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The Uninhabitable Earth

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Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#81

Post by aeorgnoieang »

cagenut wrote: post #28
dota_fanatic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The energy consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) per capita in the west/US comes almost entirely from the feedback loop between single-family-detached housing and the car-or-two it takes to live in that kind of sprawled out lifestyle. Put another way, Transportation and Housing (heating & cooling) are the #1 and #2 sources of carbon emissions for suburban, exurban and rural dwellers. People who simply live in…

> So the #1 thing an American can do to fight climate change is be "pro-city". Move there. Encourage building/density there. Help fix the schools. Use, vote for, and demand more and better public transit.

This seems nearly as impossible as direct political action against climate change. Effectively, none of the current residents of cities want anyone else to move there, let alone allow more development, especially of greater density. Cities themselves seem to be pretty uniformly terrible at scaling-up to support larger populations. NYC's subways seem pretty close to crippling failure as-is.

I don't prefer revolution, but some kind of significant 'shake-up' seems pretty inevitable given the ossification of all of the relevant 'systems'.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#82

Post by cbennett »

joloka wrote: post #47
nickthemagicman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 communis…

>>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.

Where is the second half of the article where, after discussing at length many bad possible outcomes, the guy goes on to propose detailed social engineering schemes to solve the looming planetary crisis??

Either you did not read this article closely, or you are simply trolling. In my opinion, the real ending of the piece was marvelously open-ended. The author concludes by highlighting the irrational , but quintessential human, tendency to see some bright-side to the whole thing-- here are our climate scientists like Hansen and others, that know the most and see of everyone how screwed we are, still maintaining some faith we'll figure it out. And they didn't need 'communism', 'mega city' or some other nebulous concept to help them to that conclusion-- it was/is either habitual, or fantastical.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#83

Post by astrodust »

EGreg wrote: post #57
astrodust wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lifestyl…

I didn't single out Muslims, I said any families that have 7-10 kids. Those kids eventually move into the cities and use the modern amenities everyone else uses. Unless you think all those people will stay poor and underdeveloped for the next 50 years. I did however link to a Wikipedia article that lists the birth rates of Muslims, Christians and others.

You're implying that religion has something to do with it when it's the wrong factor to be looking at. The birth rates in Brazil and Philippines are high as well, but those are very Christian countries. Meanwhile Russia, arguably Christian (Orthodox) has a very low birth rate which drags down the average.

That article also shows declining birth rates in the Muslim world, which is to be expected as poverty and education issues are addressed.

> Those kids eventually move into the cities and use the modern amenities everyone else uses. Unless you think all those people will stay poor and underdeveloped for the next 50 years.

It really depends on the country in question and how stable their political future is. I can see Malaysia making big gains, but South Sudan and Syria still being a total mess.

There are some countries which were resource poor to start with and will never get ahead without some kind of political partnership, while others have huge, largely untapped sources of potential wealth.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#84

Post by chiefofgxbxl »

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…

This is why I'm so concerned about the trend that SUV sales are outpacing Sedan sales. Whereas sedans used to be the "default" car a decade ago, SUVs are now taking their place [0].

All things being equal, a smaller car (sedan) should get better MPG than a larger car (SUV) [1].

And yet it seems that people's efforts to reduce their environmental footprint is focused on recycling a plastic cup here and there [2].

A very general trend over the past few decades shows us that the price of gas / gallon has increased. So Americans' response to this is: I need to buy a bigger car? A pollution tax would certainly help but is far too big of a thing to accomplish in the short-term.

I've been contemplating a sort of "big car" tax for a number of reasons, and increased gasoline consumption / environmental impact is a key item on that list. (Non-environmental items include (1) the danger they pose to other drivers in smaller vehicles, and (2) the race-to-the-bottom condition no. 1 imposes, since more and more people will want larger vehicles when they feel threatened by the presence of large vehicles on the road, leading to a positive reinforcement cycle)

[0] http://www.driveprime.com/blog-suv-and-crossover-sales-outpa... [1] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=37918&i... [2] https://youtu.be/eNx9tvCrvv8?t=1m10s

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#86

Post by jackmott »

grondilu wrote: post #43

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 th…

>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.

Nonsense hand waving. Nobody has a coherent plan for how to "just" make that happen. The people who think they have a coherent plan haven't opened up excel or a napkin to do some preliminary math about the scale involved.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#87

Post by crush-n-spread »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #18

And in the USA, we are led by people who seem almost uniquely incapable of grappling with our societies hard problems. Sad.

Elon Musk leads America more than Donald Trump does, trust me. Don't get discouraged because Donny has become President. They hardly do anything interesting.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#88

Post by Daishiman »

grondilu wrote: post #43

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 th…

Hope without plans is useless. Hope is not a strategy. This is pretty much just prayer, and a grain of sand in the vastness of problems caused by climate change. Nothing to do with solving permafrost thawing, nothing do with solving the heat shock created by extreme climates, no solutions for ocean acidification.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#89

Post by pixl97 »

EGreg wrote: post #48
dota_fanatic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mil…

Self-sufficiency is rife with its own inefficiencies.

For example, using Mozarts timeframe and attempting it place it on our current planet leads to a situation where no logical comparison can be made. He is from around 1800, there were around 900 million people at the time. You could grow enough locally to feed the population locally in most places. This is no longer true. Mass transportation of food, water, and resources for survival are currently necessary.

The problem is not capitalism, the problem is people

Pretty much every living creature goes through stages of increased resource availability -> growth -> overshooting population capacity or resource reduction -> population reduction. As we can see, overpopulation of raccoons, antelopes, and alligators isn't caused by capitalism, it is caused by the biological imperative to breed -> consume -> breed -> consume. Furthermore your willingness to blame capitalism blinds you to knowledge and an impartial view of what is occurring. Such as, most first world capitalistic countries are experiencing population stagnation. Japan, US, and western Europe all have decreasing population, until you take immigration into account. Also many non-capitalistic countries have terrible problems with pollution (Russia anyone?), thereby again rendering your premise that capitalism is the problem. Blaming the wrong thing never fixed the problem, whipping boys don't lead to solutions.

Re: The Uninhabitable Earth

#90

Post by Brakenshire »

jackmott wrote: post #86
grondilu wrote: post #43

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 th…

>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. Nonsense hand waving. Nobody has a coherent plan for how to "just" make that happen. The people who think they have a coherent plan haven't opened up excel or a napkin to do some preliminary math about the scale involved.

One of the major problems we have is that this amazing carbon sink is being destroyed, there have been quite a few years where slash and burn in rainforests has competed with the burning of fuels as the major source of carbon emissions. We face a major challenge to halt that, but to actually reverse it entirely and aim for a radical recreation and expansion seems ambitious. My understanding was that rainforests take hundreds, perhaps thousands of years to develop.
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