|
It seems like we are at the point where mitigation strategies are useless. It getting clearer that the window for doing something about climate change is closing, and unless something absolutely fundamental changes in the political environment, there is no we we can get where we need to be to hold this problem off. Given that this is the case, it might be time to shift the focus from prevention to management. Instead of saying "We need to prevent climate change." we will soon need to say "How can we deal with climate change so that fewer people die and civilization as a whole does not collapse?" Instead of funding green energy, we need to fund mass relocation plans to move millions of people out of areas that will be flooded in a few decades. We've made our bed, now we have to lie in it, and the sooner we start planning for the coming catastrophe the better chance we have of coming out of it alive.
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2011 02:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:45 |
|
|
sanchez posted:As the impacts of climate change hit, particularly talking about food supply but weather too, hundreds of millions of people will die. This means hundreds of millions of people will stop consuming fossil fuels etc, reducing carbon emissions. How many people have to die before the climate stabilizes? Assume the poor ones who use little energy go first. There are positive feedback effects that keep this from happening. Once we cross a certain threshold, we are hosed, even if we reduce carbon emissions to zero afterwards. The Earth will probably recover on a time scale of thousands of years, but there is no recovery on a shorter time scale.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2011 01:13
|
|
|
The problem is that a lot of these technologies are decades away, and we don't have that kind of time. If we had a huge government commitment similar to "We'll land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s" we would have a small chance of getting a technological solution, but good luck with that.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2012 05:28
|
|
|
With Keystone XL, the carbon output from the tar sands is the least of our worries. The route they had planned for the pipeline had it going over the Ogallala Aquifer. The aquifer is the source for virtually all the irrigation and drinking water in almost all of Nebraska, western Kansas, and northern Texas. If there were to be a massive spill into there, well, we're not sure what will happen. What we do know is that cleanup will be virtually impossible, and if the groundwater is contaminated, agriculture in those areas will cease entirely. 30% of US crops use water from it, so if it stops it will have a huge impact on food prices, as well as a huge flow of refugees from areas that no longer have sufficient supplies of drinking water. Of course, this is a worse case scenario, a large oil spill into groundwater has never happened, so we have no idea how severe it will be.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2012 21:22
|
|
|
Aufzug Taube! posted:Well at least something is being done: No, it doesn't. This kind of thinking prevents the real action that needs to be taken. If your house is on fire, you don't go grab your neighbor's garden hose, and it wouldn't 'help' if you did. We had time for incremental changes like this twenty years ago, now the only thing that will help is swift and pervasive action of the sort that is politically impossible. Here is the only viewpoint that I think will help at this point: "I want to abolish democracy and start up a worldwide totalitarian dictatorship in order to implement the changes we need to stop climate change. There is no way this will happen without everyone's participation, and there is no way we can democratically agree to do what needs to be done. I will use whatever violence is needed to seize power and implement the changes needed, the deaths caused by this will be nothing compared to what will happen if climate change is left unchecked." I'm 100% serious. Maybe we can try democracy again in a few hundred years, but there is no way it can work now. We'll have WWIII anyway once the serious effects of climate change hit and the oil runs out. If you look at the kinds of actions that need to be taken and when they need to be implemented, this is the only chance we have barring everyone in the world instantly agreeing to dramatically alter their lifestyles to prevent climate change.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2012 08:04
|
|
|
Smegmatron posted:Is there any truth to my own personal delusion that fossil fuels will become scarce enough to make them economically unviable to the point where carbon-neutral energy sources (note; I don't necessarily mean renewable) will become the economically preferred option in time to start fixing things? Not really. A lot of people will still drive at $10/gallon gas, either because they can afford to or because they have no other options to get to work or access basic services. If there is a long term price increase, that may increase the value of high density areas which allow for public transportation, but the shift would take decades. We should have stopped building low density communities where public transportation is inefficient or impossible twenty years ago, but the market demanded them. Of course it doesn't matter now anyway, since for all practical purposes we are no longer "in time to start fixing things."
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2012 19:51
|
|
|
Shipon posted:Perhaps this is why, then, we should institute a heavy fuel tax to subsidize public transit and to discourage car-driven development. Just because it's "too late" doesn't mean we just put up our hands and let the current system fail miserably. I think that a better idea would be to channel development to high-density areas through a combination of subsides and taxes. A fuel tax won't make public transportation viable in low-density areas, and even a very high one won't make people move. Instead, we should do whatever is needed to encourage development of high-density real estate suitable for public transportation for all price levels and family sizes, while using zoning laws to ban or heavily tax the construction of new low-density real estate. With the right city plan, public transportation can fund itself, but it is a huge and endless money sink if you try and use it when there isn't enough density to support it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2012 03:48
|
|
|
Keep in mind that the power has to come from somewhere, and if you refuse to build nuclear plants it will probably be coal, which is much more deadly than nuclear. The only problem is that the deaths from coal are either economically disadvantaged coal miners, or they are people who get diseases from the pollution. If a nuclear disaster were to cause as many fatalities as Upper Big Branch Mine, you can bet that the consequences would be a lot bigger than having the company responsible pay a small fraction of the profits back in fines.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2012 22:15
|
|
|
duck monster posted:Thats an excellent article and I encourage everyone to read it, because I honestly feel that way too. We need to stop "debate" with denialists and just start mocking them mercilessly. The longer we play along with this "debate" the more people will continue to think that there is anything left to debate about climate changes reality. The issue is that there isn't scientific consensus on what the effects would be yet. If scientists could say "There is clear evidence that rising sea levels will cause these highly populated areas in these coastal cities to be uninhabitable by 2050" then there would be a lot more room to make plans about what to do, and a lot more people would take action.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2012 10:17
|
|
|
I just wish that environmentalists would educate themselves on nuclear power. Some blogs I read on the topic lump nuclear in with fossil fuels, or post alarmist stories of how bad nuclear is. I can just about convince people that nuclear is better than fossil fuels, but many cling to the idealistic view that we can get 100% of our energy needs from renewable resources, which is just not realistic.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2012 20:02
|
|
|
There are all sorts of reasons to grow your own food, but it doesn't help the environment, nor will it prepare you for a breakdown of civilization. The way to make food production environmentally friendly is to have large scale farms use sustainable practices, and have that food distributed to people in high density areas. Having a bunch of people live in low-density areas where they are reliant on cars to get anywhere doesn't help matters, even if they grow food extremely inefficiently, using more of almost every environmental resource per unit of food than the "factory farmer" due to economies of scale and a less than ideal environment.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2012 19:28
|
|
|
Your data includes the qualifer: "Under the care of a knowledgeable farmer, who understands the land and the network of relationships that exist therein...". That's a whole lot different then having a garden of a few square yards. That data about small farms being more efficient is interesting though, although the dollar value figures are probably inflated due to the fact that a lot of small farms are organic, which means they can charge a premium.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2012 21:36
|
|
|
We can probably build a city-sized settlement on Earth that will be able to survive any environment. The technology for the most part already exists. With current and developing nuclear power technologies, it should be possible to stockpile enough nuclear fuel to last thousands of years. With sufficient power, you can purify seawater and make air from it. Food production is an unsolved problem, no one has needed to grow all their food "artificially", so there hasn't been much research in this area. However, with high efficiency gardening techniques and genetically modified crops I think a solution could be found, although there would probably be rationing and meat would be nonexistent.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2012 19:33
|
|
|
spoon0042 posted:Of course the slightly clever ones have already moved on to "it's happening but humans aren't causing it / can't do anything about it". The will be right though, since even today it's already too late to do anything. Climate change is happening, and it will cause massive death on an unprecedented scale, no matter what we do now. Read the OP, and realize that it is from a year and a half ago. We're hosed, and even the most radical ideas being proposed by anyone in power don't even come close to fixing the problem.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2013 15:13
|
|
|
It won't be horrible, but by then long-term property investments in those cities should be completely halted, and if the government is sensible they will be giving people incentives to move away. Those places will be worse off then Detroit is today, and everyone will know that there isn't any hope of recovery.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2013 02:42
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:Mid-range projections for drought posted in this thread are calling for dustbowlification of about half of agriculturally productive land in North America by 2050. That's going to mean a lot to everyone if it comes to pass. It will mean higher meat and milk prices, and an end to 'organic' agriculture and the horribly inefficient practice of turning corn into biofuel, but I don't think it will result in food shortages or a spike in the price of staple grains.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2013 04:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:45 |
|
|
I agree, and I also think that we should start prioritizing research into how to save as many lives as possible given that the catastrophic effects of climate change are going to happen. For example, we could start incentivising people to move away from areas that will have to be evacuated sometime in the next 50 years, and channel long-term development to areas that will stay liveable. Of course, it would be political suicide to say "we shouldn't build anything new in Miami" and such a policy would crash the local economy, but that's better than having thousands of deaths and millions of refugees later on.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2015 23:54
|
|