Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

Yiggy posted:

So, I'm 27 years old. I will be dead before most of the Really Bad Stuff hits the fan. Now, I believe global warming is real, and its happening, and things are going to get terrible. But, this is the problem I run into whenever I try to talk to anyone about this in an older generation. They never outright, explicitly say it, but its ultimately the major hang up in the argument. "Ok, so what if you're right? That won't effect me." Its the largest barrier to getting them on our side. If they're religious, maybe you can make an appeal al la E.O. Wilson's The Creation. Or maybe if they have grand children, maaaaybe you can pluck some heart strings and get them to think about the next generation. More often then not, older people I talk to just can't be brought to care. Because its really never going to affect them.

How the hell do we get past that sort of apathy? And rationally, if you're one of those people... why should you suffer if we're going to hell in a handbasket, and you won't experience any of the heat?

I'm 27 too and I can expect to live until I'm about 80, so that takes us both up to the 2060s or even the 2070s. As I understand it the seriously hosed up poo poo will start happening at about 2050, so we will both live long enough to know whether human civlisation will survive the century. Our retirement's are going to be pretty poo poo though. On the positive side you don't need to worry too much about your 401k or super plan or whatever because it'll probably have evaporated or been plundered by the financial classes long before then.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 08:23

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 16:58

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

ascii genitals posted:

Do you know much about methane clathrates? Those are what really freak me out. Ocean acidification is also bad, but I feel like there are ways we can mitigate it.. giant deposits of methane becoming soluble and boiling out of ice and the deep ocean would really gently caress us.

There was a joint US-Russia emergency expedition to the Arctic in September to measure the methane releases. The report will come out sometime in April.

http://arctic.ru/news/2011/10/data-arctic-methane-will-be-available-six-months

quote:

Data on Arctic methane will be available in six months

October 18, 2011

The first results of methane discharge research conducted by the expedition to the Eastern Arctic, which concluded its work on Monday, will be ready in about six months, Dr. Igor Semiletov, expedition leader and head of the Arctic Research Laboratory at the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA Novosti.

The expedition of 27 Russian and U.S. scientists left Vladivostok on September 2 at short notice to study massive methane discharges from underwater gas hydrates in the Eastern Arctic. A special focus on this problem can be explained by the fact that a drastic increase of this gas in the Earth�s atmosphere can exacerbate the greenhouse effect.

The phenomenon of large-scale methane discharges in the Arctic is a global problem, whose solution requires joint efforts. Therefore this year�s Arctic expedition was funded mainly by the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research and endorsed by the U.S National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

According to Semiletov, the scientists detected the most powerful methane discharges in the north of the Laptev Sea. Although earlier the scientists detected only several eruptions of gas, this time they found thousands of them using state-of-the-art equipment.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 08:58

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

err posted:

Are there any theorized deadlines that we could see that would make us say, "we done hosed up"?

I recall reading that by 2050 there will be no summer ice in the Arctic. Anything else? When will we start seeing poo poo hit the fan?

According to the most recent measurements the Arctic will have ice free summers by the end of this decade:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/11/06/depressing-climate-trends/

According to the IEA we only have 5 years left to curb CO2 emmissions or we wil trigger dangerous climate change:

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/09/364895/iea-global-warming-delaying-action-is-a-false-economy/

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 05:16

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

Alctel posted:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

Yikes, the methane thing was always the thing I was really worried about out of all the feedback loops

I've been waiting for some news from this expedition. It certainly sounds bad but I guess we'll have to wait for actual data to know for sure.

NoNotTheMindProbe fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Dec 13, 2011

# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 08:22

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

You couldn't capture it, it's releaseing from a massive area the size of entire countries. You could try to cool it, but any kind of cooling mechanism apart from a giant sunshade would take energy to run and that energy would have to come either from a source that emits CO2 or a source that would take enormous amounts of CO2 emissions to build and maintain.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 12:40

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

McDowell posted:

Can we just talk about space please?

http://youtu.be/7SECSxUbXTA

We pretty much have to choice but to expand to other planets to consume/trash them, for better or for worse.

We can't even organise ourselves to lower CO2 emissions over the course of a few decades. The type of century or millennia long thinking needed to colonise space is simply beyond our civilisation's and possibly even our species ability to do so.

If you really want to colonise space you should join the Roman Catholic Church. They're the only organisation that has survived in one piece long enough to develop the kind of planning skills needed.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2011 07:54

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 16:58

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

Claverjoe posted:

So "Tragedy of the Commons" means nothing to libertarianism?

Libertarians believe the free hand of the market will cause a solution to be invented or sold, or cause capital to be invested which will make new resources or environments appear.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2012 08:12

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