2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
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2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
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Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#2Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#3Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places.
I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#4The scary thing about this (well, one scary thing) is that we, as a worldwide community, needed to be making hard decisions about the climate two or three decades ago, to stave off the worst of the impact of climate change. We're several years too late to stop it, and we still have half of our government (in the US) utterly denying the problem even exists. The decisions that need to be made now to stave off complete disaster are too extreme for even the non-insane elements in our government to support, because there's a whole segment of the population that still believes in fairy tales spun by the oil and gas industry.
The human mind is just terrible at grasping problems on the scale and timeline of global climate change, and it's plausible that it'll be the end of life as we know it in another few decades. All the assholes who denied it was happening will be dead, already, of course...so they won't care. I just don't see any significant movement on solving these problems; despite cool stuff like electric cars and renewable power becoming cheaper than coal, emissions are still increasing worldwide, not decreasing (and, again, it needed to begin decreasing decades ago).
I'm an optimist in the general case, but when it comes to climate and the environment, I see little reason to be optimistic.
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#5Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
One of the big news stories right now is how people are unhappy with the idea that other people want to relocate to other places.
I'm guessing that even more people wanting to relocate in the future would be slightly unpopular.
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#6Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
Is this no longer a problem because it wont affect YOU during your lifetime?
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#7Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
One big impact is the change to food supply. Plants and animals thrive in certain climates (the midwest of the United States for example). Those zones are moving due to climate change. Does that mean they are getting larger or shrinking? Will it require more energy (water, fertilizer, mechanical harvesting) to get the same amount of food? It's my understanding that both land-based and water based sources of food will shrink with a warming planet.
(Not sourced as I am currently at work - presumably someone is composing a detailed response to you as well)
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#8Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
Already climate change is causing disease and death on an alarming (and growing) scale. Rich people, as always, have a buffer. We in the developed world will be the last to be hit by it and the least impacted.
But, Africans are already feeling it. The Zika virus, which was identified in the 40s, was never been considered a serious health crisis, until climate change enabled it to spread farther and faster. Anything that enables mosquitoes to live longer and breed faster is a death sentence for people in many parts of the world.
Drought-prone regions are also feeling it already. It isn't a matter of "just move to another place" when your wages are measured in single-digit dollars per week or month. So, as climate change progresses, more people go hungry.
And, I think what's most alarming about it is that it is progressing faster than even the most extreme (mainstream) projections predicted. Where small changes were expected over a long period of time, we seem to be seeing a domino effect, where slight rises in temperature trigger other events that cause faster change. So, we probably don't have a century to adjust, particularly in areas that already have challenging weather events; Florida and Louisiana because of hurricanes and flooding, Texas and California because of drought. Many of our food producing states will be forced to evolve rapidly...I doubt it will be a smooth transition. There's already constant political battles over water in some parts of California.
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#9Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
You seem to assume that the temperature will slowly increase, giving us time to adapt, without descending into another global war due to all the shufling of agricultural areas and mass migrations.
But there's a scarier scenario, where temperatures change much more rapidly due to a positive feedback loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
Re: 2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records
#10Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
The regugee crisis of today, one could argue, is a result of supply issues caused by climate change... and things haven't even really started to get bad yet. As things get worse, the people who are impacted will resort to more extreme measures.
Even if we turn this planet into Mars, we can figure out how to live on it... humans are amazing adaptable. The issue is can we scale that up to 10 billion people? I imagine resource wars are the biggest threat from climate change.