101–110 of 247 posts
What strikes me is the relative sharp change. CO2 has been rising since, what 250 years ? However real effects of global warming seems to be felt since, like 10 years old ?
It has been rising exponentially.
> However real effects of global warming seems to be felt since, like 10 years old ?
Look up glacier timelapses. More vulnerable ecosystems have visibly reflected climate change for far longer than 10 years now.
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>The conditions leading to the Cold War were reversible, this crisis is becoming very much less so. During the covid start lockdowns when everyone was forced to WFH and nobody was driving to work for a couple of weeks, we saw a massive decrease in CO2 and emissions. So it can be reversed, we just don't want to because we gotta keep the GDP hamster wheel moving
We did not see a massive decrease. We saw a short-lived drop to levels normal in the mid tens. It is barely a blip on the graph. WFH won’t save us, unfortunately.
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Financial markets are the reason nobody has top-down control, because the market has control. I don't remember where I read that where employees in companies think AI is stupid but their manager wants them to, the manager also thinks AI is stupid but the CEO wants them to, the CEO also thinks AI is stupid but the board wants them to, the board thinks AI is stupid but investors want them to, and when they interview so…
What would you suggest that humans could do to steer it away from climate change?
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The cold war never heated up. Even if we stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow, it will take millennia for the climate to return to normal.
Won't the climate change naturally even in the absence of fossil fuels? Like it has during all of history? What's "normal" is based on a small slice of human history, which itself is a small slice of the planet's history.
It's hard to compare a shift in a probability distribution because people will hang on to outliers. We hear this every winter: "all I hear about is Global Warming but look at this record snow". But I do believe the empirical evidence for all this has gone well beyond statistical significance. The Wire is one of my all-time favorite shows in part because it's a story of institutional failure at every level. The police…
lots of wealthy people are anti-fossil fuel.
> Build a solar farm and it... just produces electricity.
it needs land. It increases the value of land. Wealthy people own lots of land.
The main objections for switching to wind and solar are variability in output and the cost of building all the new stuff.
> Spain could become the energy powerhouse of Europe here. It's one of the most southernmost European countries and has plentiful sunshine.
Fine if you are Spanish. Not so good if you are from the north of Europe or somewhere with less spare land.
> It's worth adding that the privatization era of the 1980s and 1990s was a massive problem. Every utility in Europe should be nationalized. It's easier to subsidize energy shocks when you own the companies that are profiting from them.
I think it would have the opposite effect. Its tempting to sustain the profits when you get them.
I wonder whether the British government would be so keen on moving away from fossil fuels if it still owned BP?
"Europe's rapid warming is partly the result of [...] a drop in the number of tiny polluting particles in the air. This means that less of the Sun's energy is reflected back into space, leaving more energy to heat the Earth's surface." Hmmm...
"But ..."
Revs the engine again. "ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
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War won't end human existence. If there's one thing you can learn from the recent wars in Iran and Ukraine, it's that conventional air-bombing has acquired a terrible cost:efficacy ratio that cannot be sustained, that drones have leveled the playing field on the ground, and that attackers generally appear to lack the stomach for mass mobilization and mass casualties in war. Again, there'll be winners and losers. Some…
War definitely can end technological civilization. Bootstrapping it again will be quite difficult as a lot of the easily accessible natural resources are already depleted.
That's a myth, but let's assume it isn't. I'm thinking it sounds like a job for you.
Okay, here's what you've gotta do. Buy some titanium slabs. Etch onto them, in simple and decipherable language (there's a technical way to approach this, I can explain later,) the secrets of solar panels, how to refine scrap metal, the basics of modern materials science, and so forth. Include the secrets of nuclear power, germ theory, semiconductors, DNA, important mathematical and physical formulae, and whatever else you feel like they ought to know. Warn them against the once-low-hanging fruit of fossil fuel; tell them that hydrocarbons ought to be used as chemical building blocks, solely.
Bury the slabs in a seismically stable vault, and leave clues to its existence at various geographic landmarks.
That's it, you've saved technological civilization in 50,000AD.
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Climate change itself is not gonna endanger humans as a species, but secondary effects might. Such as wars resulting from dramatic shifts in the value of territories and wars over resources.
War won't end human existence. If there's one thing you can learn from the recent wars in Iran and Ukraine, it's that conventional air-bombing has acquired a terrible cost:efficacy ratio that cannot be sustained, that drones have leveled the playing field on the ground, and that attackers generally appear to lack the stomach for mass mobilization and mass casualties in war. Again, there'll be winners and losers. Some…
to me, these heatwaves feel like the start of the end of human existence
Nah. It's really as simple as this: Southern climates are moving north. (In the northern hemisphere.) If you want a vision of the future, consider a New England that looks more like the Southeast. There will be winners and losers. As climate zones move toward the poles, weather patterns and agricultural viability will shift with them. This will eventually turn current breadbaskets into deserts while warming up northe…
So extending the time before frost, won't help many plants reach maturity. The days will be shorter, and when the sun comes up there is barely any light anyhow. Raw "daylight hours" are meaningless here, when the sun only gets barely over the norizon.
One month of June light is like 6 months of December light in much of Canada.
Why is it that aggressive climate action is not taken still?
Do you really think Russia, China, India or developing countries are going to stop using fossil fuels if we stop? If the west de-industrializes then our enemies will destroy us... Russia's literally invading Europe right now (albeit poorly).
India is doing industrialisation via solar. Massive solar arrays on top of factories and warehouses.
How the heck is installing solar panels to generate green electricity de-industrilaize?!
Also India is building worlds largest solar park of 30GW