131–140 of 145 posts
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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.
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The world was once 8C to 14C hotter than it is now (during the Eocene) and it didn't run out of oxygen. In fact, this was the epoch when modern mammals took over the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene
Prehistoric warm periods didn't happen as fast as what we're doing. If you give nature thousands of generations to adapt to warmer temperatures it's not as big of a deal. If you do it over a hundred years or so, ecosystems have a much harder time to adapt.
We often see just a few members of an invasive species transplanted into a favorable environment multiply and spread and end up dominating the local ecosystem in far, far less than a hundred years. Let's use that to help ecosystems adapt to climate change.
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Prehistoric warm periods didn't happen as fast as what we're doing. If you give nature thousands of generations to adapt to warmer temperatures it's not as big of a deal. If you do it over a hundred years or so, ecosystems have a much harder time to adapt.
Ecosystems can adapt very quickly with a little help. We often see just a few members of an invasive species transplanted into a favorable environment multiply and spread and end up dominating the local ecosystem in far, far less than a hundred years. Let's use that to help ecosystems adapt to climate change.
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?
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Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.
Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is: Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about 100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle? Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years? The answers to these questions are simple: A1: Fires. Massi…
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Mad max apocalypse would only last, like, 15 years max. Can't keep feeding people to the pigs (sus scrofa domesticus) forever. It really seems like there is something about humanity that is being selected out of the ecosystem. My guess is the over-reliance on physical violence and emotional abuse to maintain group structures.
So, if there's something that's "selected against", it's our unexpected success. I don't think that there are many times in the history life on a planet that a species lands such a jackpot.
Unfortunately we're just like Joe Shmoe after a lottery win; we spend all the loot in one spree over the planet and wake up a few years later, facing the consequences of our reckless behavior while we were drunk on power.
Our monkey brains just aren't built for the life in paradise.
I have honestly wondered whether a rational, amoral planner would be readying the release of some pathogen(s) from which a reasonable number of people would survive. I wonder what the signs of such preparation would be? Obviously you would want to make sure that nuclear power stations, refineries and dangerous chemical plants were either capable of a graceful shutdown or that there would be enough trained operators i…
There is a tick that renders people allergic to meat. The villain could start with that and let the market work out the details.
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"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 do…
Using the word "externalities" though means you will and did and you accept the use of numbers which are not "infinity" and can be compared to other numbers.
When you give away that you don't care at all about the meaning of the words you use to try to get leverage, it might as well be the buzzing of gnats.
You can't take language wholly as a means to manipulate people and be transparent about it and expect it to continue to work.
Anyone who actually believes that the damage done by burning one gallon of gas is "infinity" would be willing to sacrifice humanity to avoid it. But I'm not interested in debating whether that's a correct ethical perspective! You're entitled to feel whatever you feel.
My irritation is with people who appropriate economic jargon without the least intent to communicate the ideas a word denotes. To me, destroying the communication value of a word, is like some sort of semantic atrocity.
(note, "you" is the generic you, I'm not blaming you for the original poster)
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Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is: Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about 100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle? Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years? The answers to these questions are simple: A1: Fires. Massi…
We can handle fires if we plant those forests. We could engineer the buffers to stop the spreading, and develop infrastructure for early detection and extinguishing. Not saying it's easy, but can be done if everything depends on it.
To put things into context and quantify...we know wild fires have produced, on average, 8 billion tons of CO2 per year for the past 20 years. That is fully 25% of total annual CO2 emission, which sits somewhere around 32 billion tons per year.
That’s a very serious contribution that makes some of the things politicians focus on absolutely laughable.
If we plant trillions of trees and, at some time in the future, experience a massive forest fire we could easily move backwards several decades.
What I am saying is that fire mitigation has to be a first class concern when we speak of reforestation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is: Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about 100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle? Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years? The answers to these questions are simple: A1: Fires. Massi…
We can handle fires if we plant those forests. We could engineer the buffers to stop the spreading, and develop infrastructure for early detection and extinguishing. Not saying it's easy, but can be done if everything depends on it.