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At the point where the conversation gets to Yellowstone supercaldera I think we've solidly left the realm of anthropogenic outcomes and I don't know if the conversation was really ever about them.
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Nov 4, 2017 02:41
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Hahahaha he picked one parenthetical thing out of a list of like a dozen things and used that to say the whole post was wrong. Predictable, but still ridiculous.
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Nov 4, 2017 02:44
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Trabisnikof posted:At the point where the conversation gets to Yellowstone supercaldera I think we've solidly left the realm of anthropogenic outcomes and I don't know if the conversation was really ever about them. Is the camel's back intact?
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Nov 4, 2017 02:55
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The problem with climate change is that the longer you discuss it, the less you can ignore all the other horrific ravages which human civilization is currently inflicting upon our biosphere. Nobody wants to see how the sausage gets made, basically, much less consider their hand in the process. To do so for any length of time necessarily leads to mental anguish if you have any shred of morality.
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Nov 4, 2017 03:33
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Nov 4, 2017 03:46
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If it honestly gets to the point where massive depopulation consistent with "nobody have any more kids!" is the "right" thing to do, your options become: A.) Have people like shrike82 convince or coerce the people who want kids that they can't have them B.) Just have the people who want kids kill him, or as many other people as they need to for the numbers to work out. Since only B.) is consistent with the long term survival of human civilization, In shrike82's framework most possible futures that involve the continuation of human civilization also involve him getting his face smashed in with a backhoe or something during Corn War II. So the fact that he is pretty short on the odds of humanity continuing longer than his lifetime are understandable.
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Nov 4, 2017 04:29
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yup i'm pretty fearful of roving groups of quiverful families roaming around the climate apocalypse assassinating people so they can have more kids
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Nov 4, 2017 04:51
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Evil_Greven posted:Along with you know... ~60 years of farming left in the U.S. and less in a lot of other places, killing the oceans, exhausting or destroying our freshwater supplies, sea level rise forcing mass migration within a few decades at most, collapse of economically viable natural gas and oil, the staggering loss of flying insects, the continued extinction of animals a we murder them and their habitats, the looming degradation of the thermohaline circulation, the destruction of glaciers all across the world, the global decline in evaporation due to our extreme global dimming, the continuing population growth demanding more food and water, the coming conflict between Pakistan-India-China, a whole host of potential natural disasters that are due (Yellowstone, Cascadia, New Madrid, ...), continued butchering of fisheries, relentless destruction of forests, the annihilation of landscapes in pursuit of resources, the inability for democracies to respond to a few crises (never mind a so many all at once), and so on and so on... Haha, yikes! *nail biting* To the poster who wanted to go as agw: this, staple this post to your face.
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Nov 4, 2017 04:53
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Bringing sentient life into the collapsing world that gave us President Donald Trump might not be the best thing to do. A healthy and well adjusted person can figure out how to have a happy life without some illusion that you're going to be immortal by spaying your DNA up inside someone. Plus, if you want to take care of someone you can still do that by adopting!
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Nov 4, 2017 04:54
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shrike82 posted:yup i'm pretty fearful of roving groups of quiverful families roaming around the climate apocalypse assassinating people so they can have more kids
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Nov 4, 2017 05:18
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i'd be more worried about the hillaryfolk to be honest
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Nov 4, 2017 05:19
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god dammit shrike what did i tell you about not leaving your room
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Nov 4, 2017 05:24
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It is pretty much incontrovertible that population growth will exacerbate efforts at limiting climate change. However it's important to keep to keep in mind the reason we are compelled to fight climate change; that is because it threatens our health, our economy, social stability, and etc. The entire point above all to protect human lives, and everything else like conserving biodiversity comes second. There's a few very sad souls who due to tunnel vision or simple misanthropy have completely lost sight why climate change matters. Climate change has the potential to unleash famine with renewed intensity upon the global poor. Preventing this is one of the greatest challenges of today. Yet somehow people have looked at this problem and come to a monstrous conclusion: to prevent a famine in the future we must have it TODAY. Kill the poor now, and climate change won't have a chance to do it later. Likewise, climate presents risks to our values and freedom. Economic decline and refugees could produce radical rightwing governments. Somehow to prevent this, people have come to the conclusion we must have a brutal and cruel government today, eager and capable of enforcing compulsory abortions along the Chinese model. In order to avoid the (theoretical) disaster tomorrow, we must create one today. We have to kill to save lives, sacrifice our liberty in order to save it, and impoverish ourselves before circumstance strips us of our wealth. I am not saying we won't have to swallow any bitter pills when it comes to addressing climate change. Just that you don't vaccinate against against an illness by inflicting another just as bad.
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Nov 4, 2017 05:29
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In general, people feel that elon musk will prevent us from driving off a cliff, while teslas drive off cliffs. Its very worrying.
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Nov 4, 2017 05:36
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With regard to the "60 years of farming left" thing. What does that really mean and is it set in stone? I mean, the dustbowl caused all the topsoil to pretty much dry up and blow away, yet there is still farming in the midwest, how does that work?
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Nov 4, 2017 05:36
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Uh you guys I'm talking about not having kids for the sake of your personal psychology, not some misguided effort to reduce your personal impact on the future of the planet, as if anything you do makes any real difference. You don't have kids because the living beings that you're putting the entirety of your reason for existence into are going to be growing up in a dying or already dead world. They're either going to die very young or, if they're very fortunate, live to try to subsist in whatever's left over afterward. Anyways, the political future I keep referring to is the fact that no countries will be surviving the effects of the refugee crises that are coming without a full-on conversion to straight up fascism and aggressive war-making to acquire the resources needed to keep their poo poo afloat. This includes the genocide of any country that gets in the way of that, by virtue of needing to feed the hundreds of millions of starving people they're stuck with. Even in the long term this provides no hope for the continuity of global civilization, fascism is inherently unsustainable and nobody's gonna be taking over the world in full due to the amount of nuclear weapons poised to prevent that at any cost. This is why when considering the long term we hope for things to come to a head sooner, rather than later. If humanity is brought to it's knees on a quick enough time scale, the loss of GHG production may allow the oceans to survive and sustain the theoretical subsistence of whatever human population remains afterward. Then maybe given enough time, the distant descendants of those people can try again at making it work in a world that barely resembles the one that we almost destroyed. I don't really care about that either way though, I'm just hoping I can get to NZ before poo poo goes bad.
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Nov 4, 2017 05:46
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cm please talk to a doctor. if you're making concrete plans to flee your life for new zealand, don't follow through on them until you've discussed your mental state with a professional
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Nov 4, 2017 05:50
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You can't flee to new Zealand anyways because if you're posting in this thread you don't have enough money.
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Nov 4, 2017 06:12
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Squalid posted:... a monstrous conclusion: ... Alternate Proposal: Arcologies and Megacities 
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Nov 4, 2017 06:19
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yaffle posted:With regard to the "60 years of farming left" thing. What does that really mean and is it set in stone? I mean, the dustbowl caused all the topsoil to pretty much dry up and blow away, yet there is still farming in the midwest, how does that work? Quick read Bit longer older read
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Nov 4, 2017 06:25
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Soil degradation is not a new problem. It played a large role in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, which predicted worldwide famines starting in the mid-1970s. Of course, these famines never occurred. Nor was Ehrlich alone, or simply an extremist crank who didn't know what he was talking about. The problem of soil degradation was, and is, real. But just because a problem is real doesn't mean it's intractable, or that we can confidently make statements like "we have X years of farming left".
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Nov 4, 2017 06:41
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We can just inject more chemicals into the soil to keep it productive until a long-term technological solution is found. Right?
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Nov 4, 2017 07:00
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Thug Lessons posted:Soil degradation is not a new problem. It played a large role in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, which predicted worldwide famines starting in the mid-1970s. Of course, these famines never occurred. Nor was Ehrlich alone, or simply an extremist crank who didn't know what he was talking about. The problem of soil degradation was, and is, real. But just because a problem is real doesn't mean it's intractable, or that we can confidently make statements like "we have X years of farming left". lol this is some climate denial "we don't have enough information to worry about this" poo poo
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Nov 4, 2017 07:03
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shrike82 posted:lol this is some climate denial "we don't have enough information to worry about this" poo poo That's wrong. I stated very clearly: the problem is real, and soil degradation exists. Why would you not worry about that? But we should also realize that the problem of soil degradation is not new, but rather has arguably been with us throughout history and has been acute for, at the very least, decades. Probably centuries. What does "worrying about" soil degradation mean in that context? Either assuming it will just automatically be solved or that it's doomed to end farming seem hopeless, which really only leaves one option: trying to fix it. Pragmatism. Thug Lessons fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Nov 4, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2017 07:19
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Stairmaster posted:You can't flee to new Zealand anyways because if you're posting in this thread you don't have enough money. the old ceremony posted:cm please talk to a doctor. if you're making concrete plans to flee your life for new zealand, don't follow through on them until you've discussed your mental state with a professional I don't really have any great love for the place I live and nothing in particular to keep me around.It's gonna be at least half a decade before I have any chance of getting NZ residence, much less citizenship, unless I somehow come into a couple million dollars unexpectedly. Aside from that, I'm white, if I have employment or enough money there's no social reason to not move to any other white people country. e: Also I get that I come across as crazy on the internet because I like to challenge normalcy bias, but you people are just gonna have to take my word for it that I'm a perfectly functional person in real life. I don't lose sleep over the future, I don't wear a tinfoil hat, I don't give enough of a poo poo to try to blow up coal plants or oil pipelines or assassinate politicians or CEOs. I'm just a pretty normal guy with unusual interests and future plans. Thug Lessons posted:Soil degradation is not a new problem. It played a large role in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, which predicted worldwide famines starting in the mid-1970s. Of course, these famines never occurred. The green revolution didn't end the danger of worldwide famines, it just pushed them into the future under the assumption that technological progress would once again solve the problem when it reoccurred. ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Nov 4, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2017 08:16
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ChairMaster posted:The green revolution didn't end the danger of worldwide famines, it just pushed them into the future under the assumption that technological progress would once again solve the problem when it reoccurred. That's what technological (and economic, social, etc.) progress does, and then, before it can meet that future failure date, pushes it further again. We are always, in some sense, on the brink of collapse. And we're horrible at predicting how it will play out. Modern people have been saying an agricultural failure will kill us all since Malthus. People like Paul Ehrlich are not wrong to say that the past failed predictions of collapse don't mean it won't happen in the future, but they do give us good reason to be skeptical of predictions claiming it will. If repeated projections of declining crop yields and widespread famine consistently prove to be wrong, that at least counts for something in assessing contemporary claims that such declines and famines are imminent. And for that matter, we also have reason to be skeptical of claims that technology or some other adaptation will solve everything. They obviously haven't, which is why we're worried about climate change. But anyone who actually believes they've mapped out even a general course of history, based on super-accurate predictions of the course of technology, history, politics, climate change, soil degradation, and a million other factors? Those people are engaged in a grand project of self-deception.
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Nov 4, 2017 08:37
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Thug Lessons posted:That's what technological (and economic, social, etc.) progress does, and then, before it can meet that future failure date, pushes it further again. We are always, in some sense, on the brink of collapse. And we're horrible at predicting how it will play out. Modern people have been saying an agricultural failure will kill us all since Malthus. Are you trying to tell me that sustainability is literally an impossible fictional idea and that humanity only exists at the mercy of our own ability to develop technology indefinitely? Thug Lessons posted:But anyone who actually believes they've mapped out even a general course of history, based on super-accurate predictions of the course of technology, history, politics, climate change, soil degradation, and a million other factors? Those people are engaged in a grand project of self-deception. It seems pretty obvious to me that using the predictions of the scientific knowledge we posses in 2017 isn't really comparable to predictions made using the scientific knowledge of half a century ago. Our computational and observational abilities are orders of magnitude greater than they used to be. poo poo, nobody back then even knew what burning fossil fuels was doing to the planet (other than oil companies who kept it quiet). There's nothing incorrect about taking the huge likelihood (I only say likelihood to exclude the obvious retort of "you don't know for sure that rising sea levels will lead to the displacement of almost all human populations in coastal regions", as if anyone believes otherwise) of various separate things all happening at once and bringing them all together to conclude that global human civilization probably isn't gonna make it that much longer.
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Nov 4, 2017 08:56
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ChairMaster posted:Are you trying to tell me that sustainability is literally an impossible fictional idea and that humanity only exists at the mercy of our own ability to develop technology indefinitely? Dude, there isn't any reliable prediction that shows collapse in the next century. Economic predictions have predicted between a 2-20% decline in GDP relative to predicted growth. It's possible even those underestimate the catastrophic effects of climate change, but the reality is that we're pushing the bounds of speculation. The uncertainty is terrifying. But simply losing hope isn't a scientific opinion; it's more of a disposition or a stance you choose to adopt. It seems to me a foolish one to me, because it's both a perennial mindset that's more often wrong than right, and because it's a very miserable one as well.
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Nov 4, 2017 09:04
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ChairMaster posted:Are you trying to tell me that sustainability is literally an impossible fictional idea Aren't you the one saying sustainability is literally an impossible fictional idea for the future of global human civilization?
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Nov 4, 2017 09:09
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To be honest a lot of this strikes me as rather vain. We live in a world where something like 3 million people starve to death annually. The biggest environmental problem at the moment isn't climate change, it's air pollution, which kills as much as 6.5 million people annually. There are a great deal of real, immediate problems on planet Earth that don't rely on predicted ends of civilization 30 or 60 or 90 years out. But for some (probably selfish, conceited) reason the predicted doom registers far more easily for the average person.
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Nov 4, 2017 09:14
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ChairMaster posted:Are you trying to tell me that sustainability is literally an impossible fictional idea and that humanity only exists at the mercy of our own ability to develop technology indefinitely? That is not obvious at all. In fact in many domains modern forecasters are no better at making predictions than they were 50 years ago. We understand the climate much better than we did then, but our understanding of the economy and political processes have improved much less. It is highly probable sea-level rise will displace people. Someone could probably even draw up a prediction interval for the range of plausible outcomes. You can't however calculate a probability that this will trigger a war or lead to civilization collapse. That is impossible. And many of the amateur prognosticators in this thread go one step worse, they take many low-probability worst case scenario events and assume they are as inevitable as sea-level rise, and will all co-occur. That is not a scientific prediction, it is not evidence based and it is not helpful.
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Nov 4, 2017 15:15
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Thug Lessons posted:The biggest environmental problem at the moment isn't climate change, it's air pollution, which kills as much as 6.5 million people annually. Uhh... no? "Biggest problem" =/= "Currently most deadly problem" Beyond that, air pollution from humans is literally the largest thing driving climate change. They go hand in hand. Thug Lessons posted:There are a great deal of real, immediate problems on planet Earth that don't rely on predicted ends of civilization 30 or 60 or 90 years out. What's your point? Squalid posted:That is not obvious at all. In fact in many domains modern forecasters are no better at making predictions than they were 50 years ago. We understand the climate much better than we did then, but our understanding of the economy and political processes have improved much less. [citation needed] quote:It is highly probable sea-level rise will displace people. Someone could probably even draw up a prediction interval for the range of plausible outcomes. You can't however calculate a probability that this will trigger a war or lead to civilization collapse. That is impossible. And many of the amateur prognosticators in this thread go one step worse, they take many low-probability worst case scenario events and assume they are as inevitable as sea-level rise, and will all co-occur. That is not a scientific prediction, it is not evidence based and it is not helpful. This isn't a scientific paper, it's a forum thread. If I told you there was a meteor coming with a 10% chance to hit earth you'd probably use the threat of it hitting to motivate people to actually address the issue. NewForumSoftware fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Nov 4, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2017 15:16
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Conspiratiorist posted:If all the doom and gloom was wrong, this would still be true. a colleague once told me that he was worried that his daughter will never have a job in her lifetime. I was internally screaming "then why the hell did you HAVE one? Abortion is perfectly legal in this country!". I just plain don't undrstand how people can be deluded enough into accepting responsibility for an entire human life in good times let alone now. Anyone who willingly reproduces is condeming an innocent human to a lifetime lf misery.
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Nov 4, 2017 16:43
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Trabisnikof posted:Aren't you the one saying sustainability is literally an impossible fictional idea for the future of global human civilization? I'm the one saying it's politically impossible, I've never said in this thread that there's no way for us physically to prevent catastrophic failure of human civilization, just that the political reality of the situation is that we are absolutely not going to. His post implies that the natural state of humanity is to keep growing and growing forever, increasing consumption indefinitely, with nothing more than the assurance that technology will always be there to save us. I didn't think that I'd have to explain why that'd a ridiculous thing to say in this thread, but apparently more than one person thinks this? You people do understand that unlimited growth is a childish fantasy implanted in your minds by a capitalist society that doesn't want to admit that it's failing? This is as basic as it gets, here. Thug Lessons posted:To be honest a lot of this strikes me as rather vain. We live in a world where something like 3 million people starve to death annually. The biggest environmental problem at the moment isn't climate change, it's air pollution, which kills as much as 6.5 million people annually. There are a great deal of real, immediate problems on planet Earth that don't rely on predicted ends of civilization 30 or 60 or 90 years out. But for some (probably selfish, conceited) reason the predicted doom registers far more easily for the average person. Are you loving kidding? 10 million people per year is the largest crisis facing humanity to you? 0.14% of the population annually between both factors? And you're trying to sell this as a more urgent issue than loving climate change? You sound like a Republican acting like climate change is nothing more than slightly different weather and maybe a couple brown people somewhere die from it every once in a while but who cares about that? We should focus on this other distraction I've come up with instead. Squalid posted:That is not obvious at all. In fact in many domains modern forecasters are no better at making predictions than they were 50 years ago. We understand the climate much better than we did then, but our understanding of the economy and political processes have improved much less. This whole board is about politics, dude. If we can all agree on what's being caused by climate change (clearly there is some extreme optimism even in the effects alone going on here), then all that remains is for me to try to get people to realize how hilariously loving fragile our society is in the first place, and how woefully unprepared we are politically and practically for a quality of life reduction in the first world to happen for real. Fascism is on the rise worldwide, and climate change has hardly even touched upon most of the countries in which it appears. Do you seriously believe that when things get hard people are gonna take a hard left turn and vote to do the right thing and make sacrifices for the good of humanity? Or might you agree that people are more likely to step on the fuckin gas, blame whatever out-group is convenient and whatever neighboring country they might have a problem with, and decide that the only solution to their problem is war. When literally the only options available to the world are: 1) unilateral global co-operation in matters of quality of life and wealth redistribution, and 2) conflict and war between all nations on the planet, starting with the small ones and moving on up to the largest rather quickly, you seriously believe that the first option is more likely?
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Nov 4, 2017 16:44
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Thug Lessons posted:To be honest a lot of this strikes me as rather vain. We live in a world where something like 3 million people starve to death annually. The biggest environmental problem at the moment isn't climate change, it's air pollution, which kills as much as 6.5 million people annually. There are a great deal of real, immediate problems on planet Earth that don't rely on predicted ends of civilization 30 or 60 or 90 years out. But for some (probably selfish, conceited) reason the predicted doom registers far more easily for the average person. Since climate change directly affects the availability of food and coal plants and mining are largely responsible for the pollution that kills so many people (the Lancet article I and another poster linked actually estimates 9 million deaths/year), addressing climate change both addresses immediate, near, and distant problems. In the US, it's the poorest communities (and disproportionately minorities) who are affected directly by pollution. Cleaning that up and switching from coal to carbon-free energy will also obviously require people to work, which is an opportunity to lower unemployment and redistribute wealth from the rich to poor people. That would also be a preventative healthcare measure that in the long term would reduce healthcare costs. None of these problems are disconnected or need to be addressed one at a time in a rank order. On an unrelated note, this article refers to a foundation currently highlighting the link between climate change and refugees. I like the quote from a US General: ""If Europe thinks they have a problem with migration today … wait 20 years," Stephen Cheney, retired US military corps brigadier general told the Guardian. " I think the US military's concern with climate change offers a way to bridge discussions with more conservative people, since it speaks more directly to issues they find concerning. Browsing the Environmental Justice Foundation's site, they have some good articles and media, then small things you can do to support (sadly, those things appear to be subscribe, sign this petition, or buy our t-shirts). Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Nov 4, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2017 17:19
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Dr. Roy Spencer released October numbers... YEAR MO GLOBE 2016 01 +0.55 2016 02 +0.85 2016 03 +0.76 2016 04 +0.72 2016 05 +0.53 2016 06 +0.33 2016 07 +0.37 2016 08 +0.43 2016 09 +0.45 2016 10 +0.42 2016 11 +0.46 2016 12 +0.26 2017 01 +0.32 2017 02 +0.38 2017 03 +0.22 2017 04 +0.27 2017 05 +0.44 2017 06 +0.21 2017 07 +0.29 2017 08 +0.41 2017 09 +0.54 2017 10 +0.63 Also some bullshit about the divergence of satellite and surface measurements and talking like there will be an El Niña. For reference, the highest monthly anomalies in the 20 previous years in UAH TLT (in this revision of the data) were... 2015 12 +0.46 2014 10 +0.25 2013 1 +0.45 2012 10 +0.24 2011 7 +0.20 2010 3 +0.51 2009 9 +0.27 2008 11 +0.06 2007 1 +0.43 2006 10 +0.22 2005 4 +0.33 2004 3 +0.35 2003 12 +0.38 2003 1 +0.34 2002 6 +0.30 (tied with Feb) 2001 8 +0.25 2000 5 +0.09 1999 2 +0.17 1998 4 +0.74 (Feb and May of this year also exceeded Oct 2017 by +0.02 and +0.01, respectively; Jun exceeded Sep 2017 by +0.03) 1997 12 +0.25 Prior to 1997, these are the only months that beat its anomaly back to 1978, so it's not really worth going back further: 1991 6 +0.31 1995 8 +0.28 Top 10 anomalous months in UAH dataset now are: 2016 02 2016 03 199 2016 04 199 199 2017 10 199 2016 01 2017 09 Surely a good sign. Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Nov 5, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2017 18:21
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ChairMaster posted:I don't give enough of a poo poo to try to blow up coal plants or oil pipelines or assassinate politicians or CEOs.
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Nov 4, 2017 18:32
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Evil_Greven posted:Dr. Roy Spencer released October numbers... I'm a big idiot so I'm going to ask what all this means?
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Nov 4, 2017 18:55
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It's getting hotter faster.
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Nov 4, 2017 18:58
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ChairMaster posted:You know perfectly well how having kids changes a person. Do you seriously believe that any amount of evidence could convince someone with kids that their children are almost certainly going to die at a much younger age than them? Or that their children are likely to die in the same crisis that they will? what
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Nov 4, 2017 20:18
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