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What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

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Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#111

Post by perl4ever »

chillacy wrote: post #31

There are now 3 positions in american discourse on climate change: 1. It's not happening / not real 2. It's happening and we can still prevent it 3. It's happening and it's worse than we all think Externalities aren't correctly priced into our market and we're suffering the consequences.

"Externalities aren't correctly priced"

If you can say that, it follows that you have calculated or are aware of the correct price. So, I really want to know - about what is the correct price of the externalities of a gallon of gas that aren't included in, say, the retail price in California? Is it closer to $0.01, $0.10, $1, $10, $100, or $1000?

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#112

Post by perl4ever »

berrynice wrote: post #73
antiutopian wrote: post #27

There are measures we can take against climate change, they just go against the structural needs of the capitalist system. If governments continue to put the continuation of the system above the needs of the environment, then of course we won't see serious action. The author accepts that this is a permanent state of affairs and attributes it incorrectly to "human nature" when in reality it reflects the present weakne…

You're not going to be able to kill capitalism before things go really wrong, modern capitalism still has a stranglehold on us all and it probably won't fall until climate change kicks into high gear and eradicates huge portions of the western population. At least the anprims will be happy.

I'm not clear on why people are particularly angry at capitalism. It seems like just a label that allows people to focus on the US fossil fuel industry, as the US is the archetype of capitalism, while vaguely associating all the other major fossil fuel producers with the West/US/capitalism.

Is the reason Russia and KSA are producing fossil fuels because they were infected with a specific ideology? I feel like there's a confusion of cause and effect, like if you blamed evolution on Darwinism.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#113

Post by AstralStorm »

leereeves wrote: post #106
tw04 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter in the least if you agree with a candidate on everything. This one specific subject should be a deal breaker though, regardless of just about any other stance. Your opinion on free market is irrelevant in the face of Extinction.

Alarmism only discredits the effort to respond to climate change.

Why? If people are not alarmed, they won't take the necessary extreme measures and extreme and global measures is what we all need.

People become desensitized to it, unfortunately.

Mostly policy is necessary though, and politicians love half-hearted efforts.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#114

Post by AstralStorm »

avmich wrote: post #84
hyperman1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: I always see 'humans will survive' in these kinds of posts. Why? We know most of the past species are extinct, we are in the middle of a mass extinction event, the climate crisis hasn't even fully begun, and there are other serious problems coming. So I don't want to be negative, but I do want to stay realistic. Does someone know why humans will survive, and on which time scale this prediction is va…

We don't have reliable data that an advanced civilization of our level (yes, we're advanced comparing to many our ancestors) goes extinct. Particularly for reasons like this. So we naturally not sure. On the other hand, we see some examples of wonderful inventiveness - say, in time of a war, but also in time of great geographical discoveries, technology and science achievements etc. So for many it feels like an open…

We have some examples. Just look at Petra and some Mayan cities... They fell because climate stopped spring people there - they ran out of water and fell to either starvation or disease.

Mostly they moved elsewhere, but on planet scale that would be much more problematic.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#115

Post by AstralStorm »

perl4ever wrote: post #111
chillacy wrote: post #31

There are now 3 positions in american discourse on climate change: 1. It's not happening / not real 2. It's happening and we can still prevent it 3. It's happening and it's worse than we all think Externalities aren't correctly priced into our market and we're suffering the consequences.

"Externalities aren't correctly priced" If you can say that, it follows that you have calculated or are aware of the correct price. So, I really want to know - about what is the correct price of the externalities of a gallon of gas that aren't included in, say, the retail price in California? Is it closer to $0.01, $0.10, $1, $10, $100, or $1000?

The problem is akin to computing value of human life. If you burning gasoline will kill 3 humans and make life a misery for 20, what's the proper price?

Many would argue it's infinity. It's not safe to continue burning fossils in any way, shape or form, not burning fresh biomass either. Reclaiming biogas is probably the only sane way of burning anything now... (Prevents methane releases.)

Unfortunately most people don't or can't run moral calculations like this.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#116

Post by AstralStorm »

pharke wrote: post #63
tormeh wrote: post #2

Really disheartened that it will hit during my lifetime. Had hoped to dodge it, really. How do you, as an individual, prepare for this?

There seem to be a bunch of self-centered pessimists replying to you so I'll try to give a real response. If you don't already work in an industry that is doing research towards or creating a product that makes a difference, change careers. The solution to this, both on an individual and collective level, is not to give up and hide in a hole hoping you die quietly in your sleep. The solution is to fucking solve the p…

Even if we can't fix it we can make it much better and less misery for everyone involved.

The question is, how many people do you want to sacrifice to eat your delicious cow and drive a SUV?

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#117

Post by AstralStorm »

robomartin wrote: post #102
adrianN wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can suck carbon out of the atmosphere faster than the geological processes that do it naturally. But that of course doesn't matter if you work on the assumption that it's ridiculous to stop burning fossil fuels. Many people believe that it's possible and actually not hard, just expensive.

No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale. EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels. I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said (and I've written about this a fe…

What we could do is attempt to develop (air conditioned) domes or underground dwellings, hydroponics and water sparing farming. (Incl. GMO, to hell with greens on that.) That would cushion the blow a lot. Catalog and save the species we still can, like corals.

Trying to sequester CO2 and CH4 unfortunately won't work well on big scales.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#118

Post by AstralStorm »

faissaloo wrote: post #67
fuzzy2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we don't understand enough to be sure it wouldn't cause unintended negative side effects. I read that one possibility is less rain. Which is obviously something we don't want. It's already not enough.

We don't understand enough to ensure anything we've done wouldn't cause unintended negative side effects but as it stands we're headed for utter destruction so doing something might be better than nothing.

No. Doing wrong things can be much worse than doing nothing. If you kill off too much biosphere for example, there goes humanity.

Volcanos tend to throw a lot of sulfur in the air which is deadly. We could disperse dust in other ways, but the risk is that we'd increase albedo of Earth and cook it even more.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#119

Post by AstralStorm »

adrianN wrote: post #57
hannob wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're only efficient and low-cabon if you compare them to coal, not if you use basic sanity that building any kind of new fossil infrastructure is madness. Even the low carbon of fracking is questionable given methane leaks.

Building gas plants is not terribly stupid, because we'll probably need power-to-gas technology unless somebody finds cheaper ways to make batteries.

The only viable kind of gas is biogas which you have to sequester anyway. Other kinds speed up the catastrophe. There cleaner than some coal and oil but that's about it. They're not even close compared to nuclear or renewables.

Why do you need gas? Can't use the electric vehicle or appliance? If you need trace gases for manufacturing, you can sequester them instead.

Re: What if we stopped pretending the climate apocalypse can be stopped?

#120

Post by adrianN »

hyperman1 wrote: post #96
adrianN wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If push comes to shove a breeding population can survive for millenia in underground caves huddled around breeder reactors.

Citing a post in this same discussion: warming by 5 degrees will cause all phytoplankton to die off and as a result we'll run out of oxygen. So no, that's not enough. Even if it would be, how would you feed these people? How would their underground cave get power for light etc in a CO2-negative world? AFAIK, the 'biosphere 2' experiment and the experiences with the space stations demonstrated humanity is not capable…

Breeder reactors are really nice in that they produce lots of energy that you can use to produce food and oxygen. Biosphere 2 was a hippy project that tried to reproduce a complex ecosystem that nobody really understood. The Russians had much more pragmatic approaches. For this project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS-3 it's much easier to see how it could scale up to true self-containment.
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