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I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

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Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#441

I never worried particularly much about climate change, but just to hedge my bets for my kids I moved to northern Europe. For the most part it's just equated to milder (= bearable) Winters and nicer summers up here. I guess we also spend a fair bit on moving to renewables up here - Finland achieved energy self sufficiency last year thanks to a good combination of nuclear + solar + hydro. If I were an ideologue in eit…

If shit hits the fan everywhere else but North Europe remains safe - will it be business as usual there? Won't hundreds of millions of people (or more) from India, China and Africa flee to to wherever is safe?

> If shit hits the fan everywhere else but North Europe remains safe - will it be business as usual there?

No, it will still suck, but it'll be the kind of suck you can survive without fleeing.

Unless the thermohaline circulation changes significantly, in which case the northern Mediterranean coast starts to look like Toronto, Paris starts to look like Vancouver, and Scandinavia starts to look like Anchorage.

> Won't hundreds of millions of people (or more) from India, China and Africa flee to to wherever is safe?

Yes, although in the case of China they'll probably flee to elsewhere in China, because it's huge.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#442

I no longer worry. I'm extremely pessimistic about the impending climate change. I believe Sabine isn't pessimistic enough about what to anticipate. Consider the tundra methane emissions and the explosive release of methane-hydrates from the oceans, along with water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas. The disaster looming over all ecosystems (a mass extinction event) that will happen in decades and the doom-phase could l…

I am glad that I survived oil outage, sour rain, the Ozone hole, mass famine because of overpopulation. All in a lifetime. I must have had sheer luck.

Yeah, but are you building a bunker in Hawaii? Because Mark Zuckerberg is building a bunker in Hawaii.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#443

I never worried particularly much about climate change, but just to hedge my bets for my kids I moved to northern Europe. For the most part it's just equated to milder (= bearable) Winters and nicer summers up here. I guess we also spend a fair bit on moving to renewables up here - Finland achieved energy self sufficiency last year thanks to a good combination of nuclear + solar + hydro. If I were an ideologue in eit…

I am puzzled by the usage of the word “ideologue” in a context of self preservation.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can put your fingers in your ears and say "la la la" all you want, it doesn't change the undeniable and objective truth. everybody knows the solution, *you* know the solution, it's just a hard pill to swallow so mental gymnastics are preferable. as a species we know that the overconsumption of resources is the problem. there are exactly zero valid arguments against that. anybody who claims that consuming less res…

It's not overconsumption, it's waste and pollution that are the problems. Cleaner technologies and policies are the solution. We could have decarbonized part of the economy already with nuclear power. Degrowth is not a viable alternative on a world that's still has a large number of people that need better standards of living, and will still be adding a couple billion to the population. There's no viable economic or…

it is overconsumption. for one, it would be much easier to need our needs with renewable energy sources if we just consumed less energy and weren't so wasteful with it. more to the point, energy is only one part of the problem. all the clean, free energy in the universe doesn't stop deforestation, overfishing, and other habitat loss and environmental damage from unsustainable agriculture as a result of overconsumption. solving the emissions issue doesn't count for much if all the ecosystems we rely on collapse and we starve to death anyway.

degrowth is the only thing that could work at all, the lack of compatible economic and political models that would be compatible with is exactly my point, which is why we will ultimately not solve the problem.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If shit hits the fan everywhere else but North Europe remains safe - will it be business as usual there? Won't hundreds of millions of people (or more) from India, China and Africa flee to to wherever is safe?

The plan appears to be massive gun turrets at every southern border at this rate.

You sure about that? The plan seems to be letting in anyone and everyone who says the magic words “asylum” or “refugee.”

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#446
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't we hypothesizing a situation where there is no (or a much reduced) Greenland ice sheet? I'm imagining "hey, look at all this bare rock that's suddenly available, and it's gonna take a couple of thousand years for erosion and lichen to develop soil here, so lets take a short cut". I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm saying it's a theoretically possible idea in the face of an extinction-level event.

Here is where you are incorrect in your anticipation. The amount of land usable for agriculture will be decreasing faster than the ice shields melt. The territory where the fertile soil is available will not be human-friendly for the entire season, if at all. You can't make people work at 50°C or even 45°C with 90° humidity. You can't breathe water... https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

But "usable for agriculture" implies "has soil" to me. We're talking about moving the soil to a more temperate zone, and we're not talking about the current population of the planet, we're talking about the human species surviving.

(I'm trying to find a sea rise map that looks right by eye and not having much luck. Here's the North Atlantic at 10m[1]. Surely that's not enough flooding?)

[1] https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/4/-10.3532/51.4503/?t...

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#447
post #409
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If climate change didn't affect humans we wouldn't care. Did we care when the skies started to glow at night due to air pollution and destroyed the ecology, or the importation of European honeybees, or effects of toxins on fauna. No it was "marvelous" a "triumph against nature". The ONLY question to most people is: what will happen to me from it, if it will, why me changing anything will help?

I’m not disagreeing. This is exactly how it is. I’m just saying that this way of thinking (not yours, but the one you describe) is depressing.

You can make it a bit less depressing by thinking on the scale of the universe. Life on this planet has at most a billion years left, after that it's gone even if humans never existed. Humans are likely the only species that can save anything from this planet for the trillion years of life that is possible in the universe after this planet is gone.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#448

I never worried particularly much about climate change, but just to hedge my bets for my kids I moved to northern Europe. For the most part it's just equated to milder (= bearable) Winters and nicer summers up here. I guess we also spend a fair bit on moving to renewables up here - Finland achieved energy self sufficiency last year thanks to a good combination of nuclear + solar + hydro. If I were an ideologue in eit…

This is an illusion. There is no safe place, you can’t escape the reality of global warming by moving to another place.

I want to move back to a farm/out of the city.

For sure for a lot of reasons like having space for a garden etc. but also i think its a lot more easier to survive there longer.

Alone the space in my flat limits me of having provisions etc.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#449
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was that story about a frog which was slowly boiled in a pot and didn't know it about it until it was too late? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7069279/

Funny how everyone always leaves out the part where in the original experiment, said frog's brain was removed before putting it in the pot :)

Well that only makes it even more relevant.
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