101–110 of 214 posts
Launch solar shade! @ Sea levels drop.
a) We can't b) What secondary / tertiary / ... / n-th order effects would that have? I'm guessing you don't know.
Anyone whom wants actual facts ought to watch Paul Beckwith out of University of Ottawa on YT for detailed updates and analysis on climate change.
Couldn't one try to at least limit the feedback loop by spreading sulfur over the affected regions by plane? (Simulating a volcanic eruption that reflects sunlight)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc. Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.
Have we ever done something that requires global agreement?
I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on) could save our way of life. "Sooner and worse than expected" is a phrase I expect to hear with increasing frequency.
"I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on) could save our way of life." If such feedback loops could be that dire and unavoidable, then they would already have happened direly and unavoidably. It has been this warm before, in the not-th…
The Holocene Climate Optimum is the nearest thing in the last few hundred thousand years and it wasn't anywhere near this warm globally. What it did do though is melt the Laurentide ice sheet, dramatically raising global sea levels. But the ice sheet protected the North American continental tundra. Nowadays there's no ice sheet there any more to absorb the heat and stop the tundra melting and releasing its CO2 and methane.
Look up the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum though. That's the nearest equivalent episode to what's happening now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc. Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.
Have we ever done something that requires global agreement?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recommend you read "Money: The Unauthorized Biography [0]" You'll never look at money the same way again. Money is not a commodity even though we treat it as such. It certainly is not a finite resource. Plenty of money gets created everyday for thing far more stupid than trying to save the world. Look at how much money has been created (and will be spent) for no good reason at all in the current cryptocoin bubble.…
Actually.. Original money was just a highly marketable commodity. Salt, spices, gold, cigarettes in prison. I highly suggest a better biography of currency. Maybe something authored by one of those pesky Austrians.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc. Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.
This isn't a flaw in the species. It's a consequence of game theory and evolution and would likely be found in any species that was a product of evolution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need to invent fusion like yesterday and use that to power efforts to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
I'm a big proponent of huge increases in funding for fusion research. But I think a better "extreme measures" project to mitigate global warming is the space sunshade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The destruction of civilization will probably cap our ability to do further significant damage. If not, then our extinction surely will.
Nobody believes that global warming will cause the literal extinction of the human race. The scientific consensus is that sea levels will rise by a couple feet over the next 2 hundred years. That's the science. Doesn't sound like doomsday to me.