Rapid Ice Melt in West Antarctica Now Inevitable, Research Shows 142
Accelerated ice melt in west Antarctica is inevitable for the rest of the century no matter how much carbon emissions are cut, research indicates. The implications for sea level rise are "dire," scientists say, and mean some coastal cities may have to be abandoned. From a report: The ice sheet of west Antarctica would push up the oceans by 5 metres if lost completely. Previous studies have suggested it is doomed to collapse over the course of centuries, but the new study shows that even drastic emissions cuts in the coming decades will not slow the melting. The analysis shows the rate of melting of the floating ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea will be three times faster this century compared with the previous century, even if the world meets the most ambitious Paris agreement target of keeping global heating below 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Losing the floating ice shelves means the glacial ice sheets on land are freed to slide more rapidly into the ocean. Many millions of people live in coastal cities that are vulnerable to sea level rise, from New York to Mumbai to Shanghai, and more than a third of the global population lives within 62 miles (100km) of the coast. The climate crisis is driving sea level rise by the melting of ice sheets and glaciers and the thermal expansion of sea water. The biggest uncertainty in future sea level rise is what will happen in Antarctica, the scientists say, making planning to adapt to the rise very hard. Researchers said translation of the new findings on ice melting into specific estimates of sea level rise was urgently needed.
Losing the floating ice shelves means the glacial ice sheets on land are freed to slide more rapidly into the ocean. Many millions of people live in coastal cities that are vulnerable to sea level rise, from New York to Mumbai to Shanghai, and more than a third of the global population lives within 62 miles (100km) of the coast. The climate crisis is driving sea level rise by the melting of ice sheets and glaciers and the thermal expansion of sea water. The biggest uncertainty in future sea level rise is what will happen in Antarctica, the scientists say, making planning to adapt to the rise very hard. Researchers said translation of the new findings on ice melting into specific estimates of sea level rise was urgently needed.
It’s all just noise at this point (Score:2)
If the first third is rcorrect, we’ll be geoengineering the planet in order to keep it habitable. The scientists will say “we told you so, maybe you morons will consider listening to us next time there’s a planetary crisis”
If the second third is correct, Tucker Carkson and F
It is all just noise at this point (Score:3)
I think your percentages are off. It's more like 10-10-80, with 10% thinking "all drown", 10% thinking "all bull", and 80% who not only don't "know", they don't think about it.
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Re:It is all just noise at this point (Score:4, Insightful)
Those are all deniers in denial.
Re:It is all just noise at this point (Score:5, Insightful)
Those of you who "who understand that the climate is changing because we know that it's always changing" are simply ignoring the data that show the Earth has never warmed this quickly in the past. Get your head out of your ass and stop hiding up there.
Let's Stick to the Data (Score:2)
we know that it's always changing" are simply ignoring the data that show the Earth has never warmed this quickly in the past.
Let's not make claims that we do not have the data to support - and indeed may even have the data to refute. This is definitely the most rapid change in climate since human records began but the further back in time you go the less granular the temperature information becomes. Despite this Britannica (which to my knowledge is not some climate change-denying website) claims that the cooling in Europe and North America in the Younger Dryas was 4-8C in a decade [britannica.com].which is much more extreme that what we are doin
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The cooling actually took place over 30-50 years but did not affect regions equally and even in some parts of North America the effect wasn't cooling,
This sounds much like our current human-caused climate change only in reverse. Climate change is not affecting everywhere equally - higher latitudes seem to have larger effects - and the trend is not always warming. Some areas are projected to get increased cloud cover and rain from more moisture in the air and have cooler summers. Also, one prediction is that the Gulf Stream will shutdown which will significantly cool Europe.
Also please note that I am not at all questioning that humans are causing the
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Europe will still be warmer than pre-industrial levels, just not as much warmer as with out it based on that modelling.
That's not what this article [scientificamerican.com] suggests. Although it is unclear whether it will shut down or not.
Well, it was pretty bad for quite a large number of species such as mammoth and humans in North America who got almost entirely wiped out or totall wiped out (opinions differ).
That's still not an existential crisis for humanity and that was with stone-age technology which meant humans at the time had no clue what was happening, no ability to mitigate it e.g. by importing food and resources from elsewhere nor any way to identify and then travel to areas made more hospitable by the change in climate.
Conservation of Angular Momentum (Score:2)
I think when the moon's orbit flipped over the poles the process created a rapid increase of heat that largely vaporized the oceans.
Why would the "moon's orbit flip over the poles"? That would require a significant change in the moon's angular momentum (or a significant change in the Earth's) that could only be caused by a huge impact and in that case it would be the impact doing the heating, not the moon.
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I'm depending on a friend who is an astronomer to justify that claim, and he's not at hand at the moment, so I can't say why it would do that, but it caused significant heating because of the change in tidal stresses. (Also the moon was a lot closer, then, and the days were a lot shorter, so the tidal stresses were a lot more intense.)
Yeah, to me the idea of an impact by Theia makes more sense, but he has reasons (I've never really worked out) for believing that the moon flipped over the poles. I think it
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translation: trust me bro
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I'm depending on a friend who is an astronomer to justify that claim
I do not think that they can justify it. The tidal stresses on Earth are not enough to keep the core molten - we have a molten core because of natural radioactivity - let alone "boil the oceans". Yes, the moon was a _bit_ closer to the Earth in the past but not by a huge amount - the day has only lengthened by a few hours over billions of years since the rate of lengthening is 2.3ms per century. Then there is the problem that there is a continuous fossil record of life in the oceans from about 3.5 billion
Re:It is all just noise at this point (Score:4, Insightful)
No, a denier insists that the climate isn't changing. What I'm talking about is those of us who understand that the climate is changing because we know that it's always changing, but doubt that humanity is currently the main driving force behind it
We're now 99% certain it's human activity.
because we know that there have been times that the Earth has been warmer than this before mankind was able to put enough energy into the atmosphere to make a difference.
And we know why that was the case then and we understand it enough to know it's us now.
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99% certain?
*chuckles
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There are times when precession of the earth's axis has probably had an effect, there are times when solar activity has had an effect.
The problem is that the "climate has always been changing" crowd is that they admit that there is climate change except for one single aspect. That the de sequestering
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I agree that dumping more and more CO2 into the atmosphere to see what happens isn't a good idea. I just don't think that it's the only reason that the Earth's warming, especially when the warming started before we were dumping anywhere that much junk into the air.
I cannot disagree at all with that statement. Yes, there are many things that will affect climate. And cycles and epicycles, and plate tectonics and volcanics - and we don't have much control over our nearby star.
What we have done over the years though, is been able to piece together and elaborate on what might have been the effects that have caused the earth to warm or cool. From ice cores to specific mineral deposits that from only under certain conditions, we end up with pretty solid ideas.
Yes there
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"doubt that humanity is currently the main driving force behind it"
I recently engaged with a few of those after avoiding them for years because I was fed up with B.S. but hey, I did learn what "die Kalte Sonne" means.
Anyway, the latest from this very serious sober scientific crowd is that, after 10 years to telling me Man is too insignificant , they're now claiming that both the warming & the cooling of the early 20th century was because of.....the impact of WW1 and WW2.
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One thing I do know, however, is that I spent most of my life in southern California, and there are lots of areas there that are within 100km of the coast and more than 5 meters above current seal level. If it's true there, I'm reasonably sure that it's just as true in many places all over the world.
Congratulations: You lived on the edge of a tectonic plate that is uplifting land, resulting in significant slope.
Maybe like so many Californians, you should consider moving to Florida. Since it is not uplifting rock but flat old sediment, in the worst-case scenarios the state will no longer be a peninsula, but just a little nub. (Maybe that's why DeSantis acquired that monster pair of white waterproof boots.)
Many if not most of the world's seaside cities are built near river outlets. These are also usually
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I love how you gloss over what happens when dikes and pumping systems fail; a la Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Or the 1948 "Vanport Flood" that left 18,000 people homeless and wiped out the second largest city in Oregon when a dike failed while the Columbia River was 15 feet higher than the flood plain used for wartime housing construction for shipyard workers who migrated to the Portland area during World War 2.
As it turns out, when you need that shit to function 100% for the rest of your life to not
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No, more accurately is that we shouldn't just keep fucking up our planet thinking we can engineer our way out of it after the fact because we've "solved" problems, which absolutely aren't solved to the degree which would be necessary to call that course of action a legitimate way forward.
That should have been pretty obvious, but apparently you only have the ability to evaluate a binary position "surround entire continents with dikes and pumping systems" or "don't build anything ever" ?
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That works if the sea level is just slightly about the land level. Dikes don't work very will if you're talking about meters of difference. Moving the city is a much better answer.
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And, I've no doubt that low lying coastal cities around the world will be following the example of New Orleans and much of the Netherlands by building dikes to keep the water out.
I spent five years in New Orleans. If you think New Orleans can engineer a solution for 2 to 3 meters of sea level rise, you've never flown over the city, much less looked at a topo map, studied geo-engineering or subsidence, or thought seriously about the problem at all. Even if it were possible -- and it's not -- the city still becomes unlivable, because there's no drinking water supply at that point. The drinking water supply is already at risk [army.mil] with current sea level. What do you suppose happens when
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And, you can hunt through my posts as long as you want and never find me saying that mitigating the effects of climate change will be easy
Well, let's see. I didn't have to go far, it's just 3 posts up:
Keeping the sea away from land you want to use or to create more land to use is a solved problem, and the solution is centuries old. If we need to do it we will, and we'll find a way to finance he work when the time comes.
Apparently, you have a huge deficiencies in judging both the costs of climate change and your own posting history.
However, you're right about the people who live in those cities finding a way to finance the work. As I said, we can assess a massive fee on your old posts.
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One thing I do know, however, is that I spent most of my life in southern California, and there are lots of areas there that are within 100km of the coast and more than 5 meters above current seal level. If it's true there, I'm reasonably sure that it's just as true in many places all over the world.
The inability for Americans to fathom that the circumstances other places have could be different from their own, is the one of the biggest causes of those percentages.
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You're ignoring a whole bunch of "secondary effects". E.g. salt water will move far inland making entire rivers salt water. Salt water is a lot more corrosive than fresh water, so any metals, and even much cement, can be expected to rapidly corrode. Where do you get drinking water from? Where does your sewage go? These are both in peril.
If the sea rise is enough that dikes are impractical, you're likely to be better off moving the city.
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How about, I'm a working class stiff that lives far enough into the continent that I don't care about rich coastal people's problems. Or I care about their problems as much as they care about mine.
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That can work, but it doesn't address that they still probably need to move the city. Unless you want them to move into your back yard and raise the rents.
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They already own my entire neighborhood and have already raised the rent. Luckily it can only go up 10% by law in California. I'm sure they will just get more of my state's tax money to build a sea wall instead. Got to protect our tourism and rich folk homes after all.
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A sea wall is a reasonable thing for a few inches, or even a foot or so. Not for a few meters.
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Yes, but it isn't going to go up a few meters over night or even over the next ten years. A foot a year would be pretty hilarious because they would freak out. It's funny watching rich people upset about stuff.
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I'm a working class stiff that lives far enough into the continent that I don't care about rich coastal people's problems.
Bro, first off, fuck your classist nonsense, as is having money means you deserve your fate. Second off, have you ever been to America's Gulf Coast? I promise you, it's not drowning in money. Do you think thousands of people died during Katrina because they had the money to evacuate and chose not to?
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That raises the question of where do you move the city? Where I am, the big city is on the flat land beside the ocean/river, then it is all mountains, mostly steep mountains with a few benches that are already being developed like crazy. Besides, the reasons for the city are the port and the valley bottom farm land.
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"It's more like 10-10-80"
That 80% is broken up into 20% who think we might be able to avert disaster, 20% who think "fuck it, I'll be dead before it's a real problem" and 40% who believe it's out of their hands one way or the other.
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I guess the ice went woke.
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A third of humanity thinks this is a problem.
Worse, I think they're not sure what the consequences will be.
A third of humanity thinks it’s a bunch of lies.
Worse, I think they're motivated by other, probably selfish, things.
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A third of humanity thinks this is a problem. A third of humanity thinks it’s a bunch of lies. The rest is too poor or apathetic to do anything about it. Meanwhile, the emissions curve keeps climbing.
Emissions are definitely clear. On the other hand, go back 10000 years and Europe was finally emerging from it's glacier. The earth is in a cycle of a roughly 30,000 year cycle. Going back 3000 or 5000 years doesn't give an accurate cycle. We might be just fine but with expanded tropics or deserts. We've survived the warming period of the last 10,000 years while the Mastodon is long gone.
Re:It’s all just noise at this point (Score:4, Insightful)
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"We've survived the warming period of the last 10,000 years while the Mastodon is long gone."
Mainly because of us, more than the warming trend. Human hunters are tough on the megafauna.
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On the other hand, go back 10000 years
I'd rather not. It was a miserable time for humans, which seems to be the point everyone misses when talking about the past.
We've survived the warming period of the last 10,000 years while the Mastodon is long gone.
The population of the world at 8000BC is estimated to be around 5 million people. That's a bit of a logistical difference to what the world looks like now.
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We have been on the eve of destruction [youtube.com] since 1965.
We all know the story of "the boy who cried wolf." People are numb to these messages. They won't do anything until they feel the pain. And even then, they will adapt to the pain in some way and stop there.
None of us is as dumb as all of us [despair.com]
Re: It’s all just noise at this point (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s that they have been saying âoethis wonâ(TM)t happen tomorrow, more like 2023â and now we are here and you are saying âoethey have been saying this like FOREVER omg so boring!â
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Yeah, this is the problem with humans. If you tell them something is going to happen in fifty or a hundred years and it doesn't happen by next Tuesday you're crying wolf. SARS was a close call and it would inevitably happen again but worse? Lol, stupid scientists, it's 2004 and look, still no SARS!
This is explicitly a story about what's going to happen in the next eighty years, leading to consequences over the next few centuries. It's the first sentence of the summary.
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Alternatively stated: we've been put on notice for 50 years and will ignore it up to the point of disaster. Then demand why nobody did anything about it.
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And a subset of both the second and third groups are thinking "I'm going to be dead by the time things get bad. It sucks to be you."
I'd also say that the number of people too poor or apathetic to do anything about it is significantly larger than your 1/3rd estimate.
Re: It’s all just noise at this point (Score:2)
If the 2nd 3rd are right, are you saying theyâ(TM)d be laughing because we retrofitted our economy for the long term, reduced the rapid consumption of oil for something that will last longer, preserve the green space we have, and it would have been all for nothing except the benefit of having those things?
Even if itâ(TM)s all a farce, the actions we take (outside of carbon emission cap and trade) will still benefit us in the long and short term.
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You are quite optimistic about the scale of the effort needed for effective geoengineering. If Pakistan were to engage in it perhaps Vietnam would get some benefit. More likely it would be somewhere out in the Pacific. And the effect would be so dilute by the time it got around the world that you couldn't measure it.
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Will we now see any of the high-profile politicians and celebrities sell their beach-front properties?
It does not help the cause when the most prominent spokespeople consistently act contrary to their professed beliefs.
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1) You are totally ignoring the time scale. The effects won't be really serious for a decade or so unless thwaites collapses. And then it will probably take a year for the sea levels to level off.
2) The politicians don't believe or disbelieve this kind of thing, they believe it will get or cost them votes. The scientists don't have the kind of money that would let them buy beachfront property, even if they wanted to.
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This is a tired and tried tactic of climate alarmism. We've seen it repeatedly - from the 70s with global cooling, the 80s with acid rain, the 90s with global warming, and the 00s and 10s (and now 2020s) with "climate change" - all stated breathlessly as the end of civilization as we know it, but nothing has really changed (and in many cases, things have gotten significantly better despite the many "points of no return" we have passed).
If they're that concerned about it, perhaps we (they)should talk to Chin
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It's more like 75%, from what I've seen.
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Dude, I was there. It was in movies and TV shows and there were ads run regularly on TV. I grew up terrified of acid rain. Remember Captain Planet? Acid rain was a prominent theme.
Don't gaslight me that there wasn't a concerted propaganda effort to push a climate alarmist agenda.
(No, I'm not dismissing that it was a local problem. I agree. Just like coastal shore erosion is a local problem, largely due to things like destroying mangroves for increased "curb appeal".)
Re: It’s all just noise at this point (Score:2)
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I'd get a neurological workup done, you seem to be having a difficult time with reading comprehension.
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Tell do you work on being this stupid or does it come naturally.
Global coming was never a thing.
Acid rain was legislated out of existence successfully by preventing polluters from polluting.
Global warming causes climate change. It's exactly the same thing people are taking about.
Now try dropping a cube of ice into your glass of water. The level goes up.
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Nevermind the whole "ice will make the sea level rise" thing is, patently, false. We know it's not true, and it can be easily disproven with a glass of water and a handful of ice cubes. (If anything, we'll probably see a drop of sea levels.) They claim "multiple inches" (10+ in some cases, 5+ in others) of sea level rise in the past century, but the evidence just doesn't support those claims when you look at specific locations.
The ice melting contribution to sea level rise is from ice on land, not floating ice. So the ice-cube experiment is meaningless. The fact that you've been told it proves something shows that someone you trust is trying to mislead you.
Sea level has been monitored globally, from space, for almost half a century. The measurements are validated in multiple different ways, and do show a rise. The rise is as expected given the amount of land ice lost and the increase in ocean temperature (thermal expansion). Agai
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I guess this is the way I look at it:
1. if the first third is correct, then the worst case scenario is that billions of people die from sea level rise and increased drought and famine which may be preventable or at least reduce-able.
2. if the second third is correct, doing what is recommended by the first third means the worst case scenario is more accurate climate modeling, and a whole lot of money spent on having a cleaner grid and cleaner air.
The worst-case scenario from doing what the first "third" say
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This is worrying largely about straw men. Climate change isn't going to make the Earth "uninhabitable" -- at least by any mainstream projections. But it sure as hell will make *certain regions* of the Earth that people inhabit harder to make a living in. And that's going to be truly horrific -- *for some people*. Other people will do fine, either because they get dealt lucky climate cards, or because their economic and political clout enables them to adapt.
If sea level rises the expected 1.5m (*not* 5m!
It's been nice folks (Score:2)
Re: It’s all just noise at this point (Score:2)
The anti nuclear idiots with claims that wind/PV is cheaper/ cleaner than nuclear and geothermal.
The claim that nuclear/ geothermal will take too long to add
The vegans pushing against meat claiming that it is one of the top 3 causes of emissions.
Here is the states where they fight against raising fuel taxes because it is a regression tax.
That nat
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We could have built some trains and busses 30 years ago and then you'd not be have to debate about what kind of power source is in your car. Oh well, we were given the choice between the easy way and the hard way, and we collectively decided to do things the hard way. Enjoy your pain in the ass future. Where energy gets more and more expensive, and jobs pay less and less, and taxes go up and up.
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Nah, it goes back way further than 30 years. Pretty much with the dawn of the interstate highway system this country decided that we'd need one car for every person who desires to be a productive member of society, unless you wanted to live in an urban environment with your next-door neighbors right up your ass.
We look back at previous generations who could have all their decadence* practically as their birthright and go "No, I don't want to be on some filthy train with a bunch of Covid-spreaders, you can
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if you go back far enough we didn't have enough data on climate change to have altered our path significantly. but but the 1980's we could have improved our rail corridors, you know have freight and passenger tracks in both directions along important routes. And I don't say this as a hindsight is 20/20, but rather that our rail infrastructure was something discussed many times as an environmental issue to address smog and acid rain in the 1970's and 1980's.
and at some point we reach the end of the road. My
*Sigh* (Score:2)
Slashdot really needs a "Don't quit your day job" mod for when a joke goes flat.
And for the record, we really do own an EV that I don't get to drive because it's my partner's commuter car, and two of them really would've broken the budget.
Asking for a friend... (Score:1, Troll)
So does this mean we can start lobbying for hunting licenses allowing you to legally harvest two Global Warming deniers per year?
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How horrible (Score:2)
This will mean Florida man is no longer confined to Florida. He'll have to find higher ground in other states.
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They could be swimming through their kitchen and will still deny that their houses are underwater, or any other fact which doesn't go along with fringe Republic ideology.
Wall or Tesla? (Score:1)
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Florida is actually the top #2 state in EV registrations. [energy.gov] In the grand scheme of things though, it's still just a drop in the bucket compared to all the gas guzzlers.
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At the current pace I expect the Ford Raptor M1A1 Abrams Edition to be released within a few years. When drivers think the only way to be safe is to driver a bigger Truck/SUV than everyone else on the road there is just no end to the vicious cycle.
Massive EV's with huge battery packs are not the solution either, and come with their own baked in carbon footprint. Somehow we need to get the average carbon footprint of the rich countries to actually shrink rather than just greenwashing continued gluttony.
Hello Slashdot, you're doomed. Any questions? (Score:3)
Sea level rise is a secondary threat (Score:2)
west antarctica (Score:2)
Where exactly is "west" antarctica? Seems to me that antarctica is one of the few places where saying "go west, young man" can mean just go in circles without reaching a coast.
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Simpsons did it.
Re:Limits of scare propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Limits of scare propaganda (Score:2)
Nuclear power plants? Evil due to propaganda.
Inability to build these fast enough to make a dent in emissions? Propaganda.
Wind/PV cheaper than geothermal, hydro, and nuclear? Propaganda.
Hybrids lower emissions? Propaganda
Nat gas stoves are major emitters of pollutants in home? Propaganda.
Israel blew up hospital? Propaganda.
Sadly, facts are propaganda to you and yours.
Re:Limits of scare propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but science is often propaganda for one side or another.
No. Science is just science. Propaganda may spin results, leave out critical details, be poorly reported on, but the underlying science doesn't give a shit about your politics.
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Yeah, I should have said "science reporting".
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You know most politicians won't take this climate change "theory" seriously until the waves are lapping at the front doors of their seaside vacation homes.
[ Holy crap | Mon Dieu | Scheisse ] I didn't think global warming would affect ME! We'd better do something quickly.