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Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

theguardian.com

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Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#161

Post by milesrout »

jsperson wrote: post #109
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…

Offensive!? You're of course free to get offended, but pointing out that flying pollutes a lot relative to the proposed limits is certainly valid. I think the point is that there is an opportunity to take personal responsibility here. Why wait for government? Using a couple of your examples, buying less stuff made in China would go a long way.

Taking 'personal responsibility' does nothing. I'm not going to forgo travelling overseas from NZ once every few years because some American thinks I'm 'using up my carbon budget'.

It's not my personal fucking responsibility. Its yours. Your country is the one ruining the environment, backing out of carbon treaties, polluting the world. It's you, not me. NZ has a dairy industry, yes, but I don't vote for parties that support it.

Nobody is saying you should 'wait for government'. Don't 'wait' for anything. Do. Change the government, push government in the direction you want it to go in.

You know what would go much further than 'buying less stuff made in China'? Not wasting so much fuel shipping the absurd quantity of stuff you Americans consume on a day-to-day basis around your enormous country.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#162

Post by kakarot »

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've never flown on a commercial jet, have no kids, limit my consumption of meat and other products of the corrupt agriculture industry, and I don't own a car because I don't support extortion via insurance and I have a hard time convincing myself it isn't selfish to add more greenhouse gases to the air when I know better, even though "it's just me" and I'm one person.

Don't be so quick to judge the members of your community, maybe consider a less accusing tone, I dunno. But you're pointing your finger at everyone and no one.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#163

Post by kakarot »

knz wrote: post #127
J-dawg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Having more kids in western cultures contributes significantly. I wonder how much longer before the idea of limiting people's reproduction is on the table. Someone who never has kids can probably drive a Hummer and spend every weekend jetting off somewhere, and their lifetime carbon footprint will still be many times lower than someone who has several children. I understand that developed country carbon footprints a…

Many OECD nations are barely at or even below replacement levels for fertility. Few people are having 4+ kids. https://data.oecd.org/pop/fertility-rates.htm

Many populations are probably auto limiting themselves because we are walking the threshold of resource availability. Another kid means less food in your other kids' mouths and less chance of survival.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#164

Post by rleigh »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #35
Red_Tarsius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But our scientific knowledge could be lost, maybe forever. The survivors may also forget the concepts of free speech, human rights, the separation of faith and state. What are the chances that we rediscover all of this? Such thoughts require a minimum threshold of resources. But climate change might disrupt our sources of food production.

A hundred million people with smartphones will be able to preserve that. Try to come up with a realistic scenario that kills the last 100m humans. I've never seen one. You'd become at least internet famous if you could do it.

How long would smartphones be able to preserve knowledge? When you can no longer get clean power to charge them, they will cease to function. When they break, there will be no means to repair them. And most critical knowledge isn't even contained on the phone, it's on other machines which are likely inaccessible given the number of failure points in our global networks. If a catastrophe occurs, this high technology will be the first class to break. And no one person or group can recreate them; they depend upon global supply chains and expertise and manufacturing techniques siloed in hundreds of companies. And if a collapse did occur, we might have more pressing needs than recreating such technological marvels, like feeding and clothing ourselves. The value of such technology would vanish overnight if the supporting infrastructure collapsed.

To preserve knowledge you need it to be usable and accessible as the high edifice of our technological society crumbles. That would mean quality paper, vellum or some other durable material. We know it can last for hundreds to thousands of years if properly cared for. And I suspect that with the essentials of our knowledge base preserved and disseminated in such a way, we could quickly re-master the missing advanced stuff in a handful of decades. But if we relied on smartphones to save us, we'd quickly become savage and starving cavemen!

One of the more dangerous tendencies of modern times is that precision manufacturing techniques are often undocumented and are learned skills which require passing on from masters to trainees. There's plenty of technology from WW2 and earlier which we already can't recreate even though we know exactly what they look like. The people who knew retired and died. The drawings and documentation are useless without full training--we'd have to rediscover and refine the processes from scratch. Just last week I was reading about the restoration of a German WW2 fighter plane. They had to replace the entire engine because they couldn't manufacture a replacement part for the (repairable) original, because the machines to make the parts no longer exist and the expertise was lost. We'd have to make the machines to make the machines that make the part. Our technology base is built upon a house of cards. It's not a new phenomenon, but what is new is our utter reliance upon technology we have little control over to feed us and run our lives, making its loss quite disastrous.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#165

Post by nsajko »

speeder wrote: post #121
flukus wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted it's mostly from the outside looking in, but your politics does like a bit better than ours. There seems to be a lot less pressure to hold the party line for one thing, which is very rigid here and there seems to be more local engagement. I'd appreciate someone who has experienced both more closely to correct me though. Much of the current trouble in Australian politics though is because we have the senate wh…

I am from Brazil, that theoretically has a fully modern democracy... Parties learned to "negotiate" so well they became meaningless, frequently absurd laws pass that all parties allowed, you see multiparty tickets that include extreme left and right at same time, and when a big corruption scandal shows uo we find out almost all parties were involved... I personally believe Brazil need to copy UK and put at least our…

Well of course the former royal family is not corrupt, they are not in power!

At least in the current system, the politicians hold responsibility and can get exposed, prosecuted, and convicted for corruption (eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Car_Wash ), after which you can try to get somebody else elected; how would it be better if you put an arbitrary family in power?

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#166

Post by Recurecur »

rixed wrote: post #155
Recurecur wrote: post #152

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." 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.

I did not say that "rational thought is the solution", although it is true that rational thought will provide the means for market forces to do their work. I didn't expound on how markets are changing as much as I probably should have.

I did state that market forces are the solution, and the reason for that is cleaner and ultimately cheaper technologies are displacing combustible fuels - primarily solar, nuclear and wind. Coal is already being displaced by cheaper natural gas, and advances in CO2 free technologies will make them the least expensive of all in the end. Proponents of new modular nuclear reactor designs believe they'll generate electricity for 3 to 5 cents per KWH, for instance.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#167

Post by Recurecur »

M_Grey wrote: post #159
Recurecur wrote: post #152

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." 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 lea…

1) No, -I- believe a solution still exists.

2) My comments about Australia addressed the generally fuzzy thinking on this topic.

3) Again, there is no reason to think that the outcome is definite at this point. Clearly, in the worst case, technology should provide a solution. If the gloomiest projections turn out to be incorrect, for which there is mounting evidence, no mitigation may be needed at all.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#168

Post by idanoeman »

flukus wrote: post #93
worldsayshi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as at least some coral survive it's not time to give up. If we can halt carbon emissions and turn our industrial complex towards proper sustainability the earth will probably heal. Perhaps it will take a thousand years for it to recover but as long as we reach sustainability that doesn't really matter.

It could probably heal, it might even do so if we burned every fossil fuel on earth, but the incredibly amount of biodiversity in the reefs would be gone and that will never come back.

I think you mean "won't come back in 100s (1000s? 10000s?)" of years. We don't have the technology to actually eliminate life on earth.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#169

Post by dvtv75 »

dang wrote: post #18
hoodoof wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X

Your comments were obviously sarcastic, but that doesn't make them ok. It's the venting indignation part that doesn't help. HN is something of an ecosystem in its own right; there's no need to damage one in defence of another. Nothing good comes of it.

Sometimes satire and sarcasm are the best way to draw attention to the absurdity of a given position.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#170

Post by hueving »

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…

There are those of us that also think asking people to 'cut back' voluntarily like this is a fucked solution out of the gate.

I continue to fly across the country for work because refusing only hurts my career and gives me a slight sense of smug superiority. Someone else on standby would just take my seat anyway and my refusal would have had no impact (other than a negligible reduction in revenue for the airline).

Instead I actually do something that might have an impact and I donate to organizations researching alternative energy or just straight up planting trees.

I would rather just have the price of carbon emissions priced into the airline tickets than stupidly trying to shame anyone who travels.

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