81–90 of 223 posts
Between natural disasters and weaponized weather modification (yes it still sounds crazy but it's becoming increasingly clear that it's a real thing), this is definitely a priority for a country like Japan.
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Adaptation without mitigation will not be effective as the impacts worsen. Uncapped emissions and business as usual scenarios will cause outcomes that we will not be able to build ourselves out of. We must reduce emissions and push for sustainable infrastructure and solutions, now. We must adapt and we must also mitigate. Only through the combination of both efforts and through our determination and willingness to le…
Nah, the problem is self-limiting. If global warming reduces the carrying capacity of the environment, people will die. Dead people don't use resources; their bodies are returned to the environment by decomposers, where they will provide fertilizer for trees and other plants, which will grow even more abundantly because of the enhanced CO2 levels. Eventually the earth reaches a new equilibrium at a somewhat higher te…
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It seems that we could be headed for a mass extinction, whether or not humans manage to survive thousands of years longer. We aren’t going to entirely destroy life on the planet, which will eventually recover great diversity (speciation to fill new ecological niches in some new stable equilibrium) within a few million years after we’re gone, but it will look significantly different than what we are familiar with. Tha…
This issue is too political for normal people to properly understand. I don't mean to offend you personally but there's little value in the feelings of someone who's been immersed in a social atmosphere of global warming propaganda, calls to action, and pressure to shut down dissenting voices. Even scientists can't safely publish work on positive effects of climate change or areas where it's not as bad as previously…
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The Big Dig may have been closer to the budget, except it kept getting changed. An example would be that they initially planned on shutting down certain routes until a politician decided to announce that traffic flow would not be disrupted. That's great if you're paid to model the traffic but probably not so great if you now have to pay the added expenses.
But that indicates the project was not planned well since change requests for such a large project would have been expected.
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The Big Dig may have been closer to the budget, except it kept getting changed. An example would be that they initially planned on shutting down certain routes until a politician decided to announce that traffic flow would not be disrupted. That's great if you're paid to model the traffic but probably not so great if you now have to pay the added expenses.
But that indicates the project was not planned well since change requests for such a large project would have been expected.
Notably: I only modeled traffic. I am not to blame. ;-)
(I have used that caveat so many times.)
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This doesn't add up to me. I can be one of the two people in a prisoner's dilemma scenario and fully acknowledge the reality that I might be heading to jail while still playing the selfish strategy of snitching. Just because you recognize that your personal actions won't affect the outcome as it pertains to you doesn't mean you can't recognize that the personal actions of a large number of other people will affect th…
This isn't prisoner's dilemma though - everyone has a full ability to communicate with each other. That breaks a pretty basic assumption. To stretch your analogy, you are playing prisoners dilemma with someone who is swearing he will snitch, has a lawyer who is saying "my client will cooperate fully with the police" and who has signed a document explaining the facts.
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yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip This. Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Telecommuting is a thing. Home-solar is a thing. Electric cars are a thing. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally,…
>Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally, now. This being effective seems contrary to everything we know about economics. If even a huge portion of people voluntary lower consumption or energy usage, it frees up that…
> You're just concerned about projecting the appearance
> that you care.
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It seems that we could be headed for a mass extinction, whether or not humans manage to survive thousands of years longer. We aren’t going to entirely destroy life on the planet, which will eventually recover great diversity (speciation to fill new ecological niches in some new stable equilibrium) within a few million years after we’re gone, but it will look significantly different than what we are familiar with. Tha…
This issue is too political for normal people to properly understand. I don't mean to offend you personally but there's little value in the feelings of someone who's been immersed in a social atmosphere of global warming propaganda, calls to action, and pressure to shut down dissenting voices. Even scientists can't safely publish work on positive effects of climate change or areas where it's not as bad as previously…
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Changing economic behavior with public campaigns has a pretty much zero success rate. Anyone remember Pres Ford's "WIP" buttons (Whip Inflation Now)? It had the hubris that inflation could be stopped if only people would just stop raising prices. Even as a kid, I laughed at the absurdity of that campaign. Of course it had zero effect. Something that will work is to tax pollution, i.e. a carbon tax. Making it more exp…
Changing economic behavior with public campaigns has a pretty much zero success rate. yet advertising and marketing happens.
The US feels more like a third world country in its "response" to climate change compared to countries like Japan