have the same idea, we could have ten thousand acres. that's enough private land to host a bunch of critically endangered species and perpetuate a viable yield of crops, and that means that in five hundred years, long after i've died and been forgotten, there will be human beings still living in australia. just remember this. the human species is not going to die out. we are the first of generations. we only have a single lifetime in which to work; the miracles happen after we're dead. the time to act is now. think about what you can do; choose what you will do; and start doing it.
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Aug 24, 2017 03:42
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For reference, a ton of methane is roughly equivalent to 25 tons of carbon dioxide, so 17 million tons of methane is ~425 million tons of CO2, and global emissions stand at around 10,000 million tons. These numbers are pretty significant. All else being equal, we're looking at permafrost contributions to atmospheric carbon rapidly transition (just a decade!) from a drop in the water, to a sizeable climate change driver.
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Aug 24, 2017 03:43
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Conspiratiorist posted:For reference, a ton of methane is roughly equivalent to 25 tons of carbon dioxide, so 17 million tons of methane is ~425 million tons of CO2, and global emissions stand at around 10,000 million tons. Methane turns into CO2 within a matter of months, so that's good. On the other hand, what matters the most is not base-level increases in temperature, but rather the nasty feedback loops caused by temperature spikes, such as the ones caused by these methane bubbles bursting. AFAIK we have no way of modeling them accurately, much less predicting them.
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Aug 24, 2017 03:49
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the old ceremony posted:learn permaculture
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Aug 24, 2017 03:58
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the old ceremony posted:we are heading for a massive extinction event, yes. it is a few centuries in the future and will be caused by a combination of equatorial regions becoming uninhabitable, the desertification of farmland, and ecosystem collapse at the microbial level that will devastate crops. none of us are going to see that. we'll see the start of it. what i'm expecting in the next few decades, which most of us will see, is a pandemic that spreads through livestock. obviously that's a pretty conservative guess because we've already had swine and avian flu, and our international agricultural system is apparently custom designed to create big reservoirs for disease, full of stressed malnourished perfect hosts with no immune systems, and then spread infected animals all over the world in as little time as possible.  This is a good post, this is what more posters in this thread should think like when it comes around to this again rather than just despair. I am the triple thread. I am Rope Access Technician, and I will shortly be licensed to handle commercial explosives. I can program computers, weld without gasses, and manage bee hives. I'm working on becoming a qualified wilderness guide: not because I care about yuppies paying me to hike up mountains with them, but because the vast amount of knowledge that career requires will become invaluable if things go south. If the timeline of decline is slow and I'm old when things really collapse, hey, I like my life and I make a lot of money doing what I do. I will be using that money to buy a acrage here on the BC coast which will be above any conceivable sea level rise in my lifetime, surrounded by one of the oldest surviving off-grid populations in North America. Every. Single. Day. of the week I am either biking, running, hiking, or climbing mountains to keep myself in shape, on top of studying. Yes, the world as we knew it growing up is gone, that's life. Yeah, there's a powerfully strong possibility that we won't recognize our civilization in ten years, but as I've pointed out many times before: that's the nature of human existence. You are citizen in the last days of Byzantium: Do you sit in the city and clutch your faded family heirlooms, sobbing while the Turks beat down the walls? Or do you GTFO and build the best life you can?
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Aug 24, 2017 04:04
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the old ceremony posted:... and a methane bubble from the siberian permfrost could turn the planet into venus by the end of next year .. A minor point, to be sure, but this won't and can't happen. Still, keep those asteroids in mind.
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Aug 24, 2017 04:11
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It's just all happening so goddamn fast
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Aug 24, 2017 04:16
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the old ceremony posted:we are heading for a massive extinction event, yes. it is a few centuries in the future and will be caused by a combination of equatorial regions becoming uninhabitable, the desertification of farmland, and ecosystem collapse at the microbial level that will devastate crops. none of us are going to see that. we'll see the start of it. what i'm expecting in the next few decades, which most of us will see, is a pandemic that spreads through livestock. obviously that's a pretty conservative guess because we've already had swine and avian flu, and our international agricultural system is apparently custom designed to create big reservoirs for disease, full of stressed malnourished perfect hosts with no immune systems, and then spread infected animals all over the world in as little time as possible. you're way too positive for this thread stop ruining the mood just kidding, keep up the good work!
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Aug 24, 2017 04:17
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