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Uranium Phoenix posted:If anyone wants clarification or a more detailed rebuttal on any of his other claims, let me know. Thanks for a great post, but I really would rather see Arkane ignored and ridiculed as much as possible as even rebutting his disingenuous bullshit is lending some sort of credibility to one if the biggest and most malicious liars I have ever seen. As a two-second google search and a quick read can refute most of the stuff he says, I'd rather some time be spent talking about who he is, why he wants to misrepresent things and his long history of doing so - because I'd really hate for anyone to think he's arguing in good faith.
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Nov 9, 2015 16:30
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Posted this in the wrong goddamned thread (old thread isn't closed yet) so I guess I'm crossposting. " What's Really Warming the World posted:
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Nov 12, 2015 23:01
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CommieGIR posted:The Great Barrier Reef is dying: Yep. At least it's a very visible thing to go wrong. Too bad the people with actual power and influence don't give a poo poo what the general population thinks of this.
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Mar 29, 2016 16:50
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Paradoxish posted:Saying that something isn't good enough isn't the same as saying we shouldn't do it. Electric vehicles aren't nearly good enough without a massive overhaul of our energy infrastructure, and electric cars themselves can't be deployed on a meaningful scale without a massive overhaul of our transportation infrastructure. People are gloomy because we're starting to realize that we aren't dealing a problem that's fifty years out, we're dealing with a problem that's already happening. So electric cars are cool, and helpful, and will probably reduce emissions over the long run, but it's hard to be optimistic when you realize that the battle you thought you were fighting five or six years ago is already lost. I will say this though, that the adoption of electric vehicles will have some significant impacts on the electric infrastructure and will lead to the development of more fundamentally green technologies. I'll explain what I mean: The next big thing in development of industry, logistics and services is going to be automation. I expect that within ten years time we will see a lot of manpower being replaced with automatics, like driving, delivery, cargo transport and public transportation. This has huge implications, because the combination of these technologies makes a lot of sense; we can make up for the faults of electric vehicles with tireless drivers and automatic load handling systems a la Amazon. We will have net efficiency gains, lower transport costs (with electric vehicles at least) and if electric cars can be produced and transported at least somewhat carbon-free this will be a great boon to the environment. But then there's the greater issue: What will automation - not just for transport and logistics but everywhere conceivable - do to our financial system? Capitalism works (somewhat) because people have money to pay for things. If half of everyone loses their jobs to robots (this is actually not unlikely), we can't really invent enough new jobs for them to have busywork to do, and the social safety net of unemployment insurance and such will not be able to compensate for a 50% unemployment rate. Which either leaves a permanent underclass of destitute people, or we wil be forced to adopt a socialist stance and a sort of "citizen's wage" to provide a basic financial back bone to society, financed by heavy taxation or outright public ownership of the means of production. And how will that impact the environment? Well, seeing as capitalism as an economic system is unable to deal with climate change, the fight against climate change almost certainly requires the death of capitalism and a restructuring of our economic culture and understanding and diverting these massive freed resources of manpower and efficiency gains into A: Making all industry green and B: Gigantic international projects against climate change. In essence, our society needs a massive change of political and cultural understanding so it can transition into something that values solidarity and cooperation over massive corporate greed and consumption. Now, do I believe that will happen? Hell no. The people on top, the 1%, the oligarchs, the "elite", whatever you want to call them will not allow this to happen. They have too much to lose, have no incentive in their (non-existent) personal risk in case of climate change, and really truly do not care in the slightest about any and all human suffering that does not directly impact them or their families. Not in any significant way at least. To quote George Carlin: "It's a big club, and you ain't in it". Until most people share my opinion that vast fortunes are fundamentally undemocratic and shouldn't be allowed and that the blame for climate change lies in the hands of the people who benefit the most from it, the people who have all the power in our society to frame the issues through their ownership of the media, the power to truly influence politics, things will absolutely not change to the benefit of the environment. Socio-economic politics is environmental politics. They are completely linked. And until people realise that, meaningful change will not come.
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Apr 16, 2016 08:49
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oxsnard posted:This is an interesting thread. I'm not going to disagree with you on the facts at least. For this automated electric car scenario to work, I'm assuming advances in battery technology that allows us to make batteries at least somewhat eco-friendly; if we assume the same battery production method as is currently in use all we're really doing is having well-off westernes paying large sums of money to transport local pollution to the battery-producing countries. Which - all inequality aside - accomplishes nothing in the long run and the big picture, since we're all sharing this one atmosphere. But there will be advances in battery technology, hopefully (especially) in making batteries greener. I don't think we can speculate as to what that will look like, though, and certainly not plan for it. A better solution might be alternative to cars; existing road infrastructure replaced by electric trains and trams, and local short range transport being accomplished by a small number of shared automated cab-like vehicles. This has its own issues, but at least it's a feasible way to accomplish people transportation with a minimum of pollution and most importantly CO2. It would set us back to 1920s era transportation for most people though, which would be a big adjustment for most westerners. But hell, transport in the future might be severely limited regardless, so... As for nuclear, you're also not wrong. Good luck convincing everyone else though, I'm willing to bet that will be difficult even when rolling brownouts become an everyday thing.
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Apr 18, 2016 08:32
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Isaac0105 posted:Don't be so optimistic about nuclear. I can understand why people would be so sympathetic towards it- it's not oil, it's not coal, the idea of nuclear tickles the mind about its possibilities (especially in light of possible tech improvements, like breeder reactors or fusion). But I'd really like to emphasize that as a solution it is not permanent. Even if we manage to make a global nuclear transition (a gargantuan if) then uranium is still a non-renewable resource and we would just be kicking the ball down the road, pushing forward the inevitable collapse and downsizing that our civilization needs to undergo. Possible tech advances are not a way out of this because they don't exist right now - believing that they will be around to bail us out seems just a form of faith to me. And further, I suspect that even if these fusion/thorium/breeder reactors come around, there will be some other resource limit that will knock them on their rear end anyway later down the road. Remember that even if the fuel for something like fusion is insanely abundant, what might not be so abundant are the rare metals and minerals that will be required to construct these new reactors (and maintain them). Not to start a nuclear debate in general (even though it is definitely key to any kind of civilization post a green shift in industry), but just for accuracy's sake: Chernobyl wasn't really much worse than Fukushima. WHO estimates increased cancer cases from nuclear pollution at around 4000, and total worker deaths/shortened lives including cleanup crews from the sovjet union were almost certainly less than 6000. Estimates of hundreds of thousands and millions are complete bunk, and I say that as a person born just before the disaster in the radioactive pollution zone. No, I'm not kidding. I mean, not to use wikipedia as a source, but there are a bunch of citations here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster Chernobyl is easily the worst nuclear plant accident in the world, but compared to something like the worst renewable power accident in the world that killed 171 000 people, Chernobyl really was nothing significant at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam Nuclear energy has a very bad PR problem that you're a great example of, but it is by a ridiculous, completely ludicrously overwhelming margin the safest method of power generation known to man. France generates much more than half of its electricity from nuclear. It's not exactly a nuclear wasteland, France. It gets even more mindblowing when you consider that the only significant nuclear accidents have been ancient, terribly designed plants from the 60s. It's still the safest way to produce electricity. Nuclear is very safe, and is completely and utterly necessary for any real attempt at combatting climate change.
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Apr 18, 2016 11:36
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oxsnard posted:Don't hold your breath. You're chained the redox potential between two elements. There are real physical barriers to a breakthrough on this front, which is why we've improved a lot on optimizing existing chemistries but nothing really new has shown up in decades. The energy yield as a function of mass makes batteries wasteful for large applications to a fault. Allright, I'll defer to your expertise on this since it sounds like you know what you're talking about. I hate speculating on future anything really, because prediction is usually a complete illusion. I've read about battery technologies that don't rely on current materials technology at all (which I guess makes it basically science fiction until it can be proven to be science fact), crystal matrice batteries, carbon nanotube bullshit... I'm in no position to make assumptions as to what a battery (or general energy storage breakthrough) will look like in the future. The only assumption I will make is that there will almost certainly be some improvement beyond pure optimisation, even if it's not enough to consider a "breakthrough". When combined with other future technologies, it might become a viable alternative for public and private transportation. Maybe. But as I talked about in my previous post, I'm not holding my breath for any of it. Isaac0105 posted:But you see I'm not saying it is likely (or has been likely), I'm saying it is possible. I'd hate to depress you pal, but reality does not offer any guarantees. And "realism" means dealing with the world as it is, not the Disney version where everything works out in the end. You've done nothing to back up your assumptions with verifiable facts. Why exactly should we consider your view "realistic"? The very first thing you posted on this topic was wildy inaccurate wildly speculative nonsense.
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Apr 18, 2016 14:55
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Trabisnikof posted:NREL's studies show far higher limits to grid penetration than that blog post does. But even if wind and solar peak out at 40-60% of the grid, I'm still glad we're building them now rather than waiting for a better solution to come alone later. Just to be blunt: there are mainly two factors at play for energy generation. 1 - The laws of physics 2 - The human factor (public opinion, regulation, finance) The laws of physics overwhelmingly support a central grid system with a nuclear baseline, something that hydroelectric - among renewable power sources - is the only thing accomplishing even remotely the same. We need this baseline. We cannot replace this. One of these two factors can change. The other one can't. It's the laws of physics. That's the one that can't change. This means that either public opinion, regulation and financing changes, or we don't get power as we know it. This is not a new debate in general or on this forum, a quick look in the energy generation megathread can pretty much get you all the facts and details. In any realistic scenario with continued industry and high-tech living with high living standards, we need power and nuclear is the only realistic option. And just to point it out, industry and manufacture is very important to both economy, military might and living standard (job generation), as we can't all work in tertiary sector jobs. If the western world refuses to adapt to global warming and the disappearing fossil fuel issue, the third world countries that are building and developing nuclear are for damned sure going to become the new superpowers. And the western world with its human rights advances and social ideals will be left in the dust. Nice piece of fish fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 22:17
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Cranappleberry posted:There are absolutely changes that can be made to mitigate climate change and environmental damage, even at this late stage. However, most of these changes have to occur on a large scale. I can tentatively agree that individual choice and sacrifice matters to the whole of global warming, relating to the signal effect. If adoption of environmental austerity measures by the individual creates a culture of environmental conciousness, ushers in the public perception that everyone must contribute to combat climate change, which then leads to sweeping political/systemic/industrial reform, I will agree that this will have an effect. If it was massively frowned upon socially to drive huge inefficcient vehicles, pollute, use non-renewable energy or heating a house with anything but sustainable biomatter and eating meat, then sure, I can see that having an effect on the whole picture. But it takes one coal-rolling rear end in a top hat to negate an entire neighborhood full of effort, and a single years continued output from a coal plant to eradicate the gain from hundreds upon thousands of neighborhoods. I'll accept the signal effect, but individual contributions and sacrifices don't matter to the big picture even all of them together. As an aside, reverting to third world living conditions is a non-starter no matter which way you slice it, so there's a definite cap on these individual sacrifices too.
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Apr 22, 2016 10:15
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Dr. Furious posted:How do you get to this point when people that push the boundaries by criticizing the choices individual people make are shamed as smug assholes, even by people that are aware of the stakes of the overall problem of climate change? It's uncomfortable to think of ourselves as selfish, but it's a valid ethical argument, even if the person making it is being a hypocrite compared to some other hypothetical individual whose lifestyle generates lower emissions. Climate change is a collective prisoner's dilemma. How can we move to a position where betraying your species becomes more socially unacceptable if the only position from which someone can make a valid criticism of others is some ideal unobtainable moral high ground? You don't. At least if you factor in the entire world outside of the developed nations. It will have to happen the same way cultural and moral-philosophical change happens, gradually and slowly. Which I believe it is among younger people. And not to be dismissive, but that's why this alone won't solve anything; attitudes are changing too slowly in response to a problem that has utterly glacial speed and momentum. As I've said before, I'm more of a cynic than an optimist when it comes to this, but I honestly think that changing attitudes about climate change, individual effort and all that is very deeply tied in to political beliefs and opinions - solidarity, social responsibility and egalitarian/socialist economics has got to accompany this awareness of environmental issues. We need to change all of it. We need a paradigm shift, and a big one. Luckily, this isn't impossible at least from a historical point of view. But there needs to be a catalyst, and what that might be I don't know. Potential BFF posted:Electric public transit with a nuclear grid and social programs to mitigate the reasons people hate public transit like homeless people sleeping, pissing, and dying in it seems like a doable future. Yeah. That would actually solve a great deal of the emissions issue, especially combined with increasing electrification of industry based on a low emission grid and probably a massive reforestation program coupled with agricultural and aquacultural reform. Also huge would be an alternative to air travel, and a significant decrease in air traffic. And low-emissions logistics. E: A great example of a social policy that would also be huge for the environment both local and global (at least for most of Europe) would be free public transport (bus, tram) in all cities. In the long run it would probably save money even if the up-front cost of the system would be taxpayer funded, it just wouldn't be as visible. But it would be extremely effective in terms of moving the biggest amount of people with the least amount of emissions, and reduce traffic (and fuel consumption) dramatically. Nice piece of fish fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Apr 22, 2016 |
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Apr 22, 2016 20:56
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sitchensis posted:Funny enough, I just finished a major research paper as part of my masters that touched on this subject. Haven't read up on this topic at all, would you mind giving a short synopsis of your take on this based on your work with these sources? Goes for the both of you, really. I find this issue very interesting if not completely central to the topic of the thread and I'd love to see some more discussion on it.
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May 4, 2016 09:13
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Fasdar posted:Are you referring specifically to the issue of climate change induced migration or general social dimensions of climate change? Because I can do the latter moreso than the former, but I'd be happy to put something together later tonight. Both are actually very interesting, the first because it'll be one of the first big effects of climate change, and the second I'm generally interested in because I don't know enough about it by far. sitchensis posted:yes but give me like, a few hours But please both of you, take your time. Climate change isn't going anywhere.
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May 4, 2016 22:49
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Fasdar posted:Quality posting. sitchensis posted:More quality posting. Thanks a million to the both of you, excellent posts. That both confirms a lot of uneducated impressions I've had on the problems as well as gave me some new insight. Exactly what I was hoping for. I am deathly afraid of what you're proposing might be the likely scenario, but given political history and what I know of the political developments of these "filter" countries like Turkey and Greece - particularly the stuff we're seeing now with the dealmaking with the EU and internment camps - I'm having a hard time finding reasons to contradict your logic. I'm hopeful that the democratically strongest nations in western EU won't accept this kind of development, but... the rise of right-wing politics and the history of right-wing extremism in response to immigration in pretty much all of Europe as well as the issue of hard self-interest voting... Yeah. A lot of people are screwed, and it's not us who will be feeling it first. Those poor bastards 
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May 5, 2016 10:54
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Rime posted:Turkey. Turkey is a pot getting ready to boil over due to the stresses of climate change. For decades it's just been the Kurds fighting against the Turks, but as soon as the Turks turn against their own government, it's all going to implode. And don't think Erdogan and crew don't know it. They have been pulling concessions and hard deals out of the EU like a dentist pulling teeth from a meth addict for a while now, and they are going to leverage the current refugee situation as much as they can to ease turkish emigration into the EU as much as possible before they start getting overrun themselves with mideast refugees. They want the economic backing and support of western Europe both for mitigating climate change and to retain control over their region. I have no idea how that will develop, though.
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May 6, 2016 21:23
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Trabisnikof posted:That's a relatively small spill and isn't a blowout like deep water horizon. Also unlikely to impact climate change significantly. Yeah, that's 90 000 gallons of CO2 not going into the atmosphere. Also, it's ugly, unpopular and terrible PR for oil companies. It sucks for the local wildlife, but it's not necessarily bad for the rest of the world.
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May 13, 2016 21:43
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It's also an example of regulation fixing a free-market problem or correcting for things the free market doesn't take into account. The only way capitalism as a system can be forced to deal with climate change is through private regulation born from public perception and pressure, and actual national and international legislation. And it does need to be forced. While this is moving forward, I still don't have faith that capitalism can be made to fully accept the consequences of climate change and adjust accordingly. The pushback from rich investors and the corporate upper-class will stall or delay significant regulation almost no matter the consequences.
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May 19, 2016 08:38
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Triglav posted:Unless your ideal standard of living is subsistence farming, I would say capitalism has improved things. If you don't like picking berries, you can now chop wood for someone that likes building houses. If you don't like chopping wood, you can still pick berries. First of all, let's not pretend the Soviet goddamned Union is some sort of poster child for socialism and/or communism. It was and probably still is a corrupt totalitarian state paying lip service to marxist ideals as a political unification tool. The thing to be discussing is a comparison between neoliberalist capitalism and western/northern european democratic socialism, so leave off the obvious red (heh) herring. So how has capitalism improved things? Industrialism and the industrial revolution improved the living standards of the people. Medical advances and discoveries in the same period - raising the average life expetancy - was not done by any corporations. Capitalism gave us consumerism which is nowadays touted as a prerequisite for progress, which it never was and never will be. Before the time of the labour union and the rise of social democracy, people were literal wage slaves existing at the whim of wealthy owner-class people, having little to no rights and the lowest lived on the brink of starvation in hovels with no hope for the future or advancement of any kind. The improvement in material living standards only came when the demand created by labour unions forcing the wealthy to pay them a living wage enabled people to afford things. Market liberalist capitalism as a system doesn't generate value. It creates and reinforces inequality and creates consumerism while at the same time attacking the social advances labour organisations have fought for, through the concentration of wealth on the top and the power and greed that results from it. Nobility under a different mantle. Unchecked capitalism is on the balance an evil thing, and on a global scale causes horrible misery for untold millions and enables the exploitation of the third world. The consequences of global climate change will not even touch the wealthiest among us, and it's more probable that those consequences and increasing automation of jobs (means of production solely owned by the wealthy with low cost and completely controllable - a capitalists wet dream) will most likely bring us back towards those robber baron ages of poverty and misery for most people. I disagree that we need to overthrow capitalism completely and replace it with something to begin combatting climate change effectively, but at some point something will have to break, because consumerism and unchecked industrial pollution will prevent us becoming sustainable. Capitalism as it exists today is inexorably linked to those things, so either it needs to change into something we wouldn't even regard as capitalism today, or it must be regulated into oblivion and replaced completely. That will be a process, and the change will have to come in increments alongside the implementation of global warming policies. TL;DR: Capitalism has never been a prerequisite for progress, nor ever been directly responsible for it. We dont' need to overthrow capitalism before fighting global warming, but capitalism will have to change alongside that.
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May 28, 2016 10:22
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pidan posted:Considering that according to the article they feed on hydrogen, they'd have a hard time finding a place in nature where there's enough hydrogen to cause any significant impact. Also "The proofs came in yesterday ... it's going to be embargoed by Science" probably means it's bullshit. Well, it's not bullshit. I mean, the A-B-E process is fairly well known to be a (mostly inefficient) way of producing alcohol fuels and acetone in industrial quantities in the beginning of the 20th century. I seem to recall Japan resorting to it for aircraft fuel during the oil shortage caused by the second world war. Butanol and butanol/ethanol mixes are especially interesting as a fossil fuel substitute, because they only differ slightly from our current fuel types, at least in terms of mechanical function. Of course, the big problem with the A-B-E process is that it utilizes anaerobic bacteria and produces CO2, making industrial production even to a fraction of the world's oil production costly and difficult. If this new bio-engineered bacterium actually produces those quantities of butanol and ethanol while consuming CO2, it could change that massively. Not only would production of biofuels using a liquid-based process not use up valuable farm land, if it could be done using waste water it wouldn't necessarily be too water-intensive, making it viable in a lot of third world countries with not a lot of excess fresh water. At the same time, I'm doubtful this process doesn't take chemical/fertilizer chemical or hydrocarbon input, there's no way this bacteria lives on sunlight, hydrogen and C02 alone. If it works as advertised, it is a big deal, but even then we won't se it in industrial use until oil becomes a lot more expensive. I figure ten years at the very least. But it is a very cool concept, and absolutely a fantastic (theoretical) solution to getting off fossil fuels.
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May 30, 2016 08:12
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Triglav posted:If I recall correctly, You don't. Triglav posted:I asked about dirty energy's pivotal role in improving the standard of living of those in developing countries. You didn't. That was the thing before. This topic came from this: Triglav posted:Unless your ideal standard of living is subsistence farming, I would say capitalism has improved things. Which presupposes that capitalism is the answer to your original question, of which I (and some other people ITT) disagree. Triglav posted:People said socialism would fix that. They didn't. I said: Nice piece of fish posted:[...] The thing to be discussing is a comparison between neoliberalist capitalism and western/northern european democratic socialism, [...] And I didn't see anyone saying socialism was a prerequisite for fighting global warming, nor that it would fix everything forever. Triglav posted:Further questions led to everyone explaining that they meant welfare capitalism. It's sorted now. They did? I seem to read a lot of CommieGIR posted:Jesus gently caress you are dense. Nobody is arguing replacing capitalism as a MARKET FORCE with Socialism. They are arguing for the same Socialist Democracy that we've had since 1940. Just stop. You are arguing against something no one is saying. The US has a form of welfare capitalism now. Doesn't seem to help. Triglav posted:Okay. We all agree: Capitalism is good. Way to move the goalposts, buddy. The question was whether or not capitalism (and just capitalism and the market forces therein) was responsible for increased standard of living. History, and common sense would indicate that it is not, seeing as the market mechanisms behind capitalism have existed for centuries if not millennia, and changes in standard of living have fluxuated wildly throughout history on the basis of education, medicine and socially responsible redistribution of wealth, etc. Not so much how wealthy the nobles were. TL;DR: Quit being an rear end if you want me to listen to you. Disingenuous bullshit gets you no friends here.
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May 30, 2016 11:32
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davebo posted:In terms of a "fix" though, if a legitimate plague broke out that just killed off half or 2/3rds of Earth's population, would that have a large enough effect to slow things down and keep Earth livable for the species? I'm... asking for a friend. Indulging that line of thinking: What disease could possibly accomplish this? Even antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria couldn't cause that kind of die-off. You're talking bubonic plague levels of casualties, and those were under some very specific circumstances that aren't coming back.
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Jul 26, 2016 23:16
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Anos posted:I think a command economy could potentially be most efficient in terms of economic development. It just requires that the people in charge make the right decisions. The problem is just that most people are wrong. There's 1000s of companies trying to figure out what the next thing in any industry will be and most of them will fail. By extension if you appoint any one group of people to decide how an industry should evolve then that group will more likely than not also be wrong. It's possible you can find a Ford or a Jobs and put them in charge of just the right thing at just the right time and then they probably would make the right decisions and implement it faster - more likely than not you'll put someone else in charge though. So what you're saying is that for a command economy to work we pretty much need a benevolent dictator AI in charge. Sounds like a good idea.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:52
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Uranium Phoenix posted:This advice is applicable to areas all across the US. Anywhere there's a coal plant, try to close it down and replace it--not just with clean energy, but with good jobs as well so that it doesn't even threaten the livelihood of the workers at the plant or the miners. Anywhere coal is shipped, try to get it banned. In Washington, there were several coal export terminals proposed in different places across the state, and in each case local community action defeated the terminals. Up in Bellingham, it was a chance for environmentalists and labor to get together and talk, and for activists to support the Lummi Nation, who ultimately defeated the last terminal by invoking their treaty rights. Well, yes. Even I as a pessimist will have to admit that abolishing coal as a singular, clear goal is absolutely huge and the most significant first step towards combatting climate change there is. Seriously. There is no single thing that would have a bigger impact than that. Of course, it's also incredibly hard to accomplish, possibly not in the US but in most of the third world they are absolutely dependant on coal power (looking at you, China). There are some strong forces at work against coal these days, which is mostly thanks to climate change awareness, but it's not going to go quietly and not without a fight. Not anywhere. I agree that it's a very good concrete goal for people to focus on, though. Abolishing coal would buy us a lot of time.
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Jul 29, 2016 08:31
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A White Guy posted:Hi. I have a degree in environmental science, as in an actual degree with my name on it from a credible university. A lot of my degree was talking about climate science - for example, learning to read IPCC reports, land policy, CO2e gases, using Arcmap to project things like sea level rise. However, my degree largely focused around the politics of climate change, but also the politics of land usage. I can tell you, from being close to the facts, that we're hosed, twelve ways to Sunday. - Dr A White Guy, Phd. I'm kidding. I'll take it on faith for once that you have the qualifications you say you do, I'd just love to see someone do a Phd on exactly how hosed we are and word the dissertation like your post. I don't doubt that you're correct, but I'd like to ask you to be more specific as to what definition of "doomed" you're operating under. Like I've been harping on previously, we're unlikely to see the kind of action needed to mitigate (mitigate, not prevent, because that ship has sailed) climate change without an accompanying change in political structure/ideology (the death of consumerist capitalism and its influence on politics at the very least), which will no doubt lead to big upheavals, chaos and so forth. Possibly war. Most likely war. Which, with nukes, is the biggest danger I can see of an actual doomsday happening. Humans are fairly robust and adaptable creatures, and while I don't know what kind of society we will have after the worst effects become apparent, some form of society will most likely live on. My worst case scenario is: - Billions die from starvation brought on by climate change-induced massive crop failiure and drought, together with the end of fossil fuels to use in agriculture machinery and the end of cheaply available phosfate /phosphorous(no cheap artificial fertilizer anymore). Gradual is catastrophic. Sudden collapse is much, much worse. - Massive starvation increases political instability as masses of people do anything to aquire food. Emergency services are overwhelmed, and no army can stop an entire country of starving citizens running amok. Wars begin over scarce resources/arable land and water. This gets worse the less gradual starvation is. - Wars escalate and become regional, then continental. Literal world war. Nukes fly. Curtains. Obviously, I can't know that any of this will happen. Based on the facts available right now, about the agricultural practices we currently employ and the dwindling resources they require coupled with climate change possibly rendering large swathes of farm land unusable, and how people usually respond to a life-threatening situation/resource scarcity, I can't see that ending well under most circumstances. The big unknowns are that I don't know how people really will react, how gradually the situation will develop or if we find alternatives to avoid this kind of neo-malthusian catastrophe. I also don't know that wars will really begin and that nukes will fly, but based on how close we've come in the past and the relative proliferation of nuclear weapons, I'm again not very happy about the odds. That's how I see the situation developing if we don't do anything to prevent it. I would love to be reassured that I'm wrong, though.
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Aug 30, 2016 10:17
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blowfish posted:Yeah, but that, again, is a problem of the poorest 3/4 ( Oh, in our globalized society, the problems of 3/4ths of the world is a problem of 1/1th of the world. "Stuff getting expensive" can vary by orders of magnitude depending on how well globalized trade is affected by instability and loss of industrial/agricultural capacity. If the stuff that's getting real expensive is food, the west will most definitely suffer as well. Also, "closing borders" is not realistic. It's not actually possible to stop mass migration once it reaches a certain threshold without actual literal genocide along an entire border. I hope we won't be willing and I doubt we will be able. A big problem I see, is that particularly agricultural collapse can come relatively suddenly. Crops are seasonal, and if enough areas have one very bad season, there's no nation on earth that has enough food stored to last us until next harvest. Food would get expensive over a few months and then it'd just not be there anymore. We wouldn't even have warning signs (that we wouldn't ignore) until after the harvest and reports start coming back of unexpectedly low yeilds.
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Aug 30, 2016 12:58
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Forever_Peace posted:Just so I'm actually contributing and not just throwing shade: everybody in this thread should follow Alex Steffen on Twitter. Nah, I'm fine with your posts within the context of this forum. I mean, a civil tone is great and all, but not nearly as entertaining. Given that A White Guy prefaced his posts with an appeal to his own authority as a person educated in exactly the topic of the thread, I think it's fine that his assertions are challenged above what's usual for a thread like this. That being said, and not to start off a pedantry contest, how screwed do you consider us to be? And how likely do you think mitigating action is to A: be done at all and B: accomplish anything?
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Aug 30, 2016 14:01
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Oh dear me posted:Apathy is the result of powerlessness. We are not powerless because the environmental movement warns of doom. It's not hard to feel powerless as an individual, because as an individual faced with climate change you are as close to powerless to make the distinction blurry. Democracy doesn't work well for the kind of unilateral action needed to implement massive programs against climate change and climate change consequences. There's always a good number of self-centered, uneducated people willing to vote against everyone's best interest, and suppression of progressivist voters is down to an art form for the capitalist/political elite these days. What it's gonna take, is a movement. A massive, massive movement, too massive to contain and suppress, too massive to ignore, enough to shift the balance of power away from Our Capitalist Overlords (TM) and that whole club, and into the hands of a batch of new, progessive and dedicated politicians. This will have both practical environmental and political ramifications. So to my mind, I suggest that the response to climate change is to think hard on what kind of social policies is likely to minimize suffering and death from climate change, the meaning and benefit of solidarity, the absolute horror of consumerist, capitalist, neoliberalist ideology and then get involved in cleaner living, social progress and political systemic change. I've come to terms with the fact that individual sacrifice isn't the solution, but if it makes people feel more hope I'm all for every green program, recycling, off-the-grid living etc. that people can do to feel safer and more engaged. It may not impact the greater picture, but it sends a message and is hopefully quite convincing for everybody that there needs to be a paradigm shift in people's thinking about consumption and how to achieve happiness. It also needs to translate into attitudes to take to the ballot box, and failing a global political reform, these changed attitudes need to change into actual, literal, physical revolution. Because quite frankly, hyperbole aside, this: icantfindaname posted:All of this happened 25 years ago dude. Unfortunately Goldman Sachs doesn't give a poo poo about climate change, and neither does the parasitical wonk and op-ed writer class that draws their paycheck from them is what humanity is up against. The worst parts of itself, represented in this case by the psychotic actions and short-term thinking of companies.
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Aug 31, 2016 08:45
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Mozi posted:I wonder when we will get to the 'throw poo poo in the air and see if it helps' stage, because we're obviously going to blow by all our targets. I'm pretty confident we've heard from actual scientists in this thread telling us 2C is a loving unfunny joke at this point and that we have no chance of avoiding that regardless of what we do. At this point we're looking at avoiding 3-4-5C as a best case scenario.
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Sep 28, 2016 23:07
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BattleMoose posted:Its been a serious topic of discussion and research for some time now, which makes me very sad. In 2012 at the, International conference on Cloud Condensation and Precipitation, there was a session that discussed this issue. It was pretty informal. But it is getting serious attention. General consensus is that it is a terrible terrible terrible idea, possibly better than the alternative. I am extremely sceptical towards the idea that we can or should try to geoengineer our way out of this mess. Even if we have the ability to - for instance - effectively put shades on the planet, from what we know of previous instances of that (catastrophic volcanic activity, meteorite impact) it might have some severe impacts on animal and plant life. Think crop failiure and abnormal weather patterns, very cold winters and such. And that would be the cost of just postponing the problem. It's an entirely different question whether or not we should even try. This kind of thing is scientifically new territory, we don't know the exact effects of any type of geoengineering (other than increasing CO2 emissions  ) and the potential for catastrophic, unforeseen consequences is definitely there. It would also have to be an international, unilteral effort, because not a lot of nuke-having countries would look kindly upon any nation that decided to try to alter the climate of the planet to the possible detriment of large parts of the world. Frankly, it's a risk big enough that I think you would have a lot of trouble getting enough countries behind it to avoid a diplomatic crisis.No, this gets "solved" (more likely mitigated) by revolutionizing the way humanity lives and works, industry and transport, food production and personal luxuries. Solidarity is going to have to be the answer, and big SUVs, giant ego-extensions of a mansion and a Ferrari, fossile fuel power plants and consumerist society needs to be thought of as medieval and disgusting, if not downright illegal. We change the way we are, or we go down with the ship.
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Sep 29, 2016 08:31
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brakeless posted:Here's a pretty comprehensive, one-stop basic look into geoengineering for anyone interested. This is actually a really interesting read, and I recommend it a lot. I noticed one thing of particular interest in the preface, regarding boosting or investing in increasing natural CO2 absorbtion, which apparently absorbs about half our emissions today. They seem to suggest that there are methods of improving on that which are at least somewhat cost effective and not a product of magic future technology, and they expand upon in in a companion report/volume I couldn't find a link to. Any idea of just what that might entail? Are they simply talking about reforestation efforts, or genetically modified algae supersequestering CO2 or something exotic like that?
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Sep 29, 2016 13:54
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NewForumSoftware posted:That are politically realistic? No. That's why I'm pretty convinced we're hosed regardless of what we do. We're signed up for "unknown unknowns" and no amount of international law is going to change that. The only way it changes is if the developed world takes responsibility for what they've done. You want to look at realistic options that have a basis in history, reality and real effectiveness, without considering ethics and whatnot? Sure, we have solutions. Some of that will actually happen regardless of what we do. I'm talking about a malthusian hunger catastrophe, or simply a limited nuclear exchange. Say, between india and pakistan. Reduce the world population and those growing nations into smoldering cinders, and this will have a very noticable effect on the climate. Think Gengis Khan, only the regrowth over previously habitated areas in a Chernobyl-like fashion will most likely have a very significant impact on carbon level reduction. Same with the bubonic plague: Europe experienced a great golden age after the plague, a massive economic boom for the survivors coupled with plentyful food made for great times. For the surving half. Now let's be honest with ourselves here. Do you think this hasn't crossed the minds of some of the extreme right wing populists plagueing western europe and to an extent the US lately? We can act now with whatever options we have and almost any sacrifice made by any part of the world, developed or not, will be far preferable to the inevitable alternatives coming our way, be they human, political or natural.
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Oct 12, 2016 22:11
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Mozi posted:Right - keep in mind that this type of geoengineering would redouble the acidification of the oceans, hastening the collapse of fisheries on which many of these developing countries rely. And acidifying the oceans further might well kill our greatest carbon sink and oxygen producer. Not to mention if we get enthusiastic enough, we might well get our very own Perm-Trias extinction event as oceans turn anoxic and create massive amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas, killing everything breathing and growing on the planet. Whacky fun!
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Oct 13, 2016 18:18
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The Groper posted:E; not to derail too hard or anything, but we at least have consensus on the fact that we're not about to purge ourselves back under 1B global pop and we're also not about to shut down industrial civ, soooo yeah, poo poo's gonna be hosed for a long time. That being said, I think some of the more worried people are being too hyperbolic/underestimating our ingenuity. We'll live in brotherhood of steel-style bunkers eating vat-grown yeasts before accepting extinction. Absolutely. If we can preserve industrial civilization and scientific progress of some form (which I assume is more likely in developed nations than elsewhere), humanity will quite possibly persevere, though with a much reduced capacity for... everything. It means the death of most of us, though. At least the global nuclear war that will inevitably happen with mass displacement, instability and resource wars as the post-global-warming world contracts into insular and hostile groups will solve that whole global warming thing, though. Nuclear winter and regrowth of abandoned areas will likely sequester incredible amounts of carbon dioxide. Or hell, maybe we can just try and avoid that at any - any - cost? Just throwing that out there. For instance, do we know that carbon sequestration technology - if we can get a handle on mitigation - can't be vastly improved or efficiencies increased? It makes sense to me when the resource crunch starts happening, that we would explore nuclear fission and fusion alternatives to produce incredible amounts of power, the surplus of which to be used at great carbon sequestration plants. I mean, it seems fairly obvious to me that there aren't very many other ways of doing it, since it will take more than the energy produced by the carbon emissions in the first place to sequester that carbon anew, doesn't it? Any physicists itt?
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Oct 17, 2016 20:04
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Prolonged Priapism posted:That video is fine, but it sort of highlights what I'm talking about. It's all very abstract. "An Ice Age Unit in the other direction?" I get it, conceptually. But then he's talking about really long timescales and hundreds of meters of sea level rise. Only one guy actually said "children and grandchildren" and gave the specific(ish) example of farmland turning to desert. That's what people need to hear, some tangible thing that could affect the people they care about. Another guy said "several meters instead of 12 centimeters." After the first guy said "hundreds." Again, I know what they're trying to get across, that they're talking about a bunch of different times (a long time ago, right now, 2100ish, far future) but if you're a layman watching that video, it's confusing, contradictory, and abstract. Yeah, I see your point now, and I kind of agree with you. Global Warming and climate change needs better PR, needs a human face and relatable ways of getting the message across, because charts and scientists aren't cutting it. A big problem I see, is that this - even with the addition of viral effects, internet awareness etc. - something like this would be quite expensive. Who would pay for this? Governments wouldn't, because there's no profit in stirring up a placated population. Private interest wouldn't. A grand coalition of environmental interest groups and the like probably could, but we'd need that grand coalition first. But I absolutely agree that people aren't talking about it enough, both because it's very uncomfortable to think about and because they don't really understand the threat other than some vague notion of doom. Your proposal goes a long way towards eliminating the central problem of climate change: It's happening too slowly for us to understand and react to it naturally, like we'd respond to any properly perceived threat. Uranium Phoenix posted:I know this is from a while back in the conversation, but I think it has an important message. Also, good point. I'm ashamed to say I'm not currently active with any environmental groups, I've mostly focused on personal efforts and my own plans for adapting my future and my family's future with regards to the effects of climate change. Don't really know that any exist near me, but I'll go looking. I think a common thread here is that while small person actions will amount to some, but not enough, community activism and participation in campaigns and political movements can quickly add up to a big difference mitigation-wise. It's actually the only realistic avenue that I can see towards creating a mass people's movement to end consumerism and make wastefulness and pollution absolutely heinous behaviour in our society. And to be frank, that kind of paradigm shift is probably a requirement for serious mitigation.
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Oct 18, 2016 09:51
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I know this probably falls under the category "hopeless optimism" and "potentially life-extinguishing experiment run wild" but does anyone know what's happening on the bioengineering front in terms of climate change? Has genetic science advanced or will it have time to advance to the point where we can bioengineer bacteria, algae or mycelium to more efficiently carbon capture on a huge scale through normal biological processes? Replace ocean algae with modified, more robust algae that need higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and that sequesters more of it? Using modified mycelium to break down and permanently capture carbon from all sorts of organic decomp (including possibly tundra decomp as the world grows warmer)? How about methane clathrate-absorbing bacteria? I don't know anything about this, but I keep reading about how advanced we're getting with biotech.
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Oct 18, 2016 10:17
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Wanderer posted:I've written about GreenWave farms in the thread before. There's already the start of an aquaculture movement built around seaside seaweed farming, both for food and as a cleanup method. The red seaweed in particular is already a staple of native Hawaiian cuisine, so there's even a preexisting market. I imagine government subsidies towards kelp farming would go a long way towards making it possible. I agree that this might be massively helpful, though I'd like to see some studies of the net benefactive effect of industrialized ocean farming. The fishery-industry is absolutely not enviro-friendly. And as an added bonus for kelp farms: As the world warms and oceans rise, they'll have more and more growth space
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Oct 20, 2016 09:01
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Potato Salad posted:Way easier to store and distribute than hydrogen. Absolutely. If the technology is scalable and can be industrialized for greater efficiency, we could conceivably have nuclear plants creating fuel out of airborne CO2, at possibly a cost-effective level if a goodly portion of the transport sector was electric or public transport much more robust and available. It's probably possible to take some ethanol and store it underground or just store waste ethanol/water underground for net negative carbon. Although really, carbon capture would be better with something like artificial coal/carbon lumps that could be stored underground in old mineshafts and the like. But I'm sure it would help.
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Oct 21, 2016 18:14
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Copenhagen is an amazing city in many ways.
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Nov 7, 2016 16:24
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icantfindaname posted:For what it's worth, the world will probably settle into a new equilibrium pretty soon after whatever huge cycle of wars/revolutions is coming. The worlds of 1905, 1925 and 1955 look a lot different from each other, but all of them are at a relatively stable equilibrium. Of course millions of people died in brief bursts in between them, but minor details Doesn't need to a huge cycle or some sort of WW3 scenario. Like I said previously, a limited nuclear exchange in Asia, the koreas going to nuclear war, india/pakistan, china etc, and we can postpone the worst by a lot of years. Obviously, I don't want this to happen, but the regions who are likely candidate for rapid destabilization AND has access to nukes, well... those are it. They also happen to be incredibly overpopulated and massively polluting. But this is purely speculation and would obviously be a horrible cataclysmic disaster.
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Nov 10, 2016 17:21
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If I can offer a different tack (and I'm by no means the bringer of great news) I'd like to throw a little lifeline to everyone feeling completely despondent as a result of this election, this thread and continued inaction. 1: The fact that you are reading this means that you are aware of this issue to a degree that most people around you aren't. That at the very least buys you a head start. The bad poo poo isn't starting tomorrow, you have plenty of time to personally adapt to the change and do your utmost to safeguard yourself and your familiy. I certainly am going to make it significant priority for my next decade to find and exploit all my available options for ensuring food security, safety and renewable, low-impact living. I'm going to invest in off-the-grid technology, which is really seeing some amazing new stuff these days, and looking into all kinds of stuff in terms of low impact low maintenance agriculture, animal husbandry and technologies that make it a lot easier, cheaper and less subsistence-level drudgery-like to produce food. As far as "prepping" goes, I don't really see it like that. I see it as an attempt to live more eco-friendly for me and mine, and I consider the ease of mind this buys me as a worthwhile effort regardless of the possibility of it maybe being unneccessary. I like the concept, so even if by some techno-wizardry we avoid the problem, I'm not going to regret having done something I enjoy regardless. To that end, I'd like to suggest people sharing links, ideas and groups that do stuff like aquaculture hydroponics, renewable energy for your house, small scale gardening and horticulture. Again, not to turn this into some kind of prepper thread, but to let people who are reading this who are worried and sad see some interesting or fun things they can get active and interested in. It's better to be allowed to do something and have some sense of useful direction and stuff to get into, rather than fretting at home over the inevitable doom over several decades. Seriously, there's a lot of really interesting stuff out there, and the worst thing that can happen is that you waste some effort making delicious home-grown tomatoes. This, pretty much; SavageGentleman posted:So to sum up the future - "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold". Dazzling Addar described a very likely scenario with a long descent, in which human cultures shaed many layers of complexity and unfortunately also many citizens during several centuries. Only you know, pragmatic and measured, and not dumb. At the same time, I'm obviously going to keep voting green, trying to get more active and live greener. Doing one thing doesn't preclude you from getting active in your community, finding friends who are also into sustainability, robust systems of agriculture and decentralization. I'm not talking some hippie bullshit either, just pure pragmatism (you'll need friends because no man is ever an island) and it'll make it easier to make a political impact, either local or bigger, once you have people behind you. Anyone want to discuss their own plans going forward? I'm sure this site has a lot of resources posters itt might not be aware of, even.
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Nov 14, 2016 16:03
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Forever_Peace posted:Please start a survivalist thread if you'd like to discuss that. Avoiding climate mitigation is the opposite of what this thread is for. What? Run that by me again, people are disallowed to speak about green sustainable living itt and about working with the local community to affect local and national policy on climate change? How do you equate greener living and horticulture gardening with survivalism? How is getting involved with groups and your community about climate change "avoiding climate mitigation", whatever that means?  Did Trump melt your mind or something?
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Nov 14, 2016 16:54
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