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Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down

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Re: Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down

#41

Post by piva00 »

card_zero wrote: post #27
dash2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what water's purpose is in God's eyes, but I think from humans' point of view, we should try and make sure all humans have comfortable amounts of fresh water, and if that will become impossible, that's a problem.

Uh-huh. I'm objecting to phrases that give the impression that something specific and terrifying is happening that might, for instance, kill all life, when what's really happened is that a quango released a report about the ongoing general decline.

Kill all life is absurdly hard to happen until the Sun explodes, life has survived multiple asteroid impacts, massive volcanoes eruptions, a global-scale oxidation event, so on and so forth.

The discussion around climate change and breakdown of current climate cycles is always about what's survivable for our current environment and biosphere with humans in it...

Re: Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down

#42

Post by gmuslera »

Not just this water cycle will be disrupted, most of the other “stable” cycles on which the global ecosystem and the human civilization are based on will get disrupted too. Pushing the system off balance will make things harder to survive with, with our population numbers or with much less than that.

And those disruptions also cause increasing effects, more humidity in the air also accelerates global warming, water vapor is also another greenhouse gas, a pretty powerful one.

Re: Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down

#43

Post by jmclnx »

card_zero wrote: post #13

So it's "breaking down" and "malfunctioning" relative to the water needs of the humans living in the affected areas. So this is not in fact any meaningful step change in the system, unless you see providing comfortable amounts of fresh water to all humans living in those specific areas as its purpose.

This was my take too. Globally to me, you cannot "waste water", you just can use more that your region can sustain.

Where I live, we have plenty of water and the amount will increase as the Earth warms, based upon current theories. But, there is a limit to how much water is treated and the local government refuse to invest in additional treatment. So we have water shortages here even though our lakes and rivers are filled and in some cases a bit overfilled.

Eventually people in the Southwest will have to move, along with people in the South. And people think migrations are bad now, wait a few decades.

Re: Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down

#44

Post by taylodl »

piva00 wrote: post #41
card_zero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh-huh. I'm objecting to phrases that give the impression that something specific and terrifying is happening that might, for instance, kill all life, when what's really happened is that a quango released a report about the ongoing general decline.

Kill all life is absurdly hard to happen until the Sun explodes, life has survived multiple asteroid impacts, massive volcanoes eruptions, a global-scale oxidation event, so on and so forth. The discussion around climate change and breakdown of current climate cycles is always about what's survivable for our current environment and biosphere with humans in it...

My bar is sustaining civilization, not just sustaining human life. It doesn't take much climate change for civilization to collapse. I'm fascinated by how rarely people think of that!

Re: Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down

#45

Post by piva00 »

taylodl wrote: post #44
piva00 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kill all life is absurdly hard to happen until the Sun explodes, life has survived multiple asteroid impacts, massive volcanoes eruptions, a global-scale oxidation event, so on and so forth. The discussion around climate change and breakdown of current climate cycles is always about what's survivable for our current environment and biosphere with humans in it...

My bar is sustaining civilization, not just sustaining human life. It doesn't take much climate change for civilization to collapse. I'm fascinated by how rarely people think of that!

Completely agree, I think people really don't understand systems to see how fragile civilisation as we know actually is. Breakdown of civilisation will come much, much earlier than any danger to human life going extinct.

I think it's also hard for people to grasp the stepwise process for this breakdown, at least from my personal experience I feel most are ignorant about the cycle of increasing social strife across the globe that will happen, a cycle of ever-increasing misery spreading across societies, eroding civil structures, etc.

Re: Scientists Say Our Water Cycle Has Started Breaking Down

#46

Post by Boundomma »

EGreg wrote: post #9

Elon Musk is worried about “population collapse” in countries Perhaps he’s underestimating the amount of resources needed per person and the garbage each person produces Our planet had under a billion people for every century except the 20th and 21st, right? What was so bad about that? The idea that less human scientists, workers means less innovation, productivity is not necessarily true now in the age of automation…

> What was so bad about that?

They invented the ponzi scheme of pensions. There needs to be an army of younglins slaves to prop up the system. No generation will willingly accept no pension.

Plus, last time I checked the vast majority of those billions is china, india and africa. The native west is already in decline and keeps importing third worlders to keep said scheme barely going.

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