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

[sologdin]

cool. does the aspect emperor hire me to train him in postmodernized marxism first?

[ThinkerX]

7 hours ago, sologdin said:

cool. does the aspect emperor hire me to train him in postmodernized marxism first?

Nah, your's would be the first person account of the destruction and abandonment of New Orleans and the flooded south lands, and the rational for going full totalitarian afterward, 

[The Anti-Targ]

23 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I’ll be honest. If this issue is approached as an exciting project to see how - through innovation and technology - we can reduce our ecological footprint on this planet then I for one will get quite excited about it.

If instead it is used as an excuse to load a bunch of guilt onto the people who built the modern world and who work their butts off to enjoy the fruits of their labour, then I just switch off.

And of course I’m a nobody, you needn’t care what I think. Except that I’m likely part of a large and disproportionally influential demographic group who shares this mentality.

The goal should be to get people excited about the grandeur of the project - like the goal to put humans on Mars. It should be something inspirational, not something that is guilt driven with the goal of impoverishing its participants.

The screamers and shouters may think their approach is working, but until you broaden the appeal of the campaign, you won’t succeed.

I'm thinking, you can communicate effectively with a demographic most around here can't. The best thing you can do for climate change is convince the subset within that demographic that climate change is happening and human activity is the reason. You don't have to get all passionate and righteously indignant about climate change in action, you just need to be convincing to that group of people.

One of the biggest barriers to getting anything done about climate change is there are still too many people who simply don't believe it, and there are a bunch of politicians who pander to that group. You are in a better position to influence them than most people around here.

[Inkdaub]

1 hour ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I’m not angry with her at all, I just found her speech very off putting, I agree the problem is not her and long may she campaign for her beliefs, I just think that for things like addressing the UN someone who was better versed in public speaking and not getting overcome by his or her emotions would be a better choice.

 

I would think a lack of passion is one of the primary obstacles we face.  Greta Thunberg is so very important not because of what she says but how she says it. 

[Isalie]

So, BP says oil use will increase until 2030 and then stabilize at that new level. So where are these predictions that we by 2040 will have replaced most fossil fuels?

[Rorshach]

3 hours ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I’m not angry with her at all, I just found her speech very off putting, I agree the problem is not her and long may she campaign for her beliefs, I just think that for things like addressing the UN someone who was better versed in public speaking and not getting overcome by his or her emotions would be a better choice.

Because all those great orators who have identified this problem before have managed to do so much?

Sorry, I do not buy the argument at all. I tend to see it differently: a room full of people who have the power to act, but haven't, got a thoroughly deserved kick up their backside by someone actually caring.

 

[ThinkerX]

8 hours ago, Mikael said:

So, BP says oil use will increase until 2030 and then stabilize at that new level. So where are these predictions that we by 2040 will have replaced most fossil fuels?

Google 'Peak Oil.'  Lot of articles out there.

That said, as coal, oil, and natural gas decline (which they are), then other energy sources get brought on line.  It's not an all at once thing.

[Kalbear]

It's also not a 20 years thing. Not unless we get super serious about it. 

[Rorshach]

2 hours ago, Triskele said:

There's also a bit of an Emperor's New Clothes element to all of this where the crusty old adults cannot actually see reality anymore and it takes a kid who doesn't share the blinders they all have on.  

There is indeed.

[JGP]

26 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Google 'Peak Oil.'  Lot of articles out there.

That said, as coal, oil, and natural gas decline (which they are), then other energy sources get brought on line.  It's not an all at once thing.

Random tidbit, re: oil

An interesting thing I've been seeing more of lately [like, the last couple years] is analyst focus speaking more about peak demand as opposed to peak oil.  

[Werthead]

Here's some nightmare fuel for you.

The tropics seem to be expanding, generating additional "hot spots" where the temperature has already increased by 3 degrees and could go much hotter on a localised, but still devastating, scale. Uruguay in particular seems to be vulnerable to this phenomenon.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Here's some nightmare fuel for you.

The tropics seem to be expanding, generating additional "hot spots" where the temperature has already increased by 3 degrees and could go much hotter on a localised, but still devastating, scale. Uruguay in particular seems to be vulnerable to this phenomenon.

The process I have been wondering about on occasion this past six or eight months.  Bit involved, point by point:

1 - Greenland is basically a circular archipelago with the center filled by an ice cap.  Glaciers between the individual islands connect the icecap to the surrounding seas.  Until a few decades ago, the glaciers were constrained by sea ice, a formidable barrier, even in summer.  Nowadays, though, the sea ice is pretty much gone, which means these glaciers are dumping large amounts of water into the (North Atlantic) ocean.

 

2 - Enter the Gulf Current, a major oceanic current that makes a clockwise circle extending from the subarctic to the tropics.  The warm water carried by this current is a major reason why NE north america and northern Europe have relatively mild weather conditions.

 

3 - Initially, this water has a cooling effect, forcing the Gulf Currents warm water deeper than usual, which should translate to colder than normal weather for northern Europe.  However, as Greenland's water is carried south, it gets warmed in the tropics.  Really warmed, given increasing temperatures in that region.  This leads to oceanic increase, not just because of Greenland's contribution, but because of thermal expansion.  (Yes, much of the water gets carried away into the south Atlantic and elsewhere.)   This leads to increasing sea levels along SE north America and (probably) wetter storms dumping more water in low lying areas.

 

4 - The water continues north, still warm, rubbing against Greenland's glaciers from underneath, accelerating the rate of collapse. (witness the end tracks of the last few named hurricanes/storms). Not real likely, put possible: a partial dramatic collapse of the Greenland Ice Cap and subsequent rise in (global)  sea level of maybe a meter over a span of a decade or less.  Given the mechanisms at work, this sea level increase, at least initially, would be much worse in SE north America. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

21 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

The process I have been wondering about on occasion this past six or eight months.  Bit involved, point by point:

1 - Greenland is basically a circular archipelago with the center filled by an ice cap.  Glaciers between the individual islands connect the icecap to the surrounding seas.  Until a few decades ago, the glaciers were constrained by sea ice, a formidable barrier, even in summer.  Nowadays, though, the sea ice is pretty much gone, which means these glaciers are dumping large amounts of water into the (North Atlantic) ocean.

 

2 - Enter the Gulf Current, a major oceanic current that makes a clockwise circle extending from the subarctic to the tropics.  The warm water carried by this current is a major reason why NE north america and northern Europe have relatively mild weather conditions.

 

3 - Initially, this water has a cooling effect, forcing the Gulf Currents warm water deeper than usual, which should translate to colder than normal weather for northern Europe.  However, as Greenland's water is carried south, it gets warmed in the tropics.  Really warmed, given increasing temperatures in that region.  This leads to oceanic increase, not just because of Greenland's contribution, but because of thermal expansion.  (Yes, much of the water gets carried away into the south Atlantic and elsewhere.)   This leads to increasing sea levels along SE north America and (probably) wetter storms dumping more water in low lying areas.

 

4 - The water continues north, still warm, rubbing against Greenland's glaciers from underneath, accelerating the rate of collapse. (witness the end tracks of the last few named hurricanes/storms). Not real likely, put possible: a partial dramatic collapse of the Greenland Ice Cap and subsequent rise in (global)  sea level of maybe a meter over a span of a decade or less.  Given the mechanisms at work, this sea level increase, at least initially, would be much worse in SE north America. 

Why would this be worse for SE North America vs any other barely-above-sea-level area in the world?

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 9/26/2019 at 11:34 PM, Free Northman Reborn said:

The goal should be to get people excited about the grandeur of the project - like the goal to put humans on Mars. It should be something inspirational, not something that is guilt driven with the goal of impoverishing its participants.

So Sci-fantasy then. Finding the technology to terraform earth will almost come about in our life-times. If ever: https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/1345912/nasa-says-nobody-not-even-elon-musk-can-terraform-mars/amp/

An Astrotnomist I know  even argued it’d probably be easier to simply set up shop to the nearest habitual  planet outside our solar system than Terraform Mars.

Hell, do you even realize the atmosphere at the time of Apollo was fear? It was not just boyish infatuation with Space travel as a concept. The US and USSR were terrified of the other toppling the other, coming out the world’s leader, or nuking the other.

Going to the moon was literally just one more battle in this conflict. 

The US’ mission to the moon was extremely time consuming and expensive as fuck. There’s a reason we haven’t been back there for half a century. 

You cannot seriously expect to engineer the technology needed to terraform Mars(if it can even be developed in the first place), industrialize the planet, and move billions of people with the mindset of “Climate change isn’t as pressing issue as your mortgage” when the only reason the US went as far as the moon in the first was to help maintain its’ position and not be under-cut in the Cold War. 

The climate scientists who’ve been ferociously talking  about climate change for decades, have been very detailed that we can utilize the technology we have now to divert the significant effects of climate change.

Jesus spare us, that even China and India are treating climate change as an immediate pressing threat than the American right.

[ThinkerX]

4 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Why would this be worse for SE North America vs any other barely-above-sea-level area in the world?

greater thermal expansion.  further north, the water would be bit cooler, hence not expanded as much

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Can a super volcano explosion, should it occur, be an effective stand-in for geo-engineering?  I realize that there are all kinds of follow-up questions like how big is the explosion, where does it happen, etc....

But I'm just curious is this is on the table as a remarkable, potential get-out-of-jail free card.  

That would be the Yellowstone super volcano.  Goodbye USA.  But it would offset global warming, at a horrific cost 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

greater thermal expansion.  further north, the water would be bit cooler, hence not expanded as much

Plus Florida is already starting to go under, and Miami will probably be the first major city in the world lost to rising sea levels (thanks to the limestone under the city, it cannot be protected by sea walls).

[Werthead]

3 minutes ago, Triskele said:

But theoretically possible?  Go on....

Surprised the right hasn't latched onto this in some kind of "even if things were warming which is natural there could be volcano which is natural so there..."

We could have a second eruption of the Toba super volcano, which last erupted 75,000 years ago, cooled the entire planet for over a decade and wiped out ~95% of the human race at the time. That would be "a" solution to the problem.

[DireWolfSpirit]

On Greta Thunbergs Wiki

On 13 March 2019, two deputies of the Swedish parliament and three deputies of the Norwegian parliament nominated Thunberg as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nominating politicians explained their decision by arguing that global warming will be the cause of "wars, conflict and refugees" if nothing is done to halt it. Thunberg responded that she was "honoured and very grateful" for the nomination.^[123] If Thunberg receives the Prize later this year, she will become the youngest person ever to receive it.^[124]

[maarsen]

My daughter works for a consulting firm and her speciality is renewable energy. She had just finished a presentation to the natural gas utilities in New York State last week. they are looking at methods to decarbonize now. One option is that no new houses will be allowed to be hooked up to gas pipelines for heating. Other governments and utilities are looking at similar proposals. There is not as much inaction as it seems. Is it enough? we'll see.