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Digiwizzard posted:Don't worry. Everything will be fine. We will innovate our way out of this. Humans are very intelligent. Have you ever heard of a thing called Thorium? I thought you meant thorazine for a second. Maybe give lithium a try too.
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Oct 31, 2017 02:13
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the old ceremony posted:every poster itt needs to choose a species, not necessarily an endangered one, and devote their lives to helping that species make it through the climate apocalypse This is ineffecient. We need a dna ark. They don't need to make it through, as long as we can bring them back. 
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Oct 31, 2017 02:19
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no fool, we need a real ark
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Oct 31, 2017 03:11
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we need to treat earth like an ark
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Oct 31, 2017 03:33
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lol i like how 'average IQ contract worker' slowly morphs into me being a racist classist as if that's not going to be everyone in the future and double lol at 'don't have kids' morphing in to 'gently caress the poor for wanting to improve their station in life' you can really tell who's a parent call to action fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 04:25
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Would it be shitposting to suggest we should blow up the moon in increments shading the earth with the resulting debris field?
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Oct 31, 2017 04:32
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FantasticExtrusion posted:Would it be shitposting to suggest we should blow up the moon in increments shading the earth with the resulting debris field? You're now the head of a nation, good work
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Oct 31, 2017 04:45
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Taking environmentally immoral actions (having kids, flying in aeroplanes, living in western society) doesn't make you a bad person, nor does you not being a bad person make those actions moral. We all live with a compromise between doing the right thing and our own desires and where we draw that line is a question for each individual. Collectively we need to act on carbon but raging at individual people for drawing their lines in different places to your own one is pointless and dumb.
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Oct 31, 2017 04:53
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Gortarius posted:I'm still hopeful. This bullshit solutionism is so dumb. There is absolutely no reason at all to think that we are going to be able to clean the planet or undo any of the damage we've done already, aside from normalcy bias. It's pretty fuckin far fetched, actually. If you don't wanna think about what the future looks like, then don't. Move your thoughts elsewhere. Accept that you shouldn't have kids and enjoy what's left of this world to enjoy. Don't try to pretend like there's a fuckin deus ex machina coming to save us that somehow justifies the recklessness and near-infinite lost potential of this dumb species. ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 05:00
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quote:Oil giants Shell and BP are planning for global temperatures to rise as much as 5°C by the middle of the century. The level is more than double the upper limit committed to by most countries in the world under the Paris Climate Agreement, which both companies publicly support. 
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Oct 31, 2017 06:56
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Paradoxish posted:Flying is always contentious in this thread because you aren't actually reducing emissions by avoiding it, just your own personal carbon footprint. You need to affect aggregate demand enough to reduce the number of the flights, and then that inevitably leads into an argument about personal vs. collective action.
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Oct 31, 2017 06:59
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i don't keep talking about my volunteer work to make you guys feel bad because i recognise that even being in a financial position to volunteer is a huge privilege, but if you're in a position to do it, doing some work in environmental rehabilitation is really rewarding. i get to plant trees and see frogs and butterflies up close and it makes me feel that i'm at least doing something - i may die in the great water riots of 2030 but nobody will be able to say i didn't try
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Oct 31, 2017 07:56
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plus you meet other environmentalists and you can all network, both in the socially acceptable career development sense and in the "so when the hurricanes come you can camp out at my farm" sense
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Oct 31, 2017 07:58
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Wakko posted:There's something to be said for not immersing oneself in climate news if it's impacting you physically. Eh, I'm not that much of a sad brains. Think I've done that and since I started exercising a few months back and get to do a job I like now, I'm a lot happier in general. Looking forward to joining a gym and then doing conservation work (or something related to environmental protection) on the weekends after I've moved house. It's a short life, maybe shorter than anyone expects given the state of world at present but this thread, others like it and becoming more environmentally aware in general have at least given me the motivation to now get on with doing some volunteer work. As The Old Ceremony has just aptly said: the old ceremony posted:i get to plant trees and see frogs and butterflies up close and it makes me feel that i'm at least doing something - i may die in the great water riots of 2030 but nobody will be able to say i didn't try
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Oct 31, 2017 08:11
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I recall reading something about some middle eastern sultan planning to transport an iceberg from the artic areas to his shores to turn it into fresh water supply. I don't know how he would do it but is that in any way legit or just some rich idiot thinking he can do whatever he wants? If it's gong to melt anyway, might as well bottle it up.  and then throw the plastic bottles on the ground once they are empty.
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Oct 31, 2017 09:32
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Btw, as far as aviation goes. quote:However, with that said, if you allocate all the emissions to passengers, the plane is full, and you divide the pounds of carbon dioxide per mile by the average number of passengers from Table 4, Boeing aircraft capacity and fuel efficiency, you'll get 0.24 pounds of CO2 per passenger per mile. .24 pounds of co2 per passenger per mile isn't great, but you could easily surpass it if you have a car-centric lifestyle depending on how often you fly/how far. The average car emits 411 grams of CO2/.9 pounds of CO2 a mile. A round trip life to Hawaii from California is about 5,000 miles or the equivalent of driving around 1333 miles. Considering the average American drives about 13,000 miles a year, there is an obvious issue of scale. That said, obviously, aviation is still very carbon reliant (also it will mean oil will essentially never be "worthless"). I would say in general the transportation infrastructure in the US is practically designed to maximize CO2 emissions, and a big part of that is hangups we developed from the Cold War/desegregation. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 13:44
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hooman posted:Taking environmentally immoral actions (having kids, flying in aeroplanes, living in western society) doesn't make you a bad person, nor does you not being a bad person make those actions moral. We all live with a compromise between doing the right thing and our own desires and where we draw that line is a question for each individual. I'd go further and argue that shaming individual people for flying or driving or whatever is actually harmful. "But he flies!" is a conservative argument that reframes unsustainable carbon-emissions in terms of individual consumption and motivations rather than a consequence of how we've organized our economy. I don't care if people in this thread are being hypocrites for taking a trans-pacific flight, it's a bad argument made in bad faith by people who benefit from resisting any attempt to address the massive externalities of systemic fossil-fuel usage. It was absolutely used to undermine Gore's high-profile climate activism and I'm honestly surprised to see it uncritically used here. edit: VVVV no kidding. Nocturtle fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 14:02
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no amount of contrarian logic flipping and zeitgeist analysis changes the fact that flying is bad and you should do little to none of it.
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Oct 31, 2017 14:34
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That said, you also shouldn't drive, especially not alone. Of course, we live in a society (US) completely designed around flying and driving because we hate infrastructure investment and minorities. Also, you probably shouldn't live in an area where excessive amounts of cooling/heating are necessary. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 15:25
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My assumption (hope?) is that people in this thread are familiar enough with the issues and arguments related to climate change that we don't need to make obvious points like "you really shouldn't fly or drive or eat cows". On the subject of flying, in my field and academia generally researchers are expected to go to conferences and regularly present new results. This is a real requirement for advancement and getting a permanent position. These conferences almost always require air-travel and are often international, so you can't really avoid flying multiple times per year if you want to get a job. Obviously this is the norm for many industries and in the big scheme of things is a relatively minor fraction of commercial travel. On the other hand the physical scientists in my field at the very least should know better, as they can't pretend to not understand the science of climate change and the implication that unnecessary air travel should be effectively banned. Especially as conference presentations and major results can now be shared online, and most larger conferences in fact already stream their talks (verbal talks by the way are a bad way to share results beyond a superficial level). This is objectively minor compared to the other pressing issues related to climate change but it's disappointing that people working in rigorous scientific research will uncritically participate in such wasteful events, let alone that attendance is a prerequisite for getting a position. Presumably this will all soon be moot when my field disappears along with publicly funded research and modern global society. That will be a kind of progress.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:59
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Nocturtle posted:On the subject of flying, in my field and academia generally researchers are expected to go to conferences and regularly present new results. This is a real requirement for advancement and getting a permanent position. These conferences almost always require air-travel and are often international, so you can't really avoid flying multiple times per year if you want to get a job. Granted, one issue is simply the "rubbing shoulders effect" and a lot of professional connections are made when alcohol is involved. You can share your results online, but let's be honest the guy that was there in person is going to get a massive leg up (as in many other industries). Also, if you want to do any sort of research overseas, there is really no way around flying.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:10
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StabbinHobo posted:no amount of contrarian logic flipping and zeitgeist analysis changes the fact that flying is bad and you should do little to none of it. I would gladly take a 5-hour train ride from San Diego to San Francisco over the 1-hour flight. Now if only California's High-Speed Rail actually used the EXISTING San Diego->OC->LA->Santa Barbara->San Jose route. Instead, it starts in Bumfuck, CA. As it is, I'm considering Megabus for return trips, because there are no late night flights and avoiding a hotel stay saves me from a $250 expense.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:23
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Yeah, I suspect people lambasting air travel aren’t coming from a place of honest criticism. I still find it amusing that the same folks will poo poo on the notion of advocating shifting to vegetarianism.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:29
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shrike82 posted:Yeah, I suspect people lambasting air travel aren’t coming from a place of honest criticism. Going Vegan is reported to have a bigger impact than any other personal lifestyle changes. Although I don't think it makes up for the flying-to-work nonsense I endured in 2016 (~ 20 cross USA round trips). I don't miss that and in the end, I was 'downsized' anyway.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:22
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I saw some youtube clips about these hydroponic tower farms and warehouses with red/blue LED's brasting some lettuces. I knew this sort of deal existed before, but is it a total scam or is there actually some real potential in it? It seemed too good to be true so I'm a bit skeptical.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:19
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Gortarius posted:I saw some youtube clips about these hydroponic tower farms and warehouses with red/blue LED's brasting some lettuces. I knew this sort of deal existed before, but is it a total scam or is there actually some real potential in it? It seemed too good to be true so I'm a bit skeptical. Things like that are a classic question of return on investment. It costs a lot of resources to build your tower farm with LEDs and hydroponics. It costs a lot fewer resources to plant directly in soil and use existing participation and soil amendments. But most of our agriculture falls in the middle where we might irrigate or use fertilizer or use greenhouses and artificial light or heat. My gut feeling is that technologies like this or aquaculture will end up filling a bunch of smaller niches rather than dominating agriculture. Maybe we will grow a bunch of greens in towers in cities where the winters are too hard or the summers too dry but the citizens still need the greens for a healthy diet. But I don't think we'll end up growing our starches that way.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:26
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Nocturtle posted:I'd go further and argue that shaming individual people for flying or driving or whatever is actually harmful. "But he flies!" is a conservative argument that reframes unsustainable carbon-emissions in terms of individual consumption and motivations rather than a consequence of how we've organized our economy. I don't care if people in this thread are being hypocrites for taking a trans-pacific flight, it's a bad argument made in bad faith by people who benefit from resisting any attempt to address the massive externalities of systemic fossil-fuel usage. It was absolutely used to undermine Gore's high-profile climate activism and I'm honestly surprised to see it uncritically used here. I think making the argument "Individual action" vs "Organized bureaucracy" is a false dichotomy. Any good solution requires both of those things, but I think it's hard to convince people that their personal choices matter until the bureaucracy is oriented in the right direction. The only way we make it out of this is for individual, local, state, federal, and global policy to line up and push for solutions that mitigate our impact and increase our resilience. The IPCC has to quit living in optimistic fairytale land, nation governments have to quit lying about emissions and ignoring the effects of climate change on their populace, state and local governments have to work on building resilient infrastructure, and individuals have to act in a way that mitigates their emissions. All of it. Not one or the other. All of it.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:35
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I also think "Well you fly so everything you say is moot" isn't the right way to look at personal accountability. We've all normalized ourselves into various levels of consumption. What's important is that we work to be cognizant of our consumption and we always push ourselves to minimize it beyond the edge of our comfort zone. For some of us that's giving up the last bit of red meat that we still eat. For others of us that's giving up some of our vacations every year. Not having a kid doesn't mean you're free to spew out whatever other emissions you want. You always have to be pushing that envelope of asceticism that keeps you from ever normalizing the insane lifestyle we've all come to accept again.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:38
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Gortarius posted:I saw some youtube clips about these hydroponic tower farms and warehouses with red/blue LED's brasting some lettuces. I knew this sort of deal existed before, but is it a total scam or is there actually some real potential in it? It seemed too good to be true so I'm a bit skeptical. It's real but over-hyped. Think, "high-budget greenhouse." It's cool stuff so I read a bunch of articles on it a while back. In a nutshell, it's niche. The niches are some combination of:
I'm definitely forgetting some but, in general, only some crops benefit from hydroponics and the numbers only work for unsuitable crops in difficult to farm and difficult to access regions. Or if you're selling premium products. A full 'vertical farm' set-up includes a controlled environment. This means your growing season is year round (extra crops), you don't need any pesticides (~organic~), plants are unmolested by weather and such (extra yield) and things like that. They also sport extreme efficiency regarding water and fertilizer use. So you get comparatively large quantities of perfect, pure crop per unit of land/water/fertilizer and you can charge a premium for your premium goods. I bring this up because I saw one article about a vertical farm outside Chicago which sells premium herbs. They sell a lot of high end stuff year-round and can very easily and quickly grow/sell whatever their customers request. I saw another article discussing fertilizer in particular. Fish urine's urea can be converted to usable nitrogen by bacteria in bean root systems. The article detailed an 'aquaculture' system where tilapia were farmed specifically in the water tank in order to fertilize the water/'nutrient solution' It's neat stuff. Much of the associated technology is already in used in greenhouses around the world. It looked like 'Vertical Farming' is a unitary thing but rather a spectrum of capitalization between standard greenhouses and the full sci-fi concept of a hydroponics towers (which I don't think actually exist anywhere). The closest I've seen is the Japanese computer chip plant which was converted to a vertical farm in order to generate hilarious quantities of absolutely perfect spinach. I think LED-based growlamps is what kicked all this off. They generate little heat, use little power, last a long time and can emit on the specific wavelengths chlorophylls use. They're vastly superior. As for the future, the tech's going to keep getting cheaper. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing 'vertical farms' for stuff like herbs and spinach peppering the infrastructure in the near future.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:56
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the old ceremony posted:i don't keep talking about my volunteer work to make you guys feel bad because i recognise that even being in a financial position to volunteer is a huge privilege, but if you're in a position to do it, doing some work in environmental rehabilitation is really rewarding. i get to plant trees and see frogs and butterflies up close and it makes me feel that i'm at least doing something - i may die in the great water riots of 2030 but nobody will be able to say i didn't try see, i already do this but all my eyes pay attention to is how things get worse every year. reefs are worse every year, forests are worse every year, rivers are worse every. single. year.
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Oct 31, 2017 21:27
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shrike82 posted:Yeah, I suspect people lambasting air travel aren’t coming from a place of honest criticism. What? I'm vegetarian and brag about it all the time.
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Oct 31, 2017 21:47
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call to action posted:see, i already do this but all my eyes pay attention to is how things get worse every year. reefs are worse every year, forests are worse every year, rivers are worse every. single. year. Not they're not. US agricultural land use peaked in the 1949 and has fallen ever since, freeing up more and more land for forests and other wildlands. Water use from the Colorado, the most-abused river in the US, peaked in the 1990s and has fallen ever since. And you can list a whole other slew of environmental issues here, like air pollution, landfills and refuse, the ozone layer, all of which are getting better. The environmental movement just operates under a sort of completely unsubstantiated myth where everything ecological is always getting worse, and it's heartbreaking to see these pernicious lies just dominate the discourse with no challenge at all.
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Oct 31, 2017 21:57
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Are you seriously trying to imply that by cherry-picking some of the smallest issues we face as an example of things getting better that there is any hope for the global environment at all? That's fuckin ridiculous, dude. Everyone knows the ozone layer is probably gonna be fine, we're not worried about that anymore. There's still no fuckin brakes on the things that actually matter, ie greenhouse gases and ocean acidification.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:08
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Individual action is bunk. Collective action is bunk. Feeling any emotions whatsoever over your own personal contributions towards climate change in either a positive or negative light is dumb. Judging other individual people based on their actions is also dumb, unless they have a net worth of over a billion dollars or control of a major corporation. The people behind the profits and the media want us to squabble amongst each other in confusion and disarray while they continue to do whatever the gently caress they want. Nothing will change until it’s in their interests. Death is certain.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:10
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ChairMaster posted:Are you seriously trying to imply that by cherry-picking some of the smallest issues we face as an example of things getting better that there is any hope for the global environment at all? That's fuckin ridiculous, dude. Everyone knows the ozone layer is probably gonna be fine, we're not worried about that anymore. There's still no fuckin brakes on the things that actually matter, ie greenhouse gases and ocean acidification. I didn't cherry-pick anything. I took exactly the examples he stated and provided evidence that they're not getting worse every year, at least in the US. Obviously none of this does nothing to reduce the problems of climate change and ocean acidification, (which are radically different ones from deforestation and water depletion), but it's specifically the myth that every part of the environment is always getting worse that leads to this insane belief that, as you but it, there isn't "any hope for the global environment at all". I can't see that nonsense leading to anything but complete apathy.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:12
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Thug Lessons posted:Not they're not. US agricultural land use peaked in the 1949 and has fallen ever since, freeing up more and more land for forests and other wildlands. Water use from the Colorado, the most-abused river in the US, peaked in the 1990s and has fallen ever since. And you can list a whole other slew of environmental issues here, like air pollution, landfills and refuse, the ozone layer, all of which are getting better. The environmental movement just operates under a sort of completely unsubstantiated myth where everything ecological is always getting worse, and it's heartbreaking to see these pernicious lies just dominate the discourse with no challenge at all. The Montreal Protocol and what it did for stratospheric ozone is great. The Clean Water Act and what it did for US water supply is great. Unfortunately, these things are kind of dwarfed by some of our ongoing issues. You also seem to have a very US-centric view of things; for every Colorado River there is a Nile. We've freed up more land in the US for forests and wildlands? Okay, cool, whatever, tropical rainforests are now large net carbon sources instead of sinks due to human activity. Our land reforestation efforts in the US haven't put a dent in the overall harm to the carbon budget we've caused along tropical rainforests. We've done some things to improve the environment, but our goal is also a moving target because we're changing the environment. The rate at which we're making things worse is bigger than the rate at which we're improving things. That forces adaptation and - if the rate of degradation is too high - extinction. This is compounded by the fact that we've had a poor understanding of our negative externalities that harm the environment. As more studies come in we find out consistently that our impacts were much worse than we initially expected and we need to do exponentially more to mitigate them. You seem to like to sit here and think that the good things we're doing have any sort of useful impact compared to the negative rate of change. I can see how you have this view since when we bring up things like permafrost feedbacks that aren't captured in AR5 you go "oh sorry sorry haven't done the research don't have time to look into it!" and then back out into your naive, milquetoast views. Maybe one day you'll sit down and read the actual literature instead of always falling back to the same tired sources that err on the side of least drama when confronted?
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Oct 31, 2017 22:20
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Thug Lessons posted:Not they're not. US agricultural land use peaked in the 1949 and has fallen ever since, freeing up more and more land for forests and other wildlands. Water use from the Colorado, the most-abused river in the US, peaked in the 1990s and has fallen ever since. And you can list a whole other slew of environmental issues here, like air pollution, landfills and refuse, the ozone layer, all of which are getting better. The environmental movement just operates under a sort of completely unsubstantiated myth where everything ecological is always getting worse, and it's heartbreaking to see these pernicious lies just dominate the discourse with no challenge at all. how times do we have to remind you that a lot of environmental degradation in the developed world has been exported to the third world.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:30
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I also dislike seeing things like the Montreal Protocol treated as some great herald of human change and cooperation. It's more like checking off one of the many boxes that need to be checked off to not barrel straight into extinction. Until we treat growth and development as a "why should we" thing instead of a "why shouldn't we" thing we'll keep checking those boxes off until we miss one. Our treatment of variance and externalities is more reckless than a drunken teenager sitting down for their first game of poker.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:34
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:The Montreal Protocol and what it did for stratospheric ozone is great. The Clean Water Act and what it did for US water supply is great. Unfortunately, these things are kind of dwarfed by some of our ongoing issues. You also seem to have a very US-centric view of things; for every Colorado River there is a Nile. Then we need to develop Brazil as rapidly as possible up to the US level, or at least the level of the US in 1949 when their agricultural land use peaked, so that they can start making the same adjustments the US did that allowed them to implement reforestation. It's very clear that the best thing you can do for the environment is economic development, which both allows better deployment of technology as a substitute for environmental exploitation and frees humans from the intense pressures that drive them to disregard environmental concerns. quote:We've done some things to improve the environment, but our goal is also a moving target because we're changing the environment. The rate at which we're making things worse is bigger than the rate at which we're improving things. That forces adaptation and - if the rate of degradation is too high - extinction. This is compounded by the fact that we've had a poor understanding of our negative externalities that harm the environment. As more studies come in we find out consistently that our impacts were much worse than we initially expected and we need to do exponentially more to mitigate them. I have read the literature on permafrost feedbacks. All of them estimate Arctic emissions will be dwarfed by human emissions. In the worst case scenario, the Arctic permafrost might emit 160 GtCO2e cumulatively by 2100. Humans emit 40 GtCO2 every year, and that's excluding methane, N2O, CFCs, etc. I honestly think you just read news articles and collapse porn and that's where you get these ideas that Arctic permafrost is going to kill us all.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:40
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Minge Binge posted:how times do we have to remind you that a lot of environmental degradation in the developed world has been exported to the third world. That's specious, but even if it weren't the best option would be further development so that third world countries can implement the same policies the developed world has. The actual cause of environmental degradation in the third world is the cost of development itself, (coal-fired power plants, expropriation of the wild for agricultural use, etc.), that the developed countries no longer have to pay because they're rich enough to avoid it.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:46
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