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The scary thing isn't the current state of the climate. The scary thing is passing a point of no return where climate change becomes non-linear and self-feeding

The scary thing isn't the current state of the climate. The scary thing is passing a point of no return where climate change becomes non-linear and self-feeding. According to many reports, we are not far off from that point. Still, we are in a world where a non-negligible portion of the population believes that climate change is fabricated, or at least overstated. Scientists won't be able to really do anything other than measure the problem until public sentiment gets behind them. Startups won't do anything until VCs see an opportunity to make exponential returns on their investments. The best case is the linear portion of climate change hits us hard, corrects public sentiment, and we have enough time to fix the planet before true catastrophe.

crazynick4 7y ago
Public opinion is not that important. All you need is government money given to research new technology that will make for viable competition. The economics will take care of the rest. And regarding the public, the public has plenty of reasons to be skeptical. We've been given Iraq WMDs, Obama birth certificate hysteria (more people believed this than you think), now Russia/Trump hysteria. All of this ends up being hot air. So when you tell people they have 10 years to live if we don't do a 180 on our economy, what do you expect them to say?
gremlinsinc 7y ago
I wonder even at that point, could we refreeze the earth via megastructure in space, make it miserable for most of us during winters and even summer for a time to 'reboot' the polar caps/antarctica? Or maybe we could make the mega structure only affect specific locales so the rest of the world doesn't suffer as much from extremely cold spells. I don't think that's the only fix we need though, we'd also need a way to clone and rebuild lost species like penguins and polar bears, and micro organisms, fauna, ocean creatures, etc... Reforestation on a grand scale and global outlawing of Amazon Forest depletion would be a wise thing as well... I think there are science-based solutions but I'm at a loss of how we begin researching and implementing anything esp. w/ our polarized politics of late that could give a shit. I guess when it hurts bad enough we'll stop putting bandaids on things and really try to fix stuff, especially when the entire fate of mankind lies in the balance, until we get to that point sadly it'll probably keep going the way it has been.
crimsonalucard 7y ago
It's too late man.

crazynick4 7y ago

Public opinion is not that important. All you need is government money given to research new technology that will make for viable competition. The economics will take care of the rest. And regarding the public, the public has plenty of reasons to be skeptical. We've been given Iraq WMDs, Obama birth certificate hysteria (more people believed this than you think), now Russia/Trump hysteria. All of this ends up being hot air. So when you tell people they have 10 years to live if we don't do a 180 on our economy, what do you expect them to say?

gremlinsinc 7y ago

I wonder even at that point, could we refreeze the earth via megastructure in space, make it miserable for most of us during winters and even summer for a time to 'reboot' the polar caps/antarctica? Or maybe we could make the mega structure only affect specific locales so the rest of the world doesn't suffer as much from extremely cold spells. I don't think that's the only fix we need though, we'd also need a way to clone and rebuild lost species like penguins and polar bears, and micro organisms, fauna, ocean creatures, etc... Reforestation on a grand scale and global outlawing of Amazon Forest depletion would be a wise thing as well... I think there are science-based solutions but I'm at a loss of how we begin researching and implementing anything esp. w/ our polarized politics of late that could give a shit. I guess when it hurts bad enough we'll stop putting bandaids on things and really try to fix stuff, especially when the entire fate of mankind lies in the balance, until we get to that point sadly it'll probably keep going the way it has been.

crimsonalucard 7y ago

It's too late man.