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Accretionist posted:I'd be surprised if local county governments weren't already putting the screws to flood zones in ways they never have before. Unfortunately the local governments are run by real estate developers and others with a vested interest in pretending there actually isn't any flood risk at all or it's just no big deal. You gonna tell your voters their property is a liability? The sane response is to buy them out now and block further development, but nobody wants to recognize that.
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Jul 24, 2017 21:39
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Quandary posted:While carbon capture is absolutely a long shot, I'm still pretty pro a r&d effort towards theoretically seeing what works and seeing what can be scaled. At this point the .1% chance of a realistic scalable carbon capture solution in the next hundred years is still a lot higher odds than getting everyone to stop using oil and stop having kids. I'm pretty skeptical even on the physics of it. We'll never be able to take CO2 and move the carbon back into high energy long chain molecules that can be stored at an energy cost that's cheaper than what we can get by burning those molecules again. It will always be more efficient just not to burn the carbon in the first place and use the energy we would for capture to replace the fossil fuels.
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Jul 27, 2017 19:55
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thug lessons is 100% right.
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Aug 26, 2017 17:58
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Thug Lessons posted:There are plenty of subsistence farmers in the West and basically none of them can afford a humane standard of living without welfare. It's hard enough to be a conventional farmer, to the point that 80% of their income comes from jobs they get outside the farm. Note that this statistic actually includes a lot of people who don't derive any income at all from agriculture. quote:USDA’s broad definition of a farm is any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products are produced and sold, or normally would be sold, during a year. i.e. a lot of these 'farms' are just large suburban lots in Texas, or a nurse practitioner who lives in Atlanta's family lot which is rented to a neighbor for cotton production. anyway, most of the ideology built up around permaculture/organic farming/homesteading/urban farming is so obviously nonsensical I don't see much point trying to refute it. It's not based in reason anyway so you aren't going to reason anyone out of it. So far as I've seen it is mostly harmless much like an anarchist coop bookstore. It doesn't really accomplish much but it helps get people active and involved in the environmental movement. It's so politically marginal as to be pretty irrelevant to serious policy making. The one exception I"m aware of is the EU's ban on GMO food. That's a pretty egregious example of course, though I suspect it's real motivation is to protect EU farmers from American competitors.
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Aug 27, 2017 02:01
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Thug Lessons posted:It's obviously not relevant to policy-making but it's definitely relevant to environmentalism and therefore this thread. Also see collapse theory, doomerism, etc.. They all serve as ridiculous excuses for ecologically-minded people to do nothing. Yeah. It kinda makes me squirm when it comes up. However unlike collapse theory and doomerism organic agriculture/permaculture is its one of the few ways people can get personally active and engaged in the environmental movement and for that reason I can't bring myself to poo poo it. What someone eats is just much more personal and immediate to them than an abstracted unit of carbon emission equivalents. I believe the more someone is directly engaged in stuff like community farming and home composting the more likely they are to also support meaningful action on climate change. That's probably somewhat cynical of me but for the most part these ideas manifest in ways that are harmless so there's little downside.
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Aug 27, 2017 02:52
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Rime posted:The production, packaging, and supply chains for most processed vegan products put out as much or more carbon per pound as cattle. That sounds extremely implausible given how for example the packaging for a vegan sausage and an all beef sausage at my local Walmart are virtually indistinguishable. Got a source or are you spinning bullshit?
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Sep 7, 2017 22:37
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blowfish posted:"we need 80% less people and somehow this will happen evenly and fairly across the planet instead of resulting in the mass murder of poor and mostly brown people from developing countries" The anti-green revolution crowd itt is especially bad about this. Ugh.
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Sep 9, 2017 15:46
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Thug Lessons posted:You're mostly right but glaciers are better at storing water than snowpack in the long-term. Think more in terms of variability - once the glaciers are gone and you have an unusually dry winter in the Himalayas that's going to reduce river volume, and if you have an unusually wet one that's going to create unusually high water levels. But you're correct in your intuition that it won't be causing rivers to run dry. There's a huge amount of uncertainty about exactly how it's all going to play out though. Well the Yangtze frequently runs dry now even in normal years. And with demand increasing even proportionately small decreases in flow have severe consequences.
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Sep 11, 2017 17:31
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Thug Lessons posted:It doesn't run dry in normal years, though it did during an unprecedented recent drought. The second part's correct though. Er right. I meant that post to be about the huang he but I misspoke. An interesting consequence of lower average flow in the Yellow River is an increase in flood risk. This is because with lower flow the river has less energy and capacity to move sediments, which instead build up on the river bottom, decreasing the capacity of levees to hold back flood waters. This problem is compounded for China because most of the Yellow River's dams were not built to cope with it's high sediment inputs, and have lost much of their storage capacity.
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Sep 11, 2017 19:31
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call to action posted:So why does this seem to conflict with literally everything else posted in this thread? Sample bias.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:53
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Conspiratiorist posted:Reforestation is not viable carbon capture. In most circumstances yes it is. Maybe if you use a really weird and idiosyncratic definition of 'viable' like you mean it is impractical on a global scale, or it can't sequester enough carbon to offset emissions, but at that point the factoid is irrelevant to Avshalom's project.
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Sep 21, 2017 05:20
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call to action posted:Notice how the climate minimizers never engage with the fact that CCS is a fantasy in that bullshit, worthless paper. It's very important for them to mantain the sanctity of a paper that fuels right wing denialist while contributing nothing we didn't already know. Basically reminds me of people against Medicare for All from the wonk center. Give you apparently have no idea how biological sequestration works I appreciate your promise to keep your weird hick opinions on the subject to yourself, thanks. WaryWarren posted:It's weird, most vegetarians/vegans I've known in my life are chubby/fat. Myself, I've been on the keto diet for awhile and don't weigh much more than I did in high school. I rarely eat beef or pork, generally eat fish or chicken (which has the same CO2 equivalent as tomatoes/potatoes per calorie) for protein. If you live in the United States most people generally speaking are fat. I expect that is true of most vegetarians as well as for other demographic groups. Nevertheless, the American Dietetic Association had this to say about vegetarian diets and body mass. Position of the American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian Diets posted:Obesity
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Sep 24, 2017 06:31
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call to action posted:You're dumb as gently caress if you think planting trees accounts for consequential carbon sequestration, sorry man if you think I'm a hick for knowing that. Trees burn and decay, city slicker. DURRR I've always been confused by the kind of personality that, without understanding even the most trivial and superficial aspects of an issue, feels compelled to stake out a position and defend it to the hilt. I mean you'd think you could at least go through the effort of glancing at a wikipedia page before demonstrating to everyone that you are an idiot, but even that appears to be beyond many.
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Sep 24, 2017 20:07
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Ol Standard Retard posted:^ yes. a healthy forest ecosystem won't sequester carbon at the rate required. More to the point, today nothing can "sequester carbon at the rate required" to offset what we are now emitting, nor is it probable any practical system will exist in the near term. Putting the carbon genie back in the bottle is tremendously difficult; the only reasonable conclusion is that we must first stop releasing it before putting any effort into capture.
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Sep 24, 2017 22:33
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RobotDogPolice posted:How can I help while I'm a student? I find myself gravitating toward botany and soil science. They're my favorite classes by far, but I don't know how to translate them into a degree or a field that is actionable. The most obvious career paths would be ag or to become an "Environmental Scientist" specialized in something like environmental compliance. To get a job doing the latter it would help if in addition to your hard science courses you could take at least a basic intro to environmental law and permitting, plus maybe over the summer get certificates in wetland delineation and HAZWOPPER. I won't vouch for whether this course of action counts as "actionable" or not.
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Sep 26, 2017 19:36
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AceOfFlames posted:I understand the mentality and would agree if I was somehow unaware that as all of this is happening, I would be either starving, tortured and/or raped to death along with everyone else. You are severely ill. It is the time of year SAD begins affecting people's mood, please be sure you are adhering to a treatment plan for your depression.
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Oct 24, 2017 14:51
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StabbinHobo posted:liar No this comes up all the time, there's a particularly pernicious strain of neo-Malthusian that argues the Green revolution was a mistake for example: Marijuana Nihilist posted:humans are a blight on this planet hth There's lots of posters advancing lines like this. Preventing famine is a mistake, because we should just expect future famines. And it's not famines in the United States they think we should lean to live with
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Nov 3, 2017 15:15
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It is pretty much incontrovertible that population growth will exacerbate efforts at limiting climate change. However it's important to keep to keep in mind the reason we are compelled to fight climate change; that is because it threatens our health, our economy, social stability, and etc. The entire point above all to protect human lives, and everything else like conserving biodiversity comes second. There's a few very sad souls who due to tunnel vision or simple misanthropy have completely lost sight why climate change matters. Climate change has the potential to unleash famine with renewed intensity upon the global poor. Preventing this is one of the greatest challenges of today. Yet somehow people have looked at this problem and come to a monstrous conclusion: to prevent a famine in the future we must have it TODAY. Kill the poor now, and climate change won't have a chance to do it later. Likewise, climate presents risks to our values and freedom. Economic decline and refugees could produce radical rightwing governments. Somehow to prevent this, people have come to the conclusion we must have a brutal and cruel government today, eager and capable of enforcing compulsory abortions along the Chinese model. In order to avoid the (theoretical) disaster tomorrow, we must create one today. We have to kill to save lives, sacrifice our liberty in order to save it, and impoverish ourselves before circumstance strips us of our wealth. I am not saying we won't have to swallow any bitter pills when it comes to addressing climate change. Just that you don't vaccinate against against an illness by inflicting another just as bad.
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Nov 4, 2017 05:29
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ChairMaster posted:Are you trying to tell me that sustainability is literally an impossible fictional idea and that humanity only exists at the mercy of our own ability to develop technology indefinitely? That is not obvious at all. In fact in many domains modern forecasters are no better at making predictions than they were 50 years ago. We understand the climate much better than we did then, but our understanding of the economy and political processes have improved much less. It is highly probable sea-level rise will displace people. Someone could probably even draw up a prediction interval for the range of plausible outcomes. You can't however calculate a probability that this will trigger a war or lead to civilization collapse. That is impossible. And many of the amateur prognosticators in this thread go one step worse, they take many low-probability worst case scenario events and assume they are as inevitable as sea-level rise, and will all co-occur. That is not a scientific prediction, it is not evidence based and it is not helpful.
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Nov 4, 2017 15:15
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Limiting climate change is one of those tasks that appears impossible if you can only see your current position and how far it is to where you need to be. The distance from here to their just looks impossible to traverse. What good will one one step forward do when the distance is so great? Yet all process consists of many small steps, you just can’t tell you’re getting closer when you’ve got your eyes glued to the ground. Too many here talk like they’re ready to lie down and die. Well I’m still alive and that means I’m not giving up. Get your drat heads straight
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Nov 15, 2017 05:30
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pokemon posted:we've got some seriously cute native animals that nobody can be persuaded to care about because scientists are morons and refuse to change their names from what the europeans originally called them; the europeans were extremely bad at naming animals and had zero imagination so these adorable creatures have terrible names like Good field biologists want to call all of those small mammals unpronounceable latin gobbodly gook and get passively aggressively upset when you try and talk to them in English. Now if you want those critters to get good names try harvesting a few thousand tons of them and get some serious marketing firms involved to sell it to the public like they did with the Patagonian Toothfish aka Chilean Seabass. Though given the decline of that species this may not actually serve your conservation goals. . .
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Dec 4, 2017 04:17
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pokemon posted:there is exactly one person in the australian conservation scene with marketing credentials Yeah well once you've found a branding that highlights the peculiar bouquet of Conilurus penicillatus call me for the tasting.
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Dec 4, 2017 04:32
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Just as the mackerel’s gender is irrelevant to the porpoise 🐬
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Dec 5, 2017 01:11
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Thug Lessons posted:Pretty good article on the ongoing splits between the modernist and conservationist camps of the environmental movement. It is good, although I think it kind of oddly uses the word conservationist in such a way that it comes off as synonymous with preservationist. In reality what the article describes as the "revolutionary" new policies of the modernist camp like quote:a new agreement with farmers and ranchers that requires them to "voluntarily" implement measures that will improve habitat for a variety of species. In return, landowners will receive greater financial assistance" Have been the norm for a long time. I'm sure their doing something cool and innovative but there's a long history of public-private partnerships in natural resource management and most conservation money in the United States is spent to make recreation and industry more effective. Part of why a human centric management of natural resources might seem revolutionary to a slate blogger is just that a Alabama state biologist improving Bob White habitat or stocking fish in a reservoir doesn't attract much attention in New York writers circles, its boring and mundane. Since the 1960s when people first started wonder if if hmm.. maybe there are downsides to dumping DDT over thousands of miles of forest land? I think there may have been a philosophical move towards preservationism, however in practice more hard-headed use-focused management has predominated. Of course if these new thinkers could get the Sierra Club's head out of its rear end on the subject of nuclear power, then I'd be excited.
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Dec 13, 2017 06:40
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Thug Lessons plainly states the scientific consensus and it makes the threads usual gang of misanthropes and aspiring suicides insanely mad because it's not consistent with the apocalypse necessitated by their ugly teleological perspective on history.
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Dec 19, 2017 05:06
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Conspiratiorist posted:As a native of a third world, sea-level backwater with a dying economy that's sinking faster than the land into the sea, I'm not speaking in hyperbole when I say the region won't make it to the end of the century. Well then given the seriousness of your position you should appreciate Thug lessons' willingness to take the surprisingly controversial position that actually America and Western Europe shouldn't let you die/actively facilitate your death alongside the rest of the third world.
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Dec 19, 2017 05:43
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Dr. Furious posted:Not if the policies prescribed by his conservative view of the science and his inclination toward the status quo will end up having the opposite effect of that position. Science is by necessity conservative. I know this is hard to stomach when one is engaged in a vitally important political struggle. When the strength of an argument literally means the difference between life and death passions rise, and someone pointing out the very real flaws can feel like a personal attack. It's all too easy in rhetoric to let that which is convenient stand in for what is but is not known. Yet someone pointing out our unserious arguments should be welcomed, it does us a favor. We should not take it personallly and should instead seek to engage with anyone who is acting in good faith. I've already spoken too much on Thug Lesson's behalf, a favor I doubt he appreciates, so I'm not going to try and reinterpret any more of his positions. However if you really think he has an "inclination toward the status quo" I suggest you briefly review his post history. I think you'll find he's much more forward thinking than you think.
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Dec 19, 2017 07:55
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If that is the derail I am thinking of your placement of the claim people need to stay in their own place sure seemed like it had more to do with fear of having to interact with foreigners and less to do with airplane pollution. How much energy do you think you expended taking pictures of cats on six continents I'm not a moralizer by the way who is intent on judging people by their consumption habits. However manipulating prices to reflect the carbon intensity of an activity like flying would probably be a good way to meet our carbon reduction goals. Or so I recall some economist saying.
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Dec 20, 2017 03:59
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The idea people need to stay in their own country has some pretty strong and particular connotations. Well, good thing The Groper didn't say or even imply that. Perhaps you should engage with things real people have actually said, rather than trying to read bizarre motives into simple statements. Of course somebody else might bust in here with such a take any minute, feel free to get defensive about your choice of luxury entertainment at that time.
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Dec 20, 2017 04:47
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Thug Lessons posted:Well what R.I.M. was talking about was climate change's "long tail". See: I wouldn't go too far with this kind of reasoning, as of course models can't account for or predict things we don't yet understand. Saying we "don't have to worry" has to come with a lot of caveats. Modeling isn't wizardry and we shouldn't put undo confidence in it. There is so much we can't know about the future, which can be frightening at times, but also means we always have reason to hope.
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Dec 21, 2017 04:25
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I'm surprised there are so few anoxic events off coastal China compared to Western Europe and North America. Does anyone have an explanation for the difference?
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Jan 7, 2018 20:17
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Notorious R.I.M. posted:All you're really crying about is the fact that your lifestyle is only made possible by the suffering of others. It's something all of us in the first world have to deal with. Suck it up. oocc is illustrating today one of the problems in climate change discourse. Intercontinental flights are much more than an abstract feature of global transportation infrastructure to him. It's literally part of his identity. Any suggestion that there are problems with it is more than an attack on his behavior, its an attack on his whole world view and value system. And it's why he's getting so embarrassingly defensive. It's an unavoidable problem with any moralistic argument about climate change. If we were just saying "we should all reduce our carbon emissions" I'm sure oocc would nod along happily in agreement as he recycled his plastic bottles and ate lentils for dinner twice week. As soon as you turn the criticism onto his specific baby though he flips completely. "Who are you to tell ME my (luxurious_hobby_#99) is a huge unnecessary carbon source, and should be discouraged?! Actually everyone should be do MORE (luxurious_hobby_#99), not less!" This happens regardless of the issue under discussion. Think metropolitan planning departments should prioritize public transit development over personal vehicles? "Whoa, whoa, but I hate public transit!" Think we should stop subsidizing beef consumption? "Uh, yeah right bro, any idea how many grams of creatine are in a cup of black beans?" Maybe ban drag racing? "lol I don't care the gently caress about emissions I was born to race." etc etc. Everybody has a passion, most of them seem stupid and wasteful to everyone else. I guess I just don't think as a free society we should tell oocc he shouldn't pursue his passion, as wasteful and destructive as it is. Do we really want committees deciding if a Chinese IT workers trip home to see his dying aunt counts as necessary travel or not? HOWEVER that doesn't mean I believe we have to just tolerate wasteful lifestyles. Make people pay for their carbon. Make people pony up with a carbon tax. Someone like oocc who believes his two week guided tour of Antarctic was literally some kind of consciousness expanding religious pilgrimage will pay. Someone like him who is presumably in the top wealth decile for Americans, and top 1% of all humans, will always take a disproportionate share of the resources under capitalism. But maybe to take that trip he'll forgo purchase of a new car for a couple years. While the guy who can't stand to live without steak will choose to skip the holiday flight to grandmas so he can afford his meat. And the guy who loves drag racing will scrimp on every meal so he can poor every extra penny into his precious riced out Mitsubishi.
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Jan 9, 2018 05:51
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I guess its just that I have little taste for moralizing. We're not evil for emitting carbon, its just the reality of the system we live in that our behavior is destructive. Talking about climate change is just such a hard discursive needle to thread. We need to talk about a complicated systematic response, but almost nobody cares about that. They want to know what they can do, and I really believe their individual actions matter, if mostly by creating an environment conducive to implementing a systematic policy response. But when you start talking about individual decision making suddenly you're stuck in a morass of tribalism and identity. I don't think anyone really knows how to deal with these problems, if anyone did we'd probably be doing much more about climate change.
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Jan 9, 2018 06:31
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Grouchio posted:Is it that hard to get a clear answer or am I being laughed at? I like to think we're laughing with you
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Jan 10, 2018 07:22
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incredible flesh posted:i am going to fit every single last one of you inside my rear end in a top hat and crush you into diamonds with my brawny sphincter, which can cling to a turd for months if not years and which i use to prune rosebushes around the garden. even an introduced rosebush is vital habitat for finches and lizards; they must not be killed, even growing feral. nevertheless you're all pathetic baby men kicking and screaming and pissing on your own selves. what are any of you even getting out of this thread? what joy could this possibly bring to you? is it a sex thing? if it's a sex thing i don't understand it I mean rose bushes aren’t BAD, but it’s really a lot more useful for wildlife if you plant natives (I assume you’re still in Australia?). While yes, they can be decent nesting spots they and other exotics host very few insect predators, which are vital to the growth of young nestlings. It’s obvious in telemetry studies, birds actively avoid areas dominated by exotic trees and cluster around natives.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:31
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