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Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

theguardian.com

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Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#151

Post by FireBeyond »

inopinatus wrote: post #136
milesrout wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, there should be no 'engaging with farmers'. There shouldn't be 'reductions' in pesticide and fertiliser runoffs. Erosion shouldn't be 'managed'. This shouldn't be a conversation. It's been conversation and compromise for far, far too long. Governments should be being firm with farmers, they're incredibly damaging to the environment and it's not even a lucrative industry.

The often wafer-thin margins in the agriculture sector do not invalidate farmer's demands because food security is a most fundamental national security issue, even more so than energy or border control. Conversely, and unfortunately, the Great Barrier Reef is managed by Australian governments basically as a tourist attraction, rather than a unique and fragile national treasure. There is a (locally) famous quote from…

> There is a (locally) famous quote from the Australian writer Donald Horne: "Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck." (1964). A great many idiot politicians, jingoistic fools, and tourist offices are fond of repeating the first clause of this statement whilst omitting the latter, oblivious to the sharp irony of the full statement.

Yup. It's our very own version of "Born in the USA".

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#152

Post by Recurecur »

M_Grey wrote: post #141
spodek wrote: post #89

Many posts here about how sad and disgusted people are. Not much about people taking personal responsibility. What do people think the carrying capacity of the planet means? Sustaining more humans means sacrificing other life that competes for our resources. It means pollution rising until it doesn't quite kill us but is well above the levels of a pristine, clean environment. Nobody wants to live near the carrying ca…

I'm doing my part, no kids, and I won't be having any. Unfortunately human nature isn't going to change, and we're not going to get out of this one with our civilization intact; we're probably cooked.

"I'm doing my part, no kids, and I won't be having any. Unfortunately human nature isn't going to change, and we're not going to get out of this one with our civilization intact; we're probably cooked."

Utter nonsense (other than you not having kids, that's your choice).

Market forces will in fact solve the "problem" (to the extent it is one) of excess CO2 output. If it is finally determined that CO2 based warming is problematic, the solution will be advanced technology, including high-intensity energy sources like nuclear power. In the absolute worst case, orbital sunshades or other mitigations will be used to decrease insolation.

The laughable thing about this article is the idea that any amount of spending by the Australian government to "take decisive action on climate change" would help. If Australia completely stopped producing CO2, it would have no measurable effect on water temperatures around the Great Barrier Reef, especially since the argument is that current CO2 levels are causing the problem. Then there's the fact that Australia is a minor contributor to global CO2 emissions...

What's needed on "climate change" is a lot more rational thought, and a lot less hysteria.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#154

Post by antisthenes »

flukus wrote: post #90
ckastner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please provide a credible example for such an event. Regarding your first example, Toba: we have no record of what may or may not have happened to a small population of Neanderthals 75.000 years ago, and your source itself states "Both the link and global winter theories are highly controversial". Your second example marks the decline of a civilization, but does not even come close to what could be described…

For Toba, I wouldn't expect it to be definitively settled one way or another for a long time, if ever. Volcanology, geology and genetics are very young fields of study, particularly in developing nations that are home to much of the evidence. The theory is that it caused a population bottleneck in humans though, not Neanderthals (who probably had a pretty hard time as well) and that humans nearly fell below the genet…

> I didn't mean to imply otherwise, though I would say they are one and the same thing in the long term. For humanity to survive and spread beyond our planet we need civilization and we've used up so many natural resources that I'm not sure we could rebuild one to match what we have today without them.

There's no point in spreading beyond our planet if we cannot create a fully sustainable planetary civilization first. The energy expenditures of GOING to another STAR and terraforming a planet in its orbit are many magnitudes more than it takes to create a paradise here, on Earth, at least from the perspective of energy requirements of modern countries.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#155

Post by rixed »

Recurecur wrote: post #152
M_Grey wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing my part, no kids, and I won't be having any. Unfortunately human nature isn't going to change, and we're not going to get out of this one with our civilization intact; we're probably cooked.

"I'm doing my part, no kids, and I won't be having any. Unfortunately human nature isn't going to change, and we're not going to get out of this one with our civilization intact; we're probably cooked." Utter nonsense (other than you not having kids, that's your choice). Market forces will in fact solve the "problem" (to the extent it is one) of excess CO2 output. If it is finally determined that CO2 based warming is…

You started by stating that market forces are the solution, but conclude that rational thought is the solution. Now I'm very confused.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#156

Post by jakelazaroff »

milesrout wrote: post #115
laumars wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the facts you presented, I do disagree with the sentiment. Your argument is akin to passing the buck, yet the issue of climate change affects us all. Maybe let's ignore the GP's examples of flying and instead discuss industry. How many of us by pre-packaged foods or have Amazon Prime accounts and use it to order stuff we could just as easily get from our local shops? How many of us support…

No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally. You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'. Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops…

> No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally.

That's not a fallacy. There's a direct and causal relationship between that "something as a whole" and you doing it personally. No one is saying that you alone are responsible for this systemic issue, but at least cop to your role in it.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#157

Post by cwkoss »

scandox wrote: post #94
spodek wrote: post #89

Many posts here about how sad and disgusted people are. Not much about people taking personal responsibility. What do people think the carrying capacity of the planet means? Sustaining more humans means sacrificing other life that competes for our resources. It means pollution rising until it doesn't quite kill us but is well above the levels of a pristine, clean environment. Nobody wants to live near the carrying ca…

How will politicians follow voters if voters' own actions cause shrinking economies and fewer jobs? That's not rhetorical. I don't know how it is possible within the current system to back down en-masse in the way you suggest. In addition if one culture does shrink and others simply grow more aggressively then the end result will be same. What you're talking about is a global consensus to shrink the world population…

Our current status-quo system requires perpetual growth to maintain debt obligations (money is created by debt, which comes with interest. if economy doesn't grow, there must be defaults)

Perpetual growth and protection of natural resources are inherently at odds with each other. Until the global economy fundamentally changes, things are only going to keep getting worse.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#158

Post by [deleted] »

Diederich wrote: post #146
good_vibes wrote: post #57

What can we do? Serious question.

If I remember correctly, human CO2 emissions has been flat for the past couple of years. The reason CO2 is going up, at an increasing rate, is largely because the biosphere's ability to absorb CO2 is diminished. I believe the grim truth is this: the world's transformation would continue for a long time even if humans stopped producing CO2 tomorrow. Preparations for the inevitable should be our focus.

[deleted]

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#159

Post by M_Grey »

Recurecur wrote: post #152
M_Grey wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing my part, no kids, and I won't be having any. Unfortunately human nature isn't going to change, and we're not going to get out of this one with our civilization intact; we're probably cooked.

"I'm doing my part, no kids, and I won't be having any. Unfortunately human nature isn't going to change, and we're not going to get out of this one with our civilization intact; we're probably cooked." Utter nonsense (other than you not having kids, that's your choice). Market forces will in fact solve the "problem" (to the extent it is one) of excess CO2 output. If it is finally determined that CO2 based warming is…

You seem to think that I:

1.) Believe a solution still exists

2.) Believe that Australia of all the small populations on Earth would somehow matter if such a solution existed (no offense Australia, you matter in general)

3.) Believe that "thought" matters at this point. You might as well be telling people marching to the gallows to cheer up, nothing good can come of being all depressed. You might be right, but at least stop pretending that it's going to change the actual outcome.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#160

Post by milesrout »

KnightOfWords wrote: post #107
milesrout wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite frankly I think blaming it on flying is incredibly offensive. It's got nothing, at all, to do with cars or flying. They're tiny pollutors compared to industry, specifically the dairy industry, transportation by truck and manufacturing things in China. Sure we could fly less and drive less but that would do fuck all, and certainly having fewer kids isn't going to solve any problems. Having fewer kids in the west…

Tackling the problem from the top-down (regulation) and bottom-up (personal responsibility) is the most effective path forward. The first step is education, actually understanding what contributes to our carbon footprint and more importantly radiative forcing. This gets complicated fast (here's an article on aviation: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/car... ), but reasonable ballpark estimates…

The reality is that nobody acknowledges the impact of agriculture. Remember that a very large amount of those transportation costs are associated with agriculture as well, so really it's more like 30% of agriculture. 30% of emissions, basically all for dairy.

That's disgusting.

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