We're doomed. News like this drains my motivation to do anything at all, because it might all be for nothing anyway.
World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
41–50 of 160 posts
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#42I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.
Why can't humanity survive an increase in 10 degrees? I understand polar bears or other animals that need specific levels of Ice or vegetation in specific areas, but humans are an extremely adaptive species. Edit: I'm getting a lot of responses. It seems like there is a general misunderstanding of what happened during the previous ice age. Humans existed during the previous ice age and humanity survived a major incre…
Human beings as a species surviving seems possible. The modern world economy surviving seems much less likely. And without a modern economy then much of the population will die.
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#43We're doomed. News like this drains my motivation to do anything at all, because it might all be for nothing anyway.
What is it exactly for?
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#44I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.
New technologies have not helped yet. Just covered part of increased demand. So it doesn't seem like technology is going to save us. It is all just distraction. Only way is one that will never happen: de-growth.
Per-capita emissions of most developed nations like the US and Germany peaked in the 1970s and 80s. Some of the "improvement" has been the outsourcing of polluting industries, but we are also more efficient today than we were back then. Agriculture evolved a lot, buildings became a lot more energy efficient, waste management improved, etc.
Of course for decades this has been offset by population growth even in those nations. And that's not accounting for the parts of the world where populations exploded due to better agriculture, medicine and trade. If we had time to let it play out for another 200 years without climate issues we might be fine. Sadly we don't.
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#45I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.
Dealing with very complex and large systems is hard, probably harder than our knowledge will be capable of this century, even if we keep accelerating. That is the world system, climate, life, cycles, feedback loops, and many other things that we probably are not aware yet (just check the number of recent discoveries to have a hint) as a very complex and interrelated system. Trying to have an "engineering" there and n…
> Trying to have an "engineering" there and not just messing with it to see what happens is beyond our capabilities.
That's what we're doing with the CO2 emissions though. So it's not beyond us, we just do it badly.
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you connect the dots a bit more than that? To me this just sounds like self-serving hand-waving.
Technological innovation allows the same amount of consumption with far less collateral impact. For example, before AC, electrification required 1000x more wire than it does now. Streets were covered in poles and electrical wire. Cars produced far more and worse pollution. Every technological innovation in the aim of efficiency reduces the negative collateral impact of human civilization. Likewise, more recently, the…
Technological innovation improved our lives and reduced negative impact on humans, without improving the long term prospect environment wise.
Plastics are an example of this: it helps us first and formost, and the rest of the ecosystem is worse for it.
Acceleratibg that trend doesn't help IMHO.
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#47I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.
New technologies have not helped yet. Just covered part of increased demand. So it doesn't seem like technology is going to save us. It is all just distraction. Only way is one that will never happen: de-growth.
Is degrowth even enough to save the planet from warming? Imagine 95% of people on earth magically disappeared. Have we already emitted enough co2 that the atmosphere will continue to warm for a long time even without those people’s new emissions?
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#48We're doomed. News like this drains my motivation to do anything at all, because it might all be for nothing anyway.
I truly agree. What's the point of learning JS when the Internet might collapse in the next 3 years?
Not sci-fi. Center of Spain is in severe drought at this early point of the year. People can't take showers. What will next year be?
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#49Like most media coverage, the article omits the primary cause of the recent acceleration in warming - desulphurization of ship fuel
“ the IMO2020 fuel change cut cloud tracks in key shipping lanes by half...this has a substantial effect on warming, concentrated in areas with heavy shipping activity like the North Atlantic. The reduction in reflective cloud cover over this region, plus an unrelated reduction in reflective airborne dust levels, can account for most of the warming observed in the North Atlantic”
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/low-sulfur-fuel-r...
Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year
#50I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.
Why can't humanity survive an increase in 10 degrees? I understand polar bears or other animals that need specific levels of Ice or vegetation in specific areas, but humans are an extremely adaptive species. Edit: I'm getting a lot of responses. It seems like there is a general misunderstanding of what happened during the previous ice age. Humans existed during the previous ice age and humanity survived a major incre…
Because it wouldn't be just a 10 degree (not sure where this number is coming from) average increase. It's a 10 degree average as calculated across an entire world full of extremes.
A 10 degree average is a huge increase in energy in the system, and that energy will be expressed in all sorts of ways. It'll be colder in winter due to an erratic jetstream pulling cold air down further than ever before, hurricanes will be bigger because of all that extra energy, summer storms will have that much more potential and the clouds will be able to hold way more water before bursting. But also because the atmosphere can hold more water it'll rain less, leading to drought.
The whole system will be energized, and the energy won't be evenly distributed. Our natural disasters will be massive.