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I've come to the (I feel) inevitable conclusion that we are already well and truly fucked. I will still do what I can to slow the inexorable slide into worldwid

I've come to the (I feel) inevitable conclusion that we are already well and truly fucked. I will still do what I can to slow the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy, in the hopes that the majority of my children's lives will be made incrementally better, should they choose to remain on this planet (and, it is assumed, that they may actually have a choice, but there's no way I can know). We're on the wrong side of the story arc here. It's too late. The damage has been done, and it will continue to snowball even if we stop putting carbon (as both CO2 and methane) into the atmosphere today. Anyone who cooks can instinctively understand how "carryover heat" works - the temperature gradient hasn't yet finished equalizing, the latent energy (and, for that matter, the latent GH gasses) stored in the oceans and, indeed, the land itself hasn't yet made its full effects felt, and we've successfully argued and argued and argued about it without actually doing anything substantial enough to make a meaningful difference. But that sort of hopeless talk makes me sound like a crackpot, and I've typed this sort of message into many a text field on the Internet over the past year before deleting it, or pressing cancel, or closing the browser tab. But today, in a moment of vulnerability, or for another reason I can't hope to know, something is telling me to press "submit".

ak217 10y ago
We need a Mahnattan Project for carbon sequestration.
- James001 10y ago
  I can take all that money if you'd like and plant a few trees?
  - ak217 10y ago
    Absolutely, that should be part of it. Fleets of drones planting forests. But artificial photosynthesis modules in the desert and engineered algae could also play a huge role.
    - Brakenshire 10y ago
      The cost of taking carbon out of the atmosphere by not burning it is going to be far cheaper than taking it out of the atmosphere directly, for a long time. Hell, a lot of the things we are failing to do now are outright profitable through reductions in energy costs even without any costing in of carbon emissions.
      - ak217 10y ago
        The cost is not entirely relevant, even putting aside the need to take out the carbon that we have already emitted. There is a power law distribution of wealth, and people on top have just about all of the financial and technological means to combat global warning, but limited means to convince the people on the bottom to use their tools. Deforestation, automotive and agricultural emissions are just not going to stop fast enough. It's faster, easier and probably more morally sound to build something like a Gigafactory for carbon sequestration modules than to wage (even economic) war on countries that emit too much greenhouse gas.
- epistasis 10y ago
  Or a carbon tax. Exxon is planning on a $80/ton tax, which is about $0.80/gallon of gasoline. It's a travesty that Exxon is taking this more seriously than the majority of US politicians.
James001 10y ago
Thank god for negative feedback loops eh? I'm actually glad we have more CO2 in the atmosphere, because it will increase biodiversity and agricultural yields. I don't see any evidence that climate change is proceeding at a fast enough pace to cause damage.
- doingmyting 10y ago
  If huge portions of the glaciers disappearing every year isn't convincing enough I pray neither you or your desendants are allowed to inhabit any other planet we decide to go to.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  There's a pretty solid factual case for quantifiable damage here: floods in Louisiana, Texas, India, West Virginia and France and fires in California, Portugal and Canada. There's also decreased crop yield due to droughts and decreased fish yield due to ocean acidification. This is non-zero.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - James001 10y ago
    Almost all of those cases can have explanations that are not global warming related. For example, in Canada those fires were huge because of too-efficient fire suppression methods. Not enough controlled fires were done in that area and Fort Mcmurray expanded beyond its Fire Protection zone. Not every weather-related catastrophe is caused by global warming, that just harms the credibiltiy of that argument
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      better go change wikipedia then because it basically says 'climate change'.
- mikeash 10y ago
  What's the evidence for increased CO2 leading to increased biodiversity and agricultural yields?
ldonley 10y ago
This is tangential to your point about remaining on this planet, but it is much easier to survive on our planet, polluted or not, than it is to setup shop on a different planet. I am fully in agreement with your view on how messed up things are on our planet due to human action. I just felt compelled to point out that any adjustments to be made on other planets can be done here. Can't breath on mars? Build a dome and generate air into it. The same thing could be done on Earth if the situation was bad enough. Can't survive on the surface of Venus due to hot and thick atmosphere? Live floating in the clouds. We could do the same on Earth. The process of getting to another planet is so infeasible at this point and probably will be for a long time yet. We can hope, but I like to play devil's advocate. Also, Human's are very good at adapting and I'm sure the will to survive will keep our species alive even if pollution degrades our environment to the point of toxicity.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>This is tangential to your point about remaining on this planet, but it is much easier to survive on our planet, polluted or not, than it is to setup shop on a different planet. While true, this also means that we have taken our planet for granted, since survival on it is so easy. We have to plan things much more carefully and deliberately on the next planet we inhabit.
- spdustin 10y ago
  I guess my line of thought on my kids leaving this world for another has an additional assumption: that they, and the others who would do so, would leave to escape not just the planet's climate, but the people who screwed it up for them to begin with.
  - savanaly 10y ago
    Don't you think that the problems with the environment sort of stem most significantly from emergent social phenomena analogous to (but not exactly the same as) such things as tragedy of the commons? It's not like this version of the human race just got lucky and got all the bad 'uns. Humans are humans, no point in bemoaning reality. But the social structures are in a sense an equally root cause.
CWuestefeld 10y ago
* the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy* The projections for increased CO2 emissions and thus warming are predicated on global increases in GDP, because greater consumption correlates to greater emissions. Thus, we should expect that famine will not be the result of climate change, at least within any foreseeable range of change. Falling into famine would dramatically decrease GDPs, and thus forestall climate change. It seems people fail to realize this connection. The factors creating the problem are symptoms of overall prosperity. I suppose it's possible for things to go non-linear and mess up that relationship. Perhaps we start to rely more on energy sources that are even dirtier (maybe people burn wood to economize, or misguided environmental regulations won't allow for cleaner natural gas to replace increasingly-dirty coal). Or, as I mentioned above, maybe some threshold is crossed where agriculture suddenly requires vastly greater energy input per calorie harvested. But barring very unlikely events like that, climate change will happen because we're ever more prosperous.
- mikeash 10y ago
  I think the problem with your idea is that there's huge lag in the system. Even if all human CO2 production ceased today, there would still be huge changes for decades to come. A global catastrophe due to climate change would eventually put a stop to further climate change, but by then it'll be a little too late. It's a bit like arguing that you can't die from jumping off a bridge, because then you wouldn't be alive to make the jump. It misses the important temporal relationships.
  - seiferteric 10y ago
    Not only that, but it's cumulative, all the CO2 from the past century+ is not going away very fast.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Right, that's a big part of the lag. If climate change causes civilization to collapse, it'll still take decades or centuries for the built-up CO2 to drop back to normal levels. Plus the fact that emissions won't stop right away just because a bunch of people start starving.
throwanem 10y ago
I understand your despair, but there's hope to be found in the fact that this, too, shall pass. We've weathered worse crises as a species and come out of them smarter and stronger - and we'll do the same with this one, though it take a thousand years.
- spdustin 10y ago
  I do appreciate the sentiment. Truly, I do. It occurs to me that my pressing "submit" on that first comment was actually an important milestone for me, mentally. Through the years of my watching my species demonstrate the law of triviality, I can see now that I've gone through the five stages of grief, as defined by the Kübler-Ross model. Denial: Mainly, as a child. I can't think of a moment of my life after the executive function portions of my brain were developed that I was in profound denial, but I can identify spans where I felt that my negative impact didn't really count. Anger: My early adult years, angry with the "political-industrial complex" for metaphorically writing the environmental checks I and my offspring would have to cash. Bargaining: In my late twenties and early thirties, thinking "maybe if I make these changes, I can convince others to do the same, and together, we can effect real change in our government and in society." It's about this time that I also noticed that people who use the phrase "[foo]-industrial complex" come off as either idealists or conspiracy theorists. Depression: In recent years, I've experienced a growing sense of despair while watching story after story showcasing the arguments between humans who, you'd think, would all prefer not to have to worry about how difficult life will become when the effects of climate change are really felt; grand ideas that couldn't possibly be implemented in time; seeing how my voting and writing politicians and commenting on web sites (ha!) failed to make a difference; thinking that my kids' lives will be harder, and as a parent, all I want is to make their lives better than mine. Acceptance: And here we are. My "coming out" as a person who's realized it's too late gets (as I write this) 26 fake internet points. I feel validated, in a weird way, and it gave me peace to see those first dozen points roll in over just a few minutes. I've accepted that the climate is irrevocably (in my lifetime) wrecked, and there are things I can do now to help my children. I can help them learn the lessons my generation didn't. I can show what changes we can make that would make a difference, not because they will make a difference for me, but because there may come a time that those lessons would be passed on, possibly made part of a societal contract to stop arguing, stop fucking up the environment, and start doing what's necessary to ensure, wherever they live in the future, these mistakes won't be repeated. Teaching them the simple math behind it all: When you spend, over just 150 years, a natural currency that took millions of years to save, you drive the environmental economy into ruin. From day one, a fourth grade student could've done the math and said, "hang on, guys... this doesn't add up." And then I realize: I don't have to teach them that last part. My son figured that out on his own. Two years ago. In the fourth grade.
aqme28 10y ago
>Anyone who cooks can instinctively understand how "carryover heat" works My thermo professor was fond of re-branding "global warming" as "global heating." Right now we're just melting the ice cubes. If that heat-reservoir ever dries up, things will really start warming.
- jandrese 10y ago
  Intresting since there was an article a couple of days ago about how the arctic could be ice free in just a few years. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/aug/22/historical-documents-reveal-arctic-sea-ice-is-disappearing-at-record-speed https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
justifier 10y ago
i think moments like define science accept an inevitability or try to understand a phenomena enough to affect it if tomorrow we discovered an asteroid on inevitable trajectory with the earth i hope I'll be able to help either divert its path or catch and mine it

ak217 10y ago

We need a Mahnattan Project for carbon sequestration.

James001 10y ago
I can take all that money if you'd like and plant a few trees?
- ak217 10y ago
  Absolutely, that should be part of it. Fleets of drones planting forests. But artificial photosynthesis modules in the desert and engineered algae could also play a huge role.
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    The cost of taking carbon out of the atmosphere by not burning it is going to be far cheaper than taking it out of the atmosphere directly, for a long time. Hell, a lot of the things we are failing to do now are outright profitable through reductions in energy costs even without any costing in of carbon emissions.
    - ak217 10y ago
      The cost is not entirely relevant, even putting aside the need to take out the carbon that we have already emitted. There is a power law distribution of wealth, and people on top have just about all of the financial and technological means to combat global warning, but limited means to convince the people on the bottom to use their tools. Deforestation, automotive and agricultural emissions are just not going to stop fast enough. It's faster, easier and probably more morally sound to build something like a Gigafactory for carbon sequestration modules than to wage (even economic) war on countries that emit too much greenhouse gas.
epistasis 10y ago
Or a carbon tax. Exxon is planning on a $80/ton tax, which is about $0.80/gallon of gasoline. It's a travesty that Exxon is taking this more seriously than the majority of US politicians.

James001 10y ago

Thank god for negative feedback loops eh? I'm actually glad we have more CO2 in the atmosphere, because it will increase biodiversity and agricultural yields. I don't see any evidence that climate change is proceeding at a fast enough pace to cause damage.

doingmyting 10y ago
If huge portions of the glaciers disappearing every year isn't convincing enough I pray neither you or your desendants are allowed to inhabit any other planet we decide to go to.
kristopolous 10y ago
There's a pretty solid factual case for quantifiable damage here: floods in Louisiana, Texas, India, West Virginia and France and fires in California, Portugal and Canada. There's also decreased crop yield due to droughts and decreased fish yield due to ocean acidification. This is non-zero.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- James001 10y ago
  Almost all of those cases can have explanations that are not global warming related. For example, in Canada those fires were huge because of too-efficient fire suppression methods. Not enough controlled fires were done in that area and Fort Mcmurray expanded beyond its Fire Protection zone. Not every weather-related catastrophe is caused by global warming, that just harms the credibiltiy of that argument
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    better go change wikipedia then because it basically says 'climate change'.
mikeash 10y ago
What's the evidence for increased CO2 leading to increased biodiversity and agricultural yields?

ldonley 10y ago

This is tangential to your point about remaining on this planet, but it is much easier to survive on our planet, polluted or not, than it is to setup shop on a different planet. I am fully in agreement with your view on how messed up things are on our planet due to human action. I just felt compelled to point out that any adjustments to be made on other planets can be done here. Can't breath on mars? Build a dome and generate air into it. The same thing could be done on Earth if the situation was bad enough. Can't survive on the surface of Venus due to hot and thick atmosphere? Live floating in the clouds. We could do the same on Earth. The process of getting to another planet is so infeasible at this point and probably will be for a long time yet. We can hope, but I like to play devil's advocate. Also, Human's are very good at adapting and I'm sure the will to survive will keep our species alive even if pollution degrades our environment to the point of toxicity.

enraged_camel 10y ago
>>This is tangential to your point about remaining on this planet, but it is much easier to survive on our planet, polluted or not, than it is to setup shop on a different planet. While true, this also means that we have taken our planet for granted, since survival on it is so easy. We have to plan things much more carefully and deliberately on the next planet we inhabit.
spdustin 10y ago
I guess my line of thought on my kids leaving this world for another has an additional assumption: that they, and the others who would do so, would leave to escape not just the planet's climate, but the people who screwed it up for them to begin with.
- savanaly 10y ago
  Don't you think that the problems with the environment sort of stem most significantly from emergent social phenomena analogous to (but not exactly the same as) such things as tragedy of the commons? It's not like this version of the human race just got lucky and got all the bad 'uns. Humans are humans, no point in bemoaning reality. But the social structures are in a sense an equally root cause.

CWuestefeld 10y ago

* the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy* The projections for increased CO2 emissions and thus warming are predicated on global increases in GDP, because greater consumption correlates to greater emissions. Thus, we should expect that famine will not be the result of climate change, at least within any foreseeable range of change. Falling into famine would dramatically decrease GDPs, and thus forestall climate change. It seems people fail to realize this connection. The factors creating the problem are symptoms of overall prosperity. I suppose it's possible for things to go non-linear and mess up that relationship. Perhaps we start to rely more on energy sources that are even dirtier (maybe people burn wood to economize, or misguided environmental regulations won't allow for cleaner natural gas to replace increasingly-dirty coal). Or, as I mentioned above, maybe some threshold is crossed where agriculture suddenly requires vastly greater energy input per calorie harvested. But barring very unlikely events like that, climate change will happen because we're ever more prosperous.

mikeash 10y ago
I think the problem with your idea is that there's huge lag in the system. Even if all human CO2 production ceased today, there would still be huge changes for decades to come. A global catastrophe due to climate change would eventually put a stop to further climate change, but by then it'll be a little too late. It's a bit like arguing that you can't die from jumping off a bridge, because then you wouldn't be alive to make the jump. It misses the important temporal relationships.
- seiferteric 10y ago
  Not only that, but it's cumulative, all the CO2 from the past century+ is not going away very fast.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Right, that's a big part of the lag. If climate change causes civilization to collapse, it'll still take decades or centuries for the built-up CO2 to drop back to normal levels. Plus the fact that emissions won't stop right away just because a bunch of people start starving.

throwanem 10y ago

I understand your despair, but there's hope to be found in the fact that this, too, shall pass. We've weathered worse crises as a species and come out of them smarter and stronger - and we'll do the same with this one, though it take a thousand years.

spdustin 10y ago
I do appreciate the sentiment. Truly, I do. It occurs to me that my pressing "submit" on that first comment was actually an important milestone for me, mentally. Through the years of my watching my species demonstrate the law of triviality, I can see now that I've gone through the five stages of grief, as defined by the Kübler-Ross model. Denial: Mainly, as a child. I can't think of a moment of my life after the executive function portions of my brain were developed that I was in profound denial, but I can identify spans where I felt that my negative impact didn't really count. Anger: My early adult years, angry with the "political-industrial complex" for metaphorically writing the environmental checks I and my offspring would have to cash. Bargaining: In my late twenties and early thirties, thinking "maybe if I make these changes, I can convince others to do the same, and together, we can effect real change in our government and in society." It's about this time that I also noticed that people who use the phrase "[foo]-industrial complex" come off as either idealists or conspiracy theorists. Depression: In recent years, I've experienced a growing sense of despair while watching story after story showcasing the arguments between humans who, you'd think, would all prefer not to have to worry about how difficult life will become when the effects of climate change are really felt; grand ideas that couldn't possibly be implemented in time; seeing how my voting and writing politicians and commenting on web sites (ha!) failed to make a difference; thinking that my kids' lives will be harder, and as a parent, all I want is to make their lives better than mine. Acceptance: And here we are. My "coming out" as a person who's realized it's too late gets (as I write this) 26 fake internet points. I feel validated, in a weird way, and it gave me peace to see those first dozen points roll in over just a few minutes. I've accepted that the climate is irrevocably (in my lifetime) wrecked, and there are things I can do now to help my children. I can help them learn the lessons my generation didn't. I can show what changes we can make that would make a difference, not because they will make a difference for me, but because there may come a time that those lessons would be passed on, possibly made part of a societal contract to stop arguing, stop fucking up the environment, and start doing what's necessary to ensure, wherever they live in the future, these mistakes won't be repeated. Teaching them the simple math behind it all: When you spend, over just 150 years, a natural currency that took millions of years to save, you drive the environmental economy into ruin. From day one, a fourth grade student could've done the math and said, "hang on, guys... this doesn't add up." And then I realize: I don't have to teach them that last part. My son figured that out on his own. Two years ago. In the fourth grade.

aqme28 10y ago

>Anyone who cooks can instinctively understand how "carryover heat" works My thermo professor was fond of re-branding "global warming" as "global heating." Right now we're just melting the ice cubes. If that heat-reservoir ever dries up, things will really start warming.

jandrese 10y ago
Intresting since there was an article a couple of days ago about how the arctic could be ice free in just a few years. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/aug/22/historical-documents-reveal-arctic-sea-ice-is-disappearing-at-record-speed https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

justifier 10y ago

i think moments like define science accept an inevitability or try to understand a phenomena enough to affect it if tomorrow we discovered an asteroid on inevitable trajectory with the earth i hope I'll be able to help either divert its path or catch and mine it