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Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#151

Post by myshpa »

jl6 wrote: post #16
pipes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are billionaires causing climate change?

It gives some people comfort to think that complex problems have simple solutions. If it’s just the fault of the billionaires, that’s a small group that can be relatively easily targeted. The alternative is facing the uncomfortable truth that climate change is the aggregate of small decisions made every day by every human, and there is no single action that will address it.

Climate change is a symptom of overshoot of the carrying capacity our our environment.

The financial system is based on growth, with the majority of money (97% IIRC) being debts we must repay with interest.

This leads to exponential growth, which is unsustainable in a finite environment (thus overshooting the carrying capacity).

https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_acc...

Billionaires are simply skilled players amassing virtual wealth in someone else's computer by extracting existing resources.

To really solve this, we must change the game, diminish ourselves and eliminate the pressures of exponential growth.

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#152

Post by pyrale »

psychphysic wrote: post #75
defrost wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear why you would post that but it's certainly worth pointing out that climate change denialism has been funded since the mid 1970s and that the author of that opinion piece is Art Robinson, a recent Oregon State Senator and long time denier via his "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine". While it adds nothing to the history of actual earth based science it is certainly an insight into the history clim…

Thanks for posting the link so I could see the article. I did only skim it, and I'm surprised. I don't think it's an unreasonable criticism for 1997. But that's over a quarter of a century ago. He accepts CO2 is probably released by humans and apparently at a rate the sinks can't cope. He accepts that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses can lead to warming. But says that the data thus far had not borne out global warming…

For those who didn't read the article:

> The global-warming hypothesis, however, is no longer tenable. Scientists have been able to test it carefully, and it does not hold up.

The author is very far from saying we don't have enough evidence. He claims that scientists had collected enough evidence to dismiss the theory. Which is in hindsight, quite obviously, a lie.

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#153

Post by [deleted] »

myshpa wrote: post #136
WithinReason wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I everyone in the world adopted a vegan diet CO2 emissions would drop by 13%. Still eating pork, poultry, eggs and fish would reduce it by 8.6%: https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-opportunity-costs-food

From the article you've linked: "In a hypothetical scenario in which everyone in the world went vegan by 2050, the regrowth of trees and wilderness could sequester around 547 billion tonnes of additional CO2. Each year we emit around 36 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuels, so that’s equal to around 15 years of emissions at our current levels. They also estimate an additional 225 billion tonnes of CO2 could be sto…

[deleted]

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#154

Post by Aerroon »

eimrine wrote: post #147
Aerroon wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't dream about burning more oil, they dream about the quality of life that this process affords us. Things like uninterrupted power, (uninterrupted) running water, cleaner water, the internet, cheap food, enough food (fertilizers/Haber-Bosch process), accessible transportation, economies of scale etc. While few of these things require fossil fuels, fossil fuels are nevertheless the reason why these things a…

This is the best anti-green argumentation I have ever seen. This is what a drop of water thinks about, which never considers itself a part of tsunami.

I hope it isn't only seen as anti-green. A big worry I have concerning climate change is that often I see discussions about climate policy ignore why our consumption is so high. It's not really the billionaires or greedy corporations. It's us. We're the ones consuming the bulk of these resources. And these policies will affect the poorest the most.

On the other hand, I also worry about the impact of climate change. I think as long as things remain within current predictions we will be able to manage, but what if they don't? What if some process ends up accelerating things faster than expected?

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#155

Post by pyrale »

croes wrote: post #73
pjerem wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still no solution for nuclear waste That’s false. In France we have a project to bury them 500m underground in stable geological formations. And even if this site failed to retain the radioactive (which studies says it will not) that would be a minor issue against climate change. As for security issues since nuclear power exists (~70 years) we can count deadly accidents in some dozens of victims while the pollution…

>That’s false. In France we have a project to bury them It's not a solution if it's still a project otherwise nuclear fusion and carbon dioxide capturing would be solutions too.

> It's not a solution if it's still a project

Fine, take the Finnish repository as an example then.

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#156

Post by Aerroon »

klipt wrote: post #53
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems disingenuous when the climate catastrophe is going to have far greater effects on modern life. Too many people are clinging to the dream of continuing to dig out and burn as much oil as possible when it's clear that that behaviour is not sustainable. Although personal responsibility is never a bad thing, we need to focus on the big companies that have been deliberately hiding climate science for decades -…

The solution is a carbon tax, which is unpopular with big oil companies but probably also unpopular with many citizens who vote based on gas prices. We may just have to use solar radiation management instead.

Many European countries already have something like that: excise taxes on gasoline. Gasoline in Europe is almost twice the price of gas in the US, even in countries where people earn half of what Americans do. It's not particularly new either - they've been around for decades now.

This teaches us a valuable lesson though - money from carbon taxes must not go into the government budget. It should instead be distributed to something automatically (eg equal payments to everyone or the poorest). If it becomes part of the budget then governments might try to maximize revenue rather than deal with the problem.

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#157

Post by Ygg2 »

myshpa wrote: post #141
Ygg2 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such a load of bull. I'm sick of people ignoring the science. Educate yourself before writing anything next time What are chances that everyone globally will just switch to vegan diet to save on CO2 before 2050 or whatever end date? My fair estimate is zero. It's like wishing people aren't lazy or corrupt or that are more honest. To quote the poet "You don't get what you want".

Animal ag. is the leading culprit of the mess we're in (together with fossil fuels, ofc). The reason nobody at political level talks about it is because they feel it's a political suicide. If there was a significant portion of the population with changed habits (and numbers of vegans and vegetarians are rising fast in the last few years, so much that it's affecting sales of meat and dairy already), the abolishing of…

> Animal ag. is the leading culprit of the mess we're in

Citations needed. I think cars/trucks are much bigger polluters than cows. Not to mention the ubiquitous industries of plastic, steel and cement.

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Points that Agriculture is 18.6% of total CO2 emissions. Out of which plants related emissions make like 4%. Granted, part of that is animal feed, but you'll have to replace meat calories with something else.

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#158

Post by [deleted] »

_l4jh wrote: post #94

Anecdotal story time. We have a family villa in Spain about an hour and a half south of Alicante. We just got back from two weeks there like we do every year. The heat and humidity this time was the first time it was too much so that we didn’t enjoy our time there. We’ve had this place 21 years. Yes it’s Spain and it’s always hot which is why we bought it but this year was something else. The mix of both very high te…

[deleted]

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#159

Post by layer8 »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #98
anonzzzies wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine millions and millions of people doing this But they won't. Even here on HN, where some smart people roam, touching their meat (like, eating LESS of it, not quitting altogether) will make them into incoherent angry (I guess) men. And that's of course a big step, smaller steps are even not a thing for many people; not flying, no car, hell, here people even refuse to obey the law of not topping up (or filling)…

Yes true, but we have to keep trying to convince people in our circles. Otherwise we're effed. I would have hoped that especially this HN crowd would change their mind because it's quite clear and logical that not consuming meat and dairy will mean requiring fewer resources and producing less pollution.

Human habits, preferences, and desires rarely submit to pure logic. Humans are more emotional than rational.

Re: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

#160

Post by H8crilA »

croes wrote: post #70
danjac wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are wandering the desert, dying of thirst, and you find a bottle of Coke, you should probably drink it and not worry too much about getting diabetes.

What about a bottle with Vibrio cholerae?

Stupid analogy, but yes you'd actually live a bit longer if you drank it.
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