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Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

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Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#211

Post by reportgunner »

nomel wrote: post #14
aaa_aaa wrote: post #6

If they are so sure about amounts I expect a date.

This doesn’t make sense. Volume is measurable. Satellites do it. There’s little prediction, it has already been done. Predicting when something will happen, in the future, is much harder. For example, you could measure a hamburger in front of me. Predicting when, and if, I’ll eat it is much harder.

Not that hard. You will eat it before it gets bad, possibly before it gets cold. If you are having a burger at a restaurant you will eat it before the restaurant closes. I predict you will eat it in about 1 hour. Seeing your post was 19 hours ago I doubt you still have the burger in front of you.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#212

Post by taylodl »

lizard wrote: post #181
taylodl wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kick the can down the road. Nothing to see here. Let our progeny figure out how to clean up the mess we created. We're doing the same thing with our debt, too. I'm just going to put it out there - our progeny is going to hate our guts. Then again, maybe afterward humanity will hold us up as an example for what not to do, how not to solve global problems. They'll be able to use history to quickly and effectively shut…

As a fairly new parent, I'm not thrilled about the world my daughter will inherit. I struggle with a lot of questions like whether I should raise her to be a "good" person or a "successful" person. But, I've heard that studies show that younger generations are more concerned about the environment. Both in that they are showing an interest in the subject at younger ages and they are more likely than older generations…

I'm concerned that the "concern for the environment" is mostly green washing. It's cool to be "concerned about the environment." It's far less cool to do anything about it that's consequential.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#213

Post by EngManagerIsMe »

reportgunner wrote: post #208
EngManagerIsMe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biking is demonstrably more efficient than walking. And electric bikes are even more energy efficient than biking. Sure, manufacturing a bike takes some energy, but there's huge value in people using e-bikes to get everywhere.

Walking = 0 emissions; Biking = emissions spent on manufacturing the bike and transporting it to you + trash from all the packaging it comes in. Walking is more sustainable.

It takes ~50 kcals to walk 1 kilometer, and approximately 25 kcals to bike 1 kilometer, and approximately 10 kcals (electric + human) to use an electric bike to move 1 kilometer.

I put ~1,000 kilometers on my electric bike last year, which is a net savings of ~40,000 kcals. That's not an insignificant amount of energy saved per year. And many of those trips I had a passenger, a load of cargo (like plants from the nursery, soil, clothing, groceries, etc.) that was too large for me to carry.

So, while an infrequently used bike is probably a loss, sustainability-wise, there must exist a break even point. 40,000 kcals is not nothing. It's not huge, but it's not nothing.

And compared to owning a car? A car might be 500-1000 kcals/kilometer or more. Doing the same math with a car (1,000kms) is like, 500,000-1,000,000 kcals for a small car , 50,000 for walking, and 10,000 for electric biking. No matter what, the savings of walking or biking are monumental compared to a car.

And if we really, really had to we could find ways to dramatically reduce manufacturing, transport, and packaging costs for electric bikes.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#214

Post by southernplaces7 »

munificent wrote: post #126
ryandrake wrote: post #11

Every time there's an article about climate change, it's always about how we're "close to the point of no return." It's felt like the Truck Almost Hitting The Pole GIF[1] for like 10 years now. Has anything actually gone past the point of no return? I'll almost be relieved when we're officially inevitably fucked... at least these "nearly there!" articles won't keep popping up. 1: https://tenor.com/view/truck-crash-te…

The way to visualize this is that the truck is instead a hundred-mile long train whose engine is in the back and we are all on it in different cars. The front of the train has already hit the pole. Cars nearest the front are already crumpling, killing thousands and leading millions to migrate farther back into the train. Meanwhile, those of us fortunate enough to be in cars farther down the line are starting to get c…

>The front of the train has already hit the pole. Cars nearest the front are already crumpling, killing thousands and leading millions to migrate farther back into the train.

Bearing in mind that extreme weather events have been killing people in large numbers since there have been people to kill in the world, please name at least one specific event or group of weather events that have unambiguously killed thousands of people as a result of man-made climate change. I'm honestly curious about what they might be, because I've seen many (in my mind partially dishonest) narratives in which a hurricane occurs, as hurricanes have occurred since the length of human civilization, and it's called a man-made climate change even despite a lack of concrete distinction.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#215

Post by crispinb »

FredPret wrote: post #199
crispinb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's too big a discussion to litigate here, but I don't agree that market forces + self interest have in fact been successful. Most significant problems have merely been postponed, precisely because we just don't have the cooperative mechanisms available to deal with them. Many of our ecosystems (ie. the actual physical world, rather than the virtual worlds of finance and markets) are on their last legs. I also…

My argument is that market forces have done a brilliant job in marshalling far-flung and diverse interests to optimize for the sum total of our self-interests. For instance, I'm using this device for fun and profit and it was made by actual communists on the other side of the planet. People until recently have not thought of the ecology as being in their personal interest in a direct and concrete way, only a vague an…

My point isn't for perfection, but that we simply don't deal with many global problems at all, ever. They're not left 'till they're urgent - they are ignored until they overwhelm. This is a universal, physical, biological process that happens to all organisms whose unchecked growth damages the environment they have evolved to exist in. Abstractions like 'market forces', 'self interest' and 'decision-makers' have no causal force. They are like money - concepts that skate impotently over the surface of physical reality, until their bearers are borne away.

Anyway, 'arguments' (especially those of economists - the theologians of our era, whose intellectual fairy-castles will in my view come to be seen as equally empty) are irrelevant. Rationalism lost (a historical reality economists never grappled with). Empirical reality is all. Time will tell.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#216

Post by lizard »

taylodl wrote: post #212
lizard wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fairly new parent, I'm not thrilled about the world my daughter will inherit. I struggle with a lot of questions like whether I should raise her to be a "good" person or a "successful" person. But, I've heard that studies show that younger generations are more concerned about the environment. Both in that they are showing an interest in the subject at younger ages and they are more likely than older generations…

I'm concerned that the "concern for the environment" is mostly green washing. It's cool to be "concerned about the environment." It's far less cool to do anything about it that's consequential.

Sure, but that's kinda the point. Changing society's beliefs and especially behaviors can take generations.

Today's adults are talking about it, but not doing enough about it. But for many of them it only became a problem after decades of not really hearing or caring about it. They have decades of experience not worrying about it and not seeing any consequences of it.

Today's kids have been hearing about it for most or all their lives. They'll grow up seeing more evidence of what's happening and how it will impact them. They won't know a world that's not talking about it.

Is that a guarantee they'll do something about it? Of course not.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#217

Post by southernplaces7 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #42
neerd wrote: post #10

Does anyone have suggestions for how an individual can feel like they’re actually doing something. I already make donations to organizations that advocate for climate activism, vote at local and national level for candidates what support climate action, and in my own live I try to be conscious about the environment impacts or my lifestyle and purchases. Despite all that I still feel like I'm changing nothing. I still…

I work in climate change. I changed my job in order to do so. The pace of change feels glacial (badum-bum). The same can be said of politics, and everything else that involves way too many interests fighting over a very small set of resources. You will never not feel helpless. Greta Thunberg probably felt helpless. But she turned that feeling into anger, and that anger into action. Henry Rollins said he stays angry,…

It's absurd That any serious climate scientists should take seriously the media pretensions around making an emotionally charged adolescent into a messianic figure, and consider that a useful thing for real climate investigation and some practical policy.

Either many people who work in climate change have some serious critical thinking problems in this field, or the core ideas of good scientific thinking have gone down the toilet for climate change.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#218

Post by fennecfoxy »

bradgessler wrote: post #194
peteradio wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filling a bath tub requires active control, are you saying humans need to actively control the climate of the entire earth?

I don’t understand the bathtub analogy, but I will say it should be a goal of humanity to control the climate of the entire earth. The alternative is we don’t and are forever at the whim of what Earth and the solar system decides to throw at us. I’ve found this argument to be appealing to people on both sides of the climate change debate.

I agree tbh, a modern focus is one of conservation; what better way to guarantee the ongoing proliferation of various species other than being able to control the environment they live in.

Controlling the climate (and by that of course we mean very carefully holding it at what it should be) benefits all life on the planet.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#219

Post by munificent »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #214
munificent wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to visualize this is that the truck is instead a hundred-mile long train whose engine is in the back and we are all on it in different cars. The front of the train has already hit the pole. Cars nearest the front are already crumpling, killing thousands and leading millions to migrate farther back into the train. Meanwhile, those of us fortunate enough to be in cars farther down the line are starting to get c…

>The front of the train has already hit the pole. Cars nearest the front are already crumpling, killing thousands and leading millions to migrate farther back into the train. Bearing in mind that extreme weather events have been killing people in large numbers since there have been people to kill in the world, please name at least one specific event or group of weather events that have unambiguously killed thousands…

> name at least one specific event or group of weather events that have unambiguously killed thousands of people as a result of man-made climate change

Name at least one person who was unambiguously killed by smoking.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#220

Post by upsidesinclude »

seadan83 wrote: post #185
upsidesinclude wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>have to remain elevated for hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective. To further reiterate: hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective.

Said another way, within two full human lifetimes the planets climate could further be irreversibly changed locking in 23 feet of sea level rise from Greenland alone. Though, generally for emissions we are talking about a first order derivative. Just because you've slowed down from 100 to 50 does not mean you won't still run out of roadway. So, if we are a hair away from that tippingpoint, and magically go to zero em…

You and the models of climate 200 hundred years hence have no actual idea of what will occur. You will be dead, however and this is certain.

It is baffling to me that it is a concern to you or frankly anyone that is not of extraordinary wealth.

Why? I tell you why: all effective measures at "reducing climate change" (very status quo) will unquestionably make life more laborious and less comfortable for the lower 98% of humanity. Our sacrifices will permit the 2% (or fewer) extravagance beyond what we've ever seen.

The permafrost will melt unleashing massive forests worth of growth, huge swaths of frozen soil will become inhabitable and fertile.

The ancestors of the Americas lived on the coast, 400 feet below today's surf. No one lamenting the old huts weve lost along the way

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