4 ms·

We’re Losing the Climate-Change Battle

8 points by chewymouse 10y ago

wcummings 10y ago
Whenever I read something about global warming, I can't help but think our situation is more dire than people let on. I'm not sure if it's that the endgame is so unsettling people can't confront it, or if there are other reasons for our blue sky analysis. I don't think we can "innovate" our way out of this hole. We can't stand around waiting for a silver bullet. Peoples' lifestyles will need to change dramatically. We can't keep consuming power the way we are now.
- xamolxix 10y ago
  > We can't keep consuming power the way we are now. Sure we can. We _maybe_ need to get better sources for it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now there are 7B. The "good" news is that birth rates appear to be declining in regions which are not reminiscent of Malthusian heck-holes. But mainly, I see a strongly inverse correlation between the level of apocalyptic doom in a story and its likelihood. This has more to do with us as narrative-oriented animals than anything else. The other thing is: If one wishes to engineer an Malthusian heck-hole, all one need do is raise apocalyptic narratives to the point to which Something Involving The Use of AK-47s ( or reasonable facsimile thereof ) By 14 Year Old Children Must Be Done.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). Okay, here's where you're wrong: > The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now there are 7B. Well, no. Obviously, population growth has an impact on fossil fuel consumption and CO2 production, but the amount of either per capita has decidedly not been constant over the 1790 to 2016 period, so population change is not the "principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed". > The "good" news is that birth rates appear to be declining in regions which are not reminiscent of Malthusian heck-holes. The other good news is that per capita CO2 emissions are also dropping in the developed world. (The bad news is that the developing world is a lot bigger, and per capita CO2 emissions are growing there, because any gains there might be from better energy sources are dwarfed by increased energy usage with economic development.)
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      Just to be clear - I think that advances in population are due mainly to the influence of fossil fuels on agriculture and logistics. Because food. The other things are clean water and medical advances, which ... I don't know how you'd show those to be related to fossil fuels so much outside of that the engineering culture has much in common, and they'd be hard to do without readily available power sources. I suspect they're entangled, but that's really just a guess. A really TL;DR guess... As a "people", I owe my existence partially to the fact that there are more of us. And were it not for antibiotics, chances are that I would have died at six months old. That's one of the big reasons there are so many of us. The race between making heck-holes less heckish and CO2 is a profound one. We'll see. I was saddened to see China use American affinity for cars - I'd thought they could do it better.
  - yongjik 10y ago
    > But mainly, I see a strongly inverse correlation between the level of apocalyptic doom in a story and its likelihood. That's a rather odd thing to say for a topic that's been researched by thousands of experts for decades. As if we have to resort to Bayesian priors because no other evidence is available. I mean, if someone yells "Your sofa is on fire!", you wouldn't sit there and muse "Hmm, that sounds pretty dire, but the severity of the claim is inversely proportional to its likelihood..." You would just get up and see if that's the case.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  It's not more dire than people let on. The stakes are huge, and the ability to change it is small for any one person or even one country. However, weighing the collective action problem against the idea that we would need to completely rework the way our society works (and has worked for several hundred years) in a 20 year or shorter period, I'd say that innovation is much more likely to happen than rapid de-industrialization and a pullback to a rural subsistence lifestyle for billions of people. On the bright side, pretty much everything we need to do to dig out is stuff we would likely be doing anyway since fossil fuels are not an infinite resource. It's just the timeline for them needs to be pushed up dramatically to limit the amount of permanent damage to the climate. The other good news is that the change, while rapid in geological terms, is still slow enough that even if we fail to avoid some damage, there's still a good chance that we can make the changes that need to be made and live with the consequences. And if not, well, so long and thanks for all the fish.
- poelzi 10y ago
  I go with limits of growth, as it has been shown to fit the last 30 years. http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/M... I also think Guy McPhearson is right in many aspects: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=guy+mcpherson https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=guy+mcpherson The IPCC thinks its mostly linear, does not look linear (follow the links): http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35975-arctic-sea-ice-could-disappear-this-summer http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35975-arctic-sea-ice-coul... https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/02/arctic-sea-ice-is-falling-off-a-cliff-and-it-may-not-survive-the-summer/ https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/02/arctic-sea-ice-is-fal... (I can't find a 'wonderful' video I saw lately showing the monthly losses over the years...) Then methanhydrate, IPCC, hello ??? The ignorance is partially unbelievable. So, to answer your question: Can we safe the planet - Not with the attitude most of us and even most in science have. Robert Boyle would turn in his grave if he would hear the arguments some people make. From my "crackpot" perspective, we can safe the planet, I even know how - but as I don't have the finential liquidity for the experiments and the team to do so and looking at the world as a large: the answer is no. To be honest, I think the human being is intrinsically a good being (experience as a long vipassana meditator), but our society is so fked up, I quite often think it would be better for the galaxy. At least we are not capable of doing real damage to a galaxy and are incapable of infecting other lifespawners (planets that create high level lifeforms). Stupidity is not inherent in conscious beings - it's just WE will most likely not make it due a mixture of bad circumstances.
Mz 10y ago
People should be starting passive solar companies of some sort left and right. Passive solar design could help people live more comfortably while reining in this trend. Also: Walk more. As a way to get from point A to point B, not just as exercise separate from the rest of your day.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Walkability is pretty expensive.
  - Mz 10y ago
    I keep hearing that, but it has not jibed with my first-hand experiences and observations. When I had a car and a corporate job, I lived in an apartment complex where everyone drove to the mail box, drove their trash to the dumpster, drove their kids to the pool in the complex. I gave up my car there and began walking everywhere. Over time, other residents began walking to their mail box, walking the trash to the dumpster, etc. You don't have to replace your commute to work with walking in order to walk more as part of your day-to-day life. Everywhere I go, if I stay there a few months, people begin walking more.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      Nice! Well done, sir/ma'am.

8 points by chewymouse 10y ago

Whenever I read something about global warming, I can't help but think our situation is more dire than people let on. I'm not sure if it's that the endgame is so unsettling people can't confront it, or if there are other reasons for our blue sky analysis. I don't think we can "innovate" our way out of this hole. We can't stand around waiting for a silver bullet. Peoples' lifestyles will need to change dramatically. We can't keep consuming power the way we are now.

xamolxix 10y ago
> We can't keep consuming power the way we are now. Sure we can. We _maybe_ need to get better sources for it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now there are 7B. The "good" news is that birth rates appear to be declining in regions which are not reminiscent of Malthusian heck-holes. But mainly, I see a strongly inverse correlation between the level of apocalyptic doom in a story and its likelihood. This has more to do with us as narrative-oriented animals than anything else. The other thing is: If one wishes to engineer an Malthusian heck-hole, all one need do is raise apocalyptic narratives to the point to which Something Involving The Use of AK-47s ( or reasonable facsimile thereof ) By 14 Year Old Children Must Be Done.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > So... tell me where I'm wrong here ( please! ). Okay, here's where you're wrong: > The principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed is that there were 1B people in 1790 and now there are 7B. Well, no. Obviously, population growth has an impact on fossil fuel consumption and CO2 production, but the amount of either per capita has decidedly not been constant over the 1790 to 2016 period, so population change is not the "principal manner in which our use of fossil fuels is expressed". > The "good" news is that birth rates appear to be declining in regions which are not reminiscent of Malthusian heck-holes. The other good news is that per capita CO2 emissions are also dropping in the developed world. (The bad news is that the developing world is a lot bigger, and per capita CO2 emissions are growing there, because any gains there might be from better energy sources are dwarfed by increased energy usage with economic development.)
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    Just to be clear - I think that advances in population are due mainly to the influence of fossil fuels on agriculture and logistics. Because food. The other things are clean water and medical advances, which ... I don't know how you'd show those to be related to fossil fuels so much outside of that the engineering culture has much in common, and they'd be hard to do without readily available power sources. I suspect they're entangled, but that's really just a guess. A really TL;DR guess... As a "people", I owe my existence partially to the fact that there are more of us. And were it not for antibiotics, chances are that I would have died at six months old. That's one of the big reasons there are so many of us. The race between making heck-holes less heckish and CO2 is a profound one. We'll see. I was saddened to see China use American affinity for cars - I'd thought they could do it better.
- yongjik 10y ago
  > But mainly, I see a strongly inverse correlation between the level of apocalyptic doom in a story and its likelihood. That's a rather odd thing to say for a topic that's been researched by thousands of experts for decades. As if we have to resort to Bayesian priors because no other evidence is available. I mean, if someone yells "Your sofa is on fire!", you wouldn't sit there and muse "Hmm, that sounds pretty dire, but the severity of the claim is inversely proportional to its likelihood..." You would just get up and see if that's the case.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
It's not more dire than people let on. The stakes are huge, and the ability to change it is small for any one person or even one country. However, weighing the collective action problem against the idea that we would need to completely rework the way our society works (and has worked for several hundred years) in a 20 year or shorter period, I'd say that innovation is much more likely to happen than rapid de-industrialization and a pullback to a rural subsistence lifestyle for billions of people. On the bright side, pretty much everything we need to do to dig out is stuff we would likely be doing anyway since fossil fuels are not an infinite resource. It's just the timeline for them needs to be pushed up dramatically to limit the amount of permanent damage to the climate. The other good news is that the change, while rapid in geological terms, is still slow enough that even if we fail to avoid some damage, there's still a good chance that we can make the changes that need to be made and live with the consequences. And if not, well, so long and thanks for all the fish.
poelzi 10y ago
I go with limits of growth, as it has been shown to fit the last 30 years. http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/M... I also think Guy McPhearson is right in many aspects: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=guy+mcpherson https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=guy+mcpherson The IPCC thinks its mostly linear, does not look linear (follow the links): http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35975-arctic-sea-ice-could-disappear-this-summer http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35975-arctic-sea-ice-coul... https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/02/arctic-sea-ice-is-falling-off-a-cliff-and-it-may-not-survive-the-summer/ https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/02/arctic-sea-ice-is-fal... (I can't find a 'wonderful' video I saw lately showing the monthly losses over the years...) Then methanhydrate, IPCC, hello ??? The ignorance is partially unbelievable. So, to answer your question: Can we safe the planet - Not with the attitude most of us and even most in science have. Robert Boyle would turn in his grave if he would hear the arguments some people make. From my "crackpot" perspective, we can safe the planet, I even know how - but as I don't have the finential liquidity for the experiments and the team to do so and looking at the world as a large: the answer is no. To be honest, I think the human being is intrinsically a good being (experience as a long vipassana meditator), but our society is so fked up, I quite often think it would be better for the galaxy. At least we are not capable of doing real damage to a galaxy and are incapable of infecting other lifespawners (planets that create high level lifeforms). Stupidity is not inherent in conscious beings - it's just WE will most likely not make it due a mixture of bad circumstances.

Mz 10y ago

People should be starting passive solar companies of some sort left and right. Passive solar design could help people live more comfortably while reining in this trend. Also: Walk more. As a way to get from point A to point B, not just as exercise separate from the rest of your day.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Walkability is pretty expensive.
- Mz 10y ago
  I keep hearing that, but it has not jibed with my first-hand experiences and observations. When I had a car and a corporate job, I lived in an apartment complex where everyone drove to the mail box, drove their trash to the dumpster, drove their kids to the pool in the complex. I gave up my car there and began walking everywhere. Over time, other residents began walking to their mail box, walking the trash to the dumpster, etc. You don't have to replace your commute to work with walking in order to walk more as part of your day-to-day life. Everywhere I go, if I stay there a few months, people begin walking more.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    Nice! Well done, sir/ma'am.