91–100 of 251 posts
I weep for the life my 19 year old stepdaughter will have.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> voting exclusively on how credible a politician is on tackling global warming This is really the only important thing that we can do. Except maybe not flying in an airplane, there is little the average person can do in their daily life to inhibit climate change. Whether due to preventive policies or due to resource shortages our lives will change in the near future. Expecting individuals to shame themselves when th…
I agree. Your individual actions won't have much impact, except the aggregate effect on politics. Politics is so short sighted that unless there's huge pressure from the masses nothing will be done, or just too little too late. Even if the Science backing up Climate Change wasn't solid, which I think it is, what's the alternative? Take a gamble? The Roman Civilization probably collapsed because, among other things, t…
Here's an interesting article about it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...
The key factor, apparently, was "... an enormous spasm of volcanic activity in the 530s and 540s CE, unlike anything else in the past few thousand years. This violent sequence of eruptions triggered what is now called the ‘Late Antique Little Ice Age,’ when much colder temperatures endured for at least 150 years."
(New theories should always be taken with a grain of salt, but I found it interesting either way.)
The oft-quoted opening of David Wallace-Wells's "The Uninhabitable Earth" comes to mind. Reviews have generally only included his first sentence: "It is worse, much worse, than you think." Here is his entire opening paragraph: > It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and comes to us bundled with sev…
Curious about what he means by "that wealth can be a shield against the ravages of warming". That is--I can see a case for the wealth of a nation not being a shield for every citizen, but I wonder whether the very rich could weather climate change for a long time. But I suppose that's not the same thing as being totally unaffected.
* precious metal and fossil fuels, etc
* seeds, canned goods, grain reserves
* Buildings, wells, physical infrastructure on the land
* tools etc that last through time
Money is only useful to the extent it can buy things. If civilization collapses, then that's a destruction of wealth.
If output merely diminishes, that's also a destruction of wealth. It will still be better to be rich than to be poor, but even the rich depend on what society produces.
Global warming is the single scariest existential threat our species has ever faced, and we aren't doing nearly enough to tackle it. Our future descendants will heap scorn and curses on our generation, and we deserve every bit of it. Every politician that refuses to do what is necessary or finds it convenient to play stupid language games about 'settled science' is doing incalculable harm. As citizens, I encourage ev…
Of the top of my head, asteroids, bio weapons, disease, the Sun, AI and authoritarianism are more serious. Especially AI - not being the dominate species anymore will be dangerous. But 10°C more? That just requires AC and migration.
Global warming is the single scariest existential threat our species has ever faced, and we aren't doing nearly enough to tackle it. Our future descendants will heap scorn and curses on our generation, and we deserve every bit of it. Every politician that refuses to do what is necessary or finds it convenient to play stupid language games about 'settled science' is doing incalculable harm. As citizens, I encourage ev…
The oft-quoted opening of David Wallace-Wells's "The Uninhabitable Earth" comes to mind. Reviews have generally only included his first sentence: "It is worse, much worse, than you think." Here is his entire opening paragraph: > It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and comes to us bundled with sev…
Curious about what he means by "that wealth can be a shield against the ravages of warming". That is--I can see a case for the wealth of a nation not being a shield for every citizen, but I wonder whether the very rich could weather climate change for a long time. But I suppose that's not the same thing as being totally unaffected.
Please don't take this as snark -- I'm dead serious. There are climate change deniers who will point to this as support of their position. "See, those climate scientists' predictions are always wrong." The fact is the IPCC is well aware of the political headwinds it faces and its reports are conservative -- they have always underestimated the likely outcome because it is hard enough to get sign-off on even that, plus…
"The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC" - https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433 It’s been a couple of weeks now since the IPCC report came out. You know what it says. If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort “without historical precedent”— if we start right now , and never let up on the throttle— we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emiss…
Published 2018. Just to quote the few actual lines from the report summary:
"A.1 Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. (high confidence) (Figure SPM.1) {1.2}"
"A.2 Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C (medium confidence). (Figure SPM.1) {1.2, 3.3, Figure 1.5}"
"A.3 Climate-related risks for natural and human systems are higher for global warming of 1.5°C than at present, but lower than at 2°C (high confidence). These risks depend on the magnitude and rate of warming, geographic location, levels of development and vulnerability, and on the choices and implementation of adaptation and mitigation options (high confidence). (Figure SPM.2) {1.3, 3.3, 3.4, 5.6}"
And so on.
As you see, very precise and very conservative. It is about what will happen between 10 and 30 years from now, due to the emissions that the humanity is just going to make (see A.2 quoted -- what was already emitted is not what is going to raise the average temperature for the next half a degree).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> voting exclusively on how credible a politician is on tackling global warming This is really the only important thing that we can do. Except maybe not flying in an airplane, there is little the average person can do in their daily life to inhibit climate change. Whether due to preventive policies or due to resource shortages our lives will change in the near future. Expecting individuals to shame themselves when th…
I agree. Your individual actions won't have much impact, except the aggregate effect on politics. Politics is so short sighted that unless there's huge pressure from the masses nothing will be done, or just too little too late. Even if the Science backing up Climate Change wasn't solid, which I think it is, what's the alternative? Take a gamble? The Roman Civilization probably collapsed because, among other things, t…
That requires strong political leadership and buy in.
American needs to turn back into the country represented by Captain America. They need to be leaders again, instead of acting like they're being run by one of those infant English kings from the Middle Ages..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're all dead. And you have no idea. Such panic. Seriously. We'll be fine. We'll grow to 20 billion before the population declines. Humanity will adapt. The planet has been through far worse extinction events. This one isn't even remotely impressive compared to the others. Humanity will be fine. And every single generation will keep whining about "WOE IS US, THE END IS NEAR!" for all eternity. I believe in climat…
"This one isn't even remotely impressive compared to the others." This one is provoked by your mindset and it is going to make life unsustainable for everyone you know. It is called science bitch. "I believe in climate change" Do you also believe in gravity ?
I think I'll just avoid climate change threads here from now on, they're the /r/politics of HN.
This phenomenon is curious, in a morbid sort of way. There is literally no way to stop it; we are, as Noam Chomsky fears, a lethal mutation. We developed the ability to create industrial and economic activity on such a scale, and with such sophistication, that we've overcome the planet's ability to cope, but we have no mechanism in place that seems remotely capable of remedying that situation without a global catastr…
Oh darn, I was counting on my immortality.