Climate Change is Real and Things Will Get Worse -- But Because We Understand the Driver of Potential Doom, It's a Choice, Not a Foregone Conclusion (scientificamerican.com) 268
Kate Marvel, writing for Scientific American: We are, I promise you, not doomed, no matter what Jonathan Franzen says. We could be, of course, if we decided we really wanted to. We have had the potential for total annihilation since 1945, and the capacity for localized mayhem for as long as societies have existed. Climate change offers the easy choice of a slow destruction through inaction like the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot. And there are times when the certainty of inevitability seems comforting. Fighting is exhausting; fighting when victory seems uncertain or unlikely even more so. It's tempting to retreat to a special place -- a cozy nook, a mountaintop, a summer garden -- wait for the apocalypse to run its course, and hope it will be gentle.
[...] It is precisely the fact that we understand the potential driver of doom that changes it from a foregone conclusion to a choice, a terrible outcome in the universe of all possible futures. I run models through my brain; I check them with the calculations I do on a computer. This is not optimism, or even hope. Even in the best of all possible worlds, I cannot offer the certainty of safety. Doom is a possibility; it may that we have already awakened a sleeping monster that will in the end devour the world. It may be that the very fact of human nature, whatever that is, forecloses any possibility of concerted action. But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens. A flower in a garden is an exquisite thing, rooted in soil formed from old rocks broken by weather. It breathes in sunlight and carbon dioxide and conjures its food as if by magic. For the flower to exist, a confluence of extraordinary things must happen. It needs land and air and light and water, all in the right proportion, and all at the right time. Pick it, isolate it, and watch it wither. Flowers, like people, cannot grow alone.
[...] It is precisely the fact that we understand the potential driver of doom that changes it from a foregone conclusion to a choice, a terrible outcome in the universe of all possible futures. I run models through my brain; I check them with the calculations I do on a computer. This is not optimism, or even hope. Even in the best of all possible worlds, I cannot offer the certainty of safety. Doom is a possibility; it may that we have already awakened a sleeping monster that will in the end devour the world. It may be that the very fact of human nature, whatever that is, forecloses any possibility of concerted action. But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens. A flower in a garden is an exquisite thing, rooted in soil formed from old rocks broken by weather. It breathes in sunlight and carbon dioxide and conjures its food as if by magic. For the flower to exist, a confluence of extraordinary things must happen. It needs land and air and light and water, all in the right proportion, and all at the right time. Pick it, isolate it, and watch it wither. Flowers, like people, cannot grow alone.
Thought the Title Was Bad Enough . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens.
What?
Re:Thought the Title Was Bad Enough . . . (Score:5, Informative)
could very well be a true statement. Earth could be exceedingly rare thing, like one in a observable universe if you've seen the recently recalculations.
if there is life elsewhere, could well be single celled only. we went for most of the time on this planet that way until very recently... with only three to six hundred million years left until expansion of the Sun overheats earth for any animal/human life.
Kepler shows us our solar system is really really weird compared to most.
Re:Thought the Title Was Bad Enough . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
But he is a scientist and says "No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens". What "scientist" would make that claim?
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Not so silly about about the gardens; gardens require complex multicellular life, which may not exist elsewhere due to some very unique things about the solar system that are abnormal
Re:Thought the Title Was Bad Enough . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . until I got to this.
But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens.
What?
I think he's just being poetic. He's saying the Earth is remarkable, and his background as a scientist allows him to see just how remarkable it is.
Scientists can believe in miracles. Just not when they're doing science. Creating scientific knowledge takes dedication, creativity, and sometimes luck. But when the job is done, you can still marvel at the results in a non-scientific way.
Re:Thought the Title Was Bad Enough . . . (Score:4)
I think she's just being poetic. She's saying the Earth is remarkable, and her background as a scientist allows her to see just how remarkable it is.
Fixing the gender of TFA author. Sorry, Dr. Marvel.
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I think she's just being poetic. She's saying the Earth is remarkable, and her background as a scientist allows her to see just how remarkable it is.
Fixing the gender of TFA author. Sorry, Dr. Marvel.
Did you just assume Dr. Marvel's gender??? It's 2019!!!
I'm so triggered I can't even.
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Only if you think miracles must necessarily and forever defy any and all attempts at scientific explanation.
An entirely scientifically explainable phenomenon can still be miraculous, by virtue of how it affects the lives of those who are witness to it.
Re:Thought the Title Was Bad Enough . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
"Miracle" is one of those words that has been co-opted by the religious. At the same time, we exist because the hydrogen from the Big Bang spontaneously first formed stars to make heavy elements, exploded, then re-coalesced into a new star and planet, which created life in an ocean vent, which then diversified for billions of years until it is formed a mind clever enough to realize this happened.
"Miracle" seems a pretty damn good word for it.
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Kunedog incredulously demanded:
. . . until I got to this.
But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens.
What?
I had the exact same reaction. We have no idea whether we are improbable life on a perfect planet, or inevitable life on a sub-par planet - or something in between. The Drake Equation still has more variables with unknown values than it does ones for which we've established reasonably-dependable values. (We now can say with confidence that most, if not all, stars in our galaxy have planetary systems, and we're pretty certain that rocky worlds that exist in the "Goldilocks zone
Words like "Doom" are why you fail (Score:4, Insightful)
None of the predicted rise in temperatures now bring anything like "Doom". Doom is whole continents, or even the human species dying off. Changes in agricultural zones and a few feet of ocean rise over 100 years? That is hardly even a blip of inconvenience compared to something like ANY of the world wars to date.
The thing is, it would be great for all sorts of reasons to do things to help the environment. But by proclaiming "Doom" around the issue, you either push people into actively not caring just from the natural human response to push back on tyrants, or make people think the problem is so huge they can do nothing and just give up trying.
Guess what everyone, you CAN do something. Something real. That thing is go outside, clean up the outdoors. I mean literally with a trash bag. If everyone everywhere did that do you know what a massive boon that would mean for a cleaner world?
Re:Words like "Doom" are why you fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess what everyone, you CAN do something. Stop the continued use of coal as a fuel source, replace its use with nuclear power for baseload power generation and take all of the fossil fuel executives on a one way trip to the bottom of the Atlantic, followed by the Green Peace leadership
FTFY
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Re:Words like "Doom" are why you fail (Score:4, Insightful)
The word doom has several meanings. It is not clear to me that she's using it in the manner you're suggesting. https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
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Why would what she is trying to imply matter? The "doom and gloom" of climate conjecture is as real as climate change, and what is inferred by the average reader is very relevant as to their actions that follow. He also has a very solid point in pushing people to actually do something instead of feeling accomplished because they get their power from solar. Sure, it polluted the hell out of China making those panels and the mirrors directed at a towers are killing birds at an alarming rate, but what the heck
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I've long contended that a better message is that climate change is going to cost you, and I mean *you* personally, a ton of money.
It's fine if you're getting rich off of emitting CO2, but if that's not the case you'd better be saving.
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I've long contended that a better message is that climate change is going to cost you, and I mean *you* personally, a ton of money.
It's fine if you're getting rich off of emitting CO2, but if that's not the case you'd better be saving.
How nice it would be if the only consequence of climate-change is monetary loss. Unfortunately, there are more serious consequences. [who.int]
We need more doom (Score:2)
For rational people fear is just background noise. But for a large percentage of the population it's how they make decisions. Right now fear of job loss > fear of climate change.
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Re:Words like "Doom" are why you fail (Score:5, Insightful)
SuperKendall snorted dismissively:
None of the predicted rise in temperatures now bring anything like "Doom". Doom is whole continents, or even the human species dying off. Changes in agricultural zones and a few feet of ocean rise over 100 years? That is hardly even a blip of inconvenience compared to something like ANY of the world wars to date.
While I agree that the world "doom" is a considerable overstatement, I think you mischaraterize (and perhaps misunderstand) the severity of the changes that are coming to this planet. "Whole continents" won't disappear - but neither will any of them escape radical alteration in shape and land area over the next few hundred years. Nor will those changes happen anywhere nearly as slowly as you seem to think.
Every passing year brings an assessment of the rate of global warming and icecap melting that exceeds the previous year's estimates by a non-trivial margin. I'm not the only person who's been saying that ice caps are chaotic systems, but there aren't many of us- yet. The thing is, when the initial conditions that create chaotic systems are altered only slightly, those systems completely collapse within a very short time (the classic example here being a spinning top - once it starts to wobble, it spins out of control and falls over inside of a couple of seconds).
The best illustration of what our descendents are in for is the Permian-Triassic extinction event. That one was driven by natural processes (a giant bollide impact triggered a massive basalt flow event in the Siberian Traps, which released enormous amounts of CO2, warming the oceans, which led to the release of gigatons of methane, melting the icecaps - which had formed in the wake of the bollide impact - and turning the oceans into a giant, methane fizzy), whereas the one that's happening now is driven by industrial ones. We're still looking at a vastly-altered geography, an enormous die-off of species other than our own, and an existential threat to our civilization.
Yes, we humans will almost certainly survive. We're tough, highly adaptable, and pretty damned smart for a hunter-gatherer species. Our technological civilization, though? Perhaps not.
Whatever the final outcome will be, it's clearly far too late to prevent the coming catastrophe. The best we can do now is to plan for it, rather than simply reacting to each new disaster along the way as if it were somehow the end, rather than just a waypoint.
But we won't do that, because homo sap is a relentlessly short-term-focused animal, and planning for an orderly withdrawal from our present coastlines without severely disrupting our economies in the process is, I fear, something of which we're simply incapable.
I'd love to be proven wrong about that - but that's clearly not the smart way to bet ...
A choice we made almost twenty years ago (Score:2)
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It's not as simple as psychopaths and corrupt government. You underestimate people's ability to justify their actions. Everyone likes to see themselves as the hero.
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Well, it can be said that for 99.9999% of human existence breeding like rabbits was necessary to counteract disease, flood, famine, etc...
Humans have started to limit their population in advanced countries, and need to continue to reduce their expansion through choosing to limit how many children they have. This will only come about if we expand the availability of medical technology and limit the efforts of multiple religions that continue to push people to have more children.
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Please help me understand how this quote indicates that I 'must be religious'
"This will only come about if we expand the availability of medical technology and limit the efforts of multiple religions that continue to push people to have more children."
Seriously, I expected to get attacked by the 'believers', since the Baptists, Catholics and Mormons are all telling the third world that birth control will send them to Hell... Oh well, I guess reading comprehension isn't a strength on the agnostic side of the
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Re:A choice we made almost twenty years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
irregardless
No such word. You mean regardless.
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irregardless is a perfectly cromulent word [dictionary.com]
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The solution to this is rapid improvement in living standards/development and education. One of the fundamental things is that as nations have entered the first world, their birthrate drops precipitously, typically to below replacement within a couple of generations. Especially tru when it comes to educating and empowering women. Want to stop the population from exploding? empower the women of the developing world.
Marvel? (Score:2)
Captain Marvel writes for Scientific American now? And she's going to fight Dr. Doom?
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Captain Marvel writes for Scientific American now? And she's going to fight Dr. Doom?
Actually it's Dr. Marvel. She has a PhD in theoretical physics.
And if now it's Captain Doom she needs to fight, there are a few out there: an old Western comic-book character, a battle-bot, and (sort of) a Star Wars character.
If we are doomed (Score:2)
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They can mine our landfill sites for precious ores.
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Except... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's precisely that we understand the nature of human beings that we know we will make choices that doom us.
We have:
- Climate deniers with immense political power.
- A dependence on oil.
- A desire to live a good life, good in this case meaning being wealthy and to do that we ignore externalities of our decisions.
- We have world leaders who will happily run on a policy of destroying entire forests for economic gain.
- We have corporate leaders that would sooner destroy the competition through nefarious means to protect their fossil based businesses rather than adapt to a changing world.
Then we have Slashdot, on a most recent poll a far chunk of us stated that we couldn't even be give enough of a fuck to turn off our computers at night and then proceeded to justify it using various ill thought out excuses.
Nope, we're doomed because it's the choice we continue to make.
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For now.
Choices change all the time. Codpieces were once seem as essential fashion. The recent "Me too" movement shows a shift in choices.
To be clear, there is a long way to go, but the very fact that companies even bother greenwashing says that the winds are shifting. We just need (a large number of) the god-damned baby boomers to just fucking die already.
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But anyway, it's not just the boomers. The cost and sacrifices involved in hitting any CO2 target worthwhile isn't appealing to much of anyone. Especially when it's meaningless without global buy in. No, that we can avoid a severely problematic temp rise by reducing emissions is largely academic. We as a planet could, but we won't. Long odds geoengineering is really the only hope.
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Space-Based Solar Power - we can do this with the low cost of payload that SpaceX and others have to offer. 1GW plants. That's far better than the maintenance and unreliable prone sources of land solar and wind we have today.
How about you go and ask Elon Musk what he thinks about using SpaceX rockets for space based solar? I'll warn you, you may want to step back because he might just explode.
https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
I realize that article is a few years old. I see nothing more recent on him changing his mind.
I suppose that if you asked him for rockets to launch your own space based solar project that he'd likely sell you the rockets. He'll just take your check and laugh on the way to the bank to deposit it.
Elon Musk
The only constant is change (Score:2)
The only constant in this world is that things change. Adapt or die.
Group effort requires group enforcement. (Score:2)
There's no actions an individual can take that will stop global warming. An individual can reduce their contribution but it will do little unless others do likewise. At both the individual and national levels voluntarily taking unilateral action puts you at a disadvantage compared to those who don't. Maybe that will work if enough individuals take part, but even then it's rewarding bad people at the cost of good people.
That's why things like carbon caps or carbon trading or carbon tax are necessary. There's
We already have a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, nuclear power doesn't have to be the end-game. All we need to do is switch to nuclear to prevent ourselves from going over the edge of the cliff. Then once the immediate danger is gone, we can take our time working on developing renewable technologies until they're cost-effective enough to take over from nuclear for base load. No looming deadline. No climate catastrophe hanging over our heads like a sword of Damocles.
Unfortunately, the environmental movement has decided to use that cliff as justification for rapid development of renewables. And since nuclear easily eliminates the danger of that cliff, they can't allow it to be used.
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Have had it for more than a half century. Just replace our fossil fuel power generation plants with nuclear plants. That solves the immediate problem easily, cheaply, and without having to wait for new technologies to be developed or become cost-effective.
I think Nuclear Power is great, and in general better for us than almost any of our traditional power sources for the environment. Let's not forget that even well designed Nuclear Power plants have their dangers. Fukushima for example. There are very few places in the world that isn't in at least some risk of one of the following: cyclones/hurricanes, tornado, mass flooding events, earthquake, volcano, or tidal wave. The more plants we have the more risk we are of another Fukushima.
That's not a reason n
Re:We already have a solution (Score:4, Informative)
Fukushima, well designed? no, not at all.
Water cooled reactors are a horrible, terrible idea. (blame the US Navy for that one)
Read up on the EBR-II test reactor from the mid 1960's; THAT was a well designed reactor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:We already have a solution (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no need for nuclear now. If we were having this conversation twenty years ago, maybe, but solar is now the most economical source of power we have ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/j [forbes.com]... ), cheaper than coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
Wait a minute, solar is the most economical energy source? The prices given in the article were only after the government dumped a bunch of cash on the deal for capital expenses. What's the cost to the economy? The ratepayers might see a lower cost but the load on the economy is not changed by moving the money around with subsidies.
How well would this work in places with cold and snow like Montana? Michigan? Minnesota? Or any other states with names that start with "M"?
Professor Jacobson's paper on an energy plan that supplies the world with the energy it needs from wind, water, and sun, has been shown to be unworkable many times over. He "defended" his scientific rigor not by showing his data but by suing anyone that speaks poorly of him. That is not science, that's lawfare.
And then there's also the pesky issue that the incumbent nuclear power fuel cycle creates a feedstock of spent fuel that's useful for the proliferation of new nuclear weapons-grade material.
If you believe that then you need to put down the kool-aid and pick up a book. There's only one way to destroy the weapon cores of nuclear weapons, that's in a nuclear reactor. If nuclear weapons proliferation concerns you then you'd want nuclear power, we can feed them nuclear weapons and get electricity back.
Re:We already have a solution (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because it's easy to make anything a hundred times more expensive by creating a shit ton of regulation and removing any and all funding for continued research. We (well, not "we" per se, but Russians do) now have working reactors that run on nuclear waste, and can build intrinsically safe reactors using fuel that's so abundant in nature it's pretty much inexhaustible: thorium. Yet people who claim to care about the greenhouse effect pretty much stop this progress in its tracks in favor of options which _can't replace_ natural gas or nuclear because they aren't "on" all the time, but can easily double the cost per KWh (as they did in Germany). And moreover, they'll need to be replaced 20-30 years from now at the end of their usable life.
Re:We already have a solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Kool-aid! Tell me, where exactly do you believe Plutonium 239 comes from? The genocide fairy? I know that people want to believe we're living in a post-facts reality, but the actual truth is not so convenient. I suggest it is you who needs to go read, how about this:
If you read your own link you would see that a nuclear power reactor is terrible for making weapon grade plutonium.
Do you know what other industry uses nuclear reactors? Nuclear medicine. Not all reactors are equal. A nuclear power reactor is a different beast than a nuclear weapons reactor. Which is different than a nuclear medicine reactor.
A useful thing about electricity is that it can be both stored and also transported long distances, even to Massachusetts, Maine, or Mississippi.
Transmitted? Sure. Stored? Not so much. If electricity storage was so cheap and easy then there would not be so much discussion about it.
I don't really know who Jacobson is, and I'm not citing his paper.
The guy was mentioned in the article you linked to, did you not read it? He's the guy that "proved" the world can get all the energy it needs from wind, water, and sun. It's because of Jacobson that the article was written, it's based on his work.
The idea that any sustainable power grid must include fission of Uranium atoms is simply untrue, and hopefully there can be a role for a next-generation reactor with a full burndown fuel cycle rather than something modelled after the Hanford Site's weapons grade feedstock production for a war that must never be fought. (Surely nuclear apocalypse is the second greatest danger facing humanity after environmental/ecological apocalypse, which it's arguably just a variation of. Nothing of today's political leadership suggests mankind is any more ready or sane enough to have a nuclear arsenal than it was in 1945.)
I see you've read Helen Caldicott's books. Maybe you could read someone that has a background in physics, engineering, or the environment.
Yes, yes, yes, we know all this already, damnit! (Score:2)
Climate Change... (Score:2)
Read this quote with regards to someone's (a rather right-wing Republican) lamenting that he could / should have done more to help ensure law abiding folks are able to purchase/own, etc., and keeping them away from folks that really shouldn't have them. I think it's very appropriate in the realm of climate change.
There are two perfect times to plant a tree. 20-years ago. And now.
Basically - if you didn't do it 20 years ago, doing it now is still a good option.
Meanwhile in the real world (Score:2)
Sadly while children are taught that the oceans are going to swallow coastal cities, and famine will cause endless wars and refugees, and disease will kill the remaining few survivors, nobody seems to point out to them that notwithstanding the fact it has warmed by about 1.1 C since 1850, that just happens to coincide with the greatest global improvements in the human condition in all our history. Life expectancies are longer, less people are hungry, standards of living are going up pretty much everywhere.
We know what to do and how to do it (Score:5, Interesting)
It boils down to some very very simple policy and tax changes.
1. Eliminate all fossil fuel tax incentives, depreciation, exclusions, and exemptions. By the end of this year.
2. Build far cheaper renewable energy instead, on a World War II footing.
3. Stop using government insurance backing for buildings built within 100 year flood plains everywhere.
4. Require all new building - buildings, roads, bridges, airports (stop subsidizing those, use the money for high speed rail instead) - to maximize energy efficiency and provide local renewable power generation. Don't specify what type, let the local regions determine which renewable mixes meet the needs.
5. Change FEMA and other disaster repairs so they replace damaged and destroyed power systems and buildings with ones designed for the current building standards and current energy profiles. Yes, on coasts that means no living quarters on the ground floor, no subsidies for car storage, the ability to withstand - every 2-5 years - a 100 year storm event.
We know this. We can do this. But we have to stop subsidizing bad behavior.
Re:We know what to do and how to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and a cheap and easy thing you can do right now is very very simple.
Plant trees. Trees that will work in the climate we will have in 10-50 years.
Those help.
A lot.
Think of Arbor Day as a great time to actually do something useful.
Scientific American publishes rambling nonsense? (Score:2)
Did anyone really find this rambling nonsense interesting? It's like she's giving a church sermon to ten year olds.
"But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens. A flower in a garden is an exquisite thing, rooted in soil formed from old rocks broken by weather. It breathes in sunlight and carbon dioxide and conjures its food as if by magic. F
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No, I think she is just trying to win over the religious fucktards by sounding like one
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Why climate change is denied/dismissed (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually rather simple. A lot of people don't get this , or are overlooking it.
The old rich guys with all the money (and surprisingly effective influence) DO NOT GIVE A FUCK
THEY ( the old rich guys with the influence) will be dead before the shit hits the fan.
So THEY can keep living in luxury piling up more money than they can ever use.
Humans and their addictions. Some people drink, some people smoke pot, some people do both. Some people are hoarders and some people sex addicts. Each mind is unique but there are defects that appear with frequency.
Some people are addicted to amassing wealth and they are good and it. It's what drives them. Think Warren buffet.
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I expect we could manage more than three billion deaths, if we tried very hard (things like reprogramming all the ICBMs for maximum bodycount (which means, ALL aimed at urban and suburban areas, none aimed at enemy ICBM launch sites) and ignoring who the actual ENEMY is and using the same spray-and-pray technique entirely too many people think is "normal" use of any weapon.
That quibble aside, no, we're not g
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Sure, they can. Aim all the nuclear weapons at the Yellowstone supervolcano.
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Aim all the nuclear weapons at the Yellowstone supervolcano.
Even that (if you could get it to erupt instead of just relieving the internal pressure) would just Doom about half the U.S., and probably bring about year long winters for much of the earth for several years... I don't think that would by any means kill even half the humans on Earth today.
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Probably true. But an explosion of sufficient magnitude could potentially stir up so much ash in the atmosphere and create such an extended volcanic winter that plant life dies off, which then kills off animal life, and suddenly there is nothing for anyone to eat. Hard to say if it would actually do so, but the possibility is nonzero.
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Yes, but you know how it is with infestations... if you leave enough for a breeding population, you'll soon be right back where you started.
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Nope. Look up the fun studies on that. Too many humans in places that are beneath the notice of first and second worlds and we just can't make that much fallout like "on the beach" and its remake. Makes for great screenplay though. We can wipe out a good 40% though
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All the nuclear weapon can't wipe out mankind, fallacy from Hollywood.
We can make the planet crappier for ourselves though, and kill a billion and a half humans or three.
Climate Change worst case scenario:
We make a lot of species extinct, lose a lot of land, millions or billions of people starve, followed by social upheaval, wars, disease, etc. Mankind goes on in greatly depleted numbers until it can rebound.
Nuclear Weapon worst case scenario:
We lose several billion to nuclear weapons, further millions die due to starvation, disease, etc. Remote islands can't all be hit. Mankind goes on in greatly depleted numbers until it can rebound- many areas ruined for generations.
B
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I'm imagining Bender's progeny standing atop of project pluto-esque ram-jets, reins in hand; circling the earth for decades at a time.
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Well, sorry, but you're wrong. It's a low probability kind of thing, but we could do it. I don't really believe the story that seven cobalt bombs would be enough, but it would be pretty bad.
That said, you're right that it wouldn't happen without something really major. But ending civilization would be a whole lot easier.
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Yeah, you should pay more attention to actual scientists and less attention to science journalists.
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I still don't think it's real so I'm not going to do anything differently
Oh well, too late now so I'm not going to do anything differently
Nope, you're wrong (Score:5, Informative)
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That's wrong. There's mountains of scientific evidence. Tens of thousands of studies by hundreds of thousands of scientists.
the climate models used to make said changes aren't even close to being accurate.
Absolutely false.
I don't believe the hype
Wonderful. Your beliefs have nothing to do with science.
Re:Nope, you're wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
A single post on a crackpot website with no evidence (or even a single glacier growing, even if it is true) isn't even a fart in the wind compared with literally tens of thousands peer reviewed studied. The last IPCC report contained references to about 9,300 supporting studies. In 2013.
Climate models aren't even remotely accurate to being provable.
Nobody can predict the future. They've made excellent models that predict the past few decades very accurately, and the models get better constantly. That's called science. You don't understand what you're talking about. Take a few basic science courses, then read the latest IPCC report, then get back to me.
Re:Nope, you're wrong (Score:5, Informative)
As you can see, Watts not only fabricated the nature of the study and its predictions, but you can see that the predictions themselves were not far off. The Glaciers were predicted to be inactive or gone by 2030. This was later amended to 2020 in a separate study.
The example Glacier, Blackfoot, while still having small patches of ice in its former area, is gone.
He mentions the Jackson glacier as "growing as much as 35% over the last decade" without mentioning it's 80% reduction in the 3 decades preceding it.
That dude is a piece of shit, and you're just as bad for peddling his misinformation.
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The problem isn't science, it is the HYPE associated with it, that very few people believe.
No. Most of the world believes it. You belong to a tiny minority with a strongly correlated political affiliation, mostly confined to a single country.
It's time to accept that you're just fucking stupid.
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I am not doing any of those things yet I know that climate change is real....
Just because some people do x, y and z, doesn't make climate change false...
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Anecdotal evidence is proof! GLOBAL WARMING!
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People still smoke and don't use sunscreen. People are stupid.
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Funny thing, the fossil fuel industry believes the opposite of what they are peddling, and actually plan for climate change. As early as the 80s, plans for offshore oil rigs took into account the sea level rise they knew they would be creating.
I know you want to believe that anyone who tells you to do something you don't want to do must be a hypocrite, but in reality, the situation is much more complicated. The people you complain about, this mysterious "they" you fail to define except by their supposed fai
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The fact is either you accept thermodynamics, or you believe that some, magically, increasing GHGs doesn't raise the thermal equilibrium of the lower atmosphere.
It really is that simple.
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I have no grandchildren, what's your point?
Yes, climate change is real, but if people who actually have kids can't be assed to do shit against it so their kids actually have a planet to live on, why should I?
Re: Cloud cover... (Score:2)
Re: Profiteering on the green side? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is literally, and obviously, thousands or tens of thousands of times more profits being zealously guarded by the anti-environmental propaganda wing of this debate.
If you can't see that, I pity us all. Because "then we're stupid, and we'll die", to quote a famous replicant.
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Many "green" policies we have now promote destruction of non renewable natural resources (mining lithium/cobalt and other rare earths instead of coal), merely hide pollution by moving it elsewhere and/or changing the type of pollution, promote zero net benefit energy sources (corn Ethanol), and don't actually even attempt
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Too funny, you are IGNORING the $9 TRILLION in proven petroleum reserves (that corporations are hell bound to get full value out of) whilst hunting down a few paltry tens of millions of dollars that green policies manage to sequester into "somebody's" pockets...
Are you stupid, or just paid to say this stuff?
Re: Profiteering on the green side? (Score:2)
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and the real deal, the one Bernie Sander's is pushing.
Does Sanders' plan include nuclear power? I see it does not.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
Without nuclear power the plan will fail. With Sanders calling for the premature closing of existing nuclear power we'd be going backwards on reducing CO2 emissions.
Nuclear power is safe, clean, plentiful, affordable, and doesn't require any new technology. This is what science tells us. If Bernie can't support nuclear power then he is a science denier. By denying the science he is no better than the people tha
Do you have anything to back that assertion? (Score:2, Informative)
Nuclear would be fine in a society that better trusts it's government and isn't prone to privatizing things. Maybe after a few decades of government not being actively sabotaged that confidence will return. But as it stands we're a few privatizations away from a disaster. I don't trust private corporations headed up by people who live hundreds if not thousands of miles from Ground Zeros to put up the cash to keep things safe, and Fukushima is a good example.
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Wind and Solar are already cheaper than Coal.
Great! Then the global warming problem is solved. All it takes now is the market forces to take over and people will just naturally gravitate to wind and solar because that's where the cheapest energy lies.
That is unless this is a load of bullshit, and we need more nuclear power to keep the lights on and lower CO2 emissions. You want a citation on that? Go tell me I'm wrong. Your own citation says that wind and solar isn't always the cheapest energy, it varies by location.
What we need is an energy plan
The point is market forces _won't_ do that (Score:2)
Yes, a completely free market would take over here, but there's no such thing as a completely free market. Establishment players will always distort the market for their gain. They will also ignore externalities and risks when those things don't directly impact them. And history shows that when Establishment players cause major disasters they are not pun
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The US produces 12 million barrels of oil per day and consumes 20 million. On a net basis you import 8 million barrels per day.
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But hey, it now sounds like you were trolling instead of making a salient observation, so my bad for taking the bait.