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

[The Anti-Targ]

20 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Makes me so grateful for abortion. The most loving, thoughtful gesture one can make towards our planet is to not contribute towards any further increase in the human population, who are probably the greatest source of harm to the rest of planetary diversity and life.

The planet is plagued with too many humans.

Though in all seriousness presenting 2 equally impossible things to achieve in the time necessary is just a total cop out and a poor attempt at a justification for doing nothing. It's basically the same as saying we're screwed no matter what, so we might as well be selfish bastards and have fun until it comes crashing down.

Humans will survive whatever shit sandwich we make for our descendants. But what kind of civilization will we have, and at what cost will our survival come?

[Rippounet]

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

it's more of an educated guess based on what I know of the technologies in question and of history.

But there's nothing educated in your guess. Merely saying that the "vast majority [of billions] will adapt" or that "people are working on all of these things" isn't educated, it's -quite frankly- stupid. Writing "food is relatively cheap" in answer to threats of widespread famine is downright moronic.

The only information that's conveyed in such sentences is the indiferrence of someone who's somehow convinced they won't be affected by any of it. At best your understanding of social sciences is so poor that you're blind to the reality, at worst your refusal to face the facts is a form of delusion.

Anyway...

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Humans will survive whatever shit sandwich we make for our descendants. But what kind of civilization will we have, and at what cost will our survival come?

Indeed. What we should be doing is discussing what can and should be preserved of our current civilization. Which goods and services are really unnecessary (the result of excessive materialism/consumerism) and which ones genuinely represent progress. Once genuine progress replaces growth as the overarching goal we will be ready to face what awaits us, because we will be able to determine our priorities and actually act.

[DMC]

18 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

At best your understanding of social sciences is so poor that you're blind to the reality, at worst your refusal to face the facts is a form of delusion.

I feel like this should just be your signature.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, maarsen said:

Annexing Canada when parts of the US become uninhabitable is not that good of an idea. Look at a landform map  and see the extent of the Canadian Shield. It is not agricultural land.

 

[Galactus]

It is true that there is some slack: We're not particularly close to a global food shortage, but that doesen't stop the problems of local food shortages having disastrous knock-on effects. But people are also *vastly* underestimating the threat of global warming, it's not as simple as "move north", agricultural land as much dependant on the soil as it is on rainfall or temperature, and soil takes a long time to build up (and is highly affected by all sots of things) should the US Great Plains become unusuable you will not be able to move to the canadian taiga: Wrong kind of soil. And that's disregarding the issue of the limits of phosphates and the sheer time and infrastucture require to move agriculture.

(combine this with the fact that some of the most productive agricultural land is going to end up underwater...) 

 

EDIT: There is a point that the earth will be fine. Even something like the Great Dying isn't *that* likely. (though there is at least some models that could lead to something similar, which uh... Would just kill us all straight up) but we won't be, our civilization won't be, our children and families and other people won't be. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Migratory activity will go from steady trickle to full on flood pressure. Populations will not just wither on the vine, they will get out of the worst areas when left with no alternatives.

Problem being it's gonna be difficult in more places than there are regions that will be relatively hospitable/habitable still.

I think people are really struggling with imagining what and how this playing out is gonna look like? In some ways I imagine a reverse of the rust belt to sun belt migration as future generations just calculate its too damn hot to live in some of the arid zones.

More attention will be used when selecting land not prone to flooding and eroding. Coastal areas will need to use what resources they can marshal to dyke back the sea till they can do more and have to abandon areas.

That's just the U.S. though, with the whole of the World experiencing this global warming, massive displacement and natural disasters are likely to become ruinous.

High ground caves never sounded more appealing.

[Altherion]

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

But there's nothing educated in your guess. Merely saying that the "vast majority [of billions] will adapt" or that "people are working on all of these things" isn't educated, it's -quite frankly- stupid. Writing "food is relatively cheap" in answer to threats of widespread famine is downright moronic.

The only information that's conveyed in such sentences is the indiferrence of someone who's somehow convinced they won't be affected by any of it. At best your understanding of social sciences is so poor that you're blind to the reality, at worst your refusal to face the facts is a form of delusion.

My guess is way more educated than your doom and gloom, I'm simply too lazy to link the various sources. If you want a small sample, electric battery prices have declined by almost a factor of 10 over the past decade (link of history up to 2018 and link of the 2019 report). Do you realize how rare that is for an established technology? Solar prices have not quite fallen that quickly, but they've also gone down by a factor of 2 to 3 (2010 and 2019 versions of the same report, keep in mind that the prices are in the corresponding dollars so you need to adjust for inflation). I could go on, but as you said, you have exactly the same access to information as I do so you can quite easily find it yourself.

On the other hand, there aren't actually any sources for 120°F (49°C) or for the tropics becoming uninhabitable on medium-term timescales or for the rest of the doom and gloom in this thread. There are some articles about the temperature niche of humanity moving north and about various places becoming uncomfortable because of heat and humidity for longer fractions of the year, but there's a large difference between that and uninhabitable. I'm pretty sure if there was some probability of the tropics becoming uninhabitable soon, it would be front and center in various executive summaries, but it's not mentioned there and it's hard to find a good source for this at all.

Thus, I stand by my convictions here: any statement regarding the future of the world as a whole decades in advance is a guess, but my guess has far more supporting evidence than yours.

[The Anti-Targ]

We have the technical capability to solve all of the urgent climate problems right now, so it is hardly a guess as to what could be achieved in the future, all that kind of guess guess is doing is projecting out to some unknown time where the solutions (and some improvements) get implemented, which may or may not come too late.

What is lacking is the political will to do what's needed, so the only question really is how much worse does it need to get for the political will to shift to actually doing what's needed?

[Jo498]

From a more general perspective it seems that both the "science will come up with something" or "the market will solve it" as well as the "more green/leftist government control of everything or international committees and conferences are the only solution" have a) been what produced the current state in the first place and b) have been claimed many times as only feasible solutions within the 50 years we have been aware of global environmental problem. Each side is demanding more of the same medicine that has been mostly useless so far and is claiming that the other side's medicine is poison.

[Toth]

2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

From a more general perspective it seems that both the "science will come up with something" or "the market will solve it" as well as the "more green/leftist government control of everything or international committees and conferences are the only solution" have a) been what produced the current state in the first place and b) have been claimed many times as only feasible solutions within the 50 years we have been aware of global environmental problem. Each side is demanding more of the same medicine that has been mostly useless so far and is claiming that the other side's medicine is poison.

What do you even want to say? There have been no Green majority top level governments anywhere so far and when they were a junior partner, they proved to be severely watered down versions. And the "science" has come up with quite a lot of solutions, but keeps getting dismissed with cost concerns.

[Jo498]

You can hardly deny that the UN climate conferences since the 1990s have helped almost nothing. The Greens have had a lot of influence in Germany and achieved almost nothing. (The strongest effect on the reduction of emissions in Germany was the shutting down of the East German coal plants in the 90s and this was mostly for economical reasons.) Useless additional rules like banning ordinary lightbulbs and other jokes are what green influence. As you well know the Greens have been ruling Baden-Württemberg for a while now without ever leaving the rectum of the powerful automotive industry there. They are a joke and the definition of lip service.

[Toth]

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

You can hardly deny that the UN climate conferences since the 1990s have helped almost nothing. The Greens have had a lot of influence in Germany and achieved almost nothing. (The strongest effect on the reduction of emissions in Germany was the shutting down of the East German coal plants in the 90s and this was mostly for economical reasons.) Useless additional rules like banning ordinary lightbulbs and other jokes are what green influence. As you well know the Greens have been ruling Baden-Württemberg for a while now without ever leaving the rectum of the powerful automotive industry there. They are a joke and the definition of lip service.

Wow, so they have one county where they are the senior coalition partner for 9 years? What a force to be reckoned with!

Irony aside, I am loathing the predominance of self-declared pragmatists in Green state policies like anyone else, but I find it hard to see where even they got "a lot of influence" when it comes to drastic decisions that have to be made on Federal, EU or UN level. On the Federal level the Greens had only governed as a junior partner in 1998-2005 with measly 6,7%, then 8,7%. So far the strongest influence they had was in pushing Merkel somewhat to the left on social issues by virtue of her pulling their teeth before elections. In the EU the Green European Free Alliance has currently 9,5% of seats. Sorry, but I don't see any Green domination anywhere.

[Altherion]

6 hours ago, Jo498 said:

From a more general perspective it seems that both the "science will come up with something" or "the market will solve it" as well as the "more green/leftist government control of everything or international committees and conferences are the only solution" have a) been what produced the current state in the first place and b) have been claimed many times as only feasible solutions within the 50 years we have been aware of global environmental problem. Each side is demanding more of the same medicine that has been mostly useless so far and is claiming that the other side's medicine is poison.

I think only the most extreme members of either group regard the other side's medicine as poison. It's hard to deny that the technology has improved dramatically in the recent past, but it's also hard to deny that it happened without government assistance -- there were and still are substantial subsidies for renewables of all sorts almost everywhere in the developed world.

Also, I wouldn't say that it's been mostly useless; it's just that the problem that needs to be solves is very large. A substantial fraction of the energy used for practically everything we do (residential life, industry, transportation, agriculture -- except in a few relatively small countries, none of it is carbon neutral) depends on fossil fuels. We want to get rid of this dependence worldwide and do it without disrupting everyone's lives and within the rules of the existing economic system so it's taking a long time, but it's getting there.

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 hours ago, Altherion said:

I think only the most extreme members of either group regard the other side's medicine as poison. It's hard to deny that the technology has improved dramatically in the recent past, but it's also hard to deny that it happened without government assistance -- there were and still are substantial subsidies for renewables of all sorts almost everywhere in the developed world.

Also, I wouldn't say that it's been mostly useless; it's just that the problem that needs to be solves is very large. A substantial fraction of the energy used for practically everything we do (residential life, industry, transportation, agriculture -- except in a few relatively small countries, none of it is carbon neutral) depends on fossil fuels. We want to get rid of this dependence worldwide and do it without disrupting everyone's lives and within the rules of the existing economic system so it's taking a long time, but it's getting there.

For the sake of argument, is there a general plan of action or legislation that you think would address the question posed in the OP?  Specifically, and apologies to all for the US centricity here, would you recommend any legislation that the US government could implement that would help with the identified challenges posed by climate change?  

[Rippounet]

On 9/18/2020 at 10:38 PM, Altherion said:

My guess is way more educated than your doom and gloom,

Evidently not, or you wouldn't call it "my" doom and gloom.

Ok, let's start with this:

Quote

On the other hand, there aren't actually any sources for 120°F (49°C) or for the tropics becoming uninhabitable on medium-term timescales or for the rest of the doom and gloom in this thread. There are some articles about the temperature niche of humanity moving north and about various places becoming uncomfortable because of heat and humidity for longer fractions of the year, but there's a large difference between that and uninhabitable.

Right. I have no clue how you google, but this is the type of study that I find:

Future of the human climate niche

Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability

Deadly heat waves projected in the densely populated agricultural regions of South Asia

Now I think these studies are explicit enough and I don't think anyone reasonable would say they're talking about people being merely "uncomfortable," but you can always check what the mainstream media says about them:

Billions of people could live in areas too hot for humans by 2070, study says (CNN)

The heat is on over the climate crisis. Only radical measures will work (The Guardian)

Now I like that Guardian article as an transition, as it very clearly says that "humans will be forced away from equatorial regions" with a pretty map to illustrate.

"But wait," you'll say, that's by 2100, not 2080 or 2070. So maybe we need to start talking about the AR5 (Fifth Assessment Report), the RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) 8,5 of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and a pesky little thing called a "feedback loop."

Thing is, most of these articles tend to use (directly or indirectly) an RCP of the IPCC. In case you need it, here's a definition of an RCP. Basically, these are scenarios that the IPCC uses to make predictions for our future. RCP8,5, as you may notice is the "worst-case scenario" or "business as usual," if we do nothing, and used to be a bit controversial.
As of today, it seems that the results of the newest models for AR6 (due in 2021) are even worse than RCP8,5. Ok, not sure I understand this piece of info just yet and it's a bit early to discuss this anyway (the scientists themselves are very cautious), so let's set this aside and talk about feedback loops.

Now my entry point here is a 2012 report by the UN Environment Programme called Policy implications of warming permafrost. Maybe it's me, but to my eyes this was one of the reports warning that the IPCC was not taking feedback loops into account.
And that, in my humble opinion, is utterly terrifying.

Fortunately, the IPCC covers this now, so let's see what it says about this shit. From the 2018 "Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC" :

Quote

Several feedbacks of the Earth system, involving the carbon cycle, non-CO2 GHGs and/or aerosols, may also impact the future dynamics of the coupled carbon–climate system’s response to anthropogenic emissions. These feedbacks are caused by the effects of nutrient limitation (Duce et al., 2008; Mahowald et al., 2017), ozone exposure (de Vries et al., 2017), fire emissions (Narayan et al., 2007) and changes associated with natural aerosols (Cadule et al., 2009; Scott et al., 2018). Among these Earth system feedbacks, the importance of the permafrost feedback’s influence has been highlighted in recent studies. Combined evidence from both models (MacDougall et al., 2015; Burke et al., 2017; Lowe and Bernie, 2018) and field studies (like Schädel et al., 2014; Schuur et al., 2015) shows high agreement that permafrost thawing will release both CO2 and CH4 as the Earth warms, amplifying global warming. This thawing could also release N2O (Voigt et al., 2017a, b). Field, laboratory and modelling studies estimate that the vulnerable fraction in permafrost is about 5–15% of the permafrost soil carbon (~5300–5600 GtCO2 in Schuur et al., 2015) and that carbon emissions are expected to occur beyond 2100 because of system inertia and the large proportion of slowly decomposing carbon in permafrost (Schädel et al., 2014). Published model studies suggest that a large part of the carbon release to the atmosphere is in the form of CO2 (Schädel et al., 2016), while the amount of CH4 released by permafrost thawing is estimated to be much smaller than that CO2. Cumulative CH4 release by 2100 under RCP2.6 ranges from 0.13 to 0.45 Gt of methane (Burke et al., 2012; Schneider von Deimling et al., 2012, 2015), with fluxes being the highest in the middle of the century because of maximum thermokarst lake extent by mid-century (Schneider von Deimling et al., 2015)

The reduced complexity climate models employed in this assessment do not take into account permafrost or non-CO2 Earth system feedbacks, although the MAGICC model has a permafrost module that can be enabled. Taking the current climate and Earth system feedbacks understanding together, there is a possibility that these models would underestimate the longer-term future temperature response to stringent emission pathways (Section 2.2.2).

Holy fuck, what does this all mean and why do they insist on the permafrost? I also found this older paper (2014) called "Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility" :

Quote

A number of components or phenomena within the Earth system have been proposed as potentially possessing critical thresholds (sometimes referred to as tipping points (Lenton et al., 2008)), beyond which abrupt or nonlinear transitions to a different state ensues. The term irreversibility is used in various ways in the literature. The AR5 report defines a perturbed state as irreversible on a given time scale if the recovery time scale from this state due to natural processes is sig-nificantly longer than the time it takes for the system to reach this perturbed state (see Glossary). In that context, most aspects of the cli-mate change resulting from CO2 emissions are irreversible, due to the long residence time of the CO2 perturbation in the atmosphere and the resulting warming (Solomon et al., 2009). These results are discussed in Sections 12.5.2 to 12.5.4. Here, we also assess aspects of irreversi-bility in the context of abrupt change, multiple steady states and hys-teresis, i.e., the question whether a change (abrupt or not) would be reversible if the forcing was reversed or removed (e.g., Boucher et al., 2012).

Still obscure? How about a Guardian article: What are climate change feedback loops?

Right, but what does this have to do with anything. Well remember that 2018 report? Did you notice that sentence: The reduced complexity climate models employed in this assessment do not take into account permafrost or non-CO2 Earth system feedbacks, although the MAGICC model has a permafrost module that can be enabled.

Wait, what? So maybe I got everything wrong, but it does seem that the IPCC focuses on human emissions.
Which would mean RCP8,5 is not actually the worst-case scenario. Possibly not by a long shot...
The worst-case scenario would be, well, far far worse. You'd have to assume all the worst estimates are actually quite conservative.
Now, since that permafrost seems so important, how about a few studies on it?

21st-century modeled permafrost carbon emissions accelerated by abrupt thaw beneath lakes.

The impact of the permafrost carbon feedback on global climate

And the IPCC? In its latest report, "Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate" (SROCC) from September 2019, it says:

 

Quote

Permafrost ground that has been frozen for many years is warming and thawing and widespread permafrost thaw is projected to occur in the 21^st century. Even if global warming is limited to well below 2°C, around 25% of the near-surface (3-4 meter depth) permafrost will thaw by 2100. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase strongly, there is a potential that around 70% near-surface permafrost could be lost.

Arctic and boreal permafrost hold large amounts of organic carbon, almost twice the carbon in the atmosphere, and have the potential to significantly increase the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere if they thaw. It is unclear whether there is already a net release of carbon dioxide or methane due to the ongoing thaw of the Arctic permafrost. In the future, increased plant growth can increase the storage of carbon in soils and offset carbon release from permafrost thaw, but not at the scale of large changes on the long term.

Almost twice the carbon in the atmosphere? Sounds bad to me.

BTW, chapter 6 deals with "Extremes, Abrupt Changes and Managing Risks." It also has some definitions for us:
 

Quote

Irreversibility: A perturbed state of a dynamical system is defined as irreversible on a given timescale, if the recovery timescale from this state due to natural processes is significantly longer than the time it takes for the system to reach this perturbed state. In the context of this report, the recovery time scale of interest is hundreds to thousands of years. 

Tipping point: A level of change in system properties beyond which a system reorganises, often in a nonlinear manner, and does not return to the initial state even if the drivers of the change are abated. For the climate system, the term refers to a critical threshold when global or regional climate changes from one stable state to another stable state. Tipping points are also used when referring to impact; the term can imply that an impact tipping point is (about to be) reached in a natural or human system.

But surely there aren't that many abrupt and irreversible phenomena, right? We have time, right?
Well, there are 15. Ouch, but surely they are progressive? Well, 14 of them are "potentially abrupt." But they're unlikely, right? Well one is "virtually certain," one "very likely," two will happen with "high confidence," and six with "medium confidence."
I can't be bothered to explain the details, the IPCC report is excellent. And unless I got this very very wrong, this is really really bad.

And about more recent news, from 2020?
 

Quote

How Thawing Permafrost Is Beginning to Transform the Arctic

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-melting-permafrost-is-beginning-to-transform-the-arctic

What we do know is that if the Arctic continues to warm as quickly as climatologists are predicting, an estimated 2.5 million square miles of permafrost — 40 percent of the world’s total — could disappear by the end of the century, with enormous consequences. The most alarming is expected to be the release of huge stores of greenhouse gases, including methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide that have remained locked in the permafrost for ages. Pathogens will also be released.

Quote

Permafrost Is Thawing So Fast, It’s Gouging Holes in the Arctic

https://www.wired.com/story/abrupt-permafrost-thaw/

Today in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers argue that without taking abrupt thaws into account, we’re underestimating the impact of permafrost thaw by 50 percent. “The amount of carbon coming off that very narrow amount of abrupt thaw in the landscape, that small area, is still large enough to double the climate consequences and the permafrost carbon feedback,” says study lead author Merritt Turetsky, of the University of Guelph and University of Colorado Boulder.

So what does this all mean? We still have time right? Well the IPCC says:

Quote

Unless governments move quickly and effectively towards larger, earlier commitments to keep peak temperatures in the cryosphere as low as possible, the windows to prevent some of these changes may close during the 2020–2030 commitment period.

Ouch, so 10 years? Well, yeah...
Except those words were written in 2015 in the "Thresholds and Closing Windows" paper, before the Paris meeting, before we knew just how fast the permafrost would thaw... Now...
Well, turns out RCP8,5 was probably optimistic...

And where do the social sciences come in? The IPCC still has us covered! It works on food security. For instance:

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/08/2f.-Chapter-5_FINAL.pdf

Quote

Warner et al. (2012) found the interrelationships between changing rainfall patterns, food and livelihood security in eight countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Several studies in Africa have found that persistent droughts and land degradation contributed to both seasonal and permanent migration (Gray 2011; Gray and Mueller 2012; Hummel 2015; Henry et al. 2004; Folami and Folami 62013), worsening contextual vulnerability conditions of different households (Dasgupta et al. 2014). Dependency on rainfed agriculture is from 13% in Mexico to more than 30% in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, suggesting a high degree of sensitivity to climate variability and change, and undermined food security (Warner et al. 2009). Studies have demonstrated that Mexican migration (Feng et al. 2010; Nawrotzki et al. 2013) and Central American migration (WFP 2017) fluctuate in response to climate variability. The food system is heavily dependent on maize and bean production and long-term climate change and variability significantly affect the productivity of these crops and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers (WFP 2017). In rural Ecuador, adverse environmental conditions prompt out-migration, although households respond to these challenges in diverse ways resulting in complex migratory responses (Gray and Bilsborrow 2013). Migration patterns have been linked to heat stress in Pakistan (Mueller et al. 2014)and climate variability in the Sundarbans due to decline in food security (Guha and Roy 2016). In Bangladesh, the impacts of climate change have been on the rise throughout the last three decades with increasing migration, mostly of men leaving women and children to cope with increasing effects of natural disasters (Rabbani et al. 2015).

Oh wow, it's almost as if all this shit had real consequences, uh?

But electric batteries are cheap now, so... yee-haw... I guess?

 

[Fragile Bird]

I know when I first saw the stories about the melting permafrost there were stories here in Canada about projects to build equipment that sucks carbon out of the air. These projects are going on all over the world. I haven’t seen recent updates, but somebody needs to start building a fuck-ton of them pretty darn soon. The equipment works very well.

[Rippounet]

7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I know when I first saw the stories about the melting permafrost there were stories here in Canada about projects to build equipment that sucks carbon out of the air. These projects are going on all over the world. I haven’t seen recent updates, but somebody needs to start building a fuck-ton of them pretty darn soon. The equipment works very well.

Now Bird, that, that would give me hope, far more than anything Altherion mentioned.

Stuff like this, uh?

 

Quote

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/new-industry-develops-around-sucking-carbon-dioxide-out-of-atmosphere-1.5410203

Somewhere in west Texas, amid one of the most productive oilfields in the continent, a Canadian company is building a plant that it hopes will eventually suck from the air a million tonnes of carbon that is pumped out of the ground all around it.

Carbon Engineering's groundbreaking plant is one of many projects hoping to help in the fight against climate change by turning its main driver — carbon dioxide — into a useful product that can be profitably removed from the atmosphere.

[...]

A 2017 paper in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change calculated that to stabilize climate change at two degrees Celsius, between 120 billion and 160 billion tonnes of CO2 will have to be sucked from the air and stored underground.

That's in addition to Paris agreement emissions cuts.

It's not great, but it's something. The problem is, as far as I know these plants require lots of energy and the carbon they suck from the air then needs to be stocked somehwere, so these technologies aren't carbon negative just yet. But that may have already changed... ?

[Fragile Bird]

7 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Now Bird, that, that would give me hope, far more than anything Altherion mentioned.

Stuff like this, uh?

 

It's not great, but it's something. The problem is, as far as I know these plants require lots of energy and the carbon they suck from the air then needs to be stocked somehwere, so these technologies aren't carbon negative just yet. But that may have already changed... ?

It has literally been years since I saw the story about the equipment. I think it was on the CBC series The Nature of Things, hosted by Dr. David Suzuki. I remember they said the resulting product can be used by many industries. I just don’t understand why we’re not seeing these things being built.
 

Iirc, there were were units set up in a major European city, Paris or Amsterdam, and the purpose was to reduce pollution caused by vehicles. I’m at a loss to know why we all don’t know about these things. The University of Alberta had test equipment running as well, in support of Alberta’s oil industry of course.

[Altherion]

On 9/19/2020 at 8:28 PM, Rippounet said:

Right. I have no clue how you google, but this is the type of study that I find:

Given that the very first thing you linked is the human niche study I mentioned in my previous post, I google exactly the same way as you. The difference is that I ignore the sensational articles which interpret these studies in the most eye-catching ways. Similarly, I know about the permafrost and the effect of the ice melting, but it's not well understood (which is why it's not in the UN reports). And again, people are working on that too. In fact, if you want to discuss googling techniques, for every problem you mentioned, you can also find solutions.

Also, yes, you should care about cheaper electric batteries and solar because these are solutions to problems that absolutely must be solved for any of the other solutions to be carbon-neutral (transportation and energy).

On 9/19/2020 at 4:14 PM, larrytheimp said:

For the sake of argument, is there a general plan of action or legislation that you think would address the question posed in the OP?  Specifically, and apologies to all for the US centricity here, would you recommend any legislation that the US government could implement that would help with the identified challenges posed by climate change?

The US government (yes, even under the current administration) and other governments around the world are already subsidizing clean technology of various types. In an ideal world, we would do a Manhattan Project II for the development of energy generation via nuclear fusion (this would solve the energy problem once and for all), but this simply isn't happening. Another possibility is some flavor of the revenue neutral carbon tax idea, but our system is not set up for such a concept. The thing that might actually happen (ironically, mostly because of the pandemic) is massive infrastructure spending which prioritizes carbon neutral energy generation and weatherproofing.

[Rippounet]

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

Given that the very first thing you linked is the human niche study I mentioned in my previous post, I google exactly the same way as you.

Thing is, you also need to actually read the study. I don't think it says what you think it says.

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

Similarly, I know about the permafrost and the effect of the ice melting, but it's not well understood (which is why it's not in the UN reports).

I literally copy-pasted extracts from IPCC reports talking about it. Just the extracts I posted have about 20 references on feedbacks in about as many lines, as well as a line saying one of the models actually does try to take the thawing of the permafrost into account. All of which is just the tip of the iceberg.
I could post more extracts, but I can't read them for you.

And if you'd bothered to read what I copy-pasted you'd have realized the thawing of the permafrost is only one of several positive climate feedbacks. There's about a dozen of them, nine of which are nearing "tipping points" -  which is precisely why I posted these definitions from the IPCC, in the vain hope that you would connect the dots.

The situation is urgent, pretty much everyone is saying so. Or do you think all these scientists, politicians, and celebrities are being overly dramatic? Isn't it far more likely that you're actually the uneducated one? Or is the idea of you being wrong too hard to deal with?

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

 And again, people are working on that too.

People are "working" on the thawing of the permafrost or on the consequence of ice melting on Earth's albedo? How the devil do they do that? Are people installing gigantic mirrors at the North Pole to replace the melting ice or something?
Are there also people "working" on the other feedback loops? Last I heard (like, ten minutes ago), humans aren't exactly planting trees in the Amazon, and the "green wall" south of the Sahara failed.

Do you have links and studies, or are you full of shit and talking out of your arse?

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

Also, yes, you should care about cheaper electric batteries and solar because these are solutions to problems that absolutely must be solved for any of the other solutions to be carbon-neutral (transportation and energy).

Of course I care. I'm saying it's not enough, that it's too little, too late. That doesn't mean we shouldn't work on that, quite the contrary.

The idea that we can go through this without changing our way of life, "without disrupting everyone's lives" is absurd, a lie for people selfish or stupid enough to be that gullible, "useful idiots" who won't question the current order too much. Of course it's going to disrupt everybody's lives, it already is! The only question is how. Either we understand what's happening and try to have some say in the decisions that are taken, or the way it affects us will be decided for us. No electric car will help once the shit hits the fan.