201–210 of 384 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In layman's terms, how much are we screwed without hope of a solution, and what is the rough timeframe before the evening news starts looking like "The Day After Tomorrow?"
Our grandchildren are in for tough times. Unless a political miracle occurs. Even then, it might be too late.
You mean the Republicans get voted out of office completely and the other party isn't completely incompetent? On that day.
Ok, so how do we unfuck this? What are the promising options, who's working on them, and how can one contribute?
Get involved in municipal politics to help get your city more transit and cycling oriented. Get involved in state/provincial politics to encourage the development of green energy and the abolition of coal and gas. Get involved in federal politics to encourage the creation of carbon pricing at a federal level.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This won't help clear out methane in the short term, though.
clearing out the methane is the problem. you really, really don't want it to clear out, you want it to stay frozen under the arctic permafrost. the problem is if the ice that's currently keeping all that methane sequestered melts, it releases the gas. We need to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from other sources to curb global warming and keep all that gas frozen away.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More likely our models will turn out to be slightly wrong and it won't be as apocalyptic as we thought and we'll adjust according to our observed reality.
What's the relative expected utility of assuming your best model is actually not as good as speculation?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our grandchildren are in for tough times. Unless a political miracle occurs. Even then, it might be too late.
> ...a political miracle occurs. You mean the Republicans get voted out of office completely and the other party isn't completely incompetent? On that day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Methane has a short ~5-10 year half life in the atmosphere. So, releasing 50x current methane levels over 100 years does not triple current methane levels.
Yep. Everything depends on how fast that methane will get released. It can vary from "we are completely fucked up, good bye" to "that's a rounding error, no big deal". Methane should be easier to take out of the atmosphere than CO2. Spraying something at the Stratosphere could be incredibly helpful even if the substance is short lived. (But I have no idea what to spray there, would water make any difference?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...a political miracle occurs. You mean the Republicans get voted out of office completely and the other party isn't completely incompetent? On that day.
I'm not sure we can blame it on the politicians, since they're just a reflection of ourselves.
And the politicians actively choose to maintain, and reinforce, the policies and actions which contribute to that difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...a political miracle occurs. You mean the Republicans get voted out of office completely and the other party isn't completely incompetent? On that day.
I'm not sure we can blame it on the politicians, since they're just a reflection of ourselves.
They couldn't be more wrong.
The majority of the population does not care about this one bit. They're going to carry on driving their gas guzzlers. The only change we can make is if we, who understand what is at stake, invest in renewables to bring their price down. When the backwards people will see us all in our cheap to run, fast to accelerate and cheap to maintain electric pass them on the highway will they feel dumb buying gallons of gas to…
The big changes need to come from agriculture, commercial, and industrial industries. The world also needs to quickly phase out coal and gas power plants and switch to all renewable so new "green" electric vehicles are actually better for the environment.
I don't like what I'm reading here. Is there any expert here that could at least bring in non-panic arguments ?
We've started a chain reaction that's now out of our control. There's nothing we can do now but watch it unfold.