The sci-fi writer in me envisions a story about a future where humans exist, and there is only one species of fish in the ocean, and everyone is sick of eating it.
The unused parts of the script of James Cameron’s Avatar are interesting. Everyone is forced to eat algae.
Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
101–110 of 127 posts
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#102Is it just me, or does it seem like there is big business to be had in climate change and climate denial? A lot of money appears to be flowing into these two camps.
The decidability factor is exploited by the side with skin in the game. Those that would be bankrupted by expensive restrictions on behavior, or restrictions designed to prevent such business entirely, know that they can point to unpreventable externalities like caldera volcanos and extinction event asteroids as a means to arm consumers with a toolkit to rationalize hedonism.
As if to say, live well now, because what if any of these other catastrophies strike, and obviate your life savings and insurance policies. You could have spent that money on good times today, but living with your means, and planning for a future that possibly doesn’t exist will leave you kicking yourself during the rapture.
The other side also has existential skin in the game, in the sense that a destroyed inhospitable biosphere is the figurative eating of our only free lunch, and understands the optics of the decision, but hasn’t come up with selfish motives to prey upon the undisciplined weakness of the unwashed masses. Mostly because such principles of psychological exploitation for personal gain (the joy of living in a world where the ice caps don’t melt and unleash category six hurricanes on a monthly basis in every quadrant of the world) are unrelatable to their own motivations to good conduct.
This asymmetry of operations means an unfair fight, and thus a waiting game, each biding everyone’s time until it’s too late, but undeniable.
Until then, the level of money poured into this system is only equalized by the perception of threat on the part of the hedonists. The more they feel threatened, the more they spend to fight the shadow of the obvious truth that will ultimate rob them of all inaction anyway. They aren’t even fighting their do-gooder counterpart. They’re fighting their own capacity to continue typical behavior, with diminishing returns. Shooting themselves in the foot, to maintain a gun collection of foot guns.
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#103I met a coral researcher last year who said we just have to get over the fact that it’s all over for coral as it exists now, and try to learn as much as possible from it so we can re-design it later ourselves. They were very calm about this suggesting they were way past the grieving period. It was quite shocking to me.
There’s a gq/esquire or rolling stone article on depression in the climate sciences. I remember a researcher who described leaving America and heading to a Nordic country to raise his children- because he said its hopeless and this is the only shot his child would have. He gave up on the subject. There’s other parts which describe the number of students who leave the field because of how bleak the data is. If there’s…
These folks won't be missed for the most part. "Climate science" (note the quotes) will probably benefit greatly once most of the borderline psych cases have left the field.
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now you're just repeating propaganda. > it's inane... India is almost as populous as China, but its coal usage is similar to the U.S., i.e. about 25% that of China. > actively fighting against one (the US) The U.S. is aggressively reducing coal usage. Here are two charts: (Fig. 13) https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/report/can-coal-m... http://ieefa.org/global-coal-consumption-down-an-additional-... In the fi…
> India is almost as populous as China What does India have to do with anything? Yes, India uses even less carbon per capita than the US or China! Good for India! It'd be awesome if both China and the US could bring their carbon production per capita down to India's level, or even lower. As for the situation in the US: the latter of your sources is conveniently from 2015, before the US elected a president who campaig…
> What does India have to do with anything?
Come on dude, fine that we disagree but don't keep deflecting. You've twice given China a pass due solely to its population. India is proof that you can have well over a billion people without 4x the coal consumption of the USA. The exact thing you called "inane."
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#105I met a coral researcher last year who said we just have to get over the fact that it’s all over for coral as it exists now, and try to learn as much as possible from it so we can re-design it later ourselves. They were very calm about this suggesting they were way past the grieving period. It was quite shocking to me.
I generally noticed a recent change in tone of reports and documentaries regarding environmental issues towards admitting defeat. In terms of software engineering - we aren't going to refactor our society and economy - instead we'll deploy monkey patches, work-arounds and flashy new features until somehow the plug gets pulled.
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ocean acidification frightens me more than climate change. Moving Miami is doable. Look at how fast Dubai was built. Sea walls and flood control are also things we know how to do. Ocean ecosystem collapse could be absolutely catastrophic and there is no mitigation.
In theory if you could mix the oceans faster (I know lol), you could begin dissolving the deposited calcium carbonate at the bottom and buffering the oceans with even more bicarbonate ions. Unfortunately this happens naturally on the time scale of centuries, which is super fast for geology but not great news for corals.
Maybe if we all collect our unused and expired baking soda...
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a gq/esquire or rolling stone article on depression in the climate sciences. I remember a researcher who described leaving America and heading to a Nordic country to raise his children- because he said its hopeless and this is the only shot his child would have. He gave up on the subject. There’s other parts which describe the number of students who leave the field because of how bleak the data is. If there’s…
These folks won't be missed for the most part. "Climate science" (note the quotes) will probably benefit greatly once most of the borderline psych cases have left the field.
I think this was the article - https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-s...
See if this matches your idea of
"borderline psych cases"
> As a leading climatologist who spent many years studying the Arctic at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State, Box knew that ...
>Jeffrey Kiehl was a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research when he became so concerned about the way the brain resists climate science, he took a break and got a psychology degree. Ten years of research later, he's concluded that consumption and growth have become so central to our sense of personal identity and the fear of economic loss creates such numbing anxiety, we literally cannot imagine making the necessary changes. Worse, accepting the facts threatens us with a loss of faith in the fundamental order of the universe. Climate scientists are different only because they have a professional excuse for detachment, and usually it's not until they get older that they admit how much it's affecting them—which is also when they tend to get more outspoken, Kiehl says. "You reach a point where you feel—and that's the word, not think, feel—'I have to do something.' "
Doesn't match mine.
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In a free market setting, nuclear is not going to be cheap. Costs haven't stopped Germany trying to jump ship to solar, and that hasn't turned out half as well as France from an economic or environmental perspective. Australia is one close election away from the Greens pushing something similar on to us. Australia is composed of unusually large, flat, desolate geotechnically stable areas. We produce large amounts o…
What does nuclear power have to do with the coral reefs? As far is know, it was ocean acidification which is killing corals, and then run off/pollution?
Not a huge amount; but I got riled up reading "the far-rights are ... maintaining Australia's CO2 emission levels". I sometimes get called far right in political discussion, and as far as I'm concerned Australia has a perfectly good option to lower CO2 emissions that is being blocked by the far left. I want to see more nuclear power stations, they look like a good idea to me.
There is a big coal mine in the works (Adani) and any outflows from that mine have some potential to add further stress to the reef ecosystem, so coal v. nuclear might be tangentially related there.
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing that I do know is that wind and solar have more installations and lower cost than every projection. So they're projected to not be enough... eh?
Indeed. It's awesome that they are beating projections, but even so, the rate is far below what is needed to decarbonize the energy sector by mid-century which is what we need to keep warming below 2C.
It is? That's because we aren't spending very much on wind+solar, because the projections said that the wind+solar industry couldn't grow fast enough. It's all circular reasoning.
Me, I'm for spending more on what's working.
Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
These folks won't be missed for the most part. "Climate science" (note the quotes) will probably benefit greatly once most of the borderline psych cases have left the field.
I think this was the article - https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-s... See if this matches your idea of "borderline psych cases" > As a leading climatologist who spent many years studying the Arctic at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State, Box knew that ... >Jeffrey Kiehl was a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research when he became so concerned ab…
Thanks for the link (I will read it shortly), but I was specifically referring to folks who go around spreading the "OMG, climate change - we're all doomed!" mantra, which is borderline psychotic thinking. But it's basically one ("Repent ye, for the end is nigh!") which has historically been quite effective, as thousands of years of fear-based religious-type dogma will attest.
Frankly, at this point I'm not sure what I'm more puzzled by: that so many people seem to be falling for this stuff, or that more people aren't calling it out for what it is.
PS: Oops! Turns out that I already read this long ago (I thought it sounded kind of familiar), but I may read it again just for laughs. Even though the story has a "JUL 20, 2018" date on it, it's actually several years old now. Places like Esquire must be getting kind of desperate if they're recycling old stories like this one.
"This story was published in the August 2015 issue of Esquire."