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Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

theguardian.com

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Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#231

Post by tomp »

jacquesm wrote: post #32

After seeing the global chaotic response to COVID I'm convinced that climate change will not receive a meaningful response until it is way too late. It apparently needs to hit the majority of the planet right in the gut (and then preferably the wealthy part) for people to get off their collective asses and do something about it. I'm just about ready to pack it in and hope the next generation is smarter than this one…

Silly question, but: what have you done? Have you stopped flying & driving a car? Do you not use iPhone and eat bananas to minimize global transport emissions? What’s your energy usage compared to 1, 5, 10 years ago?

The “climate industry” is full of people loudly proclaiming they’re holier than thou, but realistically there are few serious global solution except basically going back to pre-industrial world. Thanks but no thanks, I’d rather bet on technological breakthroughs in the next few decades.

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#232

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tomcooks wrote: post #72
Permit wrote: post #36

I often hear that as individuals we can't really be held responsible for climate change and that instead we should look to our government to impose laws that restrict carbon output. This made me curious: what is the "fair" amount of carbon dioxide that the average individual can emit? According to this article[1][2] published in Nature it looks like the answer is 1.61 metric tons of CO2/year. That strikes me as close…

>In order to reach 1.61 metric tons an individual would not be able to own a gas-powered car, could not regularly consume meat, could not live in remote areas only visitable by plane etc. Many things people don't even consider "luxuries" (like visiting family overseas) would be a non-starter. So literally what was normal life in Europe up to the 80's, even 90s for some regions. It's not difficult to imagine how to ac…

Are electric planes physically impossible or just not realistic with current oil prices and no carbon tax?

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#233

Post by cloudfifty »

rayiner wrote: post #182
matttproud wrote: post #5

Makes me look back at the last 20-30 years of discourse in the United States and let out a deep sigh. Had CFC propellants emerged today, I highly doubt the U.S. would have been a signatory to the Montreal Protocol — just to own the libs or avoid hindering the market by a boogeyman of 0.0001% overhead or some other form of contrarian political identity differentiation.

C’mon, man, be forthright. It’s not a “boogeyman of 0.0001% overhead.” I agree that conservative aversion to addressing climate change is a problem. But the other side isn’t proposing minor tax increases here. A very vocal front sees this as an opportunity to do all the things the socialists and central planners wanted anyway, while spending tens of trillions of dollars. When climate change is tied together with ever…

> A very vocal front sees this as an opportunity to do all the things the socialists and central planners wanted anyway

What if they're right? Should we all go down with the ship just to maintain some sort of dogmatic pride in our preferred economic system?

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#234

Post by jjk166 »

WJW wrote: post #175
jacquesm wrote: post #32

After seeing the global chaotic response to COVID I'm convinced that climate change will not receive a meaningful response until it is way too late. It apparently needs to hit the majority of the planet right in the gut (and then preferably the wealthy part) for people to get off their collective asses and do something about it. I'm just about ready to pack it in and hope the next generation is smarter than this one…

I love the optimism here, everyone always states this like the tipping point is sure to be in the future. TBH, it seems equally likely to me that the last year we could seriously avoid major climate change was in the early 1990s.

Climate change is not a binary "no harm" vs "worst case" situation where you cross some magical tipping point from one to the other. It is a continuum where the more damage you do, the worse things will be. Even if we are already doomed to some major troubles in the future, there is never a point where it makes sense to give up because it can't get any worse - it can always get worse.

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#235

Post by _y5hn »

rationalist2948 wrote: post #202

There is a lot of hand wringing, worrying, blaming about evil, short sighted, negligent, irresponsible humans doing serious damage to the environment and the planet and causing disastrous, dangerous, destructive world wide climate change, global warming, rising sea levels, etc. There is no end of what we can worry about, e.g., Yellowstone erupting, another Krakatoa, having the atmosphere of the earth blown off by the…

When you accept evidence it'll already be 20-30 years too late.

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#236

Post by tomp »

jlos wrote: post #177
jacquesm wrote: post #32

After seeing the global chaotic response to COVID I'm convinced that climate change will not receive a meaningful response until it is way too late. It apparently needs to hit the majority of the planet right in the gut (and then preferably the wealthy part) for people to get off their collective asses and do something about it. I'm just about ready to pack it in and hope the next generation is smarter than this one…

There is simply no simple way to address Climate Change like there was with CFC's in the 90s. - 1/3 of emissions come China which has an autocratic leadership accountable neither to its people or the global community. - 70% of emissions come from energy consumption. 35% of all emissions is electricity and heat, and another 15% is construction + manufacturing. - Even if every mode of transportation was fully electric…

Revenue neutral carbon taxes are by far the best solution.

They’re in fact very progressive - the poor consume less than the rich, and rich “hobbies” have greater proportional CO2 emissions - think supercars, yachting, flying business or private. So the poor will receive more in CO2 “income” than they’ll pay in CO2 tax.

The only difficulty is border control - how to prevent manufacturers simply escaping to CO2-tax-free jurisdictions and importing the finished goods - but with free trade getting a bad rep, maybe viable solutions will emerge.

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#237

Post by jacquesm »

tomp wrote: post #231
jacquesm wrote: post #32

After seeing the global chaotic response to COVID I'm convinced that climate change will not receive a meaningful response until it is way too late. It apparently needs to hit the majority of the planet right in the gut (and then preferably the wealthy part) for people to get off their collective asses and do something about it. I'm just about ready to pack it in and hope the next generation is smarter than this one…

Silly question, but: what have you done? Have you stopped flying & driving a car? Do you not use iPhone and eat bananas to minimize global transport emissions? What’s your energy usage compared to 1, 5, 10 years ago? The “climate industry” is full of people loudly proclaiming they’re holier than thou, but realistically there are few serious global solution except basically going back to pre-industrial world. Thanks b…

What I've done:

- designed and built a house on renewable energy

- designed and built a windmill

Unfortunately both of these I have had to abandon, the former because it is on the wrong continent compared to where I am today, the latter because of permitting hassles.

- I do have the maximum surface of the roof covered in solar panels, a good 2500W peak.

- transport myself everywhere I can using bicycle / e-bike (- eat very little - hardly any, actually - meat / poultry / fish

That still leaves a ton of room for improvement but as long as I'm living in my current situation I personally can't do a whole lot more for a variety of reasons, and I would if I could.

I have fortunately been able to stop flying completely, all of our work is now remote and we are pushing hard to keep it that way (when before our customers demanded on site visits all over europe).

Compared to 1 year ago my energy usage is probably about half, compared to 10 years ago it is probably less than 25% because this is a much more temperate climate.

So, what have you done?

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#238

Post by kktkti9 »

lazide wrote: post #68
jacquesm wrote: post #32

After seeing the global chaotic response to COVID I'm convinced that climate change will not receive a meaningful response until it is way too late. It apparently needs to hit the majority of the planet right in the gut (and then preferably the wealthy part) for people to get off their collective asses and do something about it. I'm just about ready to pack it in and hope the next generation is smarter than this one…

We’re inundated with folks screaming about danger and hyping up fear from every angle - everything from economic collapse, to stock market crashes, to apocalyptic visions from every angle about climate, etc. And what most people, especially younger folks, don’t realize is that it’s AlWAYS been this way. And most of the time, when something does blow up, there wasn’t a clear or unambiguous difference between the thing…

We’ve had empirical measure of industry related climate change since the 1860s hidden away by industry, who continued to be confirm through private research over and over.

If our math models can predict the Higgs decades before it’s experimentally discovered, why is a math model from the 70s confirming society will implode in the 2040s any less reliable? Same correct order of operations. Reconfirmed recently by better trained experts.

Unfortunately your “always been this” way is problematic nowadays since humans weren’t always capable of annihilating themselves. A whole lot of their imagined scenarios rightly were bullshit. Previous generations left behind rock and stone buildings, some sludge at worst.

We’re leaving behind an industrial mess and a melted planet.

Now is a very different point in time.

Earth will go on with or without us. If the answer is shrug it off, well that won’t work as a majority get anxious. Nihilism risks social stability and solution seeking. If a bunch of people aren’t going to care, why support society? Let’s all just go tribal now.

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#239

Post by handrous »

tablespoon wrote: post #160
throw0101a wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Makes me look back at the last 20-30 years of discourse in the United States and let out a deep sigh. George H.W. Bush ("Bush 41") actually had a decent track record on the environment and climate change: * https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/george-h-w-bush-underst... The craziness with the GOP started more recently (post-1990s).

> The craziness with the GOP started more recently (post-1990s). IIRC, you can date that phase to 1994 and Newt Gingrich. Though that was maybe more like phase II, with phase I starting in ~1980 with Reagan.

Yep. The late 70s and early 80s mark the beginning of several strategies, policies, and chess moves that paid off big time in the 90s.

The neoliberal movement gained a major presence in the Republican Party at the beginning of that span, and by the early 90s it had also captured the Democrats.

The Fairness Doctrine fell, and its absence was quickly exploited. The ball took a while to get rolling, but was moving fast by the early 90s.

Economic libertarianism saw some important activity near the beginning of that span, and its very confident anti-government and laissez-faire positions and language became very influential through the 90s, and it continues to grow.

The fusion of the GOP and evangelical Christianity became (very deliberately) much more solid in the late 70s and the 80s.

Basically the Republicans began in a bunch of ways to shift toward their 2rd major re-organization and re-orientation since WWII in a short span of years around 1980, with the 90s being when they'd pretty much finished that shift. They may be working on a 3rd one now, which we may end up backdating to the Tea Party movement (that time being this incarnation's "~1980" turning point). We'll see, depends how the next 5-10 years goes, may amount to nothing.

As a side-effect (or bonus, to those behind it) the Democrats ended up having their 2nd major change in the same period, too (to solidly pro-neoliberal). AFAI can tell they're not starting their next serious shift, yet.

Re: Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Gulf Stream

#240

Post by Nimitz14 »

jacquesm wrote: post #237
tomp wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly question, but: what have you done? Have you stopped flying & driving a car? Do you not use iPhone and eat bananas to minimize global transport emissions? What’s your energy usage compared to 1, 5, 10 years ago? The “climate industry” is full of people loudly proclaiming they’re holier than thou, but realistically there are few serious global solution except basically going back to pre-industrial world. Thanks b…

What I've done: - designed and built a house on renewable energy - designed and built a windmill Unfortunately both of these I have had to abandon, the former because it is on the wrong continent compared to where I am today, the latter because of permitting hassles. - I do have the maximum surface of the roof covered in solar panels, a good 2500W peak. - transport myself everywhere I can using bicycle / e-bike ( - e…

The only thing that would actually make a difference is going full nuclear.

But the greens put a stop to that, so I find it hard to take them - and anyone else who, like you, writes paragraphs about things that in reality do not matter - seriously.

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