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Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

smithsonianmag.com

111–120 of 141 posts

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#111
post #11

Never loved this framework because the arbitrary quantization can make things look better than they are (“sure temps are up 4° but we’re still banning aerosols, so drill baby drill!”) but it’s certainly a good starter framework for getting people’s attention. And to those that read this and just give up: please don’t. We’ve done incredible things as a species, and today’s world is not based in unchangeable natural co…

Every time I say the solution is to restrain those who callously and deliberately profit off climate damage, by force if necessary, people get upset and downvote me, metaphorically speaking. But all the 'yay humanity let's all cooperate in pursuit of a solution' thinkers are demonstrably failing, because selfish people make up the largest bloc (though still a minority) of humanity. People who go to a museum and throw…

> because selfish people make up the largest bloc (though still a minority) of humanity.

The noise a small group can make is not to be underestimated. Even though I have no idea what a largest bloc that is a minority means. Either they are the largest group or not. This I think is even more confused than minority majority which is absolutely an arrogant/racist way of thinking.

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#112
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"correlated" isn't an evil term, it doesn't mean there can't be useful observations in different domains. To nit pick, since "correlation isn't causation" is often an internet meme to discredit any science.

if 7 of the 9 are highly correlated, then breaching all 7 isn't as bad as it sounds, it's just one boundary.

Are they thought?

Guess that is part of the meme, anybody can say "well correlation isn't causation" and sound kind of smart. Then the onus is on the other to go prove they aren't correlated, when they are not obviously correlated to begin with, so then need to devolve into a deep dive showing percentages of correlation. It's part of the 'easy to produce BS' type argument.

I'd push back and say. Ok, then show how 7 of 9 are highly correlated. Just saying 7 of 9 are obviously correlated so boom, who cares. Is just as invalid as someone saying there is no correlation.

You have to prove it either way. And there is no clear proof. And these aren't obvious.

Just everything going bad at once doesn't mean they are highly correlated thus we really don't have to care about any single item.

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans haven't lived on the planet on geological timescales. All of human civilization only became possible because 10k years ago the climate cooled and stabilized enough for there to be agriculture. Without agriculture there is no human civilization, no nation states, no institutions. We go back to being hunter gathers. With an unstable climate agriculture disappears. Billions will dies, life expediencies will crate…

> Humans haven't lived on the planet on geological timescales. All of human civilization only became possible because 10k years ago the climate cooled and stabilized enough for there to be agriculture. The average global temperature in the Jurassic era was 16.5C, which is 2.5C higher than the current average global temperature. Average CO2 levels in the atmosphere were as high as 2000 ppm. The planet was teeming with…

CO2 was at that level with an entire planet covered in a healthy ecosystem. If that happened now, we would probably witness the entire global collapse of the ecology. It took hundreds of millions of years to cool down that much, and we’ve turned it back up in a century. Animals (humans included) do not have the time to adapt.

Have you ever been in a stuffy meeting where brain fog sets in or you start to feel tired? That’s around 2k ppm where that sets in. Humans don’t like that much co2. No offense, but your argument doesn’t seem thought through.

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#115
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venus atmosphere has a very different composition.

Am aware, but it seems to have come from a place that was more similar to earth than Mars' https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/venus-could-have-b... and other articles make that case. I don't know if that's still current information (heard it a while ago and just looked up a random article as reference now, so this might be akin to cherry picking or confirmation bias), I'm not an expert on this particular topic…

I used to joke that life actually started on Venus and we were the backup planet.

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#116

I’ve kind of accepted we are screwed. Whether I am alive when shit hits the fan or not is another question. But seeing that people are trying to build satellite mirrors to put MORE solar energy into the planet without even thinking about it for more than a few minutes, I would say we are more screwed than we realize. The first law of stupidity applies.

I'm tired of hearing this idea that this is some binary phenomenon of either saving the world or dooming it. Technological civilization is undergoing a chaotic growth and reshaping process that will end up thrashing the container it lives in to an unknown and catastrophic degree. There's no known ultimate boundary to this process. Or the only really known ultimate boundary, a completely dead planet, is very far away.…

Note that I mentioned nothing of saving it. We are well and fucked. How fucked? Couldn’t tell ya, what I can tell you, is that the river outside my house hasn’t frozen in nearly 20 years, and it had frozen every year before that in all of recorded history, some 900 or so years. There used to be annual ice skating races that now happen indoors.

I’m not worried about science boundaries and all that. I’m worried about civilization going tits-up once some places get too affected. For example, we are probably less than a decade or so away from certain places with lots and lots of people living there becoming inhospitable. Either they will die, or run into some other country/region that can’t support them, or disperse around the world (most unlikely).

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500,000,000 years of my understanding of atmospheric CO2 concentration is what I was referring to as "Historic".

Technically that's prehistoric. History conventionally starts with the invention of writing

You’re right that "history" starts with writing, but "prehistoric" refers to the human period before written records, starting with the use of stone tools around 2.5 million years ago.

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#118

The Planetary Boundaries framework is so bad, I don’t understand why it’s so popular. Most of the "boundaries" are directly correlated. Most of them are fairly arbitrary. It’s such an awful tool to discuss the actual very serious issue it underlines. I wish it would just disappear. Just to be clear, there is nothing magical about most of these boundaries. The situation is not in any way suddenly worse today than yest…

It's useful for political and media purposes. Some might call it climate propaganda, such as when Al Gore claiming (based on what we was told by top climate scientists) that the arctic would be ice free in 5 years. It's used to make a point and to shock people. It does not appear that any of those same type of doomsday predictions (Gretta, etc.) ever came true. They really do a disservice to the underlining, and very important, issue.

Instead of trying to scare people with future predictions of doom, talk about what is happening right now, today, and what will continue to happen. Educate, stop trying to shock and manipulate.

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I say the solution is to restrain those who callously and deliberately profit off climate damage, by force if necessary, people get upset and downvote me, metaphorically speaking. But all the 'yay humanity let's all cooperate in pursuit of a solution' thinkers are demonstrably failing, because selfish people make up the largest bloc (though still a minority) of humanity. People who go to a museum and throw…

> We choose instead to condemn the people who draw attention to this. We condemn them because what they do is dumb not because they draw attention to climate change. It’s the same thing as glorifying a teenager skipping school. Climate activists are incredibly good at killing their own credibility. That’s why most people don’t bank on them to change anything. > But all the 'yay humanity let's all cooperate in pursuit…

It's not dumb because it fulfils their communication goal.

You go tell the Nigerian

This is trying to displace responsibility for fossil fuel extraction to some remote place with different incentives. Climate activists like Just Stop Oil are concerned with the policy choices, lobbying, subsidies, infrastructure, and overconsumption of fossil fuels in the developed countries where they live. Demanding those change is a valid political position.

Re: Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I say the solution is to restrain those who callously and deliberately profit off climate damage, by force if necessary, people get upset and downvote me, metaphorically speaking. But all the 'yay humanity let's all cooperate in pursuit of a solution' thinkers are demonstrably failing, because selfish people make up the largest bloc (though still a minority) of humanity. People who go to a museum and throw…

> because selfish people make up the largest bloc (though still a minority) of humanity. The noise a small group can make is not to be underestimated. Even though I have no idea what a largest bloc that is a minority means. Either they are the largest group or not. This I think is even more confused than minority majority which is absolutely an arrogant/racist way of thinking.

Look up the word 'plurality'. If you have 3 groups sized 40%, 30%, and 30%, the largest one is the 40% group, even though that is still a minority of the total. You're welcome.
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