Climate Disruption Is Now Locked In. The Next Moves Will Be Crucial. (nytimes.com) 288
America is now under siege by climate change in ways that scientists have warned about for years. But there is a second part to their admonition: Decades of growing crisis are already locked into the global ecosystem and cannot be reversed. From a report: This means the kinds of cascading disasters occurring today -- drought in the West fueling historic wildfires that send smoke all the way to the East Coast, or parades of tropical storms lining up across the Atlantic to march destructively toward North America -- are no longer features of some dystopian future. They are the here and now, worsening for the next generation and perhaps longer, depending on humanity's willingness to take action. "I've been labeled an alarmist," said Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist in Los Angeles, where he and millions of others have inhaled dangerously high levels of smoke for weeks. "And I think it's a lot harder for people to say that I'm being alarmist now." Last month, before the skies over San Francisco turned a surreal orange, Death Valley reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest temperature ever measured on the planet. Dozens of people have perished from the heat in Phoenix, which in July suffered its hottest month on record, only to surpass that milestone in August.
Conversations about climate change have broken into everyday life, to the top of the headlines and to center stage in the presidential campaign. The questions are profound and urgent. Can this be reversed? What can be done to minimize the looming dangers for the decades ahead? Will the destruction of recent weeks become a moment of reckoning, or just a blip in the news cycle? The Times spoke with two dozen climate experts, including scientists, economists, sociologists and policymakers, and their answers were by turns alarming, cynical and hopeful. "It's as if we've been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for decades" and the world is now feeling the effects, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. But, she said, "we're not dead yet." Their most sobering message was that the world still hasn't seen the worst of it. Gone is the climate of yesteryear, and there's no going back. The effects of climate change evident today are the results of choices that countries made decades ago to keep pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at ever-increasing rates despite warnings from scientists about the price to be paid.
Conversations about climate change have broken into everyday life, to the top of the headlines and to center stage in the presidential campaign. The questions are profound and urgent. Can this be reversed? What can be done to minimize the looming dangers for the decades ahead? Will the destruction of recent weeks become a moment of reckoning, or just a blip in the news cycle? The Times spoke with two dozen climate experts, including scientists, economists, sociologists and policymakers, and their answers were by turns alarming, cynical and hopeful. "It's as if we've been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for decades" and the world is now feeling the effects, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. But, she said, "we're not dead yet." Their most sobering message was that the world still hasn't seen the worst of it. Gone is the climate of yesteryear, and there's no going back. The effects of climate change evident today are the results of choices that countries made decades ago to keep pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at ever-increasing rates despite warnings from scientists about the price to be paid.
We must act now (Score:3)
> America is now under siege by climate change in ways that scientists have warned about for years. But there is a second part to their admonition
The time ti act is now folks. This is an EMERGENCY. We need to hand over all rights and freedoms to the government to make unilateral sweeping reform in our greater interest. The individual can not be trusted to act appropriately. Hig Zail.
And whose fault it THAT? (Score:2)
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Sadly, that goes for the government officials that some are demanding we hand all our rights over to as well. They're clearly not capable of critical thinking and making real decisions. I've been watching them promise and fail to act for my entire adult life. It's not like we didn't have any warning about this. Why would we trust them to act when they haven't for the entire time any of us have been alive?
"Sure, sure, we've continually backstabbed you and stolen ever more rights away from you in the nam
Of course it can be reversed. (Score:5, Insightful)
But what is physically possible and what is practically possible are always two different things.
It is entirely possible, in the physical sense of the word, to stop and even eventually reverse global warming, but it's so unacceptably inconvenient to do so that it is probable impossible for all practical purposes.
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Or we could tax carbon and return the revenue equally to everyone. If the tax is $1.00 per gallon of gasoline, and if the average person uses 125 gallons every 3 months, then everyone would receive a $125 check every 3 months no matter how much gasoline they used.
Now $125 may not seem like a lot of money for you or I, but for a poor person, it would be a very welcome supplement to their income.
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So the poor will have the money to burn more gas, and the rich won't care and keep driving.
I'll believe they are serious about limiting CO2 emissions when they ban commercial air travel. Two percent of global CO2 emissions and the planet's best virus dispersion system and a luxury unimagined until a hundred years ago.
And they could do an arms control treaty to end combat aircraft too. Air power has been shown to be most useful at slaughtering civilians. Leave exceptions for reconnaissance aircraft and medev
This is fine. (Score:2)
Not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Until then, business as usual. Too many companies have spent too much money buying too many ads and too many politicians. Too much disbelief in the science has been sowed. In the US, we have a entire political party that's nearly-homogeneously dedicated to anti-science. It will take decades to undo all of that social programming, and we can't even get started until after society decides to take things seriously.
In the meantime, the scientists and engineers have a duty to come up with ways to effectively geo-engineer the climate. It will be needed. To the people who are against geo-engineering: too bad, screw you, that ship sailed 3 decades ago when we could have dealt with the problem, but as a species we consciously chose not to. When the rest of humanity pulls it's head out of it's ass and asks for help, the scientists and engineers need to be ready with solutions.
It's not going to be pretty.
Re:Not enough (Score:4, Interesting)
And none of those things is actually going to happen, so I'm cool with that.
The EcoMarxists have been declaiming imminent environmental disaster for the ENTIRETY of my life (I was born in 1967).
Silent Spring was a lie, entirely.
Nuclear power was our way out of the coal/petrochemical trap, and they chained themselves to railroad tracks to stop that dead.
This is more of the same screeching, given more currency only because their fellow travelers and useful idiots are now old enough to be in positions of responsibility in academia and government, instead of impotently getting high during a "sit in" in a campus dean's office..
One good thing about being older is you've seen it all before. As the song lyric says, "we wont get fooled again".
I have to explain this to kids all the time when they are in a tizzy over the crisis du jour.
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Pebble Bed Reactors FTW! (Score:2)
also ending pro-natalism (Score:2)
When they start demanding that nuclear power plants be built in order to power all of the electric cars that are needed to replace the ICE powered cars on the road today, I'll start believing the alarms.
Also when they stop policies that promote expanding population, especially in high-energy economies. (That includes both encouraging birthrate wherever and importing low-income, high-birthrate migrants to places where the, and their offspring, can afford to use more energy and grow bigger families.) It doe
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ya? so what (Score:2)
Historic wildfires? (Score:3)
Only one way to stop/reverse this (Score:3)
Is it or isn't it? (Score:2)
Whomever msmach is, they need to make up their minds. One post says time has run out and the next says there is time remaining. /. should stick to technology and leave reading tea leaves to others.
Climate Disruption Is Now Locked In. The Next Moves Will Be Crucial.
Posted by msmash on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @09:51AM from the closer-look dept.
A New York Clock That Told Time Now Tells the Time Remaining
Posted by msmash on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @09:10AM from the how-about-that dept
Question the facts in the premise (Score:3)
While I won't contest that it's been a remarkable year, it doesn't help when facts in the premise are in question. for example: ... except, this isn't quite accurate.
"Death Valley reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest temperature ever measured on the planet"
https://www.history.com/news/t... [history.com]
While there are some trying to invalidate that claim, it doesn't change the fact that it was pretty darn hot and pretty darn close to the same. I'm just saying, state your premise correctly, or all that follows is suspect.
Until Trump says that it is true (Score:2)
then 40% of the population will not believe it.
As his re-election campaign has lots of $$$$ from Oil, Gas etc he won't dare say anything to upset his backers.
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then 40% of the population will not believe it.
As his re-election campaign has lots of $$$$ from Oil, Gas etc he won't dare say anything to upset his backers.
According to https://www.opensecrets.org/in... [opensecrets.org] oil & gas has given Trump $1.5 million.
That isn't much in the scheme of things. Bloomberg is spending $100 million in Florida alone to help Biden.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/13... [npr.org]
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Neat looking ride.
okay (Score:3)
Forest Fires Aren’t at Historic Highs (Score:3)
California’s wildfires are a serious matter, but the official record of the United States shows forest fires in the US today are far below the annual average in the 1930s and 1940s.
https://fee.org/articles/fores... [fee.org]
Back in the long long ago in the before time (Score:2)
Re:Weather events or climate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Weather events or climate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, stable energy sources and cleaner classic sources were shouted down by the green movement in the 80s until now. A single nuclear reactor can produce as much energy as 16M solar panels with heavy metals and during the lifetime of a reactor, you have to replace those solar panels 5 times over. At this point, solar panels can likewise not be recycled and should be treated the same as nuclear waste, except 80M solar panels are much larger physically than a few tons of uranium or thorium.
Everything has its pros and cons, but stagnating because it's not clean enough or it's hard or scary, hasn't got anyone anywhere.
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yes, solar panels are recyclable [Re:Weather e...] (Score:2)
Except modern solar panels last 30+ years.
And they don't use heavy metals, either.
At this point, solar panels can likewise not be recycled
Why not? The main mass of solar panels are the glass and the aluminum frame, both of which are recyclable. After that, in fact, the silicon can also be recycled.
and should be treated the same as nuclear waste,
Huh??? If you put your dead solar panel at the bottom of a swimming pool, you think it's going to grow blue with Cerenkov radiation??
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For the record, even if they do last those promised 30+ years, they irreparably (repair costing more than replacing the panel entirely) degrade every year.
Really high quality, utterly price uncompetitive panels degrade at around 0,5-1% a year. The price competitive Chinese stuff being installed today is around 1-3% of annual degradation depending on the supplier and batch.
So even if you take the promise of 30 year+ durability manufacturers make, you're not going to have anywhere near the installed capacity
Degradation rate [Re:Weather events or climate?] (Score:2)
0.5% power loss per year for average panels. For premium panels, 0.3%.
https://www.solarreviews.com/b... [solarreviews.com]
So even if you take the promise of 30 year+ durability manufacturers make, you're not going to have anywhere near the installed capacity after a while.
If you don't have a calculator, that means that after 30 years, the panels are still producing 86% of original power (91%, if you went for the premium panels).
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burying the rest in the ground, lead, arsenic and all
That's stupid, someone a couple decades from now is going to get rich digging it up and extracting the usable metals. Already most North American landfills have higher gold content than most commercial mines, and a number of other metals as well.
No lead, no arsenic [Re:Weather events or clim...] (Score:2)
burying the rest in the ground, lead, arsenic and all
No reason solar panels should have lead-- could have lead in the solder, but doesn't have to be-- we learned to make lead-free solder decades ago.
And they most certainly don't have arsenic. You can use arsenic as a silicon n-dopant-- but turns out that you don't; for solar cells, phosphorus turns out to be easier.
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At this point, solar panels can likewise not be recycled
Ignorant as always... [reuters.com]
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So you're just confirming my claim by pointing to an article that describes how much tonnes of PV recycling is expected and how almost none of it is recycled and how a brand new, unproven technology plant yet to be built and nowhere near the capacity necessary, could potentially 'recycle' it by basically grinding it to pieces.
No, he was refuting your claim with an article that was a couple of years old. Here's a blog post [greenmatch.co.uk] that's newer, and just to make sure you see it, here's one of the conclusions:
"The common belief of solar panels not being recyclable is, therefore, a myth. It is, however, a process that needs time to be widely implemented and requires further research to reach its full potential of adequately recycling all solar panel components." [emphasis theirs]
According to that post, at least 85%, and in some cases up to 96% of the material can be reused.
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"The common belief of solar panels not being recyclable is, therefore, a myth. It is, however, a process that needs time to be widely implemented and requires further research to reach its full potential of adequately recycling all solar panel components." [emphasis theirs]
According to that post, at least 85%, and in some cases up to 96% of the material can be reused.
Most plastic is recyclable too. Does not mean it is or ever will be.
In theory almost everything is recyclable. There is this thing called economics though.
Distraction (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an important to bring up, because, while reducing CO2 is important in the long-run, it's not going to fix the underlying issue that building in areas that have high occurrence of hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires is going to increase the amount of property damage caused by hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires.
The quickest solution would be to float the price of insurance in these areas. For example, the federal government currently underwrites flood insurance for New Orleans. If the risk of flooding is so great that only the federal government will insure you, that's probably a sign that it's not a good area to build in.
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I pay for flood insurance in Gilbert, Arizona, because my house is 6 inches below the predicted 100-year flood level. In Gilbert, Arizona, you ask? Why, yes. There is a risk that within a 100 year period, rainfall could exceed the capacity of drainage, washes, reservoirs, or catch basins, and poof, flood. It does happen, the most recent major event in Maricopa County resulting in the I-17 flooding for miles, due to pump failure, and a neighborhood in Mesa virtually destroyed due to bad drainage design, ulti
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So start blasting rocks out of the rockies near railroad lines. Load rocks onto trains to New Orleans. PIck up dirt dug up in plains along the way. Keep dumping rocks and dirt in New Orleans until the whole city is 20 meters higher. Expensive as hell but so is rebuilding the city over and over because it's under sea level.
Or do the cheaper thing and move everyone inland. Build up the docks with the capability to raise height as needed, as well as the rail and road lines to the ducks. Build a ginormous 30+ m
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It's worth remembering that raising entire cities is not a novel idea but something that we already did once in the past. We had to do it in 1800s when epidemiology was discovered and sewage systems were invented to address problems epidemiology discovered. Which led to entire old cities having modern sewage systems installed. You can find magnificent images of entire city blocks being literally lifted off the ground via various means to perform relevant work. It was expensive with 1800s technology, but it
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I like your idea! Best thing is, it should be dirt cheap [instantrimshot.com].
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Re:Weather events or climate? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's usually the anti-government people who pushed to stop controlled (preventative) burns because they didn't trust to the gov't on both the need claims and ability to control them. And they didn't want to pay for it in taxes. Controlled burns do have a risk associated with them; there is no risk-free lunch either way.
Thus, generally same people who blame the current fires on gov't also slowed preventative measures. They also pushed to reduce county fire safety regulations for residential houses in wooded areas.
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They could also start building houses as sealable concrete bunkers that can survive fire. You can put up some sort of facade around the sides made of molded rock wool if you're worried about appearance. Next time fire comes through, nothing burns.
Re:Weather events or climate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya, the Arctic and Antarctic have been melting for years, the fact that it is greatly increasing now is merely scientists making shit up. Greenland melting and glaciers in the Alps and Himalayas? Nope, just scientists misreading their instruments. Oceans warming? Obviously another instrument malfunction. Fish decamping for colder climes so that fishermen must go further to chase them down? Why, it is clear the fish are in on scam. It is surprisingly easy to bribe fish into this sort of behavior. Coastal flooding on the East Coast of the U.S. increasing in the last 40 years? People are just imagining this flooding. If they didn't imagine it, it wouldn't be there.
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I live about 600' above sea level and about 300 miles inland. There is no flooding here, no fires, no threat from rising sea levels for the next million years.
Besides, when the local grocery store closed and Wal Mart opened, those fish sticks I eat got closer..
Frequency is not predicted to increase (Score:2)
https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/
Intensity not frequency (Score:5, Informative)
Global warming affects hurricane intensity, not frequency. The list you helpfully linked to actually shows category 4 & 5 hurricanes getting more common over time. Sea level rise (directly resulting from climate change) also causes hurricanes to be more destructive when they reach the coast due to storm surges. You can read more at https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/glob... [noaa.gov]
Again, your statement, while true, isn't really relevant. Forestry services have realized since the 1980s that limited fires were a natural part of maintaining a healthy forest and regularly initiate controlled burns whenever possible to clean up the dead wood. The problem is that extended drought conditions in many areas (again a result of climate change) make any forest fire, intentional or accidental, too dangerous and likely to get out-of-control.
Re:Intensity not frequency (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not environmentalists who are blocking proper forestry management (other than maybe some very specific instances to protect the habitat of an endangered species). It's NIMBY home-owners and businesses who don't want to be inconvenienced or are afraid of losing property values.
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So, you think that the wildfires are being caused by man's management. Well, there is truth in that though you missed the initial cause. Here in the west, we have several beetles that borrow into pines and spruces, which make up the majority of our trees. These beetles brought a fungus with them that kills the trees. Probably around 70% of the pines in the west, extending from Mexico, all the way into southern Canada is infected. M
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If you go back about fifteen years or so ago, the models weren't predicting more *frequent* tropical storms. They predicted fewer, but wetter and more intense storms. Here's the relevant bit from the 2007 IPCC report:
Results from embedded high-resolution models and global models ... project a likely increase of peak wind intensities and notably, where analysed, increased near-storm precipitation in future
tropical cyclones. Most recent published modelling studies investigating tropical storm frequency simulate a decrease in the overall number of storms...
Now it is true that more people are building in the path of hurricanes, but in the US because of building codes the threat isn't wind speed; it's catastrophic flooding. Building are vulnerable because they were sited using obsolete floodplain maps. For example, in southern Texas what was a
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Re:Weather events or climate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Great comment. Let's see,
1. no one mentioned Communism until your post.
2. you think all versions of socialism are Communism.
(tell me how the British Labour Party, which is
*officially* socialist, is Communist, and how the UK
was horrible under their government)
3. You think "God" won't allow it, like one idiot woman
I used to commute with.
If your imaginary sky friend existed, he would have sent lightning bolts to every funnymentalist church in the US.
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If your imaginary sky friend existed, he would have sent lightning bolts to every funnymentalist church in the US.
Well, actually... [pennlive.com]
Re:Weather events or climate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically, your position is the propaganda from the global fossil fuel industry. Your comments indicate that you have been gas-lighted and are trying to draw more people into your flawed conclusion.
It is the indirect cost of fossil fuel that is making us financially oppressed.
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That's an interesting insight into the Republican point of view. It's often hard for me to understand the views of uneducated and unintelligent people. You enlightened me, so thanks.
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When people make a decision, they judge it based on consequences as much as evidence. If climate change is real, it means accepting economic hardship,giving up luxuries like cheap transportation, and compromising deeply-held political principles by supporting some heavy-handed government regulation. That's not acceptable, therefore climate change must be a liberal hoax.
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Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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Even the poorest people at minimum income in the US have about the average for European disposable income.
US federal minimum wage is $7.75 an hour. Average EU wage is EUR 1441, so roughly EUR 9 or $10.50 an hour.
Your claims are unproven unless you can prove that the cost of living is substantially cheaper in the US than the average in Europe.
Re:Weather events or climate? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with the notion of climate change. I also agree with what the OP posted (at least with regards to the wildfires; I can't speak to his claims about hurricanes), because he's correct. What he said is factual and you can't just hide your head in the sand when the facts don't go the way you'd prefer. You need to be able to speak to them and integrate them into your understanding of the world and reality.
Having an abnormally dry year doesn't help things, of course, but pinning everything on that is missing the forest for the trees (pun intended). A dry year means there'll be more fires, but fires are normal and should be easy to control. A century of forest mismanagement is what results in an inability to control those fires, and that's what makes this situation as terrible as it is.
A friend of ours is a forest management expert, and he was telling us back when last year's annual round of out of control wildfires were in the news that they'd continue getting worse before they got better, simply because of how the forests had been grossly mismanaged for the better part of the last century. Rather than engaging in controlled burns or other brush management, much of California had been suppressing any and all fire for decades, just as the OP said, resulting in a massive overabundance of brush. Whereas a typical fire like the ones the OP was talking about would be relatively cool and mostly harmless, burning out the brush without killing the trees (in fact, these fires actually help forests, both by eliminating competition for nutrients and by being part of the reproductive cycle; certain varieties of pinecones only open up to drop their seeds in response to fire), if you let the brush accumulate for too long the fires can burn hot enough to kill the trees and spiral out of control, irreparably damaging the forests and ravaging entire regions.
In the last few years California has started waking up to all of this, hence why you may have heard reports of them starting to use goats, of all things, in an effort to eliminate the brush in forests adjacent to cities and towns. They've also begun stepping up the use of controlled burns. Those are all steps in the right direction, but it takes time to set things straight.
In the meantime, there's an incredible irony in the fact that forests that have been around for centuries and survived countless fires without any intervention from us are now being burned down to nothing because we decided to "protect" them from fire.
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You can't and I can't, but it seems to work well for Trump.
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You really don't understand how any of this works. Not worth trying to explain it to you, especially since all the data is out there.
Ah, the appeal to common sense, which takes too long and too much effort to explain... Pardon me while I chuckle..
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Perhaps you should note that Native American and most pre-industrial humans weren't very ecologically responsible. It works if your group stays small and travels but for the current population, living like that would kill us, as it did London in the 19th century.
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Nice to see someone stand up against the myth of the noble savage living in tune with the natural world.
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I don't live in a flood plain where no insurance has insured any property for the last 50 years. Moron.
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Is displaying your ignorance of basic science a fetish or something? Does it bring you sexual pleasure to show your stupidity to innocent bystanders?
My fetish is educating morons. Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I'm not sure what you are talking about. I live in northern Michigan, and we are experiencing unusually warm weather. It was 80 degrees yesterday.
Two can play this game...
I live in Dallas, and it's been unusually cool and wet this summer... I think it's global cooling here....
Can we just stop "proving" things with antidotal evidence and leave that logical failure to the anti-vaxers? I mean I loved laughing at the "Global warming" crowd struggling though the record cold and snow in some northern city because January in Chicago was all they could afford for their international convention, but it really wasn't fair.
Anybody who starts off with "Well
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My point was he said the growing season in MI was unusually short and ended last week. He's wrong. We haven't even had a frost yet.
My point was you are both idiots even if both statements are true (and they could be)... Neither are proof of anything having to do with climate change.
Re:Yea right! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's less sunspots and solar flares.
The suns cycles don't cause much change in it's luminosity. Even a Grand Solar Minimum only causes a ZERO point twenty two percent change.
As far as the planets, including Earth, care about the sun, is it's a really consistent energy source to orbit.
It doesn't "heal" anything, it just adds energy to our environment, and the real bummer with that is we've caused the planet to retain more of that energy than is normal. Guess what, that's how ovens work. But you probably don't understand that, or convection currents, or anything else in the grade school science level.
As a side note, MAN could change the suns ability to heat the earth by putting huge structures in orbit between us and the sun, but the cost would be astronomical, and it would be like trying to do surgery with a chainsaw.
Either giant thin "sheets" of mylar or something similar, or simply huge clouds of some high albedo particles in orbit, or possibly the upper atmosphere are just some of the "feasible" proposals.
Well, it's not my job or hobby to educate people that can't understand stuff that was common classroom science stuff and experimented with even by kids back in the 70s. Man made climate change isn't any big secret or new thing, it's been known about and was being tracked before you were probably even born. Of course big money has been trying to fight it just as long as actually doing something about it would cut into their profit margins. Kind of like how the tobacco industry was about their products causing cancer.
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Literally.
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Notably, the cost would be incredibly high but still actually within the realms of feasibility. Conservative estimates are that building a working sunshield would cost around as much as the entire F-35 program ($1-$1.5 trillion range). Some estimates put it closer to $200 billion, which could be realistic as the cost of launching into space has dropped dramatically.
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There Is No Impending 'Mini Ice Age' [nasa.gov]
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Re: Climate refugees (Score:5, Funny)
You know what they should do... (Score:2)
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Exporting your idiocy doesn't fix it.
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Given the reliability of the electrical and water utilities in California, one **could** consider them a Developing Nation. . . . (evil grin)
Re:Climate refugees (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people will never open their eyes to global warming. It will always be, "why are all these dirty immigrants trying to take our land?" "why is this evil guy in that country over there hoarding the food? We better fix this by killing him." "Why can't the power company stop downed lines from starting fires in this tinderbox that used to be a forest?"
Re: Climate refugees (Score:2)
Actually the global death rate is too low as the median age is slowly increasing. In 2000 the median age was 26 and now it is 31. This means that the number of people 30 and younger equals the number of people 31 and older. The population is getting more and more elderly.
A big collapse in the population is coming due to the birth rate being too low to sustain a stable level of the population. The problem is that you have to wait 80 years for the people to die off, so there is a big delay. This collapse is b
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Climate refugees, or arson refugees?
Not just arson. Also political repression, racism, taxes and treats of future financial seizures to the level of kleptocracy or sovietization, religious repression, abandonment of law enforcement, mob rule, ...
(Speaking of arson: You don't hear as much about it as you ought. That's partly because facebook censors will knock down reports of it - even with video or links to mainstream news sources or police reports - as "fake news". As Eric Frank Russel said in _Wasp_
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We're also talking about a LOT of Silicon Valley who have now demonstrably proven that they can work from home, and are realising that it's pretty academic where "home" is as long as you have a reliable connection to the office and/or cloud.
More importantly, the Pointy Haired Bosses have finally discovered that work-from-home works, and are willing to accept it. (Some have discovered it often gets them more and better work and are encouraging it.)
Re:Climate refugees (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how long it'll take them to realise that if a job can be done from home, it can be done from India.
Re:fear porn (Score:5, Informative)
Though some right wing nutjobs have been lying to people and claiming huge numbers of arsonists.
Of course they're also trying to say that Portland is a huge apocalypse zone as well.
Both of which are total lies. I've got friends and family up in Portland, and have even seen video streams from them. That includes things at the protest area, which is only a few blocks. I've even seen 360s from the edge of the protests. Frankly, there's a bigger mess when a championship game happens.
Re:Can we get new mods? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but life for humans will become increasingly unpleasant.
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This is a post about climate, not politics.
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I was in your position many years ago, open minded and just wanting some evidence presented. Since then there have been constant missed predictions, a complete lack of any attempt at anything resembling proof. the demonization of anyone who dare ask questions and a general misapplication of anything resembling the scientific method.
Climate change isn't science. it's religion. No proofs are shown, no discussion can be had, and every prediction turns out to be false. It's time to stop the fear mongering. Even
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You have done such a great job of outlining the facts without resorting to insults that you are sure to convince everyone that you are completely correct.
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"No, but life for humans will become increasingly unpleasant."
That's a result of Leftist politics. You weren't taught honest history in school, were you...
Re: Can we get new mods? (Score:2)
Leftist governments don't breed happiness as often as they breed genocide and failed economic conditions. Like I said earlier...
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Right,left... labels. Not a binary choice. I'm in the UK, for example. By US standards, we would be considered so left-wing we're socialists - we have a national health service, completely taxpayer-funded. But by European standards, that's nothing remarkable - and our policies on crime make us look really right-wing to them. Funnily enough, even in our current time of political turmoil, the country continues to function.
Re: Can we get new mods? (Score:2)
Sadly, I'm believing that our current political landscape, in America, is shaped by the struggle between Left and Right. And the Left isn't used to losing. Traditionally the Left uses any means necessary, including violence.
The UK has an undercurrent of disaffected, lamenting the Dole, among other things, that's been giving the stiff upper lip for some time. But they may eventually complain about the Health Service performance, though they are dying off. Dignity and stability, traditional English values, ma
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California crazies and (semi) professional arson combined with generational forest mismanagement in my book for the fires.
Don't forget the freelance firebugs who get off on it and suddenly have the police too distracted and/or demobilized to interfere with their fun.
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