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Climate: Il fait VRAIMENT CHAUD (fka un petit)


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Just some anecdotal evidence to break up these conversations, because who doesn’t like anecdotal evidence, right?

The iconic Niagara Falls boat tours, which set off from Niagara Falls, Ontario, in foolishly small boats that cruise up to the base of the falls, started up today. Never in their history have they started in March. A few years ago they set a new record by starting up on, iirc, April 1. Generally they start mid to late April, sometimes not even until May, because normally there’s ice 50 feet deep at the base of the Falls. The ice this year was so thin on Lake Erie that we didn’t get the massive ice flows coming down the river and over the falls. Record low ice cover on the lake.

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2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Are you talking about multi-junction solar cells?

Probably. Until I read that article, I'd only seen references, not detailed descriptions.

From the article, it looks to me like making these available at a commercially competitive price is merely a matter of working out the manufacturing details. If this is doable, then Solar Powered Cars become a viable option...at least in sunnier climates.

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On 3/17/2023 at 3:37 PM, ThinkerX said:

If this is doable, then Solar Powered Cars become a viable option...at least in sunnier climates.

Unless you have some data on this I'm doubtful. At the moment panels on EVs are a complete gimmick. Basically give the power required to run the HVAC systems, or add a few (single digit) miles / kms per day. Only things like the lightyear one (makers now bankrupt) which had every surface covered in solar panels, and was designed to be efficient to the point of complete impracticality (is half again as efficient as the most efficient mass produced EVs right now) were even close to every day use.

And I strongly suspect EVs will become on average less efficient with time* as battery tech / cost allows (most energy is lost through aerodynamics, aerodynamic blobs are kinda ugly, and designing largely around that can't be fun) so I can't see a simple doubling in solar power input making much of a difference. Not that may people would want to be parking a $50k+ car outside in the sun all the time anyway. Far easier / more cost effective to put a large surface area of panels near where the cars are usually parked, and use that power to charge them.

*note: this is exactly what happened with combustion cars as engine / fuel technology developed

Edited by Impmk2
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On 3/17/2023 at 1:13 PM, Rippounet said:

That's wildly optimistic.
Eventually, perhaps. I do share the fantasies of the environmental crisis being a catalyst for the unification of our species. However, as things stand now, with reactionary forces gaining ground, just getting to the point where it actually becomes a possibility will entail a devastation I find difficult to comprehend.

We're largely in agreement there. Something devastating will need to happen, and I think that something is coming in the next handful of decades, things can't carry on the way they are. Which doesn't seem "soon" to a lot of people, but considering the span of human history a handful of decades is the blink of an eye. The combination of the inequalities neo-lib capitalism inherently causes and climate change remaining inadequately addressed (mostly because of neo-lib capitalism) is a potent combination for creating a tipping point to global catastrophe.

Looking on the bright side my go to reality checker on fusion recently put out a much more optimistic video than I thought.

Commercialisation being a decade away at least, and then large scale deployment some time beyond that means it does not meet the Monbiot "next few months" criteria. But by the mid 2030s it might mean we have a solution to getting ahead of the demand curve that keeps coal, oil and gas generating plants needing to continue to operate to avoid black outs or rationing.

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21 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

We're largely in agreement there. Something devastating will need to happen, and I think that something is coming in the next handful of decades, things can't carry on the way they are. Which doesn't seem "soon" to a lot of people, but considering the span of human history a handful of decades is the blink of an eye. The combination of the inequalities neo-lib capitalism inherently causes and climate change remaining inadequately addressed (mostly because of neo-lib capitalism) is a potent combination for creating a tipping point to global catastrophe.

Yes. The issue here (imho) is how far the reactionary movements will go to protect the current socio-economic structure and/or the Western way of life or, to put it differently, just how bad the devastation will have to be before humanity unambiguously rejects and buries neo-liberal capitalism.

There is a scenario in which fascist governments decide that collapse is preferable to any alternative, and use the devastation (and the countless refugees) to enshrine their power instead of addressing the environmental crisis.
This is also the path we're on right now, "Götterdämmerung capitalism" as Kim Robinson put it:
 

Quote

 

https://nautil.us/kim-stanley-robinson-holds-out-hope-237987/

So then I’ve got to ask, how do you feel about Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement?

It’s yet another indication of how crazy and how violently destructive he is. I call this Götterdämmerung capitalism. When the gods are going down at the end of Wagner’s opera, Götterdämmerung, they take the world down with them, like Hitler in his bunker. Trump is a narcissist and a fool. And so if he has to choose between admitting he’s been wrong on climate and destroying the world, he’ll choose to destroy the world. That’s the narcissist’s choice. That’s the Götterdämmerung.

 

Trump may be a fool, but a significant proportion of the global elite does seem to be determined to resist any meaningful change. How far will they go? Ultimately, if some form of fascism is the only way to protect their interests, is it not logical to assume this is what they'll choose? One thing about neo-liberalism is how it encourages human narcissism to such a point that many would rather cling to its illusions than to behave rationally.

Andreas Malm has made this incredibly powerful point in Fossil Fascism:

Quote

The development of climate policy seems to obey a law of polarization: the higher the temperatures, the greater the antagonism between a left ready to take the necessary orders and measures and a right that, for this reason, refuses even to think about it. Each year of inaction requires more revolutionary action the following year; which – even hypothetical or tautological – reinforces the conviction that it is a conspiracy of the left, pushes the right even further to the right and hardens its core; and so on.

I personally believe that we've already reached the point where addressing the environmental crisis within a capitalist economy is impossible. But the implications are terrifying.

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

personally believe that we've already reached the point where addressing the environmental crisis within a capitalist economy is impossible. But the implications are terrifying.

Just read through the comments on a couple off climate change articles. Virtually all of the far-right posters considered climate change a plot to initiate 'one world government.' To them, the changes thus far - the floods, the fires, the heat waves...that's just normal.

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9 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Just read through the comments on a couple off climate change articles. Virtually all of the far-right posters considered climate change a plot to initiate 'one world government.' To them, the changes thus far - the floods, the fires, the heat waves...that's just normal.

Who gives one flying fuck what they think? 

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24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Who gives one flying fuck what they think? 

"Know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated."

- Sun Tzu

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because it's opponents do not cease to be insipid."

- Frederich Nietzsche

 

"The most important tactic in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face."

- Stephen Jay Gould

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50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Who gives one flying fuck what they think? 

Because they have the ability to deny some solutions to the climate change situation.

Furthermore, when finally forced to admit artificial climate change is happening, they WILL blame it on a 'democrat-socialist-communist conspiracy to bring about one world government' and given the chance WILL go on a witch hunt for those they deem responsible.

Foreknowledge if forearmed. 

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2 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Because they have the ability to deny some solutions to the climate change situation.

Furthermore, when finally forced to admit artificial climate change is happening, they WILL blame it on a 'democrat-socialist-communist conspiracy to bring about one world government' and given the chance WILL go on a witch hunt for those they deem responsible.

Foreknowledge if forearmed. 

A minority of a minority who are bad faith actors should in no way shape any aspect of the debate, full stop. We are where we are here in the US in large part because we've allowed a very loud but small faction to have a real seat at the table. 

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2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

A minority of a minority who are bad faith actors should in no way shape any aspect of the debate, full stop. We are where we are here in the US in large part because we've allowed a very loud but small faction to have a real seat at the table. 

True on both counts - a group of incoherent radicals should not have a seat at the table - yet they do. 

Worse, standing behind them are equally delusional billionaires whose wealth comes at least in part from destructive environmental actions. Stop those actions, they lose money. And money buys influence even outside the circles of the deranged .

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The number of deniers is less important than the influence they have on policy. Every year they are able to delay the implementation of policies that can rapidly reduce emissions worsens the eventual severity of the disaster that looms over us. We appear to have reached one point of no return (the chance to avoid warming going above 1.5C), so now the question is whether those influences will see us blow past another point of no return.

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On 3/21/2023 at 3:12 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

Something devastating will need to happen

I believe "Something terrible happening will convince people of THIS" and "People will have to do THIS because the alternative is doom!" are two untrue (and slightly silly) arguments.

To the first, I say that terrrible things happening make people scared, stressed and angry, which tend to lead to bad decisions rather than good ones.

To the second, I say that even if it was factually correct that the alternative to THIS is doom, you'd need a clear majority of people to believe it to be so, and this seems unlikely. Even if it was, somehow, the case (like, most people will agree climate change is real and a serious concern), the devil is in the detail. Very few people agree exactly how serious a concern it is, what policies should be implemented as a result, what the timeline should be to implement them, or who should bear the cost. The fact that we may be on a highway to doom, or even that doom is already an inevitability, doesn't change that.

People will make better decisions if they're wiser, kinder people. I doubt fear or disasters will make us so.

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1 hour ago, Mentat said:

I believe "Something terrible happening will convince people of THIS" and "People will have to do THIS because the alternative is doom!" are two untrue (and slightly silly) arguments.

Unfortunately, the bolded is not a question of belief. We know exactly what human societies must do (or stop doing) to avoid doom. It's not an argument. It's not up for debate. The fact that people can't agree on the hows or the details doesn't change that.

It's the terrible thing about scientific fact. You might want to disagree with them, but ultimately, unless you're some kind of genius or make a super-lucky guess, you'll almost always be wrong. You can always claim that the devil is in the details, or whatnot, but ultimately you'll still be wrong.

Now maybe you're trying to make a point about communication, in which case I will -again- point out that no one here is a politician trying to convince anyone, we're just a bunch of random joes discussing facts.
If you're not making a point about communication, it may be time to become familiar with the IPCC's work:
IPCC Climate Change 2023

By the way, I haven't found the time to finish the latest report, but I must say I am glad they included these maps about the wet bulb effect. It's fucking terrifying and it should be.

 

1 hour ago, Mentat said:

To the first, I say that terrrible things happening make people scared, stressed and angry, which tend to lead to bad decisions rather than good ones.

[...]

People will make better decisions if they're wiser, kinder people. I doubt fear or disasters will make us so.

This may be a misconception. Recent research suggests that confronted with terrible things happening, humans overwhelmingly act in a perfectly calm and rational manner, and even tend to revert to an eery state of kindness, empathy and solidarity. It's governments that can take advantage of difficult situations for their own agenda.

But that's beyond the point. The disasters will happen anyway, because they're already happening. Almost every year a different country is seriously hit by the effects of climate change (in 2022 it was Pakistan which was the hardest hit imho). Hoping that the disasters will ultimately produce a positive outcome is not an "argument," it's the best we can hope for.

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Unfortunately, the bolded is not a question of belief. We know exactly what human societies must do (or stop doing) to avoid doom. It's not an argument. It's not up for debate. The fact that people can't agree on the hows or the details doesn't change that.

I'm not arguing with the science. I'm no scientist myself, but I tend to listen to and trust those who are. The existence of scientific truth doesn't remove the need for policy, though. Scientific advice will need policy to be acted upon.

 

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

This may be a misconception. Recent research suggests that confronted with terrible things happening, humans overwhelmingly act in a perfectly calm and rational manner, and even tend to revert to an eery state of kindness, empathy and solidarity.

If true, this is extremely counter-intuitive.

 

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

But that's beyond the point. The disasters will happen anyway, because they're already happening. Almost every year a different country is seriously hit by the effects of climate change (in 2022 it was Pakistan which was the hardest hit imho). Hoping that the disasters will ultimately produce a positive outcome is not an "argument," it's the best we can hope for.

Again, I'm not arguing with science, and I certainly wouldn't argue with hoping for a positive outcome. I hope for as positive an outcome as we can get. My argument is that positive changes to human behaviour are rarely a result of suffering or fear, and that consensus on how to best deal with a crisis will not increase on the basis of how threatening or impending it might be. If I'm actually wrong about that then... good?

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Suffering, misery and disaster are what drives pardigmatic changes in humanity. Warnings of the need for pandemic preparedness were met with half-arsed responses from governments and societies. An actual killer pandemic is what drove substantial changes, and, hopefully meaningful preparedness for future pandemics.

There's two types of fear: fear of what might happen or a perceived threat, often leading to negative or harmful decisions esp when the perceived threat is a group of people: Jews, gays, non-white people, trans-people, women. Then there is fear of an actual crisis and disaster that is happening. That usually leads to good decisions by those who take that disaster seriously and look to address the causes. One of the problems with this pandemic is that too many people were dismissive or conspiratorial about it, so the good decisions that were made or could have been made were thwarted.

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Studies are a bit iffy, but it seems a valid argument can be made for the Antarctic Ice Sheet being in rough equilibrium. Which means the real risks of ocean level rise comes from the Greenland Ice Sheet and thermal expansion.

 Fact check: NASA Antarctic ice sheet data consistent with global warming (msn.com)

 

The 2015 study referenced in the post did not challenge the existence of global warming, according to the study's author. Instead, the paper explicitly stated climate change was causing ice loss in parts of Antarctica. However, the authors concluded that ice gains from snowfall in other areas of the continent made up for the losses, resulting in a net gain. Other NASA-backed studies have concluded that the Antarctic ice sheet is losing ice. 

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Global warming putting more water into the air and thus some of that water vapour eventually making down to Antarctica one should expect more precipitation over Antarctica just like we are expecting and experiencing more precipitation in other parts of the world.

I think one of the things that needs to be kept a close eye on is acceleration of the seaward movement of Antarctic glaciers. Ice sheets are keeping glaciers moving at a, well, glacial pace, but if ice sheets are disappearing and more snow is dropping inland then the forces holding glaciers back will diminish relative to the forces pushing them towards the ocean. Over the next decades it's possible we will see a rapid (relatively) acceleration in glacial movement.

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Global population expected to take a nosedive by 2100...according to this group anyhow. It does seem to sort of line up with the other numbers I've been seeing.

Why Global Population Growth Will Grind to a Halt by 2100 | Live Science

 

World's population could plummet to 6 billion by the end of the century, study suggests | Live Science

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From a climate scientist who has multiple papers cited in the IPCC report, a critique of said report that seems pretty hard to refute.

Having spoken with a local Green Party voter about it, the argument seems to be that a bit of catastrophizing propaganda is necessary to move the needle in the right direction. :dunno:

Edited by Ran
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