5 ms·

"All this is ostensibly to combat the slowly, and ever-slightly increasing global temperature." Am I missing something, or does the writer of this article live

"All this is ostensibly to combat the slowly, and ever-slightly increasing global temperature." Am I missing something, or does the writer of this article live in an alternate reality where global warming is only a minor problem?

wyager 5y ago
"Minor" is a fairly reasonable description IMO; best predictions suggest single digit productivity loss a hundred years from now, compared to a number of existential risks like nuclear proliferation, advanced biowarfare, normal warfare, etc. Of course it's all relative.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- undoware 5y ago
  This post will not age well. Neither will its author. Aging requires food.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    Food comes from plants, which require CO₂ to grow. An increase of atmospheric CO₂ leads to an increase in plant growth, proof of which can be easily had by checking historical records which show a direct relation between the CO₂ concentration and the amount of biomass. It is possible that the growth zones will move and that areas which are currently too cold for food production become viable for agriculture - Russia and Canada stand to gain here. So yes, ageing requires food which should be plentiful. There have been earlier warm periods which saw e.g. the flourishing of the Roman empire. This was followed by a cooler period (during which the Roman empire saw its demise), followed by another warmer period in which the Vikings sailed the known world and colonised Greenland. Grapes for wine were grown in the south of Sweden in those days, these eventally disappeared and the Greenland colonies had to be abandoned when the climate turned colder. Now grapes are grown again in the south of Sweden even though it took the cultivation of a more hardy species (among these a frost-resistent Frankenthaler, I tried to grow it in the west of Sweden but it turned out not to be frost-resistant enough, alas...) to make this possible. If you don't agree with what I wrote here I'd like to see a rebuttal. Why will there be less food on a greener planet?
    - undoware 5y ago
      rubs face ok so here's the thing. Food grows in topsoil. As an eater of food, you need to know this. It's important: food that does not come from the ocean[1] comes from topsoil. Beef? Cows. Cows graze. Pork? Pigs are calorie batteries. They eat anything. But they don't do so great in bog. Chickens? ....yeah. The places that you think are coming online as 'greener' locations are places where the soil just unthawed. It's not topsoil. It's not loam. It's moss and bog, where it isn't boreal forest[2]. The land is not usable for agriculture or animal husbandry. Probably won't be for thousands of years. It's the crossfade. It's also going through massive subsidence as the permafrost melts, and is constantly belching methane. It's a soup of microrganisms, mosquitos, and (scientific term here) gunk. --signed, a Canadian from a farmtown that was just a lil too far north. (Yes, really.) [1] before you call loophole: yes, we're running out of that, too. Faster, in fact. Fun times. Those are some empty empty oceans. [2] Conifers often intentionally (to the extent that plants have intent) make the soil around them acidic; this is because only conifers can survive in this soil. The territories you're eyeballing as a future breadbasket are often currently boreal. When they're not bog. And the boreal tends to turn into bog. That subsidence. Trees hate it -- they like being vertical. So, yeah, idk what you'd grow there, unless you eat mosquitos.
      - hagbard_c 5y ago
        You might want to study your farming books again before you write your next condescending rant? It will be a while before permafrost becomes farmland but luckily there is a huge - and I mean enormous - area which has not seen permafrost for thousands of years but simply is too cold for many crops to be grown profitably. If the planet really ends up those 1.5°C to 2.5°C warmer than it is now (but cooler than it has been) growth zones move up and farming those crops becomes profitable where it currently isn't. This is something you know but for some reason decide to ignore only to indulge in apocalyptic fantasies. Why is that? Why do you - and the many with you who show similar behaviour - choose this path of rapture? If you think this makes people who do not follow your beliefs take them more seriously realise that it achieves exactly the opposite: the more outlandish the proposed scenarios of doom, the less likely non-believers are to fall in line.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - wyager 5y ago
    The fact that you think GW places us at imminent risk of starvation suggests you're probably not operating on a coherent model of GW risks. Are you willing to put money on the table? Make me a market about a measurable GW-related food production loss and I'll probably take you up on it, assuming you're willing to commit to it.
- imglorp 5y ago
  This is so vastly understating the problem that it appears to be fossil fuel shill fud.
  - wyager 5y ago
    Yeah you got me, I'm a fake account funded by Shell. Care to explain your eminently rational model of the costs of global warming, which I'm sure you didn't get from TV?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sovnade 5y ago
The author also failed to say anything positive about electric motors. Considering a stock-off-the-lot tesla can absolutely rip a hellcat in a race, you'd think these guys would be all for it.
WhisperingShiba 5y ago
To be fair, we know it will be a problem, but we don't know if will actually be a big problem or a small problem. Will we have mass migrations? Total environmental collapse? Deserts everywhere? Or will something bigger than climate change roll around to wipe out civilization, like a mass psychosis or WW3?
- undoware 5y ago
  clears throat as someone whose country includes the Arctic, I am qualified to inform you that 'total environmental collapse' is accurate. Also, post-ex-facto. You, my friend, are looking at what is colloquially known as a Big Problem.
  - WhisperingShiba 5y ago
    I tend to agree, but not acknowledging how others feel is a one way ticket to no progress. We have a human problem caused by fear, in my evaluation. The solution isn't fear, its something closer to "tricking fearful people into embracing a future that benefits everyone instead of holding onto fear". As opposed to "Changing peoples fear from war and scarcity to climate change and scarcity". You feel me?
john_moscow 5y ago
It's not about the size of the problem, it's about the quantifiable efficiency of mitigations. In real world, every problem has numerous competing ways of solving it, and the rational way to solve the problem is to quantify the costs, efficiency and risks, and to pick the methods based on it. The general public's approach for addressing climate change is very far from rational. It looks more like a panic where people desperately chose a random way of inconveniencing themselves, as long as it looks plausibly "green". This has been spearheaded by the marketing departments, where many cost-cutting quality-lowering measures are sold as "green" leading to very measurable and quantifiable profits on one side, and some guilt alleviation on the other one. There are efficient technologies, such as biodiesels, wind power, carbon capture, that have a net positive impact, and there are others that are more questionable if you consider second-order effects (e.g. limited supply of lithium and pollution from making batteries out of it). If you really care for the planet, spend your time researching the big picture and making rational and properly weighed decisions, rather than blindly trusted the marketing department that exists solely to make money off your decisions...

wyager 5y ago

"Minor" is a fairly reasonable description IMO; best predictions suggest single digit productivity loss a hundred years from now, compared to a number of existential risks like nuclear proliferation, advanced biowarfare, normal warfare, etc. Of course it's all relative.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
undoware 5y ago
This post will not age well. Neither will its author. Aging requires food.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  Food comes from plants, which require CO₂ to grow. An increase of atmospheric CO₂ leads to an increase in plant growth, proof of which can be easily had by checking historical records which show a direct relation between the CO₂ concentration and the amount of biomass. It is possible that the growth zones will move and that areas which are currently too cold for food production become viable for agriculture - Russia and Canada stand to gain here. So yes, ageing requires food which should be plentiful. There have been earlier warm periods which saw e.g. the flourishing of the Roman empire. This was followed by a cooler period (during which the Roman empire saw its demise), followed by another warmer period in which the Vikings sailed the known world and colonised Greenland. Grapes for wine were grown in the south of Sweden in those days, these eventally disappeared and the Greenland colonies had to be abandoned when the climate turned colder. Now grapes are grown again in the south of Sweden even though it took the cultivation of a more hardy species (among these a frost-resistent Frankenthaler, I tried to grow it in the west of Sweden but it turned out not to be frost-resistant enough, alas...) to make this possible. If you don't agree with what I wrote here I'd like to see a rebuttal. Why will there be less food on a greener planet?
  - undoware 5y ago
    rubs face ok so here's the thing. Food grows in topsoil. As an eater of food, you need to know this. It's important: food that does not come from the ocean[1] comes from topsoil. Beef? Cows. Cows graze. Pork? Pigs are calorie batteries. They eat anything. But they don't do so great in bog. Chickens? ....yeah. The places that you think are coming online as 'greener' locations are places where the soil just unthawed. It's not topsoil. It's not loam. It's moss and bog, where it isn't boreal forest[2]. The land is not usable for agriculture or animal husbandry. Probably won't be for thousands of years. It's the crossfade. It's also going through massive subsidence as the permafrost melts, and is constantly belching methane. It's a soup of microrganisms, mosquitos, and (scientific term here) gunk. --signed, a Canadian from a farmtown that was just a lil too far north. (Yes, really.) [1] before you call loophole: yes, we're running out of that, too. Faster, in fact. Fun times. Those are some empty empty oceans. [2] Conifers often intentionally (to the extent that plants have intent) make the soil around them acidic; this is because only conifers can survive in this soil. The territories you're eyeballing as a future breadbasket are often currently boreal. When they're not bog. And the boreal tends to turn into bog. That subsidence. Trees hate it -- they like being vertical. So, yeah, idk what you'd grow there, unless you eat mosquitos.
    - hagbard_c 5y ago
      You might want to study your farming books again before you write your next condescending rant? It will be a while before permafrost becomes farmland but luckily there is a huge - and I mean enormous - area which has not seen permafrost for thousands of years but simply is too cold for many crops to be grown profitably. If the planet really ends up those 1.5°C to 2.5°C warmer than it is now (but cooler than it has been) growth zones move up and farming those crops becomes profitable where it currently isn't. This is something you know but for some reason decide to ignore only to indulge in apocalyptic fantasies. Why is that? Why do you - and the many with you who show similar behaviour - choose this path of rapture? If you think this makes people who do not follow your beliefs take them more seriously realise that it achieves exactly the opposite: the more outlandish the proposed scenarios of doom, the less likely non-believers are to fall in line.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wyager 5y ago
  The fact that you think GW places us at imminent risk of starvation suggests you're probably not operating on a coherent model of GW risks. Are you willing to put money on the table? Make me a market about a measurable GW-related food production loss and I'll probably take you up on it, assuming you're willing to commit to it.
imglorp 5y ago
This is so vastly understating the problem that it appears to be fossil fuel shill fud.
- wyager 5y ago
  Yeah you got me, I'm a fake account funded by Shell. Care to explain your eminently rational model of the costs of global warming, which I'm sure you didn't get from TV?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sovnade 5y ago

The author also failed to say anything positive about electric motors. Considering a stock-off-the-lot tesla can absolutely rip a hellcat in a race, you'd think these guys would be all for it.

WhisperingShiba 5y ago

To be fair, we know it will be a problem, but we don't know if will actually be a big problem or a small problem. Will we have mass migrations? Total environmental collapse? Deserts everywhere? Or will something bigger than climate change roll around to wipe out civilization, like a mass psychosis or WW3?

undoware 5y ago
clears throat as someone whose country includes the Arctic, I am qualified to inform you that 'total environmental collapse' is accurate. Also, post-ex-facto. You, my friend, are looking at what is colloquially known as a Big Problem.
- WhisperingShiba 5y ago
  I tend to agree, but not acknowledging how others feel is a one way ticket to no progress. We have a human problem caused by fear, in my evaluation. The solution isn't fear, its something closer to "tricking fearful people into embracing a future that benefits everyone instead of holding onto fear". As opposed to "Changing peoples fear from war and scarcity to climate change and scarcity". You feel me?

john_moscow 5y ago

It's not about the size of the problem, it's about the quantifiable efficiency of mitigations. In real world, every problem has numerous competing ways of solving it, and the rational way to solve the problem is to quantify the costs, efficiency and risks, and to pick the methods based on it. The general public's approach for addressing climate change is very far from rational. It looks more like a panic where people desperately chose a random way of inconveniencing themselves, as long as it looks plausibly "green". This has been spearheaded by the marketing departments, where many cost-cutting quality-lowering measures are sold as "green" leading to very measurable and quantifiable profits on one side, and some guilt alleviation on the other one. There are efficient technologies, such as biodiesels, wind power, carbon capture, that have a net positive impact, and there are others that are more questionable if you consider second-order effects (e.g. limited supply of lithium and pollution from making batteries out of it). If you really care for the planet, spend your time researching the big picture and making rational and properly weighed decisions, rather than blindly trusted the marketing department that exists solely to make money off your decisions...