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

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Amoxicilina posted:

And we have the audacity to think that climate change will make certain parts of the world more hospitable or manageable to us is ok. Once we all move up there, are we going to slash and burn the gigantic untouched boreal forests that exist in these places to grow corn and soybeans? Despite the fact that they provide a great quantity of the oxygen we need to breathe?

It is even more complicated than that. Maybe eventually the arctic will be productive, but before that happened you'd have to get the soil acidity to usable levels. There are a lot of 6 foot tall spruce trees, and blueberries as tart as lemons growing in Alaska.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Soil_pH.svg
http://www.borealforest.org/index.php?category=world_boreal_forest&page=overview

In the long run it would work, but, well, in the long run, you know.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Dec 8, 2011

# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 05:57

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:16

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

ascii genitals posted:

The thing that makes me most angry about climate denial is the way people scoff and act smug in their denial. There are economic and health reasons that would make switching to efficient, clean technology a great idea. This combined with the scale of the potential disaster we are heading into tips the calculus from "waste of money if wrong" to "completely worthy pursuit even if we may be wrong in our predictions."

How does that help the people who are in power NOW, benefitting from the systems that would be displaced? They would bear much of the cost of such a transition, and to be sure, much of the benefit, but at the cost of creating opportunities for them to be displaced by new competitors.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 06:01

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Strudel Man posted:

You know, there may be an upside to all this that we haven't considered. In the early Jurassic period, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere was around 1800 ppm, about four and a half times higher than it is today. If we can push it up that high again, the dinosaurs might come back.

I'm sure it'll be a hell of a party in 5 or 10 million years when life has evolved to cope.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 06:50

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Morose Man posted:

First I'd like to address terminology. This phenomenon was called global warming until spin doctor Frank Luntz persuaded George W Bush that "climate change" sounded less threatening, less apocalyptic. The Americans made it a condition of their signing any treaty on global warming that the term climate change be used instead. I really do feel that we should reclaim the language. There is overwhelming scientific evidence (and the wrath of a Something Awful moderator) supporting the view that the planet is getting warmer, let's stop hiding the truth.

"Global warming" is not comprehensible to the "but it's snowing outside!" crowd. You'll never get it to make sense to them (nor income distribution, or anything that contrasts averages with actual distributions).

"Climate change" may not be as to-the-point to someone who isn't a loving idiot, but it doesn't have the same innumeracy barriers.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Dec 8, 2011

# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 16:20

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Strudel Man posted:

I'm not sure much evolution would be necessary, really. Temperature and weather pattern shifts promise to upset existing biomes, but it's not like they're likely to open up fundamentally new niches. It's dangerous for modern civilization and for particular species, not life broadly.

There's more to expanding or contracting biomes than just temperature change, and if temperature change is fast enough that the other things can't be changed before life dies, it dies. How bad the mass-extinction is depends on how fast the change is...and it only takes one generation unable to reproduce to kill off a species.

You could easily be left with only those species that are able to occupy different, neighboring biomes, and which are not dependent upon any other species that cannot.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 16:29

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

Right but the data doesn't indicate that the temperature change rate is greater or lesser than previous events because that's not how the data works. Look at the K/T boundary which likely had much much much greater rates of change than now and yeah, there's a mass extinction event, but it didn't mean all life died off. That which survived, evolved.

That which survived was significantly less than before. With huge chunks of the food web removed, not just biodiversity, but biomass may have declined. That's what I meant by "it'll be one hell of a party after life recovers." Not that all life will die off, but that an awful lot will, and it will be rough going for a while...but once life can do something with all that extra CO2 (and has altered biomes that were useless at their particular temperature/ph conditions, with the organisms available to colonize them) things will be pretty active.

In some areas, at least, I'm right:
http://books.google.com.hk/books?id...ecrease&f=false

And the point is: SO WHAT IF NOT ALL LIFE DIES OUT? That which doesn't die is mostly going to wish it did. The lucky ones in Soylent Green are the ones who were eaten.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Dec 9, 2011

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 03:27

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

eh4 posted:

Add to that the estimated rise in dementia:

How much do you think that accounts for the political climate in the US?

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 03:43

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

This is just reaching, a mass extinction event is the definition of what is going on now, a hell of a lot of the life on this planet will die. That which survives will be quite comfortable, and it's not like we've actually hosed humanity any time particularly soon. There's a hell of a lot of lovely science on both side and that's because people have mistaken reality with loving faith. This thread is just an example of it in many cases. Those of us who work in related fields want to put a bullet in our heads when people go "OH NO WE'VE hosed HUMANITY THE WORLD IS OVER" as when people go "THERE'S NO GLOBAL WARMING HEH LOOKIT THAT EARLY SNOW".

Seriously, it's really trendy to accept absolute worst case models which require a hell of a lot of variables and catastrophic thinkink involved. The earth gets warm every now and then, a shitload of stuff dies and things get kinda lovely for a while. It happens when ice ages end. That's been happening longer than we've been industrialized. That's not to say we're not contributing, that's not to say we're not releasing way too much CO2 into the atomosphere, that's not to say we shouldn't clamp down hard on the royal dickbags who keep curtailing regulation to gently caress up our planet. But to imagine that this is drastically different from any other warming event other than that we're here to witness it is scientifically ignorant.

This is a lot of text to defend an attack on one sarcastic throwaway line (which was also pretty much correct, with only the timeframe being off) about you missing the point.

"What's the big deal, we aren't going to eradicate all life on the planet, it'll be fine in the end!" What's your point? Particularly if you aren't using it as an excuse for clamping down on dickbags? Civilization suffers and/or dies. Humanity suffers and/or dies. A significant fraction, maybe even a majority, of species on Earth dies. If all you care about is the long (millions of years or more) term survival of ANY life on earth, why do you even participate in a discussion of global warming, if you know it isn't going to matter?

I also didn't say it would be different from other warming events. Those were also pretty disastrous in terms of extinction.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 05:04

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

Right, but they happened anyways.

What does that even mean? "happened anyways" as if I'm suggesting that the level of extinction should have prevented their happening?

Or are you suggesting that the fact that they happened means that this warming event was inevitable and no matter what humans do it was going to happen?

Is there some third, not-stupid point you could be trying to make here?

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 08:05

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Must not be from America or China.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 10:25

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

This is absolutely the case. What is the issue is our impact on an already changing climate. There's no question we're loving up a lot of things with pollution and our carbon dioxide output,
and I strongly advocate for strong environmental regulations, but scientific ignorance is becoming the norm on both sides of the debate and that is not okay.

Please, tell me about your background in biostratigraphy and geology in general. You know, the science that does all the figuring out about historical climates.

Do you have a point of disagreement or do you just like to state all your agreements in an argumentative, patronizing, and condescending manner?

# ¿ Dec 10, 2011 13:05

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

trollstormur posted:

Wow, at what point does the act of bombing all fuel refineries become rational self action?

Never, because you don't need to refine coal.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2011 00:23

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

You can go right to the UN site and see it, it's all right there, you just have to read BETWEEN the lines!

# ¿ Dec 11, 2011 06:28

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

zachol posted:

Stupid question: What are the practical consequences of all this? Things will get a few degrees warmer... doesn't that just mean that ecosystems will shift around a little, break apart, and then develop into new ones after a couple decades?
I mean, just to be really ignorant for a second, if temperatures go up by, oh, four degrees, won't the things that grow in one spot move north/south/higher in latitude to an area that's currently four degrees cooler (as in, will be the same temperature that they're currently in)?
I mean, I'm assuming this is completely wrong, I'm just not sure why.

You're completely wrong for a lot of environments:

Islands - obviously, most organisms are going to have trouble leaving.

Mountains - less obviously...they can only move up so far (and in fact they have been moving upward), and some organisms that live near the top would have nowhere to go. Also, the entire mountain may become unsuitable for all of its inhabitants if rainfall changes too much. And while they aren't separated by oceans, deserts can be just as deadly. That's why they're sometimes called "sky islands." Basically, birds are the only things equipped to escape, and even that might be tough.

High latitudes - polar bears have nowhere to go. If it gets warm enough for forest to overtake tundra, caribou have nowhere to go. Tundra being replaced could mean decreased insect populations (tundra is basically mossy marshland, mosquitoes love it) which could be bad for migratory birds. Same with lakes and ponds shrinking. Precipitation in much of the arctic is actually pretty low...the only reason it isn't desert or nearly so is that it's frozen half the year...you get to use a year's worth of water in 4-6 months. Less time frozen means drier summers.

And that's just on land:

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Warming_Oceans_Starved_of_Oxygen.php

Deleuzionist posted:

This isn't logical. If contamination of groundwater by gas increases after fracking, fracking must surely be the cause.

If proximity to a gas reservoir means there would already have been contamination, shouldn't that mean that fracking is unnecessary?

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Dec 13, 2011

# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 11:57

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

MeLKoR posted:

They'll be dead long before your children (more like grandchildren) really start getting it. Would you punish their grandchildren?

Their grandchildren (and to a lesser degree, almost all first worlders, and the middle and upper classes of pretty much every country) will be the main beneficiaries of the gains made at the expense of literally everyone else on the planet.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2011 10:27

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

It's going to be EXACTLY like Adventure Time.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2011 03:15

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

eh4 posted:

Given a choice between the cost of space exploration and a resource war, resource wars will win every time.

But space exploration won't pay off for years or decades! I can make money from a resource war RIGHT NOW.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2011 15:07

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

thesurlyspringKAA posted:

We need to armor our crops against extremes of weather and temperature,

This will get done because there is money in it for those who do it, and those who pay will have no choice.

quote:

armor our coasts against hurricanes,

This will not get done because while there is money in it for those who do it, those who would be paying will not have the means at the time it can no longer be ignored.

quote:

and armor our society against the coming period of increased scarcity.

If humanity in general and the US in particular were capable of doing this, we would not be in this mess.

quote:

Also we need to face the facts that cutting the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by even 1 or 2 percent would do immense damage to crops and biospheres in marginal areas that depend on getting as much light as possible. Enveloping our planet in mirrors and aerosols is the dumbest loving thing we could do.

Once we've killed all the phytoplankton, there'll be plenty of areas you can get away with shading.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2011 12:58

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Squalid posted:

Are you talking about particulate matter or is their some other pollutant reducing warming?

Particulates and sulfur dioxide give you clouds. The latter also gives you acid rain.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 06:42

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

McDowell posted:

There'd be panic, shelves would be bare. Other issues (fuel scarcity) could make it harder to get the machine working again.

I just hope that a lot of the people who were getting all hard seeing pictures of bare store shelves in the Soviet Union and making fun of famine in Africa live to see it.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2011 04:37

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

How many calories are there in freeper tears, though?

# ¿ Dec 21, 2011 05:28

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Climate = weather.

Glad Ad Astra was here to set us all straight.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2011 09:21

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

duck monster posted:

Febuary was an absolute horror. A month straight of 40C (~104f) days. I ended up going through a good $800 in air consitioner power useage just to stay sane. I can't recall another year qquite like it, and I say that as someone who detests winter, usually.

What kind of house do you live in? If you have doors and windows front and back, you can do a lot to keep the house cool with minimal AC use. Open up at night, close the sunward side early, don't close the shaded side until it's cooler inside than out. You can be comfortable and run your AC just a few hours a day. My dad in AZ spends less than 1/6th what you do for electricity (don't know what the difference in rates is) with a ~1400 square foot house, in the hottest months of summer, about as hot as you're talking about.

If you're in an apartment facing north with no windows in back, well, I don't envy you I guess.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2011 10:39

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

duck monster posted:

I detest the way governments will allocate loving massive amounts of water to industrial/mining uses while putting water rations on things like watering ones lawn. Well at least they do here.

Some mines here will use staggering amounts of fresh water , enough to supply multiple towns, meanwhile the local towns are being water rationed and people being fined for watering lawns whilst politicians pull their hair out over solutions to drier and drier dams.

Lawns are a waste of water, too. Particularly when they're watered during the day.

That's one of the things that disgusts me about Phoenix versus other cities in the southwest...they loooove their grass there, in the hottest populated part of the state, with the least rainfall. I may be retiring to the desert, but damned if I won't be taking my little piece of Ohio or wherever the hell with me. God gave man dominion over nature, and that's the end of the discussion!

Drop the Street View guy anywhere in Phoenix and you'll probably see grass. Drop him in Tucson, and unless he's next to a public park, you won't, and Tucson is 10 degrees cooler in summer, and gets 50% more rain.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2011 13:15

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Yiggy posted:

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

Watering is allowed...or at least, people do it. There was some dumb bitch who was watering her garden in her back yard almost every time I walked by in the afternoon. (You water your plants at night, retard!) Water running under her fence onto the street. The only upside is that she had a high fence and some shade trees, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. And as far as I know there was no lawn.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2012 07:14

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Office Thug posted:

Regulations make up an astounding 75% of the total costs to building and maintaining reactors in the US at the moment, most of it being a result of work delays and the tacking on of additional safety features,

So...safety is a regulatory cost?

When you say "regulations make up 75 percent of the total costs" I think "there are that many people doing redundant inspections and impacts studies and paperwork?" I don't think "damned enviro-nazis making us install safety equipment!"

For that matter, what's higher? The cost of those safety features, or the costs of Fukushima and Chernobyl averaged out over the industry?

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 03:31

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

edit: nevermind, this was idiotic.

I am not anti-nuclear. I am against the implication that safety requirements are bullshit hysterical obstructionism and an unnecessary cost. I'm also skeptical of his 75% statement without some more detail provided.

VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Jan 7, 2012

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 06:19

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Cinnamon Bastard posted:

Tools and resources have value, which means they are going to end up getting valued by people.

Buy gold.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2012 12:23

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:16

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

Zelthar posted:

Oil does not equal electrical power. That 1% that is still used to produce power is a non issue. Those are a relic of older times and said plants will not last.

Oil is transportation and heating.

http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/

And electricity can be transportation (to some extent) and heating (to a large extent) as well. I'm pretty sure the idea is that the oil companies want to prevent it taking over more of those areas.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2012 03:18

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