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The road to global warming is mined by positive feedback loops all the way to hell. Every step forward on it is risking a disaster, and by the time we finally a
by gmuslera 3y ago
The road to global warming is mined by positive feedback loops all the way to hell. Every step forward on it is risking a disaster, and by the time we finally acknowledge that we stepped over a landline, there is no way back, even if all those processes takes years to decades.
- barbazoo 3y agoAt least there’ll be lots of shareholder value so it wasn’t for nothing. /s
- _Microft 3y agoIn case you are wondering, this is most likely alluding to a cartoon: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 Textual description if you prefer that: in front of the skyline of a derelict city, a man in a torn suit and a few children in similarly ragged clothes are sitting at a campfire. The man says: “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”.
- pluc 3y agoThat last guy is gonna be so wealthy, he'll literally be able to afford anything.
- martin-adams 3y agoAnd nothing at the same time
- voisin 3y agoWill the last trillionaire left alive at the end of our species please turn out the lights?
- rmah 3y agoIf there's no way back, then why bother with painful mitigation efforts? But seriously, this sort of "it's over, there's only doom ahead" is, IMO, counterproductive and hurts the efforts to help the environment more than it helps.
- izzydata 3y agoThere is no way back to the way things used to be, but that doesn't mean it can't get even worse. If your house burns down there is no going back to your house not being burned down, but it's still better to put out the fire before it burns the neighborhood down too.
- shiroiuma 3y agoYeah, but what do you do when most of your neighbors have flamethrowers, and enjoy running around the neighborhood shooting flames at things, and then insist that it's their right to do so when you try to tell them to stop?
- nurettin 3y agoMost of my neighbors can only afford matches, but they get regular warnings about not to use any.
- wwweston 3y agoThe parent did not say "we know there is no way back now, there is only doom ahead." They said "every step on our current trajectory could represent a threshold triggering processes past which there is no return", and while it's left implied, the implication is that maybe we should consider stopping our current trajectory an emergency, much in the same way that someone who realizes they're as yet intact within a minefield might stop blithely strolling along even if the next step is only a marginal risk, not a guarantee of disaster.
- ospray 3y agoEvery time I read that the methane is melting faster than expected I start wondering if the clathrate gun will blow after all and we really will be doomed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
- 3y ago
- diego_moita 3y ago> we stepped over a landline I believe you made a typo here. Shouldn't it be "landmine" instead of "landline"?
- fallingknife 3y agoThere must logically be a lot of negative feedback too, or else every time the earth warmed, and there have been a lot of those, it would have spiraled out of control.
- cowmoo728 3y agowhat if positive feedback loops are on short timescales (1k years) and negative feedback loops are on geologic timescales (1 million years)? then for current human purposes the negative feedback loops may as well not exist.
- fallingknife 3y agoI think this is unlikely because in this scenario we would see a geologic record of many gap up instant warmings and then a slow decline, which afaik is not the case.
- HankB99 3y agoWhat about the perturbation of the typical cycles by dumping lots of climate warming gasses into the atmosphere? If nothing serious is done (as we are doing at present) and the warming becomes a runaway, it will progress until the causes have dissipated (e.g. we are no longer pumping GHG into the atmosphere and the natural sources of these have been exhausted or at least come into some kind of equilibrium.) I'm too old to be able to witness that but I think our race as a whole is likely to do so.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoNo reason not to try though. It’s very beneficial to the status quo if everyone gives up hope.
- lp4vn 3y agoWe don't have to use names here, but we already know who's to blame. This current trend of finding any kind of cynical counter argument against a phenomenon whose evidences keep piling up is something that comes already from the 00's. It's the same thing with vaccines, it's the same thing with creationism and to a smaller extent it was the same thing with the flat earth theory. One side of the "debate" is not really interested in debating anything. They are only interested in propagating outrageous and colorful conspiracy theories that in their minds piss off people who disagree with them politically. When the planet goes down to drain in 20, 30 years these same people either will be dead or will come up with some kind of excuse saying that in spite of the climate catastrophe all that was needed to save the planet from a global green dictatorship.
- t0bia_s 3y agoYour tone fulfill your description about not being interested in debate and propagate conspiracy theories. Think about that and maybe youll find another perspective in meaning of debate.
- vivekd 3y agoWhy is there even a debate? What's the goal here get 100% of the population of the world to vote in some climate measure? Isn't that the most ridiculous possible approach to solving the climate issue?