Generative AI will tell us how to fix it, I wouldn't worry.
Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
171–180 of 224 posts
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
The truth is that whatever you or I do personally has no effect at all globally on this. That's also true of hundreds of global and international problems. The best approach is to accept that which you cannot change.
That's really not true, and we have the largest experiment on collective behaviour in history to show this. COVID lockdowns had an _enormous_ impact on carbon emissions. Everyone should fight to WFH, even if you hate it, because the benefit to reducing carbon emissions is known and significant.
But COVID lockdowns were not created by me or OP.
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The truth is that whatever you or I do personally has no effect at all globally on this. That's also true of hundreds of global and international problems. The best approach is to accept that which you cannot change.
I really dislike those arguments. It's like why bother voting, one vote does not change much. You can be conscious about your consumption and set great examples. Or you can decide you don't care and keep ordering stuff on amazon every day, shove meat and fish everyday in your mouth, change car every few years while flying regularly and pretend is somebody's else problem.
It's a fact, not an argument. Dislike it if you want, it's still true.
And yes, your or my individual vote will never determine an election. I know this and still vote.
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly believe engineers will solve this not politicians.
Either that or game over. Totally agree that humans cannot coordinate on this scale.
Well, yeah, there is also the chance that we don't solve it at all. I just don't think you can design a political solution to this. Other than mass killings and I'm not for that at all.
We have to develop technologies that improve our efficiencies and reduce our emissions.
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#175Does anyone have suggestions for how an individual can feel like they’re actually doing something. I already make donations to organizations that advocate for climate activism, vote at local and national level for candidates what support climate action, and in my own live I try to be conscious about the environment impacts or my lifestyle and purchases. Despite all that I still feel like I'm changing nothing. I still…
Daydream: Chain all the politicians to rocks within a foot of sea level, so they'll actually care. More practically, try to downsize your life and carbon footprint. Avoid the performative virtue of buying lots of "green" things. (Many goods like EV's have a huge carbon footprint to manufacture. And eco-tourism via airplane is right out.) And maybe donate to a non-profit or two that are trying to mitigate the harm tha…
Keep in mind that personal carbon footprint is an invention of fossil marketers, and a lot of that is intentionally ineffective distraction.
You can't build long-distance UHVDC power lines yourself. Really big changes can only be done at the state level. If you need a new car, an EV is still better than a new gas car, but having public transport and rail network is even more efficient. But you can't create a properly functioning well-funded transport system yourself.
As an individual the best you can do is insulate your house, and if you need heating, get a heat pump. Domestic heating/cooling energy use is significant, and needs to be electrified before it can be decarbonized.
Some things like rooftop solar panels + batteries do work, but that is offloading switching costs to individuals, while the fossil industry is still getting subsidies. Grid-scale solar farms and storage are more cost effective. Wind farms are even better, but you can't build ones tall enough in your backyard.
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Greta Thunberg probably felt helpless. But she turned that feeling into anger, and that anger into action. Serious question. What impact has she had? I haven't seen any changes from her actions. People knew about climate change before she came around. What changes did she create?
Serious answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg
There isn’t really any actionable changes listed there.
I have read her wikipedia page before:)
What changes has she caused that is listed on her Wikipedia page that are you referring?
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Trust in governments would evaporate I am unclear why anyone ever trusted government or believed government would be the avenue for resolution of this problem You either understand history, or you trust government, you can not both understand history and trust government.. The second people put their trust in government was the second humanity was fucked. In the best of time Government is like fire, is a troubleso…
> The purpose for government is to provide a framework for non-violent dispute resolution, and to safe guard natural rights and property), and maybe form a national defense force. Not to provide individual safety and security. Providing for national defense, non-violent dispute resolution, and protecting natural rights and property sounds an awful lot like "keeping us all safe". I'm not sure what else you think that…
Well in the context of this conversation it seems to be extended to solving climate change, and in other context it extends to personal defense (i.e the belief the police are a individual protection force) or to provide services like School, healthcare, etc etc etc...
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The purpose for government is to provide a framework for non-violent dispute resolution, and to safe guard natural rights and property), and maybe form a national defense force. Not to provide individual safety and security. Providing for national defense, non-violent dispute resolution, and protecting natural rights and property sounds an awful lot like "keeping us all safe". I'm not sure what else you think that…
Well in the context of this conversation it seems to be extended to solving climate change, and in other context it extends to personal defense (i.e the belief the police are a individual protection force) or to provide services like School, healthcare, etc etc etc...
In very general terms, I meant that the implicit social contract is that "If you follow the rules of society, you do not have to worry that you are going to randomly die." That could be in the sense of monopolizing physical force so that roving gangs can't kill you, or it could also be in the sense of ensuring that a random natural disaster doesn't kill you or you don't starve to death.
When that social contract is broken, people tend to ignore the other half of it, which is "if you follow the rules of society..." Empirically, it doesn't seem to matter whether the root cause is starvation or war or violence, the result is still civil disorder and anarchy - which usually just intensifies the survival challenges.
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really dislike those arguments. It's like why bother voting, one vote does not change much. You can be conscious about your consumption and set great examples. Or you can decide you don't care and keep ordering stuff on amazon every day, shove meat and fish everyday in your mouth, change car every few years while flying regularly and pretend is somebody's else problem.
It's a fact, not an argument. Dislike it if you want, it's still true. And yes, your or my individual vote will never determine an election. I know this and still vote.
Elections that are decided by a single vote are fairly common. If we looked at local elections, we could probably find more than every year. [0]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_close_election_resul...
Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
#180Soros is saying [1] if not solved withing ten years, it will cost exponentially more to restore the balance. Bellow in [1] there is a video proposing a device to recreate the albedo effect using see water. For Soros climate change is the biggest security thread, only after this he talks about wars and geopolitics. [1] https://www.georgesoros.com/2023/02/16/remarks-delivered-at-...
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