What shouldn't be done...about climate change

[A True Kaniggit]

2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I'm positive he meant to say Walrus.

Walrus, seal, otter.... They all are cousins

 

Don’t let otters hear you say this. They can be touchy about that sort of thing. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

1 minute ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Don’t let otters hear you say this. They can be touchy about that sort of thing. 

I was just looking for an excuse to post that adorable otter video.

[The Anti-Targ]

Perhaps worrying about population is also something that shouldn't be done.

http://theconversation.com/why-we-should-be-wary-of-blaming-overpopulation-for-the-climate-crisis-130709

Quote

Heather Alberro

Associate Lecturer/PhD Candidate in Political Ecology, Nottingham Trent University

In reality, the global human population is not increasing exponentially, but is in fact slowing and predicted to stabilise at around 11 billion by 2100. More importantly, focusing on human numbers obscures the true driver of many of our ecological woes. That is, the waste and inequality generated by modern capitalism and its focus on endless growth and profit accumulation.

...

Inequalities in power, wealth and access to resources – not mere numbers – are key drivers of environmental degradation. The consumption of the world’s wealthiest 10% produces up to 50% of the planet’s consumption-based CO₂ emissions, while the poorest half of humanity contributes only 10%. With a mere 26 billionaires now in possession of more wealth than half the world, this trend is likely to continue.

Issues of ecological and social justice cannot be separated from one another. Blaming human population growth – often in poorer regions – risks fuelling a racist backlash and displaces blame from the powerful industries that continue to pollute the atmosphere. Developing regions in Africa, Asia and Latin America often bear the brunt of climate and ecological catastrophes, despite having contributed the least to them.

The problem is extreme inequality, the excessive consumption of the world’s ultra-rich, and a system that prioritises profits over social and ecological well-being. This is where where we should be devoting our attention.

 

[felice]

15 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Perhaps worrying about population is also something that shouldn't be done.

http://theconversation.com/why-we-should-be-wary-of-blaming-overpopulation-for-the-climate-crisis-130709

While I agree with pretty much everything you've quoted, on the other hand, we really should be dramatically raising the living standards of the poorest half of humanity, not bringing everyone down to third world status, and that will have a carbon cost. Raising living standards is the best way to slow population growth, and we'd be in a better position now if we'd been raising standards equally worldwide all along. Supporting another three and a half billion people in 2100 does seem like it's going to be a struggle when it comes on top of potentially billions of climate refugees.

[The Anti-Targ]

50 minutes ago, felice said:

While I agree with pretty much everything you've quoted, on the other hand, we really should be dramatically raising the living standards of the poorest half of humanity, not bringing everyone down to third world status, and that will have a carbon cost. Raising living standards is the best way to slow population growth, and we'd be in a better position now if we'd been raising standards equally worldwide all along. Supporting another three and a half billion people in 2100 does seem like it's going to be a struggle when it comes on top of potentially billions of climate refugees.

But for the most part raising living standards is about energy supply (with energy you can clean and move water, and water is life and wealth), and transport. And in developing countries, they are greenfields infrastructure situations in large measure. So, electrified mass transit, electric private vehicles, and non-emitting electricity generation are in principle much easier to implement because there is not the same inertia with existing infrastructure and ICE vehicle fleets having to convert to clean solution. It's a bit like how a lot of the developing world bypassed landline telephones and went straight to mobile. So raising the living standards of the developing world can, if politicians, the World Bank and IMF make the right decisions, come with a very low carbon budget, and a helluva lot lower than the carbon budget that it took to develop the countries that got wealthy during the 20th century.

If developing countries start building coal, oil and natural gas electricity generation infrastructure, then yes we're all in the pooh. So it's important to avoid that.

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 1/28/2020 at 7:33 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

Perhaps worrying about population is also something that shouldn't be done.

http://theconversation.com/why-we-should-be-wary-of-blaming-overpopulation-for-the-climate-crisis-130709

 

Agreed. Honestly, although not everyone who argues overpopulation is a problem contributing to this problem is coming from a racist place, there are definitely those who are.

They agree there needs to be less people—those people need to be strictly non-western(re white people), 

Which would totally justify applauding/being apathetic towards tens of millions of non-whites dying.

The El Paso shooter cited such rational in his reasoning for why what he did was necessary.

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Geezus this is ridiculous, I could go to Antarctica right now and it would feel like a spring break!

Antarctica just registered its hottest temperature ever

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/world/antarctica-registers-hottest-temperature-on-record/index.html

[ThinkerX]

still a couple years off at best before I can start pounding nails into boards, but I have been researching 'alternative energy options' for the cabin (cabins?) on the 'someday list.'  Connected with this is various articles on climate change.

 

something I have noticed in almost every 'green energy' promotion and article - the right wing trolls.  At first I thought they were just being...assholes.  Solar panels, wind turbines, solar thermal - all a fraud in their eyes, nothing more than a scam to make money.  Same with climate change.  Counter them - especially with links to genuine studies - and they do one of two things: they either vanish, or they throw Trump style temper tantrums.  I am coming to the conclusion that these people see 'climate change' and 'alternative energy' as a threat to their entire worldview.   

[The Anti-Targ]

On 11/14/2019 at 6:39 PM, Kalbear said:

One small difference: the world rarely has had incredibly rapid increases in CO2 like this. While CO2 has been higher at times, those happened over millions of years. Rapid changes have only occurred from extinction-level events which wiped out most of the life on earth. 

The sun has also been a lot (by a lot I mean a few %) cooler than now. So actually if you go back far enough, the energy received from the sun was sufficiently lower than today (all of human history really) that today's CO2 levels might not stop the earth from becoming a snowball planet. So, you can only go back so far looking at CO2 levels and global temperature to draw meaningful conclusions. And if we had the CO2 levels now that the earth had back then, because the Sun is hotter, we could well be close to a Venusian hellscape.

Maybe it's not well known that our star is the type that will continuously get hotter over it's lifespan (maybe all main sequence stars do?) and Earth will become unlivable well before the Sun turns into a red giant. That's still about 1 billion years away, but that's opposed to about 5 billion years when it will become a red giant and possibly swallow the Earth. Apparently the Sun's luminosity increases by about 6% every billion years. So, since the end of the Jurassic period the Sun's luminosity has increased almost 1%. I don't think you can just look at raw atmospheric CO2 levels from all of Earth's history and compare them to today, even without taking account of the rate of change issue.

[Varysblackfyre321]

So the far-right’s propping up this girl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/24/anti-greta-linked-climate-change-skeptics-set-rival-thunberg/

It's sad given she will most likely live to see the much severe negative effects of climate-change.

Or perhaps it’ll be fine to her.

She may be linked with the AFD. So when conditions get so bad, the group and her could openly call for mass killings of immigrants and genocides.

Also, this is a little good news:https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/02/27/uks-heathrow-airport-expansion-ruled-unlawful-climate-change/

[Varysblackfyre321]

Well this is a mixed bag obviously:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-has-temporarily-reduced-chinas-co2-emissions-by-a-quarter/amp

I genuinely hope we don’t have to rely on disease to see much improvement on the battle to combat-climate change.

[ThinkerX]

Team Trump adding false statements to climate change reports:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-trump-insider-embeds-climate-denial-in-scientific-research/ar-BB10Cs1l?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR1FmDlpY_nJsJE6_axp2MKBVAq7ZEc-6ZKSBc6c7eB1oG9Yv9Z47nUDeh0

 

An official at the Interior Department embarked on a campaign that has inserted misleading language about climate change — including debunked claims that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial — into the agency’s scientific reports, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The misleading language appears in at least nine reports, including environmental studies and impact statements on major watersheds in the American West that could be used to justify allocating increasingly scarce water to farmers at the expense of wildlife conservation and fisheries.

The effort was led by Indur M. Goklany, a longtime Interior Department employee who, in 2017 near the start of the Trump administration, was promoted to the office of the deputy secretary with responsibility for reviewing the agency’s climate policies. The Interior Department’s scientific work is the basis for critical decisions about water and mineral rights affecting millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of acres of land.

 

[maarsen]

Stupid is as stupid does. Why does this cease to surprise me? If Trump said the sun rises in the east I would run out to verify. 

[Gronzag]

I knew that pollution in India is horrendous, but I always assumed that murky air is mostly due to naturally foggy/rainy climate.

It is mind boggling that only a few days of lock down can make such a huge difference.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/11/positively-alpine-disbelief-air-pollution-falls-lockdown-coronavirus

[Rippounet]

The latest data from NASA on temperatures in March.

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/index_v4.html

Up to +8°C in some areas? Ouch.

A nice reminder that just because our carbon footprint is down does not mean that climate change magically stops.

[Rippounet]

There's a remarkable heat wave in France right now with many cities experiencing around 35°C.
The average for September is around 18°C.

https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/meteo-des-records-de-chaleur-pulverises-dans-le-nord-de-la-france-15-09-2020-8385405.php

From what I can tell, such a heat wave is not unprecedented... But they all happened in the last 15 years or so.
This comes from a pretty good source.

Not even sure what to make of it. Combined with the California fires it feels like the planet is about to literally burn. Fuck, maybe we deserve it.

[karaddin]

And for a sign of how much larger they can get, take a look at the Aus fires from the last year which produced similarly apocalyptic photos. Land area from current season fires in the US - 4.6 million acres, land area from Aus 2019/2020 fire season - 46 million acres. I know the much greater population density of the US means there are many more inhabited areas breaking it up but this shit can get really really bad. And the biosphere impact of this is not good as well, estimates are over 3billion vertebrate animals killed in the fires, repeats of fires like this in a short period of time will start killing off even the trees that have fires built into their reproduction cycle, and its also started burning areas that didn't get them before - the rainforest in Qld, the temperate forests in Tassie etc.

[Larry of the Lawn]

9 hours ago, Triskele said:

This Atlantic piece (I just subscribed, but clicks are limited) gets into a scientific ratio of what's happening out West in the US.  If I understand it correctly, it's truly terrifying, because it implies that just a bit hotter has resulted in fires not getting so much more frequent but getting far, far larger very quickly when they do happen.  
tl;dr - it's just enough drier because of the heat that things have changed in explosive ways.  

I know how pessimistic this sounds, but this is the exact type of stuff that I assumed was coming years and years ago, and even just a few years ago when coworkers would have kids I would say to myself "You sure that's the right move?  I'm not sure my parents should have had me?"  

 

I'm going to get all doom and gloom for a minute, but it's difficult to see anyway that we don't have mass extinctions and irreparable, accelerating, environmental destruction over the next 50 years.  And a big human cost too.  I don't think I've ever been more skeptical about the US government doing anything about any of this other than window dressing than I am right now.  

Whoever's in office in January, we should all be burning bags of dogshit on the lawns and doorsteps of any reps who fail to endorse the green new deal.

I've been living in the 'straight' world the last 12 years after a 5 year stint of being unhoused /camping/ vanning, and am about ready to just go back to the woods while they're still there.

  

[Rippounet]

19 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm going to get all doom and gloom for a minute, but it's difficult to see anyway that we don't have mass extinctions and irreparable, accelerating, environmental destruction over the next 50 years.  And a big human cost too.

We don't even have 50 years.

Right now it seems the worst-case scenarios were always the correct ones. Which means large-scale disasters and the geo-political upheavals accompanying them in the next couple of decades, swiftly followed by -at least- a partial collapse of civilization at +30.
IIRC it was estimated that in the worst-case scenario, agriculture fails globally around 2050. That's where we're headed right now.

At the+50 mark, Earth basically turns into Venus. Though oddly enough the preceding collapse of human civilization may very well save the planet (as an inhabitable one, I mean).
Realistically speaking, humanity will -barely- survive in a post-apocalyptic world for quite a few centuries and, hopefully, Earth's ecosystem will restore itself through time, allowing our descendants to thrive again around 2300 or something (just in time to build the Federation of Planets, I guess).

The thing is, of course, that we (i.e. the generations discussing shit on this forum) will see the darkest of times. The ecological disasters, the climactic super-events, the wars, the genocides, the heat (or the freeze), the famines, the pandemics (ha ha)...
Ah, FFS, we really are the shittiest species.

[Fragile Bird]

I’ve said this before, I always assumed I’d be dead before the worst happened, but now it seems I may live to see the worst of it. I always took what I read about climate change seriously, and decided in my 20s not to have children. I look at some of the wonderful children my friends have and feel a great deal of sorrow. 
 

I figure my decision not to have children means I made a much bigger contribution to reducing the effects of climate change than anything else I could have done. I don’t even feel guilty about the times I’ve travelled to Europe.