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

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

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?

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 05:11

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:53

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

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.

Thats all well and good, but convincing the 27 year olds isn't really the issue. (Also I pretty much agree with you for what its worth).

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Dec 7, 2011

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 15:08

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Squalid posted:

It's relatively small but not exactly trivial. I seem to remember Like 10% of water used in Arizona went to domestic use... Though that probably includes stuff used for bathing and dishwashers and stuff. There's probably room to make many industries more water efficient but I'm sure there are some serious limits to how much can be cut. In contrast you could completely eliminate suburban lawns without costing anyone anything besides their hobby.

Its like this in some cities in Arizona. I know in Tuscon everyone has xeroscaped lawns, no grass or watering allowed.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2011 17:00

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Dreylad posted:

Well 100 feet up isn't the stratosphere. But if that's applicable even at low altitudes, back to the drawing board.

I though the point of the water vapor is that concentrated release of it would seed clouds, and that increasing the number of clouds would raise the earths albedo. I didn't think that the point of the plan was to change that math on greenhouse gases as much a it was to increase the amount of light reflected back into space.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2012 17:54

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Dusz posted:

You should go and make a new thread about this. About half of most of the recent pages have been devoted to this very specific subtopic and so a new thread would make sense in most every way.

I'm pretty sure that thread got made if you wanna go post in it.

As uncomfortable as Your Sledgehammer's posts seem to make you, hes raising a pretty important point about the insolubility of this problem. Sure, you can just indignantly dismiss him, but his point still stands. I think to call it a void is to miss the mark. Its pointing out the truth that as the clock keeps ticking, the only real solutions are going to become more radical and untenable. Our prognosis needs to be more realistic.

This "You can only talk about stuff productive to civilization or you need to geeeeet OUT" is some real love it or leave it, head in the sand nonsense. We're approaching a point where this kind of bravado is just feeding empty optimism to the patients in the terminal illness ward.

I don't think sugarcoating the situation with daydreams about technology saving the world is helpful, because it gives people a phoney illusion that nothing needs to happen or change, because things will sort themselves out.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2012 01:32

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Of course the doom and gloom chat is unproductive, its pointing out that the waiting on the next big breakthrough sort of Pollyannaism is just as empty. Waiting on a breakthrough like thorium is besides the point, the positive feed back loops are the problem. We're trying to steer a big, accelerating ship, with no rudder. We're passing the point where slow efforts like reorganization of the economy around new energy sources is going to matter.

Lets just be optimistic about energy is just so, :dawkins101:

# ¿ Jun 14, 2012 18:28

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Wolfsheim posted:

You're basically saying we're hosed no matter what, so we should stop hoping there's a slim chance technology can save us, and instead we should...just sit around and be really depressed that we're hosed no matter what? This thread is getting really schizophrenic.

Well, is the point to discuss and figure out soluitions that are actually going to work in the time frames we have? Or to make ourselves feel better?

I mean, we can try and cheer each other up about the eschatology, but let's not kid ourselves about it solving anything. And I'm not saying do nothing, just that the solutions need to be proportionate to the problem, which they typically are not. Our more immediate problem with these is that the things on that list are often seen as too politically untenable or radical, and as the problem becomes harder the solutions only become more untenable and radical.

If we don't want to accept the radical solutions, which for a variety of reasons we rightly may not, then let's just be real about where we're going. Because to me what's schizophrenic is denying the trajectory of reality and assuming some deux ex machina is going to scrub the carbon out of the air, restore biodiversity and fix everything again.

By all means, keep hoping. Just don't sell it to anyone as a solution.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2012 22:21

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Fatkraken posted:

Taking things on a slightly different tack, when agricultural output begins to be compromised for whatever reason, what would it take for the West (as a whole or as individuals) to substantially reduce their intake of meat? Something like 30% of the edible grains we produce go to livestock, between that and calorie-poor cash crops, agricultural output could probably fall 30-40% without having a major impact on human nurtition. Removing most of that livestock from the equation would give a lot of breathing room.

I think the only way it'll happen will be if the economics price meat out of most peoples' range. There are plenty of people in poorer countries eating vegetarian or mostly vegetable based diets, largely for economic reasons. The issue though is getting people who are well within their means consuming meat to want to give it up, which for the most part none of them will unless they can't afford to. And up to that point they'll switch to cheaper options. Partly for that reason, I feel that despite any moral outcry we will never be rid of factory farms. Japan is an example, beef is more and more popular there and it starts to become a status symbol. Its like this in the states too, eating patterns have changed where we eat way more meat than we did several decades ago. That its become a luxury item, a status symbol and a creature comfort I feel like has pretty much insured its existence until its just not economically feasible.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2012 22:56

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Truthfully, I don't think it'll be a civilization killer either. I think it'll be enough to collapse many modern nation states, allowing smaller ones to rise out of their rubble where civilization will still be intact. Surrounding these will be more and more rural areas with isolated, agrarian economies with limited trade with the now much diminished but still extant urban centers. This, indeed, will be plenty bad. But I don't see total civilization collapse, it'll shamble on, regrow and head towards the next collapse in the cycle.

I guess my thinking is centered around collapse of other large nation states from history, particularly in times when nation states had much more independent economies. The Mauryan empire covered most of the Indian subcontinent, and once it was fully collapsed there were still many villages with isolated economies throughout India, and then another empire based in the same center as the Mauryan empire, but with a much diminished range. I feel like thats how its going to be. International trade will break down, and economies will become more localized, meaning more people will be driven into rural areas which will grow in number to support a less dynamic urban center.

I don't think that the argument that civilization is unsustainable necessarilly means that we'll ever get to a point where we exist without civilization. It will continue to be dynamically unstable and collapse from time to time, but that doesn't mean it'll disappear.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2012 18:44

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Thuryl posted:

To play devil's advocate even harder for a different position, what are we doing when we prescribe psychiatric medications if not trying to change human nature? As our understanding of psychology, neuroscience and genetics improve, so will our ability to modify human behaviour -- in short, if we don't like human nature, that's something technology can help us with too. Whether we should go down that path is another matter, but it's clearly something we're already trying to do with some success.

Psych meds are for treating pathologic human conditions, and depending on the condition they're treating are more or less effective. Using the same label for disease states as we use for desired, normal human behavior seems like a stretch to me. And, holding out for neuroscience to solve our problems isn't any different than holding out for engineering solutions to solve our problems.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2012 14:05

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

klaivu posted:

To me, the study was shocking stuff. It's a very recent metastudy, as rigorous science as you can find, and the most pessimistic thing I've read in a while. It's also the result of a workshop meeting. And here's what one attendee had to say:

Very different from the local-economy primitivism as is touted in this thread as the only logical conclusion of humanity's moral choices.

I don't think we'll see that kind of outcome over any sort of longhaul because if that ecological state came to be it would be too prone to collapse. Homogenized ecosystems and monocultures devoid of biodiveristy are susceptible to pandemics, collapse and extinction. If what's left of the world become high yield monocultures of crops and livestock, all it takes is one blight to cause famine and instability.

That picture of ecological control and persistent civilization is still stuck in the mode of thinking that civilization on this scale can proceed in spite of the homogenization that would be brought by our ecological destruction and agriculture. That's the sort of thing that's the problem, I just don't see us rolling with those punches. A largely homogenized biosphere of monocultures like that lacks the necessary diversity, of both species and those species' genetic diversity, to continually adapt to what will certainly be a more geologically an meteorologically dynamic world.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2012 22:20

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Those greens and their dogmatic criticism of carbon dioxide. Its all about guilt and religion, yes, thats the lens which will make this all clear.

You're right that kind of stupidity does take temerity.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2012 15:52

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

TheFuglyStik posted:

I've debated free-market environmentalists in the past, and the common thread is that the free-market part of their belief system carries more weight than the environmental side when forming opinions. I believe it firmly ignores the fact that corporations as they exist now have a primary duty to produce profit, environmental concerns be damned aside from putting a leaf on packaging for buying a carbon offset or sourcing 20% of our cardboard from recycled materials.

Maluco Marinero posted:

Said this a while ago in this thread. The only option I see on a personal level is to not play that game as much as possible, tighten up your wallet and question every purchase.

As long as we're stuck in a growth economy though, that depends on consumption to keep going and ultimately provide any of the technological things which might save us in our current economic state, then tightening the wallet just creates more instability in the system when the economy starts contracting.

Now, if your point is thats what we need (which I think I agree with), then yeah this is a way to contract the economy, but I don't know that it'll work long term. It creates too much instability, we're just as likely to reorganize in a manner that keeps consumption going apace until a catastrophic collapse as we are to slowly downshift into a smaller and more manageable collapse.

Until we get out of an annual need for a growing economy (which we won't, the developing countries have a point when pointing out that we've already dirtied the planet with our development and we're still the chief polluters, they won't abandon their development agendas and I don't see why they should feel they have to) then I don't see any good or easy way out.

Its not a happy thought, but at what point do you just accept that you can't do anything, and go about your life?

# ¿ Jul 8, 2012 15:25

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

bpower posted:

Was there a particular paper or news story that gave you an epiphany?

For me it wasn't as much direct reporting on climate change as it was all of the ancillary reporting on the biodiversity crisis which is driven in part by climate change, but also largely by our poor development choices and resource management. There were two things I read which really crystallized it for me.

First was David Quammen's book The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. He talks about evolution, how it pertains to islands, how populations shrink and then become susceptible to extinction. The haymaker comes when Quammen starts to walk you through the reality that we as a species are segregating every part of the ecosystem into islands and pushing species to the point where extinction is not just possible but likely (certain? :ohdear:

).

A second piece which helped drive it home for me was George Divoky's Planet, originally published in the NYTimes Magazine. What this piece did for me was showed me the extent to which evidence for climate change is all around us when you look to the biosphere, and that its been acting and creating real changes in ecosystems for a long time. That its been going on for so long puts the idea of inertia in your mind. The degree to which the signs are in every little place you look, and people still won't see, really started to erode what hope I had that people will be convinced soon enough to matter.

My training was in biology, so in large part its going to be what I see as the big problem. Thing is, theoretically we could reverse the CO2 problem (we won't though, no offense). But the biodiversity crisis, the extinction level event going on right now? Even if everyone realized it and tried to reverse it, its not ultimately correctible. When species disappear they disappear. You can theoretically remove the carbon, but you won't add lost species. And biodiversity of an ecosystem is kind of like genetic diversity in a gene pool. More = Better than, Less = more susceptible to catastrophe and less resilient in the face of ecological change. And climate change means that the cycle of change is speeding up faster than evolution is able to churn new species out of unfilled niches.

We don't just depend on the earth and its mineral resources, but also the biological web we're embedded in. And we're burning it down.

Here is a preview of George Divoky's planet, its worth reading the whole thing.

quote:

George Divoky's Planet

By Darcy Frey
Published: January 06, 2002

1. IN WHICH GEORGE TRIES TO BUILD A FENCE

This is a story about global warming and a scientist named George Divoky, who studies a colony of Arctic seabirds on a remote barrier island off the northern coast of Alaska. I mention all this at the start because a reader might like to come to the point, and what could be more urgent than the very health and durability of this planet we call Earth? However, before George can pursue his inquiry into worldwide climate change; before he can puzzle out the connections between a bunch of penguinesque birds on a flat, snow-covered, icebound island and the escalating threat of droughts, floods and rising global temperatures, he must first mount a defense -- his only defense in this frozen, godforsaken place -- against the possibility of being consumed, down to the last toenail, by a polar bear while he sleeps. He must first build a fence.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Jul 27, 2012

# ¿ Jul 27, 2012 23:20

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

NYTimes op-ed posted:

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic

By RICHARD A. MULLER

Berkeley, Calif.

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I�m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth�s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.

The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth�s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Ni�o and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the �flattening� of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.

Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the �Little Ice Age,� a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we�ve learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.

How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we�ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect � extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don�t prove causality and they shouldn�t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn�t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

It�s a scientist�s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I�ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn�t changed.

Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren�t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren�t going to melt by 2035. And it�s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the �Medieval Warm Period� or �Medieval Optimum,� an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to �global� warming is weaker than tenuous.

The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.

What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.

Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the author, most recently, of �Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.�

link

# ¿ Jul 31, 2012 03:09

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Yeah, his bristling on that bothered me too. He seems to be a rigorous and honest scientist, but he only trusts his own data and that seems a touch arrogant to me. Also, when he was on Maddow last night right at the end he made a little pitch for needing to expand natural gas which was setting off all sorts of bells in my head. He was defending it as the cheap option to move away from coal which is way dirtier, but carbon is carbon man. I don't see how you can sit there telling me how astonished you are about the fit between CO2 levels and global warming and then start pushing for natural gas instead of nuclear.

I'm glad he recanted on this hang up he had, but I think he's still missing the bigger picture.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jul 31, 2012

# ¿ Jul 31, 2012 16:42

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Your Sledgehammer posted:

Geoengineering would be an unmitigated disaster. If there is anything that CFCs, DDT, and carbon emissions prove, it's that we have a very hazy, shortsighted understanding of how our actions affect the environment.

Has chaos theory taught us nothing? The fact that some complex systems can be both deterministic and unpredictable is pretty drat cool and the math behind it, from what little I understand of it, is pretty drat cool, too. We've got to start paying attention to the implications of our knowledge, though. If the planet-wide ecology is both deterministic and unpredictable (and I'm pretty sure it is), then we need to approach large-scale environmental fuckery with extreme caution, or even just write off that kind of action altogether. I mean, I hate to trot out the old "bull in a china closet" cliche, but really?

Respectfully and good naturedly, given all of your posts and your perspective on this issue, do you honestly think that we (collective we) have learned anything and will actually address this issue fruitfully without huge downstream consequences? The geoengineering is probably gonna happen and the best we can hope for is that it will be a mitigated disaster.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2012 00:26

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

gradenko_2000 posted:

Pardon me if this is too stupid a question, but aren't we going to run out of fossil fuels to burn, and THAT would constitute the drop-off in emissions, or is that point of hitting the bottom of the barrel too far off before the environment is permanently and irreversibly damaged (relative to how damaged it already is)?

In the US we're sitting on tons and tons of natural gas and coal which haven't been fully extracted and which will allow us to keep driving a fossil fuel economy long after we've run past every tipping point in the environment. We may be passed peak oil and the crunch predicted by the US Joint Forces command may be emminent, but if things really get difficult in terms of fueling our vehicles with oil and gasoline we can liquify coal just like Germany did in WWII when they were short on oil. We can feasibly do that for a long time to power vehicles while using natural gas to power plants. Its going to take political will to not do that once oil prices really start to hurt. The sooner we move into nuclear the less likely we are to do that, but we're not doing anything right now to realistically address the inertia built into our oil based economy and we're not building nuclear plants on the scale which might begin to blunt said inertia.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2012 04:36

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Killin_Like_Bronson posted:

Is nuclear that tainted in the USA that liquid coal is seen as a better alternative than electric vehicles charged with nuclear energy?

There won't be any way to know til we're at that point, but the problem is I feel like you're only going to see nuclear plants built on the needed scale is if they're mandated from a federal level and thats politically toxic. I feel like as long as people can punish their elected representatives by voting them out of office, that they will punish those representatives for putting nuclear plants in their back yard. If we get to a point where there is a crunch it won't matter which is preferable, but which is feasible and possible In The Moment.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2012 04:58

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Because there isn't much realistic to be done except put sulfur in the atmosphere, which isn't a good idea because then it adds another process which has to survive instability without sending the climate kareening even more out of control and because its only a bandaid which does nothing about the festering wound underneath. Anything that allows us to keep burning fossil fuels misses the point of the problem entirely.

Holding out for engineers to save us like some sort of superman is wishful thinking. Especially if your basis is NASA fanboyism.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2012 05:30

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Fox Cunning posted:

For most of Earth's history it has not had an oxygenated atmosphere, is it therefore not supposed to have one?

Well on average...

Also on average humans need to be extinct.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2012 14:38

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

a lovely poster posted:

But what's your excuse when you knew all along but you didn't put every fiber of your being towards stopping it?

Futility?

I don't know what all we can do as individuals beyond spreading awareness and making it clear to as many people as we can how dire things are in hope that once enough people look reality straight in the face that then there may finally be a tipping point. Sure, I try to make the personal changes to reduce my carbon footprint, but I am inconsequential.

I feel like there is so much complacency because people think science will save us, and until more people realize that only we can do that by changing our behavior and the structure of our economy, nothing will happen.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2012 23:31

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Some Guy TT posted:

Indigenous peoples have survived, what, a million years, maybe more in their foraging lifestyle? Our agrarian lifestyles are the experiment which hinge on current environmental climate. They're the ones who've actually survived radical temperature changes before.

Anatomically modern humans have only been around for ~200,000 years. And a great many of the species we survived on in that interim have been driven extinct (by us). The species we currently depend on are being put in a precarious position environmentally as we continue to tear down the biodiversity in the ecosystems we depend on.

The conditions we survived on during all that time won't be around at the end of this.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2012 00:52

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Wired is the embodiment of the flaws in science journalism. It has a long history of being the edgy, exciting and frequently incorrect science periodical. I used to get Seed but it didn't have enough subscribers and only publishes on the web now. Scientific American and Discovery are supposed to be ok, but in general you want to steer clear of wired.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2012 17:12

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

I don't want to alarm you but we are so hosed. Your only solace is that your chances of living and dieing a natural death without utter despair and depravity aren't totally written off yet by any means. If you have any sort of moral accountability to the future you might want to meditate on letting that go while you ride this mess out. Don't have children, unless you won't be able to save for retirement then consider children but just remember that it's a dick move bringing them into this cause they'll more likely feel the pain for sure.

So so hosed

# ¿ Sep 12, 2012 21:19

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Carbon sequestration doesn't really seem to be off the ground yet. And we can't replace biodiversity (which we depend on). The inland migration as the seas rise is going to disrupt even more ecosystems and population is still growing.

I just feel like the "We can still do this guys!" is Pollyannaish. The ecosystem is a network, and as the connections in that network trim down as species drop out of it, it becomes much less robust. A hotter planet means more energy moving in the system and more instability with extreme weather events. The planet and ecosystem has adjusted to slow changes before, but we're increasing the speed of changes and there is no guarantee that the rate of new speciation events is going to keep up.

People aren't going to make the necessary changes before its too late. Even if we assume they would or could, what are those changes going to be and how will they be enforced?

"No guys, we got this, it's gonna be all cool!" is just singularly unconvincing. What solutions that are available are either vague and ineffectual or terrible from a human rights perspective. There's nothing outrageous about the idea of over accelerating to a point where you won't bleed off that momentum before launching right off a cliff.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2012 15:44

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Uranium Phoenix posted:

Yes, it's bad. No, we shouldn't all give up before even trying to stop it.

If all that's on offer are platitudes I'm still not hopeful. You're telling me it's not too late and I'm asking too late for what? For highly improbable mass action to improve our situation? There is no political will from the US for concerted efforts and large scale changes (even Obama is still pandering to west Virginia and coal states with his clean coal schlock). And China and India are unlikely to be leaders on this because they crave development.

You might be right that it's not too late yet (which I disagree with, much to my chagrine), but that's not really relevant when it will very shortly be too late and we won't have any sort of mass effort by the time when it'll be necessary.

Come on, guys, keep your chin up, there's still time to stand here with our finger in the dyke! Inertia doesn't matter, only Grit and Resolve!

Until there are enough people the realize the direness of the situation, concerted action is not possible. Anyone who is still holding out on a technological silver bullet doesn't appreciate the direness of the situation and is only contributing to the inevitable pain. Maybe it can be mitigated, but I think we all have to be honest that even as a mitigated disaster the consequences will be terrible.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Sep 19, 2012

# ¿ Sep 19, 2012 20:17

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

ErichZahn posted:

They're feeding cows cheerios because corn costs too much.

This wasn't supposed to affect the first world so quickly!

Do you have a link for me so I can read up on this? The cheerio part, not the corn not fertilizing part.

edit: Found it

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0923/Candy-cereal-cookies-Farmers-keep-cows-going-on-creative-feed-alternatives

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 23, 2012

# ¿ Sep 23, 2012 19:58

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Political forecast savant Nate Silver is embroiled in a spat with Michael Mann over misrepresentation and alleged propagation of denialist memes in his new book. In a twitter battle Nate claim's Mann didn't properly read the book, Mann responds that Nate minces words and tries to play both sides.

Michael Mann posted:

FiveThirtyEight: The Number of Things Nate Silver Gets Wrong About Climate Change
By Climate Guest Blogger on Sep 24, 2012 at 1:57 pm

The climate science literature is vast. It merits broad and deep reading by anyone planning to write about it. The fact is the IPCC forecasts have generally underestimated key trends, including warming (see here) and greenhouse gas emissions and Arctic sea ice loss and ice sheet disintegration. I explain why here. Finally, the IPCC generally overstates uncertainty because it insists on conflating uncertainty in future emissions with uncertainty in the climate�s sensitivity to those emissions. Continuing to take no serious action on climate eliminates almost all of the uncertainty as to whether or not future impacts will be catastrophic. Even while publishing this piece by one of the country�s top climatologists debunking the climate analysis in Nate Silver�s new book, I remain a big fan of Silver�s polling analysis (as does Mann) � Joe Romm.

by Michael Mann

If you�re a science or math geek like me, you can�t help but like Nate Silver. He�s the fellow nerd who made good. His site FiveThirtyEight.com is a must for any serious polling buff, and he regularly graces the leading talk shows with his insightful if wonky commentary. So you can imagine how excited I was a year ago when Nate�s assistant contacted me, indicating that he wanted to come to State College, PA � the �happy valley� � to interview me for his new book on �forecasting and prediction.�

Nate, I was told, was working on a chapter about global warming. He sought me out because he felt my expertise would make me an �excellent guide to the history of climate modeling�. He also expressed interest in my own upcoming (since published) book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars which details my experiences at the center of the climate change debate. Needless to say, I was very much looking forward to the meeting.

And so it was on a crisp early November day that Nate arrived at my office in the Walker Building of the Penn State campus. We exchanged pleasantries and proceeded to engage in a vigorous, in-depth discussion of everything from climate models and global warming to the role of scientific uncertainty, and the campaign by industry front groups to discredit climate science (something that is the focus of my own book). As I saw Nate off, I insisted he sample the Penn State Creamery�s famous ice cream before leaving town. I tweeted excitedly about my meeting with him, and by the end of the day Nate had even added me to his relatively short list of twitter followees. Certain our discussion had been productive and informative, I awaited Nate�s book with great anticipation.

And so I was rather crestfallen earlier this summer when I finally got a peek at a review copy of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail � but Some Don�t. It�s not that Nate revealed himself to be a climate change denier; He accepts that human-caused climate change is real, and that it represents a challenge and potential threat. But he falls victim to a fallacy that has become all too common among those who view the issue through the prism of economics rather than science. Nate conflates problems of prediction in the realm of human behavior � where there are no fundamental governing �laws� and any �predictions� are potentially laden with subjective and untestable assumptions � with problems such as climate change, which are governed by laws of physics, like the greenhouse effect, that are true whether or not you choose to believe them.

Nate devotes far too much space to the highly questionable claims of a University of Pennsylvania marketing Professor named J. Scott Armstrong. Armstrong made a name for himself in denialist circles back in 2007 by denouncing climate models has having no predictive value at all. Armstrong�s arguments were fundamentally flawed, belied by a large body of primary scientific literature � with which Armstrong was apparently unfamiliar � demonstrating that climate model projections clearly do in fact out-perform naive predictions which ignore the effect of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. As discussed in detail by my RealClimate.org co-founder, NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, Armstrong simply didn�t understand the science well enough to properly interpret, let alone, assess, the predictive skill of climate model predictions.

That Nate would parrot Armstrong�s flawed arguments is a major disappointment, especially because there are some obvious red flags that even the most cursory research should have turned up. A simple check of either SourceWatch or fossil fuel industry watchdog ExxonSecrets, reveals that Armstrong is a well-known climate change denier with close ties to fossil fuel industry front groups like the Heartland Institute, which earlier this year campaigned to compare people who accept the reality of climate change to the Unabomber, and secretly planned to infiltrate elementary schools across the country with industry-funded climate change denial propaganda.

I suspect that Nate�s failing here arises from a sort of cultural bias. There is a whole community of pundits with origins in economics and marketing who seem more than happy to dismiss the laws of physics when they conflict with their philosophy of an unregulated market. Nate may not share that philosophy, but he was educated by those who do.

Nate Silver was trained in the Chicago school of Economics, famously characterized by its philosophy of free market fundamentalism. In addition to courses from Milton Friedman, Nate might very well have taken a course from University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, known largely for his provocative 2005 book Freakonomics and its even more audacious 2009 sequel Super Freakonomics � a book that, perhaps better than any other, serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers that lurk when academics attempt to draw sweeping conclusions in fields well outside their area of training. In Super Freakonomics as you might guess, Levitt drew questionable conclusions about climate change and related energy issues based on an extrapolation of principles of economics way, way, way, outside their domain of applicability. Even some very basic physics calculations, for example, reveal that his dismissal of solar energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuel energy in combating climate change because of possible waste heat is total nonsense. Ray Pierrehumbert, a chaired professor himself at the University of Chicago, in the Department of Geosciences, pointed this and other serious errors out to Levitt in an open letter that concluded with a campus map showing how easy it would have been for Levitt to walk over to his office to discuss his ideas and, presumably, avoid the serious pitfalls that ended up undermining much of what he ended up saying in his book about climate change and energy policy.

Unlike Levitt, Nate did talk to the scientists (I know. I�m one of them!). But he didn�t listen quite as carefully as he should have. When it came to areas like climate change well outside his own expertise, he to some extent fell into the same �one trick pony� trap that was the downfall of Levitt (and arguably others like Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point). That is, he repeatedly invokes the alluring, but fundamentally unsound, principle that simple ideas about forecasting and prediction from one field, like economics, can readily be appropriated and applied to completely different fields, without a solid grounding in the principles, assumptions, and methods of those fields. It just doesn�t work that way (though Nate, to his credit, does at least allude to that in his discussion of Armstrong�s evaluation of climate forecasts).

As a result, Nate�s chapter on climate change (Chapter 12: �A Climate of Healthy Skepticism�) is marred by straw man claims that don�t stand up to scrutiny. These include the assertion that (a) climate scientist James Hansen�s famous 1988 predictions overestimated global warming (they didn�t), that (b) �the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) settles on just one forecast that is endorsed by the entire group� (pure nonsense � even the most casual reading of the IPCC reports reveal that great care taken to emphasize the non-trivial spread among models predictions, and to denote regions where there is substantial disagreement between the projections from different models) and that (c) �relatively little is understood� about the El Nino cycle (here I imagine that Nate might have misinterpreted our own discussion about the matter; I explained in our discussion that there are still open questions about how climate change will influence the El Nino phenomenon � but that hardly means that we know �relatively little� about the phenomenon itself! In fact, we know quite a bit about it).

Finally, and perhaps most troubling (d) while Nate�s chapter title explicitly acknowledges the importance of distinguishing �signal� from �noise�, and Nate does gives this topic some lip service, he repeatedly falls victim to the fallacy that tracking year-to-year fluctuations in temperature (the noise) can tell us something about predictions of global warming trends (the signal). They can�t � they really can�t.

Nate�s view of uncertainty, and its implications for climate model predictions, is particularly misguided. He asserts that the projections of the IPCC forecasts have been �too aggressive�, but that is simply wrong. It neglects that in many cases, e.g. as regards the alarming rate of Arctic sea ice decline (we saw a new record low set just weeks ago), the climate models have been far too cautious; We are decades ahead of schedule relative to what the models predicted. Uncertainty cuts both ways, and in many respects � be it the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, or the melting of the ice sheets � it is cutting against us. Uncertainty, as many economists recognize, is thus a reason for action, not inaction! I�m surprised someone as sharp as Nate just doesn�t appear to get that.

Nate also takes some unnecessary cheap shots. In what has now become a rite of passage for those looking to establish their �honest broker� bona fides in the climate change debate, Nate makes the requisite �punch the hippie� accusation that Al Gore exaggerated the science of climate change in An Inconvenient Truth (a team of climate scientists reviewed the movie for accuracy and found that by-and-large Gore got the science right). He characterizes climate scientist Gavin Schmidt as a �sarcastic� individual who is unwilling to put his money where his mouth is by betting his personal savings on his climate model predictions (this felt to me reminiscent of Mitt Romney�s widely mocked $10,000 bet challenge to Rick Perry). And while I do appreciate some of the nice things Nate says in the book about me personally (e.g. �Mann is exceptionally thoughtful about the science behind global warming�), he at the same time deeply misrepresents our discussion on several counts.

I had emphasized the importance of distinguishing the true uncertainties in climate science (and there are plenty e.g. the influence of warming on hurricanes, how the El Nino phenomenon might be affected, or how regional patterns of rainfall may change) from the manufactured uncertainties and myths typically promoted by climate change deniers and contrarians (e.g. �how come there has been no warming since 1998?� � the answer is that, of course, there has been). I stressed how important it is, when scientists communicate to the public, to make clear that while there are many details that are still uncertain, the big picture (that humans are warming the planet and changing the climate, and that far larger and potentially more dangerous changes loom in our future if we don�t act) is not.

Nate cherry-picks a single sound bite (�our statements [should not be] so laden in uncertainty that no one even listens.�) to once again reinforce the false narrative that scientists are understating uncertainty. The point I was actually making was that we cannot spend so much time talking about what we don�t know, that we don�t end up telling the public what we do know. That, as Nate correctly quotes me, �would be irresponsible�. Nate states that �the more dramatic [climate scientists'] claims, the more likely they [are] be quoted��, seemingly implying that scientists have a motivation to overstate the science. He ignores the fact that those scientists willing to feed the false �scientists are exaggerating� narrative are the true darlings of the �balance� over �objectivity� school of news reporting � a school of thought that Nate sadly seems to have subscribed to.

Most disappointing to me of all was the false equivalence that Nate draws between the scientific community�s efforts to fight back against intentional distortions and attacks by an industry-funded attack machine, and the efforts of that attack machine itself. He characterizes this simply as a battle between �consensus� scientists and �skeptical� individuals, as if we�re talking about two worthy adversaries in a battle. This framing is flawed on multiple levels, not the least of which is that those he calls �skeptics� are in fact typically no such thing. There is a difference between honest skepticism � something that is not only valuable but necessary for the progress of science � and pseudo-skepticism, i.e. denialism posing as �skepticism� for the sake of obscuring, rather than clarifying, what is known.

Nate deeply mischaracterizes an editorial published by the prestigious and staid journal Nature (whose sentiments are echoed in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars) warning scientists that they �must acknowledge that they are in a street fight, and that their relationship with the media really matters.� Nate grossly mischaracterizes the quote, claiming that �the long-term goal of the street fight is to persuade the public and policy makers about the urgency (or lack thereof) of action to combat climate change.� Nate makes it sound like the �street fight� was of the scientists choosing, completely turning on its head what Nature was actually talking about : scientists finding a better way to defend science from cynical attacks whose sole aim is to confuse the public about what we actually do know about climate change (and therefore forestall any efforts to deal with it).

I could detail the numerous other problems with the chapter (and no � there aren�t really 538 of them; I confess to having taken some �poetic license� with the title of this commentary). But the real point is that this book was a lost opportunity when it comes to the topic of climate change. Nate could have applied his considerable acumen and insight to shed light on this important topic. But the result was instead a very mixed bag of otherwise useful commentary marred by needless misconceptions and inappropriately laundered denialist memes.

Don�t get me wrong. I�m still a FON (Fan Of Nate). I will continue to follow his thoughtful commentary on all matters of politics and polling. But when he makes claims about other topics, like climate change, I think I�ll be a lot more skeptical. Skepticism � real skepticism � is, after all � a good thing.

Michael Mann is Director of Penn State�s Earth System Science Center and author of �Dire Predictions� and �The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.� This piece was also published at Huffington Post and was reprinted with permission from the author.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2012 01:32

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Can't wait for the next eccentric millionaire with initiative to begin pumping sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2012 17:15

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Wolfy posted:

Hell and high water. I like that. I mean I don't like that, but I like it. God we are so hosed. Nobody is ever going to listen, are they?

If you're not in your 40's and up yet, hurry up. I figure they'll get out of this totally pain free.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2012 07:26

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Pellisworth posted:

Part of me is a little worried that successful/promising geoengineering projects will lull us all into a false sense of having solved the problem such that we don't actually address the root causes (burning fossil fuels, slash and burn agriculture, fertilizers, livestock, etc).

Agreed, at best they're a palliative. At worse they're like the pain med shots you give a pro athlete to get them back in the game, where they go on to exacerbate the injury way worse than it'd have ever been had they just cooled their jets a little.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2012 14:09

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

I think colonizing space is a harder proposition. At the level it would make a difference to the survival of our species, it is functionally impossible for us to get the necessary amount of matter and personnel out of the gravity well. The CO2 in the atmosphere, as someone else already said, is merely politically untenable.

This pebble will definitely be our grave, and is almost guaranteed to be the grave for our children and grandchildren. After that I don't think conditions will be sweet enough where anyone will still kid themselves about colonizing space.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Nov 3, 2012

# ¿ Nov 3, 2012 15:14

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

tmfool posted:

The only hope is very rapid deployment of carbon-free technology starting ASAP.

Pfffft that'll be the day.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2012 02:58

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Vermain posted:

The best possible thing to do is to actively pursue and support policy options that are tenable in the current political/economic environment, because we simply do not have the time for a worldwide eco-socialist revolution with how things are accelerating. Something like the development of a solid nuclear infrastructure would help to ameliorate emissions from coal-fired plants, at the least, as well as being relatively tenable due to the massive amount of employment that would be required in order to build and operate it. Renewables are gaining more traction, and though I doubt they can completely replace the current electrical infrastructure of any major Western nation, they do create mitigation. Focusing on helping to develop local resiliency - creating secondary food sources via personal or community gardens, for example - is probably the best "effective" thing that you can do at the moment, quite frankly.

I'm waiting for that other shoe to fall, for that realization that "best tenable political solution" is realized for the bromide it is. If your solution isn't a real solution, it's not helpful, no matter how nice or relatively more comfortable it leaves you feeling. At some point I just feel like you owe it to the guy to be honest that he is dieing, and on an increasingly more certain time table.

It's like deciding to feed a cancer patient ice cream instead of chemo out of concern for flavor. He may die with chemo and in a terrible, unpleasant state. But that ice cream certainly isn't going to save him, no matter if effective treatment is even possible.

quote:

It is important that we continue to fight tooth-and-nail in order to create as best a future as possible, but it is equally important to not fall into the despair of giving up

Just don't despair or give up or else we'll never get this totally ineffective solution going as one happy human team, all in this together.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2012 00:10

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Paper Mac posted:

The problem is that you can't turn the climate around on a dime. The amount of inertia in the system is large enough that if we get to the point where "disaster begins to strike" (arguably it's already begun to do so), it's far too late. For 20th-century status quo modern industrial capitalism and western liberal democracy to be perpetuated more-or-less unchanged through this century, a massive buildout of some alternative energy infrastructure would have had to have happened probably 30-40 years ago.

Not to mention that even if we somehow got a big science drive behind carbon capture, it'll do no good if the damage to ecosystems has already happened. You can't just engineer and replace lost biodiversity.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2012 00:14

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

I don't have a solution. I don't think there'll be one. I don't need to show you my space elevator to show you why the other ones on offer (and in concept only when we needed action a decade ago...) are depending on wishful math.

While I sincerely wish you the best of luck, stubborn positivism isn't going to scrub carbon out of the atmosphere and I'm sorry you resent anyone that's willing to read the writing on the wall. Forgive my "posturing", I didn't realize people were enacting actual policy and getting things done in here. And finally, it's important that people genuinely interested in a solution aren't wasting their time on faulty solutions. "Do anything, do something!" doesn't guarantee efficaciousness. Knowing what won't work at least saves the people that still believe a solution is possible from spending man hours on what is essentially a placebo.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2012 23:18

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Dusz posted:

I knew you would try to weasel your way out like this, which is why I invited you to offer a solution or damage control.

Here's a solution for damage control, you and your entire family can kill yourselves. Save us the resources and spare us the carbon. Happy? Theres your damage control. And still, it won't make a difference. As if you were going to respond in any way but a dismissive one.�

quote:

So on the basis of everything you have posted, you think humanity will suffer a major catastrophe - meaning very severe depopulation and downfall of civilization. If you would bother to explain how your doom-embracing approach would help humans to better survive the calamity (even if you say they can no longer prevent it), you would at least have a case. However because you failed to do so even now that I have challenged you on it, makes me again think that what you are doing is pretentious intellectual posturing.

I'm not here to save humanity, as if any of us are going to do so with the ideas hatched in this thread. Sorry. v :shobon:

v As long as we're talking about climate change, pointing out the myriad half measures that aren't going to affect climate change is perfectly germane, regardless of how indignant that makes you. But hey, if I post some things that aren't going to work, then suddenly I'll have contributed to the discussion :rolleye:

quote:

Furthermore, you have some nerve to claim that your efforts are in any way related to people "genuinely interested in solutions". You yourself just claimed you have no solution and furthermore, that there won't be any solutions. Even further, you have spent an entire thread railing against anyone who doesn't accept your vapid ideology of absolute resignation and defeatism.

No. You're missing the point of my posting. I'm really not interested in defeatism and resignation but half-measures and unrealistic solutions aren't helping anyone, and I'm not about to suffer Dusz gladly because he wants to join hands and kumbaya around hopeful determination, all because he wants to feel better reading the thread. By all means, don't give up, but don't sit here and tell me with a straight face that community gardens and organizing will fix the atmosphere, and that no one is allowed to criticize these weak rear end solutions for what they are. Because poo poo pee pee what a bummer. <

quote:

I stand by what I said - people like you are useless. Furthermore, it seems to me that the cornerstone of your ideology is for people to internalize this uselessness, and to abandon all attempts to do anything. I honestly don't see what good such an opinion will do to anyone, even if you are right about the coming catastrophe.

Again, saying "no, that's not good enough, sorry, not that either" Is not the same thing as "Hey, stop everything!" I mean, I can see how you might jump to that conclusion since I personally don't believe a solution is forthcoming, but no one will be happier than me to be proved wrong. If I see you post something I think will matter, I'll even throw you a :bravo:

. Promise!

quote:

Finally, I don't know if you understand this but - if we are all going down, and this is how it will end, it will not give you or your grandchildren pleasure to smugly stand by and tell everyone "I told you so". And if you don't understand this - please at least have the dignity to only fellate yourself in private, and remove yourself from discussions like this.

Hey buddy, I'll be happy to offer comfort to my loved ones as poo poo is going down, but as long as we're here just discussing and stuff on a free Internet, I'm more than happy to reiterate that no one in this thread has a realistic solution and severe climate change is immanent.�

Things that might matter:
*A precipitous drop in population (not realistic)
*Deux ex machina miracle breakthroughs (possible, but not guaranteed�
*Extreme reorganization of the world economy (not realistic on necessary time tables)
*a retreat from growth focused economics (not realistic until things are much more dire, at which point so what?

Because of political intransigence the last two aren't going to happen. Because killing a bunch of people to save the world sort of defeats the point of saving the world for its inhabitants, that's not going to happen (and shouldn't). That second one, maybe ~~god~~ sorry, scientists will save us. Maybe. I hope so at least (serious posting). The first one will happen on its own, but not before the damage is done.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Nov 24, 2012

# ¿ Nov 24, 2012 05:50

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

I imagine in wealthy countries at least you'll see subterranean farms at some point if things get dire enough with temps and crop fertilizing issues (assuming there are institutions in place that could dig them). The deeper you go the cooler, and with skylights and mirrors you could probably distribute sunlight, supplement with electrical light as needed and control the temperature more easily.

Edit: Or more likely just indoor farming with AC. gently caress the atmosphere!

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Nov 29, 2012

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 00:08

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:53

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Fracking is a technique for fracturing rock formations using hydro pressure so that you can then extract the fossil fuels that were encased in the rock. As a mineral extraction technique it has opened up tons of shale fields in recent years, not to mention the boom it has created in natural gas. The only way you can say that fracking reduces CO2 emissions is by the increase in natural gas use in lieu of coal. But, it's still extracting and burning a fossil fuel and releasing CO2. Not to mention that the balance of hydrocarbons produced by fracking isn't going to be just natural gas, this shale boom is going to be a big deal.

Essentially fracking technology is the foot pushing down on the accelerator of CO2 emissions to make sure we're getting all the juice out of the tank. It's ultimately not a good thing.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Nov 29, 2012

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 21:12

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

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