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Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

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Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#91

Post by musingsole »

esotericn wrote: post #67
chiefalchemist wrote: post #62

Wouldn't it be nice it it were something as simple as setting a timeline. The reality is, it's a combination of two things (mainly): 1) We can't afford to undermind the economy. That is, any plan that cuts back on consumption (even in the short term) is going to hurt an already hurting economy[1]. However, there aren't any "leader(s)" who want to be pinned with such things so the buck gets passed. 2) Along the same l…

> We can't afford to undermine the economy. Heh. This is such a brilliant phrase that perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong. We can't afford to not afford things. :D

It's the same argument the US south made for keeping and perpetuating slavery.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#92

Post by gjm11 »

radford-neal wrote: post #36
inlined wrote: post #5

The part about divers crying into masks hit home. It was on my bucket list to dive in the Great Barrier Reef but it’s now been declared dead. 95% of my diving has been in the last 25% of my diving career because I know I have a limited time.

What? "Declared dead?" Here's a BBC report from a few days ago that says that it's in danger, but certainly "not dead yet". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-49520949?SThisFB Since the BBC is now officially a climate alarmist organization, I think one can be sure that this report is as alarmist as one can be without blatantly disregarding easily verifiable facts.

> now officially a climate alarmist organization

What exactly does that mean?

(The BBC report is summarizing a report from the Australian government, and unless it's just lying its level of alarmism will pretty much track those of that report itself. So whether the BBC is "officially a climate alarmist organization", whatever that means, matters less than whether the Australian government is one. Regardless, it would be nice to know what you mean.)

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#93

Post by fallingfrog »

spaginal wrote: post #75
fallingfrog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the people predicting climate change isn’t the club of Rome, it’s an entire scientific community, who have been double, triple, and quadruple checking every measurement and assumption for 50 years. This is not some hysterical group of panicked hippies. We’re talking about broad consensus among all the most educated and intelligent members of our civilization. Please show a little respect and listen to them.

You are missing the fact that the salesmen of climate change have been politicians, and politicians lie, and politicians propose political solutions, they want more and more of my limited money, and browbeat people who already don’t like or trust them, and frankly that is a bad combination of tactics if the solution is needed that badly across the broad spectrum of the population. If climate change stops being sold a…

The conservatives will never support addressing climate change honestly, because they are getting too much money from the fossil fuel industries. I mean honestly, that’s like saying, I won’t believe that we are spending too much money on the military until I hear it from Northrop Grumman. So you’re going to be waiting a long time if that’s what you’re waiting for. None of those people care at all about you or your kids or the worlds future. Not one single bit.

You are literally listening to the people who have the greatest conflict of interest on the subject and the least competence in it. It’s no wonder you’re confused.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#94

Post by TeMPOraL »

rayiner wrote: post #73
the_gastropod wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Of course we can't instantly solve global carbon emissions. But we can do our (very large) part here in the U.S. By shifting where our dollars go. By moving from carbon to renewable sources, we'll drop the price of renewables, helping small economies afford to do the same. Progress is virtually always incremental. We need to begin by stopping dragging our feet.

That’s like saying we should try to bail out the boat with spoons because “progress is incremental.” It’s not only pointless, but actively dangerous, because it’s a distraction. The “Green New Deal” is a great example. A jobs program obviously won’t do anything to seriously address climate change. Worse, it wastes money and political capital on things that could have more utility. If you spent that money on nuclear e…

But is it a distraction? To overuse the analogy, GP is proposing to yes, get most of the crew to spoon, to buy some little extra time while the engineering team is trying to fix the pumps. The alternative is to have the crew drink or pray to deities for the pumps to be blessed and magically start working.

If the development of the developing world is a problem, you can't expect the solution to come from developing world. On our end, like in the example of the ship's crew, most people aren't able to contribute to a proper solution - they lack the necessary skills and opportunities. Unfortunately (in this case), we live in free market democracies, which means there isn't a body that can reallocate huge amount of resources to retraining and retooling towards mitigating climate change. The market doesn't care, so we have to do things the hard way - we have to force our governments to force the market to start allocating resources, so that engineers and scientists and logisticians can deal with the problem directly.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#95

Post by nosleeptill »

ridicter wrote: post #37
rayiner wrote: post #3

Climate change was never going to be reversible with behavioral measures. Even if everyone had followed the Kyoto protocol to the letter starting in 1992 that wasn’t going to avert climate change, because nobody contemplated how quickly China and India would develop. There is no calculus where you can significantly limit climate change through behavioral measures that also allow the third world to have comfortable, m…

It _is_ a political issue. The technology already exists--courtesy of the scientists/engineers of course. Whether that technology is deployed is a problem of politics. For example, if the price of fossil fuels reflected its true cost to society--think climate change, extreme weather, stronger storms, droughts, ocean acidification, etc--then fossil fuels would be prohibitively expensive compared to renewable or nuclea…

People don't support the concept of taxes even when they can directly see the positive impact the tax payment has on their own lives and on the community.

Addressing climate change is an abstract concept and for most people, like 80% of the population they can't grasp the abstract, so it all feels like a scam, one big flea circus. "No, no, the fleas are there you just can't see them, just trust me."

Unless someone can invent a way to capture and sequester greenhouse gases from the upper atmosphere to the tune of 50.9 gigatonnes per year I really don't see humanity making any progress, slowing growth isn't helping.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#96

Post by xamuel »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #87
xamuel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a guy making a prediction make a fool of Christianity? That's like saying if I read a science textbook and then incorrectly predict flying cars by 2020, that I have made a fool of science. Jesus Himself said: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days befor…

Good point. I spoke too hastily. More specifically, brought great disrepute to Christianity, and gave others cause to mock it.

>cause to mock it

You do realize you're talking about Christianity here, right? As in, people who worship a homeless man who was rejected by his own people, tortured, spat upon, and nailed to a cross beside common thieves. He died pitifully on that cross, naked and exposed. And you are saying that what gives cause to mock Christianity is ... some dude making idle predictions 2,000 years later???

"You will be hated by everyone on account of My name, but the one who perseveres to the end will be saved." (Matthew 10:22)

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

mLuby wrote: post #80
js2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what to make of your comment. One of the politicians during yesterday’s CNN climate change debate said the following: "No individual can be expected singlehandedly to solve this problem. It's going to require national action. And by the way -- this is why we invented government. It's for dealing with issues that are too big for each of us to do on our own." This is a humanity scale problem and government…

I think they meant government-directed (mega-)engineering projects will solve this, not individual efforts. When the US wanted to get to the moon, its government created and funded a huge engineering program (Apollo) but the most individuals could do was pay their taxes and support the program—no amount of individual-scale collective action would ever put astronauts on the moon.

The problem is that the (US) government doesn't care about climate changes, so what individual-scale collective action could do is to make them care, in order for that government to start sponsoring engineering mega-projects, which will then have actual impact on the problem.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#98

Post by Junk_Collector »

fallingfrog wrote: post #93
spaginal wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the fact that the salesmen of climate change have been politicians, and politicians lie, and politicians propose political solutions, they want more and more of my limited money, and browbeat people who already don’t like or trust them, and frankly that is a bad combination of tactics if the solution is needed that badly across the broad spectrum of the population. If climate change stops being sold a…

The conservatives will never support addressing climate change honestly, because they are getting too much money from the fossil fuel industries. I mean honestly, that’s like saying, I won’t believe that we are spending too much money on the military until I hear it from Northrop Grumman. So you’re going to be waiting a long time if that’s what you’re waiting for. None of those people care at all about you or your ki…

Perhaps instead of assuming a position that he didn't actually state and calling him "confused" you could have addressed his larger point that the vocal proponents of climate action alienate large portions of the population by painting them as ignorant or stupid instead of attempting to engage with them.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#99

Post by PeterisP »

wolfgke wrote: post #86
PeterisP wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implications of 'irreversible' are that it's going to become much more difficult to reverse in the "short term" (less than hundreds of years) as after the various tipping points reversing would involve not only to cancel/compensate for our emissions, but also to overcome the much larger positive feedback loops e.g. methane released by melting permafrost, increased solar absorbtion/heating after the reflective ice…

> And our capacity to do stuff is going to decrease as we suffer from the consequences - e.g. population reduction, conflicts, etc. If the population reduces, the emission of greenhouse gases decrease which helps to reverse the effect of climate change.

These feedback loops are in total larger than our emissions, so once we hit them in the coming decades, the global warming would continue increasing for at least a few centuries even if all humans would be dead and make zero emissions.

Hitting zero emissions now (which IMHO is unrealistic) would stop global warming at something like +2C level. Hitting zero emissions in 2050 will still mean a runaway global warming, and fixing that would require some effects that go way beyond zero emissions e.g. large scale carbon sequestration (effectively negative emissions), geoengineering sci-fi or something like that. In 1980 it would have been sufficient to "just" reduce the growth.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#100

Post by TeMPOraL »

wolfgke wrote: post #81
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Two decades ago we could have solved the problem at a relatively low cost compared to what we’ll pay now, or what we’ll pay if we do nothing. Every year it gets more expensive. This is utterly false. Two decades ago we could have solved the problem if economic growth in the rest of the world stopped. (And maybe not even then.) It was never a solution.

> Two decades ago we could have solved the problem if economic growth in the rest of the world stopped. So stop the economic growth in the rest of the world to save the climate.

This would have to be forced through war, and even if somehow the developing world agreed to it without being held at gunpoint, it would still cause lots of suffering and death in short-term. Economic growth is not just zeroes on executives' bank accounts; it's food on the tables of regular people.

Instead, IMO we should double-down on clean tech and then give it away for free, or even with subsidies attached, to the developing world. This way they get to develop even faster, while reducing their contribution to climate issues.

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