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But it will only happen at the end of the century. Which, according to even conservative projections, will be way too late. I am taking the POV that we need to
by avip 7y ago
But it will only happen at the end of the century.
Which, according to even conservative projections, will be way too late.
I am taking the POV that we need to pray for the appearance of immediate, severe-yet-not-deadly impacts on our day-to-day lives.
Things like an acute year-round coffee shortage, or no bananas. Or beef price rockets to 100$/kg, frequent grid downtimes like we had when we grew up.
Let's face it, our morning coffee will motivate us to action better than some civil war in Syria or dying Koalas.
- konschubert 7y agohttps://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/increased-levels-of-carbon-dioxide-could-reduce-brainpower-study-finds/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/increased-levels-of-c...
- multiplegeorges 7y agoThe largest fires Australia's ever seen are close. Put those fires in the US and the national conversation will certainly shift...
- claudeganon 7y agoBut they’ll probably happen in California, which thanks to the truly demented, sadistic cast of our politics, will cause many to celebrate with glee.
- dfxm12 7y agoIf not glee, you'll at least get some kind of smug righteousness: https://nypost.com/2018/11/20/gop-leader-california-wildfires-are-gods-punishment-for-being-liberal/ https://nypost.com/2018/11/20/gop-leader-california-wildfire...
- yters 7y agoWeren't those fires the result of arson?
- Invictus0 7y agoThe "arsonists" were just people that left campfires burning; I think the fire ministers have stated that a larger portion of the fires were started by lightning strikes.
- jacoblambda 7y agoThe majority were either natural starts (lightning) or accidental (unsupervised campfires and I think one was due to a tossed lit cigarette) however after the fires had been burning for a while there were a few cases of arson because some people just like to see the world burn. Regardless of which fires were started by what cause however, the fires burn extremely hot and spread fast as a result of conditions caused by climate change. This turns something as simple as a tossed cigarette into a meaningful fire hazard and turns a normal fire into one that spreads aggressively enough to render it nearly impossible to stop with a large amount of manpower. That makes them actually impossible when they are burning all over the country and the mostly unpaid volunteer fire fighting force is spread thin dealing with them. That's the thing I've taken away from all of this, climate change doesn't necessarily increase the number of incidents to unreasonable levels (the rate goes up but not to apocalyptic levels), instead it takes otherwise minor or normal incidents and sets the conditions to allow them to escalate in increasing severity.
- yters 7y agoHow do we know we can attribute the fires to climate change? It seems like every natural disaster gets attributed to climate change, since 'climate change is happening', and, in turn, all these natural disasters are given as evidence that 'climate change is happening'. Seems very circular logic.
- throwaheyy 7y agoHotter weather dries out vegetation making fires worse. That overall hotter weather is the result of climate change. It's not circular, nor is it that hard to understand.
- ehnto 7y ago
- dspillett 7y agoNah. They'll just blame the gays. Or immigrants. Or something, anything, except what they don't want to change.
- ars 7y ago> except what they don't want to change. Except what they can't change.
- Angostura 7y agoI agree with you, but it's amazing how people can still not think about things. I fondly remember the old (apocryphal) story about how you can pop frogs in a pot of water, and if you increase the heat slowly enough, they'll stay in it until they boil to death. "Silly frogs" we all thought. Yet, here we are.
- avip 7y agoThere are two orthogonal "frog in a pot" tales. You've covered the first. The second is about the two frogs which fell into a bucket full of milk. We should get ourselves familiarized with both [0] :) [0] both stories, not frogs
- Retric 7y agoI don’t understand why people repeat a story they know is false as if it still somehow contained wisdom. If anything the reality suggests the opposite where people will eventually react if a room slowly gets warmer over time etc.
- Udik 7y ago> our morning coffee will motivate us to action better than some civil war in Syria You bet. Also because civil war in Syria has nothing to do with climate change and all to do with politics. But people are too busy worrying about the future to care about the present.
- TOGoS 7y ago> Also because civil war in Syria has nothing to do with climate change and all to do with politics. I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but bro, those things may be related.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoYes, the conflicts around the middle east started because people couldn't afford bread. The reason is failed grain harvests pushed up the cost of wheat. Something that's easy to miss if you live in the rich part of the world.
- Udik 7y agoPlease. The conflicts in the ME have been going on for decades or centuries, but if we want to find proximal causes these are Israel's military occupation, US's support of Israel and ME dictators and US interventionism, with the obvious case of a 2003 destruction of a state on false pretexts.
- scottlocklin 7y ago> those things may be related. I can't tell if this is parody or not. Of course they're not related. The "civil war in Syria" is a regional power proxy war and has nothing to do with climate or "the price of bread."
- mikeyouse 7y agoOf course conflict has many causes, the corruption and long standing sectarian rifts are clearly foremost on the list but there’s a plausible case that a portion of the blame for the war is due to climate related impacts: https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/news/2015/3/150302-syria-war-climate-change-drought https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/pr... > The authors acknowledge that many factors led to Syria's uprising, including corrupt leadership, inequality, massive population growth, and the government's inability to curb human suffering. > But their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compiled statistics showing that water shortages in the Fertile Crescent in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey killed livestock, drove up food prices, sickened children, and forced 1.5 million rural residents to the outskirts of Syria's jam-packed cities—just as that country was exploding with immigrants from the Iraq war.
- WhompingWindows 7y agoWill morning coffee do it though? There is enough coffee reserve that the rich/powerful who make decisions will still get coffee, whereas the Dunkin and Starbucks crowds would just be more angry, regular people without the power to change more than 5% via personal action...energy transition HAS to come from leaders, not from the people.
- mirekrusin 7y agoBut Elon is already sorting it out, no?
- ehnto 7y agoFor better or worse, the bushfires in Australia have certainly put the effects of climate change to the forefront of people's minds. Whether or not it's directly related to climate change is almost a non-issue, the fact is that it represents what is likely to come, and is a real world demonstration of the displacing power of these changes. I only worry once summer is over, they'll forget, and when it really matters we'll be complacent again and elect the wrong people.
- luxuryballs 7y agoLast thing I read was there have been around 150 people arrested since November for starting the fires in Australia... whether or not they were coordinated has not been revealed.
- mikeyouse 7y agoThis is intentional misinformation designed to elicit this exact response. Right wing blogs are taking the stats from NSWs police force who caution people for things like discarding cigarettes and having small fires on their properties and heavily implying there’s some leftist arson campaign that is responsible. It’s laughably implausible. https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/news_article?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGZWJpenByZC5wb2xpY2UubnN3Lmdvdi5hdSUyRm1lZGlhJTJGODIyNjQuaHRtbCZhbGw9MQ%3D%3D https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/news_article?sq_content_s...
- ehnto 7y agoThe spread of the information on Facebook causes the most damage I think. People who would never get involved in these lines of thought previously are now rabid supporters for accusations like the Bureau of Meteorology doctoring the numbers, an arsonist campaign, and my personal favourite, the Greens stopping backburning being the cause. (Greens are in favor backburning, but are also in an incredibly low power position and couldn't enact any policy in that regard anyway)
- vertis 7y agoYou read false claims then. The original statistic was 'police-related actions'[0]. This includes things like cautions or fines for throwing a cigarette on the ground (and many other things). 24 people have been arrested for arson. They think the majority of the fires were started by dry lightning. There is a large amount of misinformation floating around circulated by bots and trolls[1]. [0]: https://www.vox.com/2020/1/9/21058332/australia-fires-arson-lightning-explained https://www.vox.com/2020/1/9/21058332/australia-fires-arson-... [1]: https://theconversation.com/bushfires-bots-and-arson-claims-australia-flung-in-the-global-disinformation-spotlight-129556 https://theconversation.com/bushfires-bots-and-arson-claims-...
- lexpar 7y agoCoffee might move the needle, although I'm sure the big chains (Starbucks, McDonalds, Dunkin, Tims) would quickly move to some ersatz blend of roasted plants and lab synthesized caffeine. If they transition the formula slowly enough, lots of us may not even notice. As an aside, I'm not 100% sure this isn't already happening with Tim Horton's.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoEnd-user / consumer behaviour changes will have only a fractional impact on climate change; what is necessary is for large scale policy changes. Which by the way are already happening; all over the world, governments are slowly adjusting emission rights, energy companies are transitioning to renewables and closing coal plants, car companies are required to only sell low emissions cars, and billions of trees are being planted all over the world. It's already happening at a huge scale but all you're thinking of is small changes that you yourself could reasonably do that, in the end, have a negligible impact on a global challenge.
- ikbeneenheld 7y agoProblem is, renewables are pretty much a scam. Look at pie charts that show how much energy comes from windmills/ sun parks. We need something more powerful like nuclear power-plants.
- turk73 7y agoWhat exactly are we supposed to do? All the proposed solutions would end capitalism and even communism as we know them and lead to mass starvation. It all comes down to a Thanos Snap one way or another.
- Accujack 7y agoPersonally, I hold the same view of climate change that I've had as long as I've been aware of it. Humanity isn't yet advanced enough socially and in collective maturity to take the necessary actions to stop climate change. We're still part animal, part sentient, and we don't know where that line lies, much less control which side we're on all the time. All we can do is understand what the impact of climate change will be and plan to survive if we can find a way to do so. Within the next century we are definitely going to have: * Massive numbers of displaced people due to rising seas, excessive heat, lack of water, lack of food. The bulk of these people will die. * Existing countries that do not or can not take steps necessary to safeguard their population sufficiently to maintain their economy, military strength, and the logistics that support it are going to undergo major changes, possibly including dissolution or massive shrinking of borders. * The wealthy of the world will not lack anything, be it food, water, housing, cooling, military protection, etc. The weakening of governments across the world will allow these people more power and freedom than ever before. We may enter a new age of kings by other titles. The world at the end of the next century is going to be vastly different from the present world. Humanity will survive, but that's setting the bar low. Many humans will die, many ideals will die, and we may not learn anything from all of it. In other words, humanity will be the same as it's been through all of recorded history.
- Spooky23 7y agoIt's already happening in other places. Skiiing in Upstate NY and Vermont is a joke. In the early 90s, it wasn't the best ski experience, but it was there. The Ski club in my school had about 40% of the class in it. Coffee would work the same way. We already have different strata of coffee. If supply tightens up, 80% of the market would turn into ersatz coffee with added caffeine, and whatever still was being produces would become a bigger luxury item.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- atomi 7y agoHuman nature will dictate our fate. And it's not looking good.