The down votes come not from the "truth", but that this is a smoke screen. Yes, we had much higher temperatures in the past. What is the problem right now is the quick change in temperatures. At minimum this means, that our day-to-day lives are getting screwed up, as the current civilization is adjusted to the temperatures of the last 200 years. Large cities are going to be flooded, whole farming regions are going to shift. We are talking about relocating billions.
And if we are really unlucky, the eco systems get screwed up by this fast shift, which could have extinction level consequences.
Relocating billions of people is going to cause massive political disruption and the rise of all kinds of hostility between groups, including violence.
Relocating billions of dollars of economic production is going to cause significant loss of production, especially when a certain percentage of people prefer to waste away uselessly in place, like Trump's coal miners and the rust belt layoffs of a previous generation, instead of finding a role in the new economic order. We'll need people to move and change, and instead a certain percentage of them will stay home and drink and pray for everything to go back the way it was.
Relocating billions of dollars of agriculture is also not going to happen without a hitch. Is our agriculture flexible enough to avoid a significant loss of production? In the US I guess we'll call the bluff (or maybe not?) of all these subsidized farmers we've been paying to maintain extra growing capacity. There will be famine in many places.
Given the "stick your head in a bottle and pray for everything to go back to the way it was" mentality, I think the disruption of global warming will be a huge push to automate entire industries. Either you force people to move and work, which sounds horrific, or you find a way not to rely on them. The best way to derisk your reliance on low- and middle-wage workers is to rely on fewer of them. The technical/professional class, which already practices and values mobility, will consolidate control, while workforces who do not get on that bandwagon will be further reduced in relevance. Maybe the entire economy will come to resemble the petroleum extraction industry, where a small number of nomadic, relatively high skill, relatively highly paid blue collar workers are the only blue collar workers needed to sustain an entire industry. Huge numbers of people will live on public assistance in formerly productive areas, dwarfing the numbers left behind in the wake of previous economic disruptions.
Still, even in the best case scenario, we will be finding "democratic" ways to force large populations to move and other populations to make room for them.
>Relocating billions of dollars of economic production is going to cause significant loss of production, especially when a certain percentage of people prefer to waste away uselessly in place, like Trump's coal miners and the rust belt layoffs of a previous generation, instead of finding a role in the new economic order.
You mean the "new economic order" in which wages for blue-collar workers have been falling for decades, while we also cut the welfare state, leaving most of these people too indebted and impoverished to move for work, which wouldn't help anyway because there just aren't that many well-paying jobs?
What is the point you are trying to make with? If the headline included that this time it's largely due to human activity would that placate you? It's an implicit assumption with such artcles that the alarm comes from this time being the fault of human activity and that the change is rapid.
Large numbers of people are passive or apathetic to what is going on in terms of pollution and the detrimental effects that this is causing. What is the point of mentioning that climate changes naturally when the focus is on human caused change?
The fact that the headline could have been written before means what, exactly?
65 million years ago you could write the headline "Giant Asteroid Set to Wipe Out Most Life" but that doesn't imply we should be ok with a giant asteroid hitting now.
We have climate deniers, and we have another group of people who don't want to spend money to solve the problem; probably the Republican party. Global warming simply isn't a priority.
More important problems than global warming. Skip to minute 6:
Right, but they also want to _spend_ money to accelerate the problem. With just a dozen years of subsidy, we're now at a point where unsubsidized the solar and wind industries do better than the still heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry for everything but the midsized high-output applications (e.g., trucks & shipping) and some specific industrial cases.
The first would could do commensurate good by spending its enormous resources accelerating the reliance on renewable resources. So this argument against Kyoto (which is indeed a proposal that is more a gesture than a solution) is basically used to dismiss other things.
For example, Trump's proposed to wipe out the EV tax credit (please don't, I want my tax credit!) in the US. It'd reclaim less than a billion dollars but substantially deter the uptake of EV cars.
Similarly, the US is facing a grim truth that even it cannot maintain its entire massive infrastructure in the face of modern economic challenges. Renewable resource generation offers an alternative, distributed power grid. Between this and modern manufacturing techniques, we see a glimpse of a future where socialists, centralists and anarchists all see a world resembling more of what they want, with regional control and generation of power resources and control over economics, but a framework left in place for a top down government to govern things that are advantageous overall (central planning for scarce resources & conservation, rights and health care, etc).
Resistance to the topic on the grounds that Kyoto is bad is over-applied to all attempts to grapple with climate change, even when they actually have huge positive effects only tangentially related.
"Trump's proposed to wipe out the EV tax credit (please don't, I want my tax credit!) in the US. It'd reclaim less than a billion dollars but substantially deter the uptake of EV cars"
Hmmm. I guess you don't understand that many Republicans don't like the idea of government subsidies. If it comes down to subsidies, we aren't going to solve the problem, according to this economist:
They like subsidies alright. Just subsidies that fit their doctrine.
> the IMF says America is the world’s second biggest culprit, spending $669 billion this year—but mostly by “post-tax” systems which fail to factor the costs of environmental damage into prices.
I really wish people would understand that allowing companies to pollute without compensating the people they poison is just as much of a subsidy as dropping a fat deposit into their bank account every month.
That recent rule change where coal mining companies are once again allowed to dump their waste into streams? That was Republicans passing a subsidy for coal mining. Every time Republicans block or roll back environmental regulations, that's subsidizing polluting industries.
Republicans have no problem subsidizing industries that they like.
What they dislike is competition. Weirdly, the Democrats morphed into a weirdly lightweight party on regulation of markets and the Republicans continue to grow towards something that incrementally becomes a planned economy.
And let's just reiterate: less than a decade of subsidizing renewables kicked it over an economic hump and we've accelerated it to the point where it's actually radically changing first world economies. So anyone saying that subsidies "don't solve problems" is clearly using a different definition of "solve", "problem", and maybe even "doesn't."
Maybe I was unclear: the irony is in the fact that the Republican party loves to appeal to the communist boogyman, all the while vying for a planned economy (albeit at the hands of private actors).
This is ironic because much of their apparent hatred for socialism/communism stems from the idea that these lead to planned (i.e. non-free) economies.
Even if we switched entirely to renewables tomorrow we'd still be ultrafucked by the mechanisms we have unleashed from the past 200 years of industrialization. That is what is so upsetting about the way politicians behave: we can't even get them to sign on to to the most minimal steps necessary to halt the progress of global warming. Discussing the steps needed to actually fix the problem, or in some way figure out how to live with it, (which is all people are going to be doing 50 years from now), is completely beyond the pale.
> we'd still be ultrafucked by the mechanisms we have unleashed from the past 200 years of industrialization.
Yes, which is why I am so keen to find a path to a decentralized infrastructure while retaining the key benefits of a centralized state (rights guarantees, pooling resources and scare resource management).
> Similarly, the US is facing a grim truth that even it cannot maintain its entire massive infrastructure in the face of modern economic challenges...
The US could easily maintain its infrastructure; we just need to stop wasting our money on useless war equipnent. There are something like 2,000 tanks sitting in Arizona collecting dust for an outdated style of warfare. https://www.google.com/amp/www.military.com/daily-news/2014/...
Then on top of that we have the dumb F35 program, which is so clearly a waste of money as drones have become so much more important.
It's so frustrating that congress wastes all this money to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. This money would be better used by investing directly in the US infrastructure and supporting the economy.
We could continue to coast on a new negative proposition, but it turns out that doing so without considering how people might actually use said infrastructure results in perverse incentives.
As in cities, where poor districts often subsidize rich district services.
On one hand, Russia may soon finally have year-round maritime access that can't easily be blocked by other powers. On the other hand, will it still be able to count on its winters to shut out invaders?
Because the Pacific coast of Russia is thousands of land miles, and even more thousands of sea miles, from the places Russia wants to be able to influence. Having naval bases there doesn't really help them project naval force in Europe and the Middle East.
Russia's Far East is basically colonies that never decolonized. Most of Russia is situated in its Europe, and its hinterlands have notable density only along roughly the region of the Trans-Siberian Railroad once you get past around the Irtysh River (western tributary of the Ob). Even past Lake Baikal, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, and Yakutsk are virtually the only cities.
Vladivostok was developed heavily, as Russia's only ice-free ocean port, but most of the rest of that region is far too sparsely populated. It's telling that, in modern times, Russia is quite paranoid that China is planning an invasion and takeover of that area.
Russia is good at causing problems, because they cost relatively little. Russia has no military to fight a protracted war against a "real" country, and definitely they cannot project power thousands of miles away.
Now if they get invaded that's a different story, but other than China I don't see anyone else invading them. If China retakes Siberia, then get ready for nuclear winters.
As Napoleon said the army marches in its stomach, and Russia has a limited amount of money. Russia is behind Canada when it comes to GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... Granted they have a history of weapon production and can squeeze more out of a dollar, but if it looks like war is coming, you'll see everyone spending and catching up.
44 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadedit-interesting how the truth looks to becoming unpopular.Included link to pdf so those downvoting can see its true.
http://sashabalcazar.weebly.com/uploads/2/4/6/2/24627865/gla...
And if we are really unlucky, the eco systems get screwed up by this fast shift, which could have extinction level consequences.
Relocating billions of dollars of economic production is going to cause significant loss of production, especially when a certain percentage of people prefer to waste away uselessly in place, like Trump's coal miners and the rust belt layoffs of a previous generation, instead of finding a role in the new economic order. We'll need people to move and change, and instead a certain percentage of them will stay home and drink and pray for everything to go back the way it was.
Relocating billions of dollars of agriculture is also not going to happen without a hitch. Is our agriculture flexible enough to avoid a significant loss of production? In the US I guess we'll call the bluff (or maybe not?) of all these subsidized farmers we've been paying to maintain extra growing capacity. There will be famine in many places.
Given the "stick your head in a bottle and pray for everything to go back to the way it was" mentality, I think the disruption of global warming will be a huge push to automate entire industries. Either you force people to move and work, which sounds horrific, or you find a way not to rely on them. The best way to derisk your reliance on low- and middle-wage workers is to rely on fewer of them. The technical/professional class, which already practices and values mobility, will consolidate control, while workforces who do not get on that bandwagon will be further reduced in relevance. Maybe the entire economy will come to resemble the petroleum extraction industry, where a small number of nomadic, relatively high skill, relatively highly paid blue collar workers are the only blue collar workers needed to sustain an entire industry. Huge numbers of people will live on public assistance in formerly productive areas, dwarfing the numbers left behind in the wake of previous economic disruptions.
Still, even in the best case scenario, we will be finding "democratic" ways to force large populations to move and other populations to make room for them.
You mean the "new economic order" in which wages for blue-collar workers have been falling for decades, while we also cut the welfare state, leaving most of these people too indebted and impoverished to move for work, which wouldn't help anyway because there just aren't that many well-paying jobs?
Large numbers of people are passive or apathetic to what is going on in terms of pollution and the detrimental effects that this is causing. What is the point of mentioning that climate changes naturally when the focus is on human caused change?
We're wondering how fast this will happen and if there's anything we can do about it.
65 million years ago you could write the headline "Giant Asteroid Set to Wipe Out Most Life" but that doesn't imply we should be ok with a giant asteroid hitting now.
29 years constitutes a baseline.
I agree with you that it does not. However, the article (and climate reporting in general) implies that it does.
Was the temperature and CO2 level stable before the Industrial Revolution?
The question remains, how 29 years can constitute a baseline from which to claim that the arctic is "unraveling."
More important problems than global warming. Skip to minute 6:
https://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioriti...
The first would could do commensurate good by spending its enormous resources accelerating the reliance on renewable resources. So this argument against Kyoto (which is indeed a proposal that is more a gesture than a solution) is basically used to dismiss other things.
For example, Trump's proposed to wipe out the EV tax credit (please don't, I want my tax credit!) in the US. It'd reclaim less than a billion dollars but substantially deter the uptake of EV cars.
Similarly, the US is facing a grim truth that even it cannot maintain its entire massive infrastructure in the face of modern economic challenges. Renewable resource generation offers an alternative, distributed power grid. Between this and modern manufacturing techniques, we see a glimpse of a future where socialists, centralists and anarchists all see a world resembling more of what they want, with regional control and generation of power resources and control over economics, but a framework left in place for a top down government to govern things that are advantageous overall (central planning for scarce resources & conservation, rights and health care, etc).
Resistance to the topic on the grounds that Kyoto is bad is over-applied to all attempts to grapple with climate change, even when they actually have huge positive effects only tangentially related.
Hmmm. I guess you don't understand that many Republicans don't like the idea of government subsidies. If it comes down to subsidies, we aren't going to solve the problem, according to this economist:
https://youtu.be/pQSGuC9GF70
> the IMF says America is the world’s second biggest culprit, spending $669 billion this year—but mostly by “post-tax” systems which fail to factor the costs of environmental damage into prices.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/ec...
That recent rule change where coal mining companies are once again allowed to dump their waste into streams? That was Republicans passing a subsidy for coal mining. Every time Republicans block or roll back environmental regulations, that's subsidizing polluting industries.
What they dislike is competition. Weirdly, the Democrats morphed into a weirdly lightweight party on regulation of markets and the Republicans continue to grow towards something that incrementally becomes a planned economy.
And let's just reiterate: less than a decade of subsidizing renewables kicked it over an economic hump and we've accelerated it to the point where it's actually radically changing first world economies. So anyone saying that subsidies "don't solve problems" is clearly using a different definition of "solve", "problem", and maybe even "doesn't."
This is worth repeating twice, in case people missed it. The irony would be funny if it weren't so damn catastrophic.
This is ironic because much of their apparent hatred for socialism/communism stems from the idea that these lead to planned (i.e. non-free) economies.
Yes, which is why I am so keen to find a path to a decentralized infrastructure while retaining the key benefits of a centralized state (rights guarantees, pooling resources and scare resource management).
The US could easily maintain its infrastructure; we just need to stop wasting our money on useless war equipnent. There are something like 2,000 tanks sitting in Arizona collecting dust for an outdated style of warfare. https://www.google.com/amp/www.military.com/daily-news/2014/...
Then on top of that we have the dumb F35 program, which is so clearly a waste of money as drones have become so much more important.
It's so frustrating that congress wastes all this money to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. This money would be better used by investing directly in the US infrastructure and supporting the economy.
As in cities, where poor districts often subsidize rich district services.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6UMniZqC7k
This guy's main argument is that the money would be better spent on research to make green energy cheaper.
The new base is almost right in line with the Northwest Passage so I assume it's meant to police it just in time for the big melt.
I wonder what all of this will portend.
Everyone seems to ignore it.
Vladivostok was developed heavily, as Russia's only ice-free ocean port, but most of the rest of that region is far too sparsely populated. It's telling that, in modern times, Russia is quite paranoid that China is planning an invasion and takeover of that area.
Now if they get invaded that's a different story, but other than China I don't see anyone else invading them. If China retakes Siberia, then get ready for nuclear winters.
As Napoleon said the army marches in its stomach, and Russia has a limited amount of money. Russia is behind Canada when it comes to GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... Granted they have a history of weapon production and can squeeze more out of a dollar, but if it looks like war is coming, you'll see everyone spending and catching up.