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The Uninhabitable Earth

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Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#41

Post by stupidcar »

paulpauper wrote: post #29
ancarda wrote: post #3

It sounds very grim, is there any chance/hope of us getting out of this situation or is it just beyond any action at this point? I get the feeling from the article we're doomed.

If it is any solace, people have been predicting he end of the world for a very long time; all predictions thus far have failed.

People claimed to know what caused sickness, and how to cure it, for a very long time. They claimed to know how the Earth was created. They claimed to know the fundamental elements which combined to form all matter.

All of these pre-scientific theories were wrong. But we don't reject modern medicine, cosmology and atomic theory because of it. Humanity's history of doomsday predictions has no more bearing on the science of climate change than the former practice of leeching has on modern treatment of septicaemia.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#42

Post by joloka »

phkahler wrote: post #10
ancarda wrote: post #3

It sounds very grim, is there any chance/hope of us getting out of this situation or is it just beyond any action at this point? I get the feeling from the article we're doomed.

Don't worry, this is a pure climate alarmist. You can tell by this quote and others: "But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough." This person is literally saying we need to be alarmed. I really didn't understand the part where they said methane has 34 times the greenhouse effect as carbon over a period of time and then changes the timeframe to bring the multiplier put to 84 times. To…

Why the downvote? The article is clearly concern trolling. Look, if you are worried about overpopulation, the US isn't your primary area of concern. The US is not overpopulated and probably never will be. Maybe some US cities are, but compared to China, India, and Indonesia, we have no overpopulation problem. I'm not sure that "being alarmed" is a good state of mind to be in--Americans suffer from crisis fatigue as it is.

The human race isn't going to solve its problems without either leaving the earth or having a massive die-off. You first.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#43

Post by grondilu »

If you feel like watching more hopeful content on the subject, there is Allan Savory's TED talk about how to stop desertification[1], and Freeman Dyson's speech called "heretic thoughts about science and society"[2].

Basically, those speakers suggest climate change is an issue that can be solved with better land management. Soil is extremely good at absorbing Carbon Dioxide. Isn't it why there is so little CO2 in the atmosphere (0.04%)? We just need to make sure the process does indeed happen.

When one looks at the map of Earth, the vastness of the desert areas is scary. Yet there are reasons to believe this is relatively recent. The Sahara was wet few thousands years ago, the American deserts became so mostly because of the considerable environmental changes brought by Europeans.

Desertification is much scarier than climate change, and it did not wait for the industrial revolution to happen. Reversing desertification is probably not impossible (after all it is being attempted already in many places around the world, like in Africa[3] and China[4]), and it might very well reverse climate change as a bonus.

I personally wish more effort and public attention was diverted to it.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFLjUt2leM

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Pro...

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#44

Post by EGreg »

germinalphrase wrote: post #34
EGreg wrote: post #20

We need to accelerate our search for carbon capture technologies. AND prevent the effect of induced demand with carbon taxes! https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/january/the-potential... Or perhaps it came time to really have a conversation about which families are having 7-10 kids? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth

That article cites Muslim families as having 3.1 children compared to Christian families at 2.1 - which is obviously more but I didn't see a reference to 7-10 children as you suggest.

That's the average. Some have more. I'm talking about those families, whether Muslims or not.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#45

Post by coldpie »

ancarda wrote: post #3

It sounds very grim, is there any chance/hope of us getting out of this situation or is it just beyond any action at this point? I get the feeling from the article we're doomed.

It's especially frustrating, because I genuinely feel we could actually solve this problem with relatively minor economic impact if we wanted to. There are dozens of realistic proposals around for limiting warming to 2-3 degrees. We just need to choose to do them. Instead the world's leading nation continues to elect anti-science morons to positions of power, and so we do nothing but head down this road to destruction. The 2100s are going to be super ugly, and frankly I'm glad I won't be around to see them.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#46

Post by dexterdog »

dmm wrote: post #6
gambiting wrote: post #2

Why the hell is the author mixing Fahrenheit and Celsius degrees? Paragraph one: " for instance, where humidity routinely tops 90 percent, simply moving around outside when it’s over 105 degrees Fahrenheit would be lethal" Paragraph two: "At 11 or 12 degrees of warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. " Same paragraph: "At present, most regions reach a wet-bulb m…

I'm an american and if you told me it was 27C outside I wouldn't know whether that was hot or cold until I reflected for a moment and compared that number to cpu core temps. Ignorance on my part, certainly, and not excusable but perhaps typical.

I never remember the formula, but I know that 0 is freezing and 20 is room temp so I fudge it from there and know that 27 is warm, but not really hot.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#47

Post by joloka »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #25
phkahler wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, this is a pure climate alarmist. You can tell by this quote and others: "But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough." This person is literally saying we need to be alarmed. I really didn't understand the part where they said methane has 34 times the greenhouse effect as carbon over a period of time and then changes the timeframe to bring the multiplier put to 84 times. To…

I got the same feeling. It's a pretty sensational article that leaves out a lot of details but simultaneously has some really good information.

Sensationalism is not a firm basis for serious debate or serious action. If anything is going to save the human race, it is technology, but to hear these breathless alarmists talk, they are anti-technology, anti-progress, and apparently want us all to live stacked up in massive cities with no real quality of life at all. I tend to see this as either an exhibition of control-freak tendencies or simply full-on communism. Either way, it sucks.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#48

Post by EGreg »

dota_fanatic wrote: post #21
latch wrote: post #15

It's pretty hopeless. I used to think we'd adjust in time, but that was when the decline looked more linear (or at least I thought it looked more linear). Of the many people who I know who are seriously concerned re climate change, I'd say 2 have taken truly meaningful steps . It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but s…

What kind of drastic change should one take? Not having kids, OK, drastic but doable. Cutting out meat, driving less, etc, OK. But what about the rest of the production chain that assumes you're the same as everyone else (whom continues to use and depend on that production chain), which is an ocean of waste compared to what any single person can do? We can individually push the needle very slightly, but it does nothi…

Realistically, you should make communities local and more self-sufficient, like they used to be.

This idea that you have to commute 20 miles to work every day, in a personal car, is less than 100 years old. People used to grow up, live, work, and marry and raise families in their villages. Not many would travel all the time. Mozart was probably the most traveled of his time, and he probably didn't go half as many miles as the average worker today.

Make it so people can work from home. Give them an unconditional basic income so they don't have to work.

The problem is capitalism, as much as many people here don't like to hear it. Capitalism is great at what it does -- but it doesn't care about externalities. If a person runs out of food, capitalism doesn't care. If a species goes extinct, the world is turned into farms and monocultures, or the planet is polluted or resources are depleted, capitalism won't care until it's done.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#50

Post by astrodust »

EGreg wrote: post #20

We need to accelerate our search for carbon capture technologies. AND prevent the effect of induced demand with carbon taxes! https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/january/the-potential... Or perhaps it came time to really have a conversation about which families are having 7-10 kids? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth

Why single out Muslims when other groups are doing the same thing, like the Christian "Quiverfull" movement?

Remember the carbon footprint of 7-10 desperately poor people is almost nothing, while the footprint of a single typical American is enormous. Those American families with 7-10 kids are typically the wealthy sort, having kids is not cheap, and are a huge problem in terms of resource consumption due to lifestyle decisions. All those kids will have cars, they'll fly around for family vacations, and so on.

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