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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:In that case, oh well, we all hosed anyways... nothing left to do but sit back and enjoy the fireworks. No. No no no no no. Stop saying that. Everyone needs to stop saying that. Is the situation grim? Yes. But when billions of people's lives are on the line, the solution is not to give up. The solution is to fight for the change that will address this looming problem. If everyone rolls over and says "gently caress it" then, well, of course we're hosed. With defeatist mentality, you lose before you even begin.
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Dec 9, 2011 07:24
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There are more photosynthetic organisms than just trees. While planting trees and turning them into wood/charcoal works, it's inefficient, and takes up a huge amount of land. Something like algae would be much more efficient. I've seen a number of proposals/studies done about natural carbon sequestration, and from what I've seen algae is the way to go. In addition to carbon sequestration, you can use the algae to produce biofuels or food for animals. There's a bunch of articles about it. This article covers the concept pretty well.
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Jan 3, 2012 06:14
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cheese posted:Forgive me if I'm missing the obvious, but when I think about mechanical or science based ways of physically pulling carbon from the atmosphere vs the hundreds of millions of cars and ships and factories pumping it into the air, I can't help but laugh at the 'spitting in the rain' feeling I get. Creating a bunch of carbon trees just seems so puny compared to the problem - is it realistic at all? The way I look at it is that every bit helps. And you can capture the carbon near the source to feed it to whatever your sequestration method thing is to make it more efficient (eg take the emissions directly from the coal plant's smoke stack instead of waiting). And how "puny" the effort is completely depends on the method(s) and the scale. But yeah, carbon sequestration is not a solution by itself, it's merely another step we can take to un-gently caress ourselves. Society absolutely needs to switch to zero-carbon energy for any good progress to be made.
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Jan 3, 2012 10:20
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prick with tenure posted:I recall reading a recent interview with a Nobel prize-winning scientist on why people seem psychologically incapable of coming to terms with climate change and reacting to it appropriately. I thought it was in this thread, but I can't find it now - if someone knows what I'm talking about, could you please link it? Thanks. Is this what you were thinking of? I also have this, which came from somewhere else that I don't have the link to: 
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Jan 25, 2012 04:00
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Since you seem to be unaware of what is taking place in the world from an economics standpoint, let me catch you up - Europe is currently embroiled in a debt crisis. Greece is so deep in debt that they are cutting government spending at a rate that is causing rampant unemployment and social unrest. The "recovery" is stalling in the developed world, and the debt crisis threatens to tear apart the eurozone and throw a few more of its member states into the same situation that Greece is in. Now, the problem with some of the recent nationalizations we've seen is this: The governments nationalize the debts and bad parts, then give away the good parts to a bunch of rich assholes. Ask yourself this: Is the energy industry profitable right now? Well duh, or it wouldn't be run by profit-seeking entities. For the fossil fuel-related energy industries, that's only because they've been able to externalize the costs. But it doesn't matter. The point is, the government nationalizing something like the energy industry doesn't mean it has to go further into debt. Indeed, it makes money, and that helps solve the so-called debt crisis! The problem with so many looks at the solutions to climate change and the current economic recession is that those looks only are through the lens of capitalism, especially neoliberalism and this ridiculous idea that countries shouldn't be in debt and the rich should get richer so wealth can trickle down. Hell, even the so-called "socialists" in Greece bought into it, and were calling for austerity and cuts. Has that worked? No. Has it worked anywhere its been implemented? As far as I know, no. But there is precedent for getting out of a horrid economic recession: Massive government spending. We got out of the Great Depression by the massive government spending that was World War 2--and you bet your rear end the government went deep into debt to do it. Now obviously, we don't want there to be a world war 3 just to get us out of this current crisis. But the government spending doesn't need to be directed at war: It could be directed to building massive renewable energy projects (wind, solar, nuclear--I don't care, though I think the latter is the most realistic), infrastructure, etc. That would solve the climate crisis and the economic crisis with one fell swoop. The problem is not scientific, or technological. The problem is not that no one knows what to do. The problem is systemic, and for that, we need systemic change. The current powers (both governmental and economic) that are driving the world towards a ruinous path need to be removed, and a system that can deal with far reaching consequences implemented.
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May 25, 2012 02:14
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" is a totally unfeasible solution in the current economic climate.
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zero alpha posted:Sorry if I missed this in the past 15 pages, but what does everyone make of this? http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/01/us-climate-carbon-idUSBRE87014Z20120801 Deniers will cherry pick text as they always do. As long as there is either a ideological or financial incentive to deny reality, it doesn't matter how much evidence you present to them. The results of this study don't seem very surprising to me. As the ocean and atmosphere mix, the ocean absorbs basically a set percent of air. If that air has higher concentrations of CO2, then, yeah, ocean uptake of CO2 is going to increase. The big problem though is the second part you've bolded: at a certain point, the ocean gets saturated with CO2. Then, suddenly, this huge carbon sink disappears, and warming accelerates. Meanwhile, as CO2 gets absorbed into the ocean, ocean acidity rises accelerating the ecological crisis there. Nevermind the rest of it, that the ocean is absorbing more CO2 than previous studies thought should be cause for alarm all by itself. Fish stocks, coral reefs, etc are already in distress--this only will speed up extinctions in the ocean.
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Aug 2, 2012 01:29
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Ratios and Tendency posted:What do you mean? That you would need nuclear weapons to mess up a nuclear plant? First, if someone is bombing a nuclear plant, that implies there's either war or terrorism going on at a significant scale that's probably way worse then slight radioactivity. Any bomb big enough to threaten a nuclear plant (turns out the concrete containment dome designed to protect the outside from the reactor does a great job protecting the reactor from the outside too) would kill more people if it hit a city. The worst case scenario of radioactive release from, say, a light water reactor would be peanuts compared to that. Newer generations of reactors with passive safety features (which we would be using if there was a large scale switch to nuclear) would be even less vulnerable to bombs/etc.
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Aug 9, 2012 11:15
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Fragmented posted:It's sad but i think at this point a global nuclear war would help the planet more than anything we can do to stop this poo poo. And it needs to happen sooner than later. The planet and life in general will be fine. Life has survived snowball earth, toxic atmospheres (oxygen!), massive meteor impacts like the K-T, and 6C+ warming spikes (PETM). Life will be fine. The planet will be fine. Fighting climate change is, to me at least, about preserving humanity and minimizing human suffering first, and preserving the current ecosystems and species second. In no way does nuclear destruction help any of those goals and you need to snap the gently caress out of whatever crazy-rear end mental state you're in that makes you think a nuclear holocaust would be on any level better for anything--humans, life, whatever. I understand the pessimistic outlook on all of this. I get depressed about it all the time. But you then need to channel that sorrow into rage, and channel that rage into action. Humanity has not failed--not yet. Do what you can to build a better future. Join an activist group, protest, talk with people, run for office, lobby, work on changing the system that is causing this environmental crisis--anything. But if we all give up without even trying to fix climate change, then we will fail.
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Aug 9, 2012 12:58
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Twisted Perspective posted:In my opinion climate change is unstoppable. Historically speaking the earth has always been a hot and tropical planet (see the dinosaurs). It just so happens that we're emerging from the tail end of a catastrophic ice age that wiped out 90% of life on earth and its going to get a lot hotter before the planet returns to its natural tropical state. Current temperature is not dependent on historic temperature. You're also conflating man-made climate change with natural climate change. On time scales of hundreds of thousands and millions of years, Earth's climate changes. Due to solar cycles, continental drift, feedbacks, volcanism, etc. That stuff is unstoppable. The climate change everyone in this thread is talking about is man-made climate change, which is directly caused by the greenhouse gases humans are putting in the atmosphere, and that climate change is absolutely stoppable.
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Aug 9, 2012 13:58
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lasts years man posted:Well it's not so much that I accept it, just that it's not as obviously inane as I expected. I mean he's not an expert, but he does link to articles by experts that at least seem authoritative. So that sort of threw me off. I mean I guess my question is something like a) is it really true that the global mean temperature has dropped since 2003? and b) is that at all meaningful or is it just some fluctuation within a larger trend? Here is a site that debunks common climate myths.
Most of the statements on that site are outright lies. Those that aren't either are an appeal to the authority of a single scientist (who's conclusion is not supported by evidence) or taking information out of context, or cherry picking data. There are a great deal of people who are either on the payroll of the fossil fuel companies or are ignorant of the subject and make wild unsubstantiated claims. So for example, here's an article showing that. There's plenty more where that came from. There's a lot of financial incentive for fossil fuel companies to deny climate change, because if climate change is true it means the end to their billions of dollars of profit and a switch to different energy produces. It also threatens the world view of conservatives (that's a great article by the way). Basically, the easiest way to do it is look at the first site I linked and use it to counter any of his claims. Anyone denying climate change will pretty much never admit defeat, they'll just move from claim to claim, constantly shifting goal posts hoping they can finally claim something you can't immediately refute. Suffice to say, they are full of poo poo and all evidence points to that. We can already see the effects of climate change with the recent droughts and extreme weather all over the world, and the gradual disappearance of the arctic ice. Really, I can go on, but hopefully that's enough resources for you to (hopefully!) correct him. Edit: Jeez that's a wall of text. Have some pictures! Arctic Sea ice decrease (National Snow and Ice Data Center)  Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)  Interactive guide with CO2, temperature data, ice data, and sea level data at NASA (awesome site!) Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 08:38
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AuMaestro posted:Vote for candidates who want to move the costs of externalities - such as issues of sustainability - onto the people who use resources. Avoid systems where environmentalism is considered a false consciousness that should or must be purged for the sake of ideological purity. When convenient, call out socialists when they try to conflate their twisted ideals with environmentalism. Not sure what you mean by the second and third sentence, could you elaborate? The solutions to climate change are controversial and not obvious. That's because the problem is not scientific, or even an engineering problem (the answer to those problems are fairly obvious), but one of politics and economics. If there wasn't controversy over what to do about those, you'd be missing a lot of the debate from this thread.
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Aug 17, 2012 18:16
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Billy Idle posted:Um, doesn't the middle ground position, as far as scientific consensus goes, still have us totally screwed? Pretty much. All evidence I've read though says the IPCC worst case scenario low balled it, because we're currently beating it and right on the path for 6 degrees C or more warming in the next century. But yeah, even if it is some sort of middle-ground 3-4 degrees C rise, that's still enough to drown several island nations and cause global catastrophic damage that will likely kill millions. Edit: The tagline for the wired article ("Why the world won't end in 2012... or any time soon") is technically correct because the worst damage will take decades to hit. It's basically a strawman though: No one who knows anything about the issue claimed the world was going to end this year or next. Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Aug 21, 2012 |
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Aug 21, 2012 17:33
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a lovely poster posted:I'm having trouble finding a more recent graph, but our emmissions have consitently been above the levels in the A1F1 scenario, which was the worst case that they offered as a possibility. This article had this:  It's not the most recent data, but it's through 2010. Note the fun little dip that I'm pretty sure was due to the global economic crisis. Anyways, yes, from what I've read, the "worst case" IPCC scenario was fairly mild and we're on that track right now.
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Aug 25, 2012 11:44
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Myotis posted:5. Nothing other than a prolonged period of planned austerity will really work. How would austerity help? To end CO2 emissions, you either need to a) Pretty much cease producing most electricity, using cars, trains, planes, ships, which would plunge the world into poverty, starvation, and total collapse, or b) Massive infrastructure projects that switch from carbon emissions, eg. building massive amounts of nuclear, solar, wind, electric train systems, making buildings/cities more efficient. The latter uses carbon initially, but actually solves the problem. The former either delays it or causes enough damage we might as well have let climate change take its course. Even if you could convince everyone to live in horrid conditions and poverty for years (hint: you can't), I don't think you're taking into account how brutal the kind of global austerity needed to significantly lower carbon emissions would be. Take a look at Greece, for example. Austerity there has torn the country party. There are people starving, committing suicide, rioting, and the horrid conditions have pushed people so hard they're willing to reconsider facism in the hopes it will help. Measures that would actually reduce CO2 emissions would be worse, and the effects would be worse too. I mean, think for a moment how much our society depends on cars, trucks, and electricity. Reducing those to the point where CO2 goes down with no replacement is a disaster. Any solution to climate change should prevent mass death and suffering, or it's no better than the problem it tries to solve.
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Aug 26, 2012 12:40
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Doomsayer posted:So, this is a really stupid question, but I'm having a tough time parsing all the readings and articles in the thread, so I'll just ask: precisely how hosed are we? Are we "just" red-alert-holy-poo poo-if-we-keep-doing-this-we're-doomed level, or has the apocalypse point pretty much already come and gone? Because I'll just start leaving all my lights on right now if that's the case. It's hard to predict, because climate is really complicated. Here's what we can say:
It's not too late yet. But the sooner we act, the more lives we save. Of course, leaving your lights on or turning them off makes no difference. What we need to stop climate change is massive, systemic change on the global level. I think the only way to do that is to have mass movements on the streets that lead to those changes.
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Sep 12, 2012 05:52
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The Entire Universe posted:It may be a typo or a missing word or something but I am having trouble extracting meaning from this, but allow me to see if I have it right: Part of the value of oil companies is based on oil they can profitably extract, but haven't yet. The value of that oil is ~$20 trillion. If that oil was burned, it would get us to over 1400 ppm of CO2, which is super very mega-bad. To instead keep us below 2C of climate change, the oil companies would have to not use that oil, meaning they basically lose $20 trillion. I hope I got that right and that makes sense.
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Sep 12, 2012 06:06
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lollynoob posted:What's everyone so worried about? I mean, worst case scenario you starve to death, and that's over with in a month or so. It's not like anyone here can change the future, so why bother getting upset about it? We, meaning people as a whole, can change the future. And if the future is going to suck if we don't do anything, we have a responsibility to do so. People need to tone down the dumb "oh no we're hosed WELP gg humanity nice run" and "yeah apocalypse is already here, might as well live/die with it" bullshit. First of all, observations and evidence don't support the claim that we're all irreversibly hosed, so calm the hell down. Second, carbon can be removed from the atmosphere, and infrastructure can be rebuild to be more efficient and emission free. Since there are solutions, there's hope. Stopping climate change isn't going to be easy, but then again, anything worth doing rarely is.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:59
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Yiggy posted:"No guys, we got this, it's gonna be all cool!" is just singularly unconvincing. Good thing I didn't say that, then! Yes, it's bad. No, we shouldn't all give up before even trying to stop it.
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Sep 19, 2012 20:05
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Hobo Siege posted:Has anyone ever fielded the idea of a purposefully induced nuclear winter? Just, I don't know, throwing up enough debris to buy us a bit of global cooling? I know there has to be a fine line between that and the end of every loving thing, but what else are we gonna do with all those nukes? This is a stone-cold retarded idea, and yes, people in this thread already have. Also, the nukes would do way more damage then climate change, I cannot emphasize how bad an idea this is. Aerosols (Sulfur or water), space mirrors, and painting a bunch of poo poo white are all better ideas.
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Sep 19, 2012 21:07
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Venus's atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth, and 96.5% of it is carbon dioxide (compared to Earth's 0.038%). Even in the absolute worst case scenario, Earth isn't going to become Venus, full stop.
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Sep 21, 2012 08:27
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Arglebargle III posted:Something will happen, certainly, but my point is that the dots have not been connected to global collapse of modern civilization. Maybe somebody has and I'd be interested to see that. But the dominant story in the last few pages of the thread of total collapse of civilization and a catastrophic return to primitivism (which is itself an anachronistic concept) hardly seems inevitable to me. Predicting the effects of climate change a few decades out is hard enough; predicting the most likely path of it's effects on civilization is magnitudes more difficult. That said, one can figure out pretty easily general patterns that will emerge from climate change: 1. Primary effects: Extreme weather (heat waves, drought, storms, flooding, etc.), rising oceans, and loss of ice (contributing to droughts). 2. Secondary effects: More pests (not killed by winters), disease carrying bugs (as climate zones shift), desertification, and massive crop die-offs (see: all of the above), more deaths due to storms, mass starvation, and mass displacement (due to flooding, starvation, storms, climate zones shifting). 3. Tertiary effects: Studies have shown people without the basic necessities of life (food, water, shelter) are more likely to fight, so war. Realize the scope of the damages, and you realize conflicts would be everywhere and widespread. Also, 4. Compounding Problems: There are a huge number of problems that aren't caused by climate change, but will compound it. Growing world wealth disparity and loss of basic necessities will (and has) provoked unrest all over the world (Europe and the Middle-East are on the news quite a bit). Aquifers are being depleted far faster than replenished. Society is completely dependent on fossil fuels, which we need to switch completely off of (and soon) or they'll compound any other problems. Add to all of that the current economic system (capitalism) that values profit over lives and society and is able to basically buy political power, and you have a recipe for a cataclysmic disaster. Yes, it's vague, but as I said, no one can predict exactly how things will go down. The point is, it's going to be bad stuff, all over the world, simultaneously. Edit: I don't think things will regress all the way to the stone age, but if things remain on course, it will probably regress society, standards of living, and technology a whole bunch, and kill a few billion people. Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 16:09
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To elaborate on the lovely crap that article is pulling: First, let's start with a link to temperature, CO2 emissions, sea level, and ice extent from NASA. And if NASA isn't credible enough, they also have tons of citations and links to other sources. Now let's take a loot at global sea-land temperature:  Well that's pretty obviously going up. But if you do this:  ...wow! It's not so threatening now, is it? Yes, if you cherry-pick data, you can do amazing things! The article is pretty clear biased. For example, look how this section is written: That lovely Denialist Rag posted:Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions. Then you get poo poo like "Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of 'natural variability'..." which is something climate scientists have been saying for ages: Climate is super loving complicated, and we still don't understand large parts of it. We do understand thermodynamics, though, and have enough data and models to accurately predict the globe is without a doubt warming. Here's some other problems with that article:
That article is biased and full of poo poo.
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Oct 15, 2012 06:29
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Individual action (such as turning off the lights, eating less meat, etc.) is piss in the ocean when fighting climate change. Community action isn't much better. Action that fights climate change needs to be societal and global, or it's still going to result in all the bad things, and if the current political and economic norms are allowed to perpetuate, it's just going to keep getting worse. The best solution is to create a mass movement. The Labor movement, Civil Rights movement, Women's Suffrage, and other major movements throughout history advanced rights and made progress. What we need now is an environmentalist movement equivalent to restructure society. We need a democratically planned economy, not an economy where profit is king, because once society is run by everyone, it can be run in their benefit. Also, as a socialist who would like to see the environmentalists and socialists link up in solidarity, I can say with good confidence that most environmentalists are not socialists, closet Marxists, or anything of that nature.
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Nov 6, 2012 02:05
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Papercut posted:I think it goes beyond even how well-informed the electorate is. When it comes down to imposing austerity measures on yourself to benefit a nebulous other/future, humanity simply isn't emotionally advanced enough to do it. Even if you could educate an entire electorate to understand that they were suffering to preserve the future of their culture, you would have to convince them that not only was the suffering worth it, but suffering even more the following election cycle and then even more the following election cycle (as you impose stricter and stricter emissions limits) and so on would also be worth it. Politicians would be running on the platform of making things even shittier while their opponents promise to ease the suffering. Summed up well by this, which has been posted here before. Austerity is a tool of the financial elite to protect their profits. Even the IMF admits it doesn't actually work. Job Truniht posted:Didn't someone a few pages back post a good paper on why libertarians must reject climate change for ideological reasons? I thought this was a non issue in this thread. Edit: jrodefeld posted:Now, I understand that many progressives think of regulations as laws and rules that are designed to protect consumers from corporate abuse and misconduct. Therefore, as with the economic crash of 2008, they attribute the unprecedented banking and corporate fraud and abuse to mean that we have less regulations than we did before. The truth is that business interests and corporations actually lobby for more regulations in order to hurt their competitors or grant themselves a monopoly. Therefore a great number of regulations on the books actually protect corporate interests rather than protecting consumers. The quantity of regulations is irrelevant as long as they are crafted to be effective and serve the correct purpose; in the case this thread is talking about, that means strong environmental regulations that prevent fossil fuels from causing climate change and therefore starvation, sea level rise, drought, desertification, extreme weather, and a load of other horrific effects. jrodefeld posted:However, the market provides regulations that are usually stricter and more comprehensive than government regulations. Edit 2 Live Free Or Edit Hard: Shai Hulud posted:And seriously, to second the previously-mentioned point: shut the gently caress up about libertarianism/free market/whatthefuckever. This isn't an economic, philosophic, or political issue. This is a scientific issue. The problem is that jrodefeld isn't actually focusing on concretely applying libertarian philosophy to climate change, but instead waxing evangelical as he spoutes vague, unsupported platitudes that derail the thread. Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Nov 8, 2012 |
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Nov 8, 2012 15:14
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UP AND ADAM posted:I couldn't respond to this earlier, but how so? Maybe not consciously; environmentalists I've known are often of the STEM mindset and don't have the background or experience in social sciences, politics, history, etc. And with a STEM education you don't get much policy context to what you learn, unless you take policy classes. But, to me, nearly every environmentalist I knew in college was prone to seeing how socialism fit with their ideas about the future. And more definitively, I think capitalism, consumerism excess, and the founding principle of constant growth were widely identified as the base problem with our environmental stewardship. So I definitely think that these kind of people would be, if not already, open to more central planning. I suppose they would not be very conscious of class struggle or social issues, which is something I have noticed. That comes with the education though, and as long as the costs of our new environmentalist economic paradigm are bore by the transgressing parties, or just plain ol rich people, socialism and environmentalism could be in harmony. Is this what you mean by environmentalists not being socialist? I was just talking from my anecdotal experience with environmentalists. Mostly, they vote Democrat and yammer about solar and wind while shaking their head about how bad Republicans are, and haven't received socialist ideas too well when I've presented them. That's my experience. I think that good exposure to socialist ideas framed in the right way should indeed convince them, since capitalism is the root of consumer excess and the political and economic policies that have gotten us into this mess. I think socialists and environmentalists should be in harmony since the two ideas mesh extremely well with no contradictions.
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Nov 8, 2012 23:07
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-Troika- posted:The government can't even spend the money it has efficiently. Why should I expect that if they confiscate most of the private wealth in the nation from people in a certain tax bracket that it will go to anything useful? The trick is to get a government that does good things with money (such as rebuilding the US infrastructure to be carbon neutral, universal healthcare) and not bad things (awful wars, bank handouts, oil subsidies, etc.). How you accomplish that is up for debate. I'd rather do it through reform, but revolution seems more likely. Government, like regulation, is a tool. It isn't inherently bad or good. However, if you're implying that somehow rich people and corporations hoarding trillions of dollars and raking in the majority of wealth each year are suddenly going to create a carbon neutral economy, I would be fascinated to hear how you think that's going to happen. Also, seconding that the "government is inefficient" thing is a myth. For example, medicare vs. private insurance. Also, I have never seen evidence that private companies or "free markets" are able to successfully regulate their own damages to the environment, so if you have some evidence of that feel free to cite it. Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Nov 9, 2012 |
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Nov 9, 2012 02:53
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The Ender posted:*inapplicable story about a strawman* Mozi posted:*needless insults* Time and time again in history, drastic, practically unforeseeable changes have taken place, upsetting the status quo in ways that people probably claimed were impossible just years or even days before they happened. The revolution in Tunisia is a modern example. That one revolution is far from insignificant, and we can see how its effects reverberated throughout the world, into Egypt, Libya, Syria, and even inspired events in the US such as the 200,000 people protesting cuts in Wisconsin and later the Occupy movement. Russia is a good historic example. Who would have imagined, as World War I began, that backwards Russia would, in a matter of years, go through multiple revolutions and end up one of two global hegemons pioneering things like launching spacecraft? Who at that time period could have predicted the leaps in technological advancement we've made today? Plenty of other historic events like revolutions in France in 1968 or in Germany or Spain after World War I could have taken history in a drastically different direction had they gone a little differently. Many people think of the status quo as a nearly unstoppable force, but it's anything but that. History is the tale of how unstable and capricious civilization really is. One thing that is important is to learn how massive changes take place. Take the Civil Rights movement in the US, for example. Imagine if it had been just one guy trying to change the racism and systemic oppression of blacks across the country. Would that have worked? Hell no. So what did happen? Like-minded individuals began a long campaign of civil disobedience (some, outright violence), and attacking systemic injustice on every front they could, from shops to courts and legislatures. History books like to merely point to the prominent leaders of the movements, such as MLK, but they were nothing without the millions following them. We can learn from that. Of course one dude changing his lightbulbs or a single or even a large group of scientists warning of doom aren't going to stop climate change. We need to do much more than that. A modern example would be 10,000 people encircling the White House protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Their efforts caused the pipeline to be delayed--Obama didn't want to risk pissing off the environmentalists until after the next Presidential election. Of course, too many people went home after that. A mass environmentalist movement needs to be sustained--looking at any mass movement in history can tell us that. The environmentalist movement can also find allies. The ongoing economic crisis, high unemployment, drastic cuts to social services, and lowering of wages and the standard of living all over the country (and world, but I'm focusing on the US) is causing a great deal of unrest (again, Occupy was an outbreak of that anger. The problem hasn't gone away, and the frustration hasn't either), and fortunately, the solution to climate change is the same solution to the economic crisis. The massive restructuring of society (mass transit, new electric infrastructure, switch to zero-emissions power, revamping water infrastructure, renovate buildings to be storm resistant and energy efficient, etc.) all requires millions of people being put to work to accomplish in the time-frame we need. That sort of program would reinvigorate the economy and be a huge step towards climate change mitigation and prevention. And--one country setting such a powerful example would inspire other countries--or their people. But something like that requires a lot of sustained, organized effort, and someone has to take the first steps. Talk to people. Join organizations, or create them if need be. Work on local environmental campaigns, or change the dialogue. If no one is talking about switching from coal power in your area, start that conversation. One there's a movement, it needs to be sustained and grown. I'm talking in generalizations here, but I can get into some of the specifics people are doing in my area. The point is, there's plenty of viable ideas on how to stop or mitigate climate change. They're difficult, but that doesn't mean they're impossible, and the only way to start changing things is to start changing things.
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Nov 24, 2012 05:39
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The Ender posted:Yeah, reducing your household energy use is 'less than useless'. Thanks for completely missing the point and ignoring the rest of my post. To elaborate on the single point you did respond to, yes, people should take basic steps like replacing bulbs, insulating their house, doing an energy audit and unplugging high-energy devices, using mass transit or bikes instead of cars, etc. Yes. Of course. I've already done stuff like that. However:  Even reducing all household electrical consumption to 0 would still only be 4.86% of US energy use. Individuals only modifying their lifestyle slightly is not enough. Stopping or mitigating climate change is going to require collective effort on a massive scale.
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Nov 24, 2012 06:00
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The Ender posted:... If you're a card carrying socialist, the answer should be "you," or do you think the card is good enough? Any movement has to have some sort of beginning and people to build it. eh4 posted:Climate doesn't care about you silly arguing humans. If nothing else, this thread demonstrates just what does go through a rabbits mind as the headlights advance. It's really confounding and sad to watch. You've got the mental equipment to get out of the way, but is that spot in the road so incredibly comfortable you'd prefer to be run over? To extend this metaphor, the car is also hurtling towards you. I don't know why the fact that the car will also hit other people leads you to criticize efforts to remove the bunny from the road. I also don't think you're actually reading what some of the solutions proposed in this thread are. Hint: It's not just geoengineering.
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Nov 25, 2012 06:25
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Space Crabs posted:You were saying the future for averting climate change is hopeful because of the technological advances we had from 1915 till now, which is wishful thinking. "Technology will solve it" is probably the worst rebuttal that pops up in these threads all the time. We are not in any reasonable time span, especially with the current political climate and population response to the problem, going to replace our entire energy infrastructure and world economy. Nations live and die on the oil they sell and buy and the food we started growing in the green revolution is dependent on petrochemicals.
I'm not saying technological innovation will save us. We have all the technology we need to stop climate change, and though incremental improvements and small adjustments will help any mitigation effort, they're not even necessary. Any mass movement needs to begin somewhere. Since the root cause of climate change can be found in capitalism, the best way forward is to have environmental movements and labor movements unite, fighting for small changes while building towards the much larger changes that will be needed to stop/mitigate climate change. I point to history as an example we can learn from. Successful popular movements can inspire actions around the world. If the US became carbon neutral due to drastic policy changes forced by a popular movement, that wouldn't exist in a vacuum. Even ignoring the US's role as a dominate military and economy power with incredibly influence in global politics, that alone would certainly inspire action around the globe. One victory can set off a chain of positive events. Again, history is an example we can learn from. The alternative to action is inaction and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people if not billions of people. Given the consequences of inaction, inaction is a morally reprehensible position to take. The immense magnitude of the challenge facing us should not dissuade us from acting. Does that clear things up?
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Nov 25, 2012 07:10
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eh4 posted:The bunny doesn't see the car, only the headlights. That was sort of the point. I was going to do an effortpost explaining why but I really can't be bothered. Good luck with your revolution, you're going to need it. To extend the metaphor even further, the bunny is not just you, but all your family, any children or future children you might have, and everyone you've ever loved and known in your entire life. So once again, I'm puzzled as to why your attitude is to not just give up, but also disparage people who actually want to try and stop this thing.
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Nov 26, 2012 02:59
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Can (most) people at least agree that fatalism and inaction are bad and at the very least we should try to stop climate change, no matter how herculean an endeavor that might be?bgaesop posted:It seems pretty clear that people won't really engage in any solutions until it is economically advantageous. The works of non-profits in this area don't seem to be accomplishing anything. Well, how will "stop climate change" ever become economically advantageous enough so that corporations embrace it? Corporations only are after short-term goals of profit and cannot take into account long-term costs. Fossil fuel companies collectively have a multi-trillion dollar monetary incentive to keep the status quo. Even companies that would, in the long term, benefit from stopping climate change (for example, food service and agriculture) seem very unlikely to contribute towards stopping climate change because contributing significant funds to that would give their competition a leg up and they'd be crushed. Will it happen through the political realm? Politicians and high level government workers are not only participating in the revolving door of bribery and regulatory capture, but politicians in both major parties are completely dependent on corporate contributions for elections, and are heavily beholden to those corporations. Lobbyists for the entrenched elite disproportionately have influence over legislation and politics. The current work being done to stop climate change, including that done by non-profits, is magnitudes less than what it needs to be, I'll agree there. A lot of organizations tend to only combat the symptoms of the problem, and have to do it with a (compared to corporations and entrenched interests) tiny amount of money. However, I don't see current market incentives or politics changing one bit without either a sustained catastrophe (which would mean change is way too late) or immense pressure from the masses (which history has shown is possible and effective). Again, I think the best way forward is building a powerful labor/environmental coalition with socialist ideas of solidarity, militant resistance, transitional demands, and eventually, supplanting capitalism, the root of all these problems in the first place.
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Nov 26, 2012 07:04
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Soul Reaver posted:This seems like the right place to ask about this... That article was already posted in this thread and the next ten or so posts are basically talking about why it's full of poo poo. Here's the basic rundown: -They cherry picked data -They're obvious biased -At the very end of the article, they even admit the headline is a lie and global warming is real If there's still something you don't understand based on those posts/links, post your specific points of confusion or whatever dumb denialist crap your co-worker is spewing and I'm sure someone will post a more detailed refutation.
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Nov 30, 2012 04:37
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Bullfrog posted:So what's the best life plan to survive this? Can I keep playing Civ 5 for the time being and just relax, or should I throw everything away, start taking a few wilderness survival classes and then drop out of college to get used to living in the woods? There's a middle ground between "literally do nothing" and "gently caress its Armageddon I'm gonna become a hermit." For example, you could try reducing your carbon footprint, joining an activist organization, and actually reading the thread you're posting in.
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Dec 5, 2012 03:56
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The Experience posted:From the BBC Headline: Every conference these clowns have reinforces my belief that nothing will get done if we wait for the various leaders around the world to act. Time and time again they've shown they're utterly incapable of handling climate change. Any real progress will have to come from the bottom-up.
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Dec 8, 2012 18:21
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TheFuglyStik posted:I have a somewhat long-standing question about this exact topic: When the effects of global warming start becoming completely undeniable, exactly how far will industrial interests go to keep the current status quo alive? As long as there's profit to be made, they'll fight tooth and nail. The effects of smoking tobacco were completely undeniable, and that didn't stop that industry at all. When facts become inconvenient to ideology or profit, most people ditch the facts. Climate change is already undeniable. Waiting until it fucks us with storms, flooding, drought and famine won't suddenly make oil executives see the light, so there's no reason to wait.
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Dec 9, 2012 09:04
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The Ender posted:I would agree, but I'd also say, "Good luck getting a critical mass to mobilize." The Occupy movement should be reassurance to any would-be organizers that the anger and frustration born out of the financial crisis is there, waiting to be directed. Class consciousness and political activism in this country is currently low, but I think people are starting to open their eyes to the reality around them. It takes time, constant effort, organization, and a strong plan of action. As I've said before, I think the best plan of action is to join a socialist organization and try and unite labor and environmental activists with transitional demands that eventually lead to systemic change. Since reforms will almost certainly never be allowed by the elites to lead to that systemic change, revolution is probably necessary.
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Dec 11, 2012 07:28
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TheFuglyStik posted:While I agree with your core sentiment, I disagree with your argument on foundational grounds. I don't believe this is a class issue, so much as it is an issue about resource availability. The middle class in this country will be lock-step against any such revolution because it will mean sacrifices on their part, even if they are superficial and skin-deep cultural changes. The middle class currently being against revolution is part of the "not class conscious" thing too. They're getting hosed over just like everyone else, and climate change will devastate their lives as well. The middle class has blindly accepted the cultural values largely imposed on them by the rich who benefit from them. In my experience, people (especially white people) in the US rarely consider what they have "culture" and tend not to examine the beliefs they hold as sacred, or even that they are beliefs, and just as arbitrary as any others. That can change. Even if I'm wrong there, the middle class is quickly shrinking, and given the current course of events, will continue to do so. I think the people in power--whether blinded by greed or whatever insane alternate reality they've constructed--have forgotten that even a modicum of security and comfort can keep people happy and quiet. Instead, they've demanded austerity, more wealth, and the deconstruction of social programs--and not just in the US, but all over the world. It's already led to constant struggles in places all over Europe. It will lead to a backlash here too.
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Dec 11, 2012 09:43
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Arkane posted:As to the second point, the temperature anomaly has remained relatively constant for about 11 years now man. Look at any graph if you don't believe. I posted one from the IPCC a few posts ago. You can find the NOAA data here: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat  Huh, weird, 2011 was up .11C from 2000, but up .69C from 1880, and overall there's a very stead trend upward and no evidence that climate change has or will level off, what with most of the warming being in the oceans and major feedback cycles like the melting permafrost yet to meaningfully trigger. Arkane posted:On a 30 year scale, we're rising at a decadal rate of ~.13C, and warming is likely to continue at a rate none of us yet know. Arkane posted:The reason I brought up the constancy in the recent anomaly data is to highlight the fact that whatever extremes he perceives are likely due to local changes that do not represent global trends (such as warm winters or cold winters).
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Dec 18, 2012 04:50
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krispykremessuck posted:A friend of mine would be otherwise one of the smartest people I know, but he told me the other day that it's far more likely that Canada/the Midwest will glaciate before it desertifies... What? Where do theories like this come from? Some of the misinformation being spread by deniers includes "global cooling." Several decades ago, some scientists were worried there would be global cooling, and we could cycle back into an ice age. Note that most scientists still predicted a warming trend, and most of the "ice age" crap was spread by the media. Now the evidence for warming is overwhelming, but deniers like to bring up old topics like that one to confuse people. Either way, there's a very good chance the Midwest will face desertification and dust bowls due to droughts, and much sooner than we'd like. Canada probably won't face desertification, but pretty much all glaciers on Earth right now are retreating so claiming glaciation is likely is pure unsubstantiated bullshit.
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Dec 19, 2012 07:24
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