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Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

reuters.com

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Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#141

Post by thtthings »

Our planet needs to be viewed as and felt as a living entity. There needs to be a shift so we care for every living entity. Every plant, animal, human. Our values need to shift from material pursuits and those as a benchmark for happiness and success to how we treat one another and also other living beings.

Is there a website i can go to and check earth's health as a whole? Like we can check our own health. It would be good to have a place that lists our planets health against a bunch of vital signs

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#142

Post by anm89 »

Fede_V wrote: post #27

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…

As someone who agrees with your suggestion as to how serious climate change is, I've come to think asking individuals to change their behavior to fix the problem is actually counter productive.

People generally want to do the right thing and they want to matter whereas in my experience the average person is not a great systems thinker. So people are very receptive to calls to "be better" because it let's them fight for what they believe set in a framework where their actions matter at least to some degree.

The problem is, these are problems of scale and systems, and once people think they are fulfilling some responsibility they aren't going to pursue other solutions, at least as aggressively.

If we straight up told people: you are going to experience extreme pain within your life time due to climate change, and the only single thing you can do that matters is to put pressure on your government to attack these problems systematically, I think we'd get much better results.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#143

Post by ForHackernews »

acqq wrote: post #97
ForHackernews wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

That is somebody doing an incompetent summary of IPCC's Special Report "Global Warming of 1.5 °C -- an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels" https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ 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…

I don't think it's an inaccurate summary at all. You're objecting to the use of dramatic language, but the content is accurate:

Watts: "Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and “deadly heat” events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated."

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15...

"Limiting global warming to 1.5°C instead of 2°C could result in around 420 million fewer people being frequently exposed to extreme heatwaves, and about 65 million fewer people being exposed to exceptional heatwaves"

Watts: "If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050..."

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15...

"Limiting warming to 1.5°C implies reaching net zero CO2emissions globally around 2050 and concurrent deep reductions in emissions of non-CO2 forcers, particularly methane (high confidence) ... In comparison to a 2°C limit, the transformations required to limit warming to 1.5°C are qualitatively similar but more pronounced and rapid over the next decades (high confidence). 1.5°C implies very ambitious, internationally cooperative policy environments that transform both supply and demand "

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#144

Post by Fricken »

radicalbyte wrote: post #98
nextos wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We need to turn this amazing machine of capitalism we've created towards solving the problem. 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..

Capitalism is for solving problems of scarcity, and for that it worked quite well. It's quite useless for dealing with problems of abundance. All our biggest problems today are problems of abundance.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#145

Post by UglyToad »

overthemoon wrote: post #80
cardamomo wrote: post #65

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.

There are certainly rich people planning to sit out the worst effects, how widespread this is I don't know: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doo...

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#146

Post by graeme »

anm89 wrote: post #142
Fede_V wrote: post #27

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…

As someone who agrees with your suggestion as to how serious climate change is, I've come to think asking individuals to change their behavior to fix the problem is actually counter productive. People generally want to do the right thing and they want to matter whereas in my experience the average person is not a great systems thinker. So people are very receptive to calls to "be better" because it let's them fight f…

I tend to agree. We've had 30+ years of exhortations for individual action against climate change. Yet global emissions are the highest they've ever been.

Meanwhile, we haven't really tried an effective government policy. One that would replace other forms of taxation with a carbon tax.

We've only tried individual solutions, dabbling around the edges, carbon offsets, cap and trade. Manifestly they haven't reduced emissions.

People may indeed view individual action as a substitute for collective action. But we wouldn't ask people to increase government revenue by making donations.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#147

Post by anigbrowl »

bdamm wrote: post #91
bloopernova wrote: post #44

I weep for the life my 19 year old stepdaughter will have.

Current 19 year olds have not much to worry about. Remember it's 2-4 deg C by the end of the century along with a sea level rise of perhaps 1m. It's her grandchildren that are truly going to suffer. Of course, nobody knows how long the current status quo can last in the face of climate change.

This whole story is about melting permafrost that wasn't expected to that until close to the year 2100 but which is instead happening now. Evidence is accumulating that such things are happening faster than anticipated, perhaps considerably faster.

Also, you're really not thinking even your own remarks through. If a person is 19 now, they could conceivably be alive by the end of the century.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#148

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

akvadrako wrote: post #135
lexpar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope you'll change your mind, specifically about that last sentence. Probably billions of the world's poorest people are likely to see their environment become unlivable. That's not a problem a little AC and migration will easily solve. Just look how poorly rich countries are reacting to the current levels of migration from less rich countries.

I'm not going to change my mind just because of mindless downvotes. If you want to show that global warming could cause the end of the human race, you have to give some plausible argument.

I think there's a difference in what people consider "bad" - millions or billions dying from disaster or their regions becoming uninhabitable isn't the extinction the human race, but for me it's at the threshold of "bad" that I'd like to do something about it. Am I worried about all the human race being eradicated? No, we're cockroaches. But I'd rather untold numbers don't have to suffer.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#149

Post by Balgair »

overthemoon wrote: post #80
cardamomo wrote: post #65

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.

History guides us well in this fallacy. No matter the wealth or influence of a person, we're all just humans in the end.

Look at Carthage [0], it was 100 years before major settlements began after their bronze-age war. No ammount of wealth saved their elites.

Look at the Zone Rouge [1] and the ecological effects we still see today. That land is just outside of Paris and used to be some of the most beautiful in Europe before the first modern war. Now it is toxic.

Look at Chernobyl or Fukushima. Radiation cares not for your credit card color.

True, in some of these instances, the wealthy could and did flee. But they had to flee to escape and could not stay. When the whole world is a Zone Rouge, where can they flee to? For how long? Time and again we see that it is not long at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Carthage

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#150

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

giarc wrote: post #71
masterjack wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but photosynthesis doesn’t generate energy but the opposite: it takes in energy from the sun in order to reverse the reaction

It does generate energy, stored in the form of carbohydrates.

It stores the energy it got from other sources, it doesn't generate it itself.
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