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Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

economist.com

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Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#221

Post by mike10010100 »

rybosome wrote: post #167
mike10010100 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really for humanity directly. We'd survive. But the plants and animals we depend on probably wouldn't have a very good time, and our biodiversity as a planet would significantly decrease. Not quite extinction level, perhaps another Great Dying, though.

> Not really for humanity directly...perhaps another Great Dying, though. It seems hard to believe that such a drastic shock to our planet won't trigger panic and resource wars which have the potential to finish us off.

Finish us off? I doubt it. We're a tenuous species.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#222

Post by malnourish »

Delmania wrote: post #43
malnourish wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I think we should be doing (as a nation). We should be pushing innovation and becoming a leader in R&D for green energy. It seems like a fantastic way of creating jobs and I have a hard time comprehending why people are so resistant to it.

Fear. Put yourself in the shoes of a 50-year-old coal miner who's had the same job since he was age 18. You lose your job, and the town in which you live is starting to decline because the major source of money is gone. You have no idea how your going to pay for your bills and food. Do you really think such a person is going to be enthusiastic for retraining for a new, competing with younger people, and moving? Or do…

The thing is, we're not going to get rid of coal and oil for quite a while, even if we do convert mostly to green energy we won't (for better or for worse) abandon the infrastructure we already have. I say this as conjecture, but it seems reasonable unless otherwise shown.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#223

Post by mike10010100 »

stouset wrote: post #173
mike10010100 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really for humanity directly. We'd survive. But the plants and animals we depend on probably wouldn't have a very good time, and our biodiversity as a planet would significantly decrease. Not quite extinction level, perhaps another Great Dying, though.

> We'd survive. But the plants and animals we depend on probably wouldn't have a very good time... I'm not sure how you can reconcile these two adjacent statements. Yes, some humans would undoubtedly exist somewhere . But only a tiny fraction of our current world population.

> Yes, some humans would undoubtedly exist somewhere.

That's called survival.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#224

Post by EdSharkey »

pas wrote: post #216
EdSharkey wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived on a hill in Los Angeles in the 70's and 80's, putting me inside the regularly Stage One-alert smog layer there. It was horrible, but we cleaned up our act since then. More people live in L.A. now than ever and pollution is down. Not a dire enough situation, try again during summertime when it's hot.

LA? Still terrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_St... The air is still killing people there, even if it doesn't feel hard to breathe. The same goes for the climate, I guess, if you don't feel it, it must be okay. But it's not.

You have no idea how choking the air was in the 70's and 80's. They still had Stage 3 smog alerts in the early seventies where you were not supposed to go outdoors. Our treatment of the earth has improved and it will continue to improve with technology.

All the (incomplete) computer models since the 90's predicting runaway warming due to human inputs to the system have not been borne out, and every year they aren't, you'll find yourself screaming louder and louder just to be heard. Real science will prevail, not the politicized stuff, and won't it be a bummer when you find you've been duped all these years?

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#225

Post by mzw_mzw »

pas wrote: post #219
mzw_mzw wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dire enough that the population of the United States is going to have to evacuate en masse to Canada? Really?

Of course not. But the math is pretty simple. More and bigger waves, more and bigger storms on the coasts. The sea level will rise slowly, but surely. It will take 100+ years, but it'll rise by at least 10 meters, of course if we don't do something against it. And it's not impossible to build dikes and levees, but they'd look like huge hills on the shore. Not so bad, we have plenty of time to move a lot of dirt, but…

> Of course not.

Ok. So the original commenter's idea of Trump having some sinister scheme to leave the Canadian border un-walled so Americans can flee en masse as the mainland is destroyed by global warming, is absurd. That's all I was asking.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#226

Post by mzw_mzw »

pas wrote: post #216
EdSharkey wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived on a hill in Los Angeles in the 70's and 80's, putting me inside the regularly Stage One-alert smog layer there. It was horrible, but we cleaned up our act since then. More people live in L.A. now than ever and pollution is down. Not a dire enough situation, try again during summertime when it's hot.

LA? Still terrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_St... The air is still killing people there, even if it doesn't feel hard to breathe. The same goes for the climate, I guess, if you don't feel it, it must be okay. But it's not.

Right. Who are you going to believe, Wikipedia or your lying eyes?

I'm guessing you aren't old enough to remember how awful the state of the environment was in the United States back in the '70s. It's like night and day to compare then and now.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#227

Post by antisthenes »

anon1253 wrote: post #217
hnsucks2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does nerve gas harm trees?

Why not nuke metropolitan areas while you're at it? Most of the population is in the coastal cities anyway, who cares about New York, Shanghai or Mumbai. Quick fix. Or force serialization for > 60% of the world population. I mean sure, there are "solutions" but there is ethics to consider too …

I've already suggested in another thread that any 'solution' to global warming that doesn't involve mass genocide will be too slow to have any effect.

Even sterilization might not be quick enough.

Obviously, neither is acceptable from a humanist perspective.

Actually, now that I've read your comment closer, I noticed you mentioned serialization. Do you mean digitizing people's minds and killing them afterwards?

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#228

Post by mzw_mzw »

madaxe_again wrote: post #80
snowwrestler wrote: post #60

I don't actually believe this, but it occurred to me the other day as a funny way to look at a very sad situation: What if Trump does believe global warming is real, but recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects? What if he expects the world to go to hell over the next 50 years and is focused on protecting the U.S. specifically? What would he do? He'd build a wall across the lower border of the U.S. to…

I do. At any rate, I do in the case of world leaders and the actions of states over the last decades. Or at any rate I'd like to believe I do. Virtually everything has been consistent with preparing for the worst case climate disaster. You might think that if we knew it was unavoidable it might comprise protecting populations in cities and so-forth by building huge coastal works, or moving populations, or other such…

> It's a fairly crap hypothesis

That's the only even remotely true thing in this entire comment. HN would really benefit without all the frantic paranoia and cinematic apocalypse-mongering that has unfortunately become the default position around here. Keep it to Alex Jones, please.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#229

Post by stouset »

mike10010100 wrote: post #223
stouset wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'd survive. But the plants and animals we depend on probably wouldn't have a very good time... I'm not sure how you can reconcile these two adjacent statements. Yes, some humans would undoubtedly exist somewhere . But only a tiny fraction of our current world population.

> Yes, some humans would undoubtedly exist somewhere. That's called survival.

Oh come on, you're just splitting hairs at this point. Pockets of a few thousand people is, yes, technically survival.

Congratulations, you're "technically correct" — the most useless, pedantically, and antisocial kind of correct.

The original question was "how is 8˚C "not much worse" than 4˚C? Surely you can concede that "tens of thousands of humans" and "zero humans" are not so much different compared to today's "billions of humans".

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#230

Post by sctb »

hnsucks2 wrote: post #213
DennisP wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's that word "just" again. The countries where it's happening don't want to let their people starve; you'd have to make them. You'd have to use military force to guard vast forests all over the world from hundreds of millions of desperate people. Good luck with that.

Does nerve gas harm trees?

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