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I guess its just that I have little taste for moralizing. We're not evil for emitting carbon, its just the reality of the system we live in that our behavior is destructive. Talking about climate change is just such a hard discursive needle to thread. We need to talk about a complicated systematic response, but almost nobody cares about that. They want to know what they can do, and I really believe their individual actions matter, if mostly by creating an environment conducive to implementing a systematic policy response. But when you start talking about individual decision making suddenly you're stuck in a morass of tribalism and identity. I don't think anyone really knows how to deal with these problems, if anyone did we'd probably be doing much more about climate change.
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Jan 9, 2018 06:31
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Squalid posted:But maybe to take that trip he'll forgo purchase of a new car for a couple years. While the guy who can't stand to live without steak will choose to skip the holiday flight to grandmas so he can afford his meat. And the guy who loves drag racing will scrimp on every meal so he can poor every extra penny into his precious riced out Mitsubishi. While the last two examples might offset each other somewhat, the first one really seems like a rich man version where he doesn't really sacrifice or offset anything. Holding off buying a new car for a few years? What a sacrifice. Maybe if he didn't own a car for a few years, and didn't travel outside a 50km radius during that time.
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Jan 9, 2018 07:28
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His Divine Shadow posted:While the last two examples might offset each other somewhat, the first one really seems like a rich man version where he doesn't really sacrifice or offset anything. Holding off buying a new car for a few years? What a sacrifice. Maybe if he didn't own a car for a few years, and didn't travel outside a 50km radius during that time. Hey I commute to work, I deserve jumbo-jet travel! Don't you judge me.  Climate compensation is a toxic idea. What a lot of people seem to struggle grasping is that most of their emissions comes from things that are very difficult to opt out of and that really should not be opted out of. You can start maintaining your clothes but you shouldn't stop consuming clothes. You could stop eating meat but you can't stop eating food. You can move to smaller accommodations but you can't live in the streets. Transports are the worst since they're for the most part completely out of your control, your government either gives you good options or they don't. You might have the option of switching a car for commute, or commute for a bicycle, but most people won't. This idea that you can opt out of a small thing and then we're set does not align with the reality of climate change at all. Maintaining our current quality of life in the aspects that actually matter means relinquishing the stuff that really doesn't.
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Jan 9, 2018 08:42
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We do try to offset and minimize as much of our carbon footprint as possible over here, rural house owners that we are. Like an energy efficient house using ground heat exchange pump for heating + wood in an efficient "kakelugn". We don't consume much, we try and limit our consumption and use a lot of 2nd hand stuff + a thing about living in the country is you consume less stuff because there's less stuff to consume... Wages are also lower so you have less money to consume with. In fact a study on this in Finland showed that per capita people in the Helsinki metropolitan area had the bigger footprint per capita than rural dwellers because they consume so much more goods and services, all which produce CO2. I did the carbon footprint calculator and our household carbon footprint (4 people, 1 small car, 0 air travel) is 6 tons per year so we're doing better than average for Finland. But it's surprising, the house and car travel account for less than half of that. The rest is kinda hard to downshift more on, like food and insurance, our bloody mortgage payments add 2 tons per year???
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Jan 9, 2018 09:02
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His Divine Shadow posted:our bloody mortgage payments add 2 tons per year??? Your money is literally exchanged for Zimbabwe dollars which is then burned for heating your most local bank office.
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Jan 9, 2018 16:21
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Oh hey I wrote a paper on borohydride energy storage. They're still having trouble with thermal stability. At least it's not hydrazine bisborane because it turns out that explodes at 160 degrees.
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jan 9, 2018 |
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Jan 9, 2018 20:28
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The world's coral is dying en-masse. 30 year bleaching events now occur every 5.
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Jan 9, 2018 21:35
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The death of the oceans is kinda sad imo
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Jan 9, 2018 23:32
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can we burn the dead coral to power our international airliners
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Jan 10, 2018 00:28
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All of this discussion is making me fear that no matter what we do to combat climate change, that a combination of it, induced conflicts, rogue AI, (and now a methane-induced Permian extinction event!?) are going to wipe us out before we're ever able to exodus to other planets.
Grouchio fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 06:52
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No matter how hosed up we make the planet it’ll be easier to create artificial environments on the ground than in orbit let alone “the stars”
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Jan 10, 2018 06:54
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grouchio i'm pretty sure you could reach the stars tomorrow if you just wished for it hard enough
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Jan 10, 2018 06:55
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Grouchio posted:All of this discussion is making me fear that no matter what we do to combat climate change, that a combination of it, induced conflicts, rogue AI, (and now a methane-induced Permian extinction event!?) are going to wipe us out before we're ever able to exodus to the stars. It turns out the universe has a very strong immune response to unrestrained capitalism. It's unlikely we'll be able to infect any local stars.
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Jan 10, 2018 07:00
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Is it that hard to get a clear answer or am I being laughed at?
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Jan 10, 2018 07:12
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Grouchio posted:Is it that hard to get a clear answer or am I being laughed at? I like to think we're laughing with you
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Jan 10, 2018 07:22
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Grouchio posted:Is it that hard to get a clear answer or am I being laughed at? What exactly is the question? Unless we work out a way to break some important laws of physics, we're never leaving the solar system. Out of all the planets and moons within our solar system, only one is substantially Earth-like... and it happens to be the one we already live on. If we can't manage to fix this planet, there's no reason to expect that we'll be able to radically transform another celestial body to make it more habitable than Earth.
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Jan 10, 2018 07:23
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Grouchio posted:Is it that hard to get a clear answer or am I being laughed at? Thread is very much of the opinion that eradicating all non-human life on earth, so that we can cover the planet with vast swatches of agriculture and resource extraction, to prop up an endless cycle of humans procreation and dying, is better than strict population control and establishing a foothold on other planets. Which, I mean, if we cause a total biosphere collapse just so that some fucks in the third world don't have to stop having kids and some fucks in the west don't have to give up beef, it'll probably be for the best if an asteroid wipes out the entire species. 
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Jan 10, 2018 07:23
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:If you want to daydream about any global stressors before around 2050 or so, it's going to have to be through some sort of weather phenomenon, and our research doesn't have that much certainty around it. It's the second half of the century where things like sea level rise, river flow changes, high wet bulb temperature days, and soil depletion problems start becoming major factors at current rates. Right on schedule: The New York Times posted:Mudslides Strike Southern California, Leaving at Least 13 Dead Joking aside, that New Yorker is worth reading but the descriptions of people getting caught and dying in these debris flows are nightmarish.
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Jan 10, 2018 07:25
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Rime posted:Thread is very much of the opinion that eradicating all non-human life on earth, so that we can cover the planet with vast swatches of agriculture and resource extraction, to prop up an endless cycle of humans procreation and dying, is better than strict population control and establishing a foothold on other planets.
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Jan 10, 2018 07:49
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Grouchio posted:This sounds like the stupidest climate change solution I have ever heard. No, it's just the person you're quoting. Rime lives in a fantasy world where nothing except draconian laws will reduce human population, even though we're already below replacement rate in pretty much every country with a decent standard of living. Hello Sailor fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 07:53
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Nocturtle posted:Joking aside, that New Yorker is worth reading but the descriptions of people getting caught and dying in these debris flows are nightmarish. https://twitter.com/erveza/status/950943408184614912
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Jan 10, 2018 08:49
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In addition to 2017 and this year 2016 was also a record low at this time of year as well  https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/950590563056631809
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Jan 10, 2018 09:46
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VideoGameVet posted:http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/12/09/warmer-pacific-ocean-could-release-millions-of-tons-of-seafloor-methane/ 4 million metric tons of methane is absolutely nothing. It's about 0.7% of annual methane emissions, and they're talking about emissions over 43 years, so it's actually more like 0.017% of annual methane emissions. And as the article notes it's not clear if even a single gram of those emissions are reaching the atmosphere, because they can dissolve in water or be decomposed by methanophagic bacteria. This is an example of one of those climate stories where they use figures and analogies, ("4 million tons", "as much as Deepwater Horizon"), and don't put them in their proper context to make it sound like they're significant when they're anything but. Thug Lessons fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 10:18
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Nocturtle posted:It turns out the universe has a very strong immune response to unrestrained capitalism. It's unlikely we'll be able to infect any local stars. This is awesome lol
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Jan 10, 2018 14:43
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https://twitter.com/toastforbrekkie/status/951117427047354368 so even when people in western european or east asian countries avoid flying by taking the train as much as possible, some american makes it up for them multiple times over. FourLeaf fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 19:47
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sorry grouchio. i kind of think of you as a gentle alien, mostly due to your avatar, but i'm not laughing at you. anyway trying to predict the trajectory of scientific advancement is a crapshoot because we tend to make progress in long periods of incremental work punctuated by crazy leaps that are the only time the general public realises anything's even going on, so much like a whole generation woke up one day to an announcement that we were going to the moon, so hopefully you will wake up one day to an announcement that we're colonising a distant solar system and you're invited
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Jan 10, 2018 23:29
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Nocturtle posted:Right on schedule: came to post this dose of horror, should have guessed someone would beat me to it
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Jan 11, 2018 00:00
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Just to clarify, humans are not going to leave Earth in any meaningful numbers.
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Jan 11, 2018 01:21
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Shifty Nipples posted:Just to clarify, humans are not going to leave Earth in any meaningful numbers. I was going to give us the solar system at most.
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Jan 11, 2018 02:02
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The Groper posted:I was going to give us the solar system at most. I would think we'll do space tourism but I don't know if there will be colonies on mars or whatever.
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Jan 11, 2018 02:06
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space colonization more like spraying genetic material at earth-likes in space and hoping something sticks
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Jan 11, 2018 02:08
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Shifty Nipples posted:I would think we'll do space tourism but I don't know if there will be colonies on mars or whatever. Nah just as an absolute upper limit of humanity's might we colonize the jovian moons and maybe some floaty Venus platforms. We're too far out in the space boonies for interstellar anything to happen using actual biological travelers. It requires generation ships and there's plenty of reading on why that won't work out well. But we're not going to solve our problems here so whatever. Car Hater fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Jan 11, 2018 |
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Jan 11, 2018 02:12
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:space colonization more like spraying genetic material at earth-likes in space and hoping something sticks ... there's a semen joke in there somewhere but I'm too tired to figure it out.
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Jan 11, 2018 13:05
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double nine posted:... there's a semen joke in there somewhere but I'm too tired to figure it out.
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Jan 11, 2018 13:46
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hobbesmaster posted:No matter how hosed up we make the planet it’ll be easier to create artificial environments on the ground than in orbit let alone “the stars” Hahha humans are only barely learning just how interdependent they are on other terrestrial species, especially bacteria and other parts of the microbiome. LOL if humans ever make it into space. Something totally unable to come back to Earth will be born within a couple of generations if they don't see "humanity" as the total ecosystemic network. Also - and not to you in particular, but more generally - methane clathrates add up to more pump, no matter how you quibble or agrandize about the number of emissions from a particular ridge. Global methane monitoring and modeling is a chaotic field, and the general sense is that we are underestimating both the global methane cycle's volatility and, thereby, its long-term impacts on our experience of climate change. Low ball estimates are nice, but we can't really say how much it will factor into long-term projections of climate - or even why it varies so much! For a short read in Science : Nisbet, E. G., Dlugokencky, E. J., & Bousquet, P. (2014). Methane on the rise—again. Science, 343(6170), 493-495.
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Jan 12, 2018 05:52
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microbiology is one of the sciences that will save us from climate change tbh. sometimes i feel like we're not advancing fast enough to preserve the species, but then i remind myself that the theory of evolution was only published like 150 years ago, and that was around the same time we learnt that you should wash your hands before doing surgery, so yeah we're still moving pretty fast. science only seems to be in a slump on human terms (what have we achieved in my lifetime? gently caress-all!) but on its own terms it's chugging along just fine, we won't go extinct, we'll figure it out it would really help if we got rid of a certain someone, though
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Jan 12, 2018 08:46
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Donald J Trump posted:microbiology is one of the sciences that will save us from climate change tbh. sometimes i feel like we're not advancing fast enough to preserve the species, but then i remind myself that the theory of evolution was only published like 150 years ago, and that was around the same time we learnt that you should wash your hands before doing surgery, so yeah we're still moving pretty fast. science only seems to be in a slump on human terms (what have we achieved in my lifetime? gently caress-all!) but on its own terms it's chugging along just fine, we won't go extinct, we'll figure it out why do you hate lowtax so much, what did he do to you
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Jan 12, 2018 09:23
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Donald J Trump posted:microbiology is one of the sciences that will save us from climate change tbh. sometimes i feel like we're not advancing fast enough to preserve the species, but then i remind myself that the theory of evolution was only published like 150 years ago, and that was around the same time we learnt that you should wash your hands before doing surgery, so yeah we're still moving pretty fast. science only seems to be in a slump on human terms (what have we achieved in my lifetime? gently caress-all!) but on its own terms it's chugging along just fine, we won't go extinct, we'll figure it out yeah if you give humans 200 or 300 years of earnest effort I think we could get to the point where we treat the ocean like the chemical reaction it is and have it nice and healthy. I just hope we don't blow past any tipping points that make it almost impossible to reverse. If we have to start engineering stuff in the stratosphere though, well, hope we solve Navier-Stokes soon.
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Jan 12, 2018 09:42
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Booourns posted:why do you hate lowtax so much, what did he do to you
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Jan 12, 2018 10:05
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Grouchio posted:All of this discussion is making me fear that no matter what we do to combat climate change, that a combination of it, induced conflicts, rogue AI, (and now a methane-induced Permian extinction event!?) are going to wipe us out before we're ever able to exodus to other planets. IMO this is the answer to the Fermi paradox
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