Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page. The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will suffer because of something that is going on ri…
Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
271–280 of 384 posts
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you look at the many different potential sources of, "Fucked... goodbye..." the trend is very clear. We're juggling apocalypses and just waiting to find one that will stick. Will it be ocean acidification first? Ocean levels rising? Catastrophic weather patterns? Famine? Drought? War touched off by rapid changed? Mass extinctions? They're all in play, each with the potential to end us.
Is this why we have not yet found signs of intelligent life in the universe? Every time a civilization is advanced enough to really screw up (their) planet, inevitably, they do? Fermi Paradox redux.
At least for our class of life: organic. Organic life naturally evolved & so all intelligent organic life lives on top of a pile of stored chemical energy (oil / coal / methane gas)
Organic life evolves through competition and so when chemical energy is discovered it is rapidly used, most often faster than such intelligent life can figure out what a truly bad idea that is.
Once they realize, it's too late. Runaway climate change is occurring. And this ends the intelligent life.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#273This is precisely why Dr. Guy McPherson has predicted human extinction on earth by 2030. Methane clathrates coming from the Arctic sea floor and from Canadian and Siberian permafrost. This is the most serious threat we face now.
So, this sort of thing must have happened in past warm periods. Yet life survived.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#274Earlier 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.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#275Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page. The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will suffer because of something that is going on ri…
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a particularly good candidate I would think. For example we know what's happening and could theoretically have stopped it but didn't/don't have the will. The Fermi paradox requires it to be extremely unlikely to survive, but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it.
> but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it. I can't imagine that. The only evidence I have to date (from a sample size of 1 planet) is that there is next to zero real political will, even if the politicians of the world create additional heat saying they have in fact found the political will.
I agree, it's unlikely a massive change can happen through a political shift (which happen only generally in revolutions and civil wars). A cultural change, however, is completely feasible.
If Facebook for instance turned into a zero-carbon marketing machine I'm pretty sure they could convince the planet to shift gears in consumption. Is the any plausible scenario where they would do this? I suppose if the global catastrophe could be computed as certainly as a trajectory of a asteroid that was about to hit earth - maybe.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you look at the many different potential sources of, "Fucked... goodbye..." the trend is very clear. We're juggling apocalypses and just waiting to find one that will stick. Will it be ocean acidification first? Ocean levels rising? Catastrophic weather patterns? Famine? Drought? War touched off by rapid changed? Mass extinctions? They're all in play, each with the potential to end us.
Is this why we have not yet found signs of intelligent life in the universe? Every time a civilization is advanced enough to really screw up (their) planet, inevitably, they do? Fermi Paradox redux.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#278It's really hard to get the scale of the domes from the photos. Are the top photos 30cm across or 100m?
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#279Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#280So, assuming we're screwed, where's the best place to move preemptively? I know Boston isn't that place. - I assume the coasts are a nonstarter. - Moving inland could be nice, but the ground would need to be pretty arable to restart civilization there. I'm guessing somewhere in Africa is a safe bet, given the lack of resource exploitation there, but then again, there's not much infrastructure at the moment.