I thought the actual quote from Sinclair was, [I'm paraphrasing here] "when you want to make a change and the facts don't support your case, tell a story."
Per capita, China produces less carbon than the first world. What gives us more right to burn carbon for quality of life then them? Besides that, we buy their crap - basically we export the carbon costs of our goods.
Do Chinese people have different biological needs? Do they require less food, less transportation, less shelter? Then why the hell should they have less carbon than you or I?
Pick a per-capita number and stick to it. Anything else is hypocrisy.
Yes, but - those "per capita" numbers for China are not for all the Chinese populace's needs - it's for huge factories, etc that benefit relatively fewer and are a growing menace to the climate.
A 99% chance that this year will be the hottest on record. [0]
I would say that now is time to panic, but the time to panic was twenty years ago. Perhaps the West will pass from 'apathy' directly to 'resignation' and skip 'panic' altogether. Bring on the apocalypse!
Do I worry about climate change on "Earth where I live"? Definitely.
Does it enter the short-list of problems important for me? Definitely not.
Do I think that sticking with pre-industrial climate is the only option? Frankly I don't. Stanislav Lem with his promised palm trees in Greenland is still vivid.
Just saying that because my point of view got to be represented.
I think you'll find that science fiction authors are the only ones suggesting that the new climate will be better. Or at least that the period as we move towards a new equilibrium will be anything less than catastrophic.
> Yes we share a common Earth, but we do have conflicting interests on it.
True. But here I was thinking that we're above wanting to cut down the expense on heating for few million of our neighbours at the expense of fucking over the lives of several billion.
More than a hundred millions of people stuck in cold climate. And it's about quality of life, not just "expense on heating".
And that's what they get for no effort. Do you seriously expect them to show effort for bringing their climate back to worse?
Do you seriously think that any minority should be screwed over just because a larger set of people might benefit from this?
For example, imagine they find a deposit of fertilizer on some tropical island. A lot of people could benefit from that fertilizer (and especially the few involved in this operation), should we just confiscate the island? After all, there's just a few thousands of inhabitants, who can be easily moved to a camp in some desert.
Well, the climate change might not be catastrophic per se, but I wouldn't be so sure about population movements it'll force, or its effect on global food supply.
It would be a damn shame if technological civilization collapsed into war and famine just because the average temperature on the planet rose a few degrees. But it feels quite likely.
It all depends on how quickly the climate changes. Populations move and food production changes over time anyway, so a sufficiently gradual change in climate is probably not going to cause anything remotely resembling a catastrophe. I think climate change believers do a disservice when they overcompensate against climate change deniers by making claims about impending doom.
I would tend to agree with you. As of right now, I'm not personally involved in the fight against global warming. I'll try to do my part, but it's just like the efforts of one vegan trying to stop the slaughter of millions of animals.
If it's going to happen, then it happens. I'll be reading the news all the way, but really the only thing I can do is to be prepared for the worst.
I hope you forgot the pronoun in your second sentence. Otherwise you have no place telling others what they should feel concerned about just because the weather was pretty nice in your backyard. Not to mention it is incredibly short-sighted to think the fate of the rest of the world will have no impact on your life.
Interest in dealing with the consequences of global warming is interest towards your fate. Regardless of where you live, you will be affected. The temperature in your backyard is irrelevant.
These are still your problems. The economic fallout alone could personally affect you, or those nicer days could lead to hurricanes and tornados where there were none, and so on.
You should panic for purely selfish reasons. There will be huge migrations caused by global warming, literally billions of people, and they're probably going to want to live where you are now.
They may not get there, but at the very least, the measures required to keep them out (police state?) will probably affect you negatively.
At this point, there is a 100% chance that this is the coolest Spring/Summer in the last 15 years. It has broken 90F ~four times, and rained at least once a week in a place that normally rains once a month and is lucky to see a high be only 90F by the end of April.
Climate change is pretty nice this year. If it wasn't obviously bad, I'd be cheering China and other "developing" countries on. The "West" has nothing on them.
This is a world problem for sure. However, has the Chinese government or corporations spent billions on efforts to convince the population that climate change is a hoax? Anyone who runs a country that agrees it's a problem is doing better than a country (USA) where so many prominent people in power deny that the earth is changing because of us. That problem in particular seems unique to the west.
Uh... despite that, US carbon emissions have dropped over 500 million metric tons from their peak levels. I don't see any movement in that direction from China and India.
But the USA also has twice the carbon emission per capita of China and India's is almost ten times lower than that of the USA. Comparing carbon emissions but ignoring the differences in population is a bit misleading at the very least. You can really only start complaining about other countries when they pollute more than yourself.
The west (and the United States in particular) has had ample time and resources to do something about the problem, and failed to act meaningfully. China and India would have had to make much larger sacrifices in terms of individual quality of life to have the same impact.
That's completely unfair. China is a huge importer of CO2 emissions. Where do you think the dollars behind all those plastic toys and electric components come from?
Statistics like these don't account for a countries carbon footprint relative to population; there's no way that Poland, with a GDP of $13k per capita, produces fewer CO2 emissions than South Africa with a GDP of $6k per capita. But it is likely that South Africa has more manufacturing and mining operations to support exports.
By your logic, we should in fact blame China for bringing upon themselves this burden by offering low manufacturing prices? Without low prices, "western" consumers would not create such demand.
Climate change is absolutely the fault of China, India, Russia and others. Perhaps they should issue basic income or increase their minimum wage.
This year's carbon isn't what's causing global warming. It would be interesting to sum all the anthropogenic carbon for the last 1000 years by source and see where it's coming from. Then we'd need to somehow work out what percentage of those totals were "consumed" locally vs exported. Europe and North America ("the west") would not come out well in this, though.
This is a global problem, trying to scapegoat any one country is a really bad idea.
Considering that much of their population lives in poverty, I would say they have done an impressive amount. I can't imagine we would do as much if the shoe was on the other foot. The figures I've seen say they have greater levels of investment in green technologies than any other country (including the US).
But, in any case, if we really wanted to do something about climate change, it wouldn't be difficult. The US is currently negotiating trade deals which would cover about two thirds of the global economy.
All they need to do is include a minimum carbon price, or a requirement to meet the Paris targets, in those deals. You don't need that much of a push for the weight of the global economy to drive forward the alternative technologies. It's not a question of who is going to take the most punishment, it's a question of applying the right pressure so that solar, electric vehicles, etc have the scale to become cheaper than current technologies. And if enough countries undertake that together, they will be leaders in those new industries.
Serious question: Is the worst case really a full-blown apocalypse? Or are people mostly safe if we live in a city at a high altitude?
I understand that sea levels will rise, we'll lose some land, have to relocate some people, and weather events will become a lot more violent and energetic. But we're not looking at human extinction?
I really have no influence over global warming, so the only thing I can do is prepare for the fallout.
That line actually serves to frame the discussion in the linked paper: we won't befall the same fate as Venus, but they instead discuss other impacts that are more likely and require our consideration.
We live in a time where it is far easier to invent wild new technology to extract and sequester CO₂ from the atmosphere than it is to convince industry and individual to reduce the amount of CO₂ they contribute, let alone convincing people that a problem actually exists.
Invent, sure, but implement on a useful scale, not yet. Even sequestering CO2 right at the source has proved more expensive than anyone wants. Extracting it from the air is worse. Research needs to be funded all-out at this point, but leaving existing fossil fuels underground is going to be the cheaper option for some time.
I read once about a really fascinating way to transfer carbon back into the oceans by seeding it with iron, which promotes algae growth. Might transform some local ecosystems, but it gets the carbon out of the air at a shockingly cheap price. (iron and ships)
Well, at least IS an idea, yes, but its effects at middle and long term are still untested. Could release again the carbon to the air in the next summer. A 400 years old tree on the other side...
You seen the replacement rate of energy with solar panels in the last 2 years or so ? Granted, cost calculations for those were done when oil was $100, but they made sense at that point and solar has been lowering in cost by ~27% per year. In other words, despite oil dropping to 50, it's just going to continue. Even China is moving away from coal (thank God for that). Coal generates disproportionate amounts of CO2 so this helps even more than you'd guess from a simple linear estimation. Most oil usage is going to get replaced soon as well (people are talking about electrical engines for non-nuclear navy ships, container carriers, ...)
What we need to invent is cheap, dense, mobile batteries. No amount of blustering by Elon Musk can mask the fact that we can't store electrical power anywhere near as easily, lightly (meaning we need the ability to pack it up and move it around), and small. Yes you can fix it with $50k cars, but electrical cars could be $10k and even less if we assume magic perfect batteries. That'd be great and will get almost every gasoline car of the road.
Batteries are currently about 10% as dense either per liter or per kilogram. A bit of this can be made up because the infrasstructure to "burn" electricity is much simpler and therefore lighter than the infrastructure needed to burn gasoline. So let's say they're 20-25% as dense for locomotion purposes (this makes them not work for powering lights or factories or ... at night though). So we need batteries 4x smaller and lighter than current batteries. Assuming the current rate of improvement in batteries, that would require about 20-30 years (improvement per year is about 5%).
So that's just not good enough. Please invent something to fix it. If we can store energy efficiently, co2 release per year will stabilize probably on less than 10% of it's current value.
Or carbon neutral fuels. I've been a fan of engineering algae to make ethanol and similar from sun water and CO2 and though nothing's ready for primetime yet you never know.
Let's say it is easier (I can't comment on that), but instead of requiring industry to party for the waste they make, isn't it a huge subsidy to allow them to keep all their profits and make taxpayers pay for cleaning up their mess? That sounds like the wrong kind of incentive.
The oil industry already gets insane incentives at taxpayer cost. I don't feel like adding to them.
It is significantly easier to engineer a solution for a single, large (generally industrial) pollution source than a billion small pollution sources for both technical and political reasons.
So, for example, electric cars are incredibly useful even if they have the same carbon footprint as combustion cars simply because they move the pollution source to a single point (the power plant).
In addition, there is not a lot that an individual can do that will dramatically affect his carbon footprint. Neighborhoods don't magically become walkable or bikeable. Businesses don't magically implement work-from-home because a low-level employee wills it (see: Yahoo).
Most carbon reducing solutions require buy-in from a group of people, and that takes forever, if you can get them to agree at all.
"In addition, there is not a lot that an individual can do that will dramatically affect his carbon footprint. Neighborhoods don't magically become walkable or bikeable. Businesses don't magically implement work-from-home because a low-level employee wills it (see: Yahoo).
"
I don't buy that, that attitude I largely why we're in this situation.
It's the individuals which make up the whole, if each individual did something, then the whole would be better off.
What do you mean you don't buy it? Parent post is saying that's what the problem is. You seem to agree that it's the cause of our problems, then saying "I don't buy that".
What you're talking about is basically the Blade Runner scenario where everything is overcast, many animals that used to be alive are replaced by electric sheep, and Mars starts to look better than many places on Earth.
the issue is not with oil industries. it is with media/news industries making every fucking thing a sensation, a breaking news solely to get their ratings up! what it does in turn - it makes people numb. we only react on things that are super violent, super graphic and immediate, now. its the media industry thats greedy and inhuman.
Every one of the last 13 months has broken the record for the hottest month on record.
In other words, May 2015 was the warmest May on record, June 2015 was the warmest June on record, same for July 2015, August 2015, September 2015, October 2015, November 2015, December 2015, January 2016, February 2016, March 2016, April 2016, and now May 2016.
That'll be because the world is getting hotter. In some places in the Northern Hemisphere it's increasing at the same rate as if you moved south 30 metres every single day. The current measurements are far worse than even the most pessimistic estimates of around 20 years ago.
"Meat production is a major contributor to climate change. It is estimated that livestock production accounts for 70 per cent of all agricultural land use and occupies 30 per cent of the land surface of the planet. Because of their sheer numbers, livestock produce a considerable volume of greenhouse gases (such as methane and nitrous oxide) that contribute to climate change. In fact, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that livestock production is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases."
Because, as meat consumption produced less than a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, the claim that "it won't improve until the world population starts limiting its meat intake" is simply false.
Reducing meat production would help, certainly. But it ain't a blocking requirement to getting global warming under control.
As an aside, while I'm choosing to accept that 18% number, counting methane in that list is a bit misleading as, while it is a far more powerful greenhouse gas, it has a far shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than CO2.
>In fact, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that livestock production is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases.
It seems like fixing 82% of the problem is more important and likely than eliminating an essential protein source from the human diet. But that's just my opinion.
First step is to stop so heavily subsidizing it. On an individual scale I can advocate for eating less meat but when its cheaper per caloric pound, especially for protein, in many places because of tremendous subsidies, economics is fundamentally working against you where it would in a natural market be working for you.
Raising cattle for meat produces a huge amount of methane, and also is the number one reason for rainforest destruction, and overall is (surprisingly) the greatest contributor to global warming, so if you are truly worried about the greatest of out problems, then you would reduce your meat intake.
Serious Question: Why does the US always get away with average or below average temperatures? Every time I see one of these maps, USA (outside of the West Coast) is always blue.
Economically for the planet a carbon tax would make sense but individual countries may be better off pollution and letting others worry about the damage.
>Many large users of carbon resources in electricity generation, such as the United States, Russia, and China, are resisting carbon taxation. (Wikipedia)
I am also of the opinion that we are currently treating the internet just like we treated plastic/fossil fuels 20-30 years ago. The amount of digital data being generated on a daily basis with no regard to the massive DCs that host all the servers with A/C on full blast 24/7 is staggering. And nobody seems to care..
That's because while also a troll haven, the internet and parallel technical revolutions have done more to improve access to education, free speech, news, productivity (not to mention small businesses, new money, new economies, and just so much more) and so on than any other 20 year period in history.
FaceTime and like software alone have so vastly increased our family's access to each other across global distances that it's hard to put a number on, let alone having pocket access to the wealth of the world's information nearly instantaneously.
Yes, there are concerns as you mention, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that would roll back the way things work now. I'm willing to bet many people would give up cars and meat before the Internet and related technologies.
You mean, other than the companies that own the DCs like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. that are working to convert their centers to solar and wind power and trying to minimize the amount of harmful and recyclable materials being used in their construction.
At risk of being redundant (I've mentioned this book a few times), I highly recommend Stewart Brand's "The Whole Earth Discipline". [1]
Brand, for those unfamiliar, was a key player in the personal computer revolution of the 1970's. He created the "Whole Earth Catalog", which inspired many of the internet's pioneers, and was a hero of Steve Jobs. He later helped create "The Well" -- the first big online community, and was present at countless other cultural moments like the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, and the forming of the Green movement.
The Whole Earth Discipline chronicles his early participation in the environmental movement, and how he's diverged from that movement over the years.
It's presented as a pragmatic guide for addressing climate change and explores things like urbanization, genetic modification of food, and nuclear power -- and how these things need to be reconsidered by environmentalists.
was a key player in the personal computer revolution … was present at countless other cultural moments
One of the first major cultural moments he participated in was the "Mother of All Demos" - he was the camera operator at Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center in Menlo Park. This was the experience that turned him on to personal computing.
Serious question, not trolling: Why do many HackerNewsen seem to feel that global warming is a bad thing? For all we know, the changes brought on by a warmer climate may be great for humanity as a whole.
From what little I understand: the earth has a lot of carbon dioxide and methane sequestered in permafrost, deep water, and ice. As the average temperature increases, the rate at which these gases are released also increases. So we're in a fairly dangerous positive feedback loop, because it doesn't take much of a temperature change for a lot of the places we live to become uninhabitable.
Perhaps something like the precautionary principle?
We know from past experience that previous temperatures are tolerable. If we do not know for sure what would happen with temperatures higher than what we have experience for (if we think it could be somewhat good, but could also be completely devastating), then it is safer to not go to higher temperatures than previously experienced, at least until we have sufficient evidence that higher temperatures would be beneficial, or at least not devastating.
The scientific consensus currently seems to be that the chances of it being devastating are pretty high, and are higher than the chances of it being good instead by the same degree, and therefore, it seems best to avoid the increase in temperature.
What do you mean by this? The principle as I understand it is about what is a good idea to do, not a statement of what will or will not happen in a given situation.
As such, I wouldn't expect it, or things that handle the same questions, to be scientific.
What would it mean for something that plays a similar role to be scientific? (or alternatively, to be not unscientific, if those aren't the same thing.)
I mean that (and as somebody who believes climatic change is real) the PP is unscientific. It makes intuitive sense to people but deep down it makes no sense at all. It can be used to create infinite technological conservationism for example.
Let's look at Pascal's Wager. Directly from Wikipedia it is:
1. Pascal argues ... if God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.).
2. Pascal argues ... whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
The precautionary principal is Pascal's Wager because it follows the same logic.
1. If Climate Change does not exist, then people will only suffer a finite loss (some types of technology, luxury, taxes).
2. Whereas they receive for practical purposes infinite gains if the planet continues to be a livable environment for humans and avoid infinite losses (the earth broiled to completion aka Venus-Earth aka actual hell).
Anything can be justified under Pascal's Wager, from charity to the Crusades, depending on the rhetorical power and motivation of people trying to persuade us to do things. It is worth noting for example, that the precautionary principal was used in arguments that succeeded in the ban of the use of nuclear energy in my country and many others in Europe, but that nuclear is now returning as people realize it's a good fit for preventing further CO2 emissions. Whether you believe in climate change or not is not important here, you have got to find this disconcerting! How can a technology destroy and save the earth at the same time? The answer is that the world is a complex system and not every choice we make reduces to a dualism.
> The principle as I understand it is about what is a good idea to do, not a statement of what will or will not happen in a given situation.
It is neither a good heuristic for policy nor a scientific principal. This is because as I've said, it is illogical. It generates contradictory conclusions. My hunch is that there exists a class of intellectual ideas that predictably lead to a form of civilizational scale suicide. You see it in the present with the Hale-Bop people, with ISIS today, with the Khmer Rouge and so forth. There is a precautionary principal logic behind their evil, which boils down to the simple: If We Don't Do This (terrible deed) Then It Will Be Worse Later.
I don't think that the people who use the PP in debates understand that they inevitably go to the same place as Ted Kazinksy if they take the principal seriously and not merely for rhetorical affect.
> What would it mean for something that plays a similar role to be scientific?
It is simple: it must not fail the test of being able to repeatedly make predictions and test them. There are lots of things that are not science but clothed in scientism by people trying to advance their aims, often with ulterior motives.
> As such, I wouldn't expect it, or things that handle the same questions, to be scientific.
Then you're particularly clear headed and we don't disagree but believe me many people in the world think the PP is a scientific principal. In another post somebody described this quality as the 'truth-adjacent'. It's something that happens when you mix science with politics or the media get hold of something.
The earth's ecosystems and our society are well adapted to the current climate. Both ecosystems and economies will falter if it changes too quickly for us to adapt.
I forest or a city located where there will no longer be an ample water supply 20 years hence can't just teleport.
Forests and wetlands will migrate, not exterminate.
I personally think it will have a net positive effect. It's already forcing us to invest in renewables which means the economic depression from running out of oil will be less.
One reason is the already mentioned feedback loop. We might like it a few degrees warmer, but we wouldn't like to accidentally turn Earth into Venus.
Another is that rising water levels means flooding coastal areas, which means mass-scale migrations of people who lived there, which will probably end up in wars, famines and generally whole lot of crap for everyone.
And while people love to trash on the East Coast Elites and other nonsense, these coastal cities in many countries are the economic centers of the world. You can't just displace NYC and Tokyo and Hong Kong and Sydney and so on and think "no big deal, it's just some displacement" because it will rock the world economy like nothing we've seen if these cities become swimming pools.
I'm echoing a previous comment of mine, but it will affect different places differently, and those with money and means to work around it will suffer less than those without. I see it as social justice question, like hunger and access to clean water.
I'm for one excited for arctic shipping as it's a huge shortcut between the northern Atlantic and eastern Asia. But at the expense of famine or war brought upon by competition of resources in a changing climate? It's a risky game.
Am I the only one more than a bit annoyed by that link at the end to 'what you can do'? 'Personal responsibility' has been the neo-liberal hands off policy excuse every time, while the problem is completely structural and systemic.
Can someone give me a summary of what will happen to the human race if we burn all of earth fossil fuels?
How will it affect daily life? I've never seen it put in these terms and frankly it seems daily life would stay the same. Wouldn't mind being proved wrong.
Consider this. Where I grew up there were birds around every summer that laid eggs. They need a certain temperature range. If it grows hotter or colder they need to migrate south/north.
What happens if the landscape north/south doesn't have any craggy mountains where these birds can build nest? It's all ocean, both northwards and southwards.
Ditto the fish the fishermen used to fish. In principle it can migrate a few kilometers, but the ocean is different a bit further north. Can't swim from the surface to the bottom.
Quite a lot of species get yanked hard by having to move a little. And when 99% of a some species birds disappear, that affects their predators, and it affects the other species preyed upon by the same predators. Before you know it, the grass changes because the grazing species do, and there are landslides where none used to be.
The house where I spent my first month might be at risk of a rock slide. The spot has been safe for a millenium, but might not be any more.
Or the rains flow off differently towards the rivers because of the vegetation changes, and you get droughts where none used to be, or flash floods.
Or, or, or... a few degrees of extra heat and there are a lot of things that can have a surprisingly large impact. We will need a lot of luck to avoid all of the badness.
1. Food prices will go up, probably by quite a lot.
2. Your chance of contracting an infectious disease that used to only live in the tropics will be higher.
3. Depending on where you live it will either be much dryer or much wetter rather than more temperate.
4. Obviously, at that point, energy prices will have to be much higher as there won't be as many fossil fuels. Or else we would have transitioned to renewable sources/nuclear by then.
5. If we're talking about even more worse case scenarios, there's the death of large chunks of life in the ocean as corals will have been bleached and the fish that live there died. Also runaway algae blooms, deaths of birds and other animals that used to live on those now dead fish.
6. Areas near the equator, like the middle east, that supply important resources will be basically uninhabitable for large parts of the year if not the entire year.
7. Areas in the far north that are covered in permafrost will turn into swamps/bogs instead. Also, in some projections, places in Europe that are warmed by the N. Atlantic stream may end up being much cooler and similar to other places at similar latitudes (e.g. Canada/Russia).
But again, many of these are unlikely to happen until late in the 21st century, so you're likely going to not be alive then anyways.
So it seems that with a one time move you could avoid 4/5 of these?
Not including the fish one since it doesn't really affect daily life IMO, or the oil price one since that is just what happens when you run out of something and not a consequence of GW, IMO.
Seems like only daily life effect of GW (assuming you migrated to somewhere else over the course of 50 years) will be higher food prices. Though I'm also curious if over time innovation will make that change rather insignificant.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-co2-hit-...
Pick a per-capita number and stick to it. Anything else is hypocrisy.
Sigh. It's not as if we were clueless about the effects of emissions 20 years ago, already
I would say that now is time to panic, but the time to panic was twenty years ago. Perhaps the West will pass from 'apathy' directly to 'resignation' and skip 'panic' altogether. Bring on the apocalypse!
[0] https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/742668462699499520
"How do you have audacity not worrying about our problems", you're probably selfishly asking. Well, I've never seen much caring about my problems.
Important to remember that "Earth" is a valid answer for where you live, as well.
Does it enter the short-list of problems important for me? Definitely not.
Do I think that sticking with pre-industrial climate is the only option? Frankly I don't. Stanislav Lem with his promised palm trees in Greenland is still vivid.
Just saying that because my point of view got to be represented.
Or maybe quite contrary, it's only people of certain coasts that think our current climate was optimal.
Yes we share a common Earth, but we do have conflicting interests on it.
True. But here I was thinking that we're above wanting to cut down the expense on heating for few million of our neighbours at the expense of fucking over the lives of several billion.
And that's what they get for no effort. Do you seriously expect them to show effort for bringing their climate back to worse?
Do you seriously think that any minority should be screwed over just because a larger set of people might benefit from this? For example, imagine they find a deposit of fertilizer on some tropical island. A lot of people could benefit from that fertilizer (and especially the few involved in this operation), should we just confiscate the island? After all, there's just a few thousands of inhabitants, who can be easily moved to a camp in some desert.
It would be a damn shame if technological civilization collapsed into war and famine just because the average temperature on the planet rose a few degrees. But it feels quite likely.
If it's going to happen, then it happens. I'll be reading the news all the way, but really the only thing I can do is to be prepared for the worst.
They may not get there, but at the very least, the measures required to keep them out (police state?) will probably affect you negatively.
Climate change is pretty nice this year. If it wasn't obviously bad, I'd be cheering China and other "developing" countries on. The "West" has nothing on them.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...
Seems to me this is a world wide issue, that calls for a world wide solution.
Actions speak louder than words, after all.
Statistics like these don't account for a countries carbon footprint relative to population; there's no way that Poland, with a GDP of $13k per capita, produces fewer CO2 emissions than South Africa with a GDP of $6k per capita. But it is likely that South Africa has more manufacturing and mining operations to support exports.
Climate change is absolutely the fault of China, India, Russia and others. Perhaps they should issue basic income or increase their minimum wage.
This is a global problem, trying to scapegoat any one country is a really bad idea.
But, in any case, if we really wanted to do something about climate change, it wouldn't be difficult. The US is currently negotiating trade deals which would cover about two thirds of the global economy.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=SUM+GDP+Australia+Brun...
All they need to do is include a minimum carbon price, or a requirement to meet the Paris targets, in those deals. You don't need that much of a push for the weight of the global economy to drive forward the alternative technologies. It's not a question of who is going to take the most punishment, it's a question of applying the right pressure so that solar, electric vehicles, etc have the scale to become cheaper than current technologies. And if enough countries undertake that together, they will be leaders in those new industries.
Anything to avoid actually doing anything.
I understand that sea levels will rise, we'll lose some land, have to relocate some people, and weather events will become a lot more violent and energetic. But we're not looking at human extinction?
I really have no influence over global warming, so the only thing I can do is prepare for the fallout.
> a "runaway greenhouse effect" -- analogous to Venus -- appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities. [1]
[1] http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session31/inf3.pdf
That line actually serves to frame the discussion in the linked paper: we won't befall the same fate as Venus, but they instead discuss other impacts that are more likely and require our consideration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
Thats a horrible idea. See ocean acidification on Wikipedia.
What we need to invent is cheap, dense, mobile batteries. No amount of blustering by Elon Musk can mask the fact that we can't store electrical power anywhere near as easily, lightly (meaning we need the ability to pack it up and move it around), and small. Yes you can fix it with $50k cars, but electrical cars could be $10k and even less if we assume magic perfect batteries. That'd be great and will get almost every gasoline car of the road.
Batteries are currently about 10% as dense either per liter or per kilogram. A bit of this can be made up because the infrasstructure to "burn" electricity is much simpler and therefore lighter than the infrastructure needed to burn gasoline. So let's say they're 20-25% as dense for locomotion purposes (this makes them not work for powering lights or factories or ... at night though). So we need batteries 4x smaller and lighter than current batteries. Assuming the current rate of improvement in batteries, that would require about 20-30 years (improvement per year is about 5%).
So that's just not good enough. Please invent something to fix it. If we can store energy efficiently, co2 release per year will stabilize probably on less than 10% of it's current value.
I love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgZfhnCAdI
It's my favourite episode of the daily show.
The oil industry already gets insane incentives at taxpayer cost. I don't feel like adding to them.
So, for example, electric cars are incredibly useful even if they have the same carbon footprint as combustion cars simply because they move the pollution source to a single point (the power plant).
In addition, there is not a lot that an individual can do that will dramatically affect his carbon footprint. Neighborhoods don't magically become walkable or bikeable. Businesses don't magically implement work-from-home because a low-level employee wills it (see: Yahoo).
Most carbon reducing solutions require buy-in from a group of people, and that takes forever, if you can get them to agree at all.
I don't buy that, that attitude I largely why we're in this situation.
It's the individuals which make up the whole, if each individual did something, then the whole would be better off.
At least fund research to have some plan and prototypes. Maybe that should have priority over article citing business :-P.
The only thing stopping it is the affluents, nothing else.
In other words, May 2015 was the warmest May on record, June 2015 was the warmest June on record, same for July 2015, August 2015, September 2015, October 2015, November 2015, December 2015, January 2016, February 2016, March 2016, April 2016, and now May 2016.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201604
"Meat production is a major contributor to climate change. It is estimated that livestock production accounts for 70 per cent of all agricultural land use and occupies 30 per cent of the land surface of the planet. Because of their sheer numbers, livestock produce a considerable volume of greenhouse gases (such as methane and nitrous oxide) that contribute to climate change. In fact, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that livestock production is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases."
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/food-and-our-plan...
(David Suzuki is a biologist and climate change activist here in Canada)
Reducing meat production would help, certainly. But it ain't a blocking requirement to getting global warming under control.
As an aside, while I'm choosing to accept that 18% number, counting methane in that list is a bit misleading as, while it is a far more powerful greenhouse gas, it has a far shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than CO2.
It seems like fixing 82% of the problem is more important and likely than eliminating an essential protein source from the human diet. But that's just my opinion.
Also, I'm willing to limit use of coal, oil, and natural gas. I'm not willing to eat less steak.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772#.V2WuH8tl...
Can you provide a source for that claim? Thanks
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/polar-vortex-to-v...
Changes in weather patterns brought about by melting arctic ice has brough cold arctic winds south over much of the US.
>Many large users of carbon resources in electricity generation, such as the United States, Russia, and China, are resisting carbon taxation. (Wikipedia)
FaceTime and like software alone have so vastly increased our family's access to each other across global distances that it's hard to put a number on, let alone having pocket access to the wealth of the world's information nearly instantaneously.
Yes, there are concerns as you mention, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that would roll back the way things work now. I'm willing to bet many people would give up cars and meat before the Internet and related technologies.
Brand, for those unfamiliar, was a key player in the personal computer revolution of the 1970's. He created the "Whole Earth Catalog", which inspired many of the internet's pioneers, and was a hero of Steve Jobs. He later helped create "The Well" -- the first big online community, and was present at countless other cultural moments like the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, and the forming of the Green movement.
The Whole Earth Discipline chronicles his early participation in the environmental movement, and how he's diverged from that movement over the years.
It's presented as a pragmatic guide for addressing climate change and explores things like urbanization, genetic modification of food, and nuclear power -- and how these things need to be reconsidered by environmentalists.
1: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6411373-whole-earth-disci...
One of the first major cultural moments he participated in was the "Mother of All Demos" - he was the camera operator at Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center in Menlo Park. This was the experience that turned him on to personal computing.
From what little I understand: the earth has a lot of carbon dioxide and methane sequestered in permafrost, deep water, and ice. As the average temperature increases, the rate at which these gases are released also increases. So we're in a fairly dangerous positive feedback loop, because it doesn't take much of a temperature change for a lot of the places we live to become uninhabitable.
We know from past experience that previous temperatures are tolerable. If we do not know for sure what would happen with temperatures higher than what we have experience for (if we think it could be somewhat good, but could also be completely devastating), then it is safer to not go to higher temperatures than previously experienced, at least until we have sufficient evidence that higher temperatures would be beneficial, or at least not devastating.
The scientific consensus currently seems to be that the chances of it being devastating are pretty high, and are higher than the chances of it being good instead by the same degree, and therefore, it seems best to avoid the increase in temperature.
That principal is completely unscientific. It's exactly like using Pascal's Wager to convince people to believe in God.
There exist rational arguments to make on behalf of climatic change being an issue, but that is NOT one of them.
What do you mean by this? The principle as I understand it is about what is a good idea to do, not a statement of what will or will not happen in a given situation.
As such, I wouldn't expect it, or things that handle the same questions, to be scientific.
What would it mean for something that plays a similar role to be scientific? (or alternatively, to be not unscientific, if those aren't the same thing.)
> What do you mean by this?
I mean that (and as somebody who believes climatic change is real) the PP is unscientific. It makes intuitive sense to people but deep down it makes no sense at all. It can be used to create infinite technological conservationism for example.
Let's look at Pascal's Wager. Directly from Wikipedia it is:
1. Pascal argues ... if God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.).
2. Pascal argues ... whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager
The precautionary principal is Pascal's Wager because it follows the same logic.
1. If Climate Change does not exist, then people will only suffer a finite loss (some types of technology, luxury, taxes).
2. Whereas they receive for practical purposes infinite gains if the planet continues to be a livable environment for humans and avoid infinite losses (the earth broiled to completion aka Venus-Earth aka actual hell).
Anything can be justified under Pascal's Wager, from charity to the Crusades, depending on the rhetorical power and motivation of people trying to persuade us to do things. It is worth noting for example, that the precautionary principal was used in arguments that succeeded in the ban of the use of nuclear energy in my country and many others in Europe, but that nuclear is now returning as people realize it's a good fit for preventing further CO2 emissions. Whether you believe in climate change or not is not important here, you have got to find this disconcerting! How can a technology destroy and save the earth at the same time? The answer is that the world is a complex system and not every choice we make reduces to a dualism.
> The principle as I understand it is about what is a good idea to do, not a statement of what will or will not happen in a given situation.
It is neither a good heuristic for policy nor a scientific principal. This is because as I've said, it is illogical. It generates contradictory conclusions. My hunch is that there exists a class of intellectual ideas that predictably lead to a form of civilizational scale suicide. You see it in the present with the Hale-Bop people, with ISIS today, with the Khmer Rouge and so forth. There is a precautionary principal logic behind their evil, which boils down to the simple: If We Don't Do This (terrible deed) Then It Will Be Worse Later.
I don't think that the people who use the PP in debates understand that they inevitably go to the same place as Ted Kazinksy if they take the principal seriously and not merely for rhetorical affect.
> What would it mean for something that plays a similar role to be scientific?
It is simple: it must not fail the test of being able to repeatedly make predictions and test them. There are lots of things that are not science but clothed in scientism by people trying to advance their aims, often with ulterior motives.
> As such, I wouldn't expect it, or things that handle the same questions, to be scientific.
Then you're particularly clear headed and we don't disagree but believe me many people in the world think the PP is a scientific principal. In another post somebody described this quality as the 'truth-adjacent'. It's something that happens when you mix science with politics or the media get hold of something.
I forest or a city located where there will no longer be an ample water supply 20 years hence can't just teleport.
But I don't think you can seriously put this forth as an argument that rapid climate change will have a net positive benefit for human welfare.
Also, no such bright side exists for forests and wetlands.
I personally think it will have a net positive effect. It's already forcing us to invest in renewables which means the economic depression from running out of oil will be less.
Rapid climate change is not as rapid as you may think: https://www.quora.com/profile/Richard-Muller-3/answers/Clima...
Another is that rising water levels means flooding coastal areas, which means mass-scale migrations of people who lived there, which will probably end up in wars, famines and generally whole lot of crap for everyone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Pass_S-1_of_Saint_P...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project
Of course we aren't 100% sure. Some of the dire predictions may not come true. Some may be worse.
But we have some idea what will happen to various parts of the world when the temperature hits +2.0C, +3.0C, and so on, and it ain't pretty.
I'm for one excited for arctic shipping as it's a huge shortcut between the northern Atlantic and eastern Asia. But at the expense of famine or war brought upon by competition of resources in a changing climate? It's a risky game.
How will it affect daily life? I've never seen it put in these terms and frankly it seems daily life would stay the same. Wouldn't mind being proved wrong.
https://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-if-global-warming-con...
Consider this. Where I grew up there were birds around every summer that laid eggs. They need a certain temperature range. If it grows hotter or colder they need to migrate south/north.
What happens if the landscape north/south doesn't have any craggy mountains where these birds can build nest? It's all ocean, both northwards and southwards.
Ditto the fish the fishermen used to fish. In principle it can migrate a few kilometers, but the ocean is different a bit further north. Can't swim from the surface to the bottom.
Quite a lot of species get yanked hard by having to move a little. And when 99% of a some species birds disappear, that affects their predators, and it affects the other species preyed upon by the same predators. Before you know it, the grass changes because the grazing species do, and there are landslides where none used to be.
The house where I spent my first month might be at risk of a rock slide. The spot has been safe for a millenium, but might not be any more.
Or the rains flow off differently towards the rivers because of the vegetation changes, and you get droughts where none used to be, or flash floods.
Or, or, or... a few degrees of extra heat and there are a lot of things that can have a surprisingly large impact. We will need a lot of luck to avoid all of the badness.
Are wild animals necessary for daily!y life?
I've already moved a few times in my life. Moving once more is not that frightening to me.
2. Your chance of contracting an infectious disease that used to only live in the tropics will be higher.
3. Depending on where you live it will either be much dryer or much wetter rather than more temperate.
4. Obviously, at that point, energy prices will have to be much higher as there won't be as many fossil fuels. Or else we would have transitioned to renewable sources/nuclear by then.
5. If we're talking about even more worse case scenarios, there's the death of large chunks of life in the ocean as corals will have been bleached and the fish that live there died. Also runaway algae blooms, deaths of birds and other animals that used to live on those now dead fish.
6. Areas near the equator, like the middle east, that supply important resources will be basically uninhabitable for large parts of the year if not the entire year.
7. Areas in the far north that are covered in permafrost will turn into swamps/bogs instead. Also, in some projections, places in Europe that are warmed by the N. Atlantic stream may end up being much cooler and similar to other places at similar latitudes (e.g. Canada/Russia).
But again, many of these are unlikely to happen until late in the 21st century, so you're likely going to not be alive then anyways.
Not including the fish one since it doesn't really affect daily life IMO, or the oil price one since that is just what happens when you run out of something and not a consequence of GW, IMO.
Seems like only daily life effect of GW (assuming you migrated to somewhere else over the course of 50 years) will be higher food prices. Though I'm also curious if over time innovation will make that change rather insignificant.