Timescale is also a critical factor in any analysis for solutions or mitigating actions. For example, we're pretty sure parts of the Antarctic melt is unstoppable and in the next 200 years we'll see somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 meters of sea level rise; that means any engineering projects (notably city planning or any dike construction around areas too valuable to abandon) need to move just fast enough to handle - on average - all the consequences of one meter every 40 years. This does still remain a significant problem if you have nowhere to build higher than 5 meters up from your current location or if you flat out don't have the money to make these adjustments, but it will not be a universal problem worldwide.
For thornier issues like climate shifts impacting agriculture, steps can be taken to similarly stay one step ahead. We've been quite proactive on the issue of preserving wilder varieties of our useful plant crops, so while there may be 'brief' periods of crisis it's unlikely we'll have Potato Famine 2: Famine Harder. There have already been a few examples of us working around this precise issue (see: bananas, at least twice now), both through natural means and targeted gene manipulation.
For cases where any of these are considered a complete crapshoot and Earth is lost, we've got an answer to that:
Expensive, almost a crapshoot on its own in some ways, but not necessarily doomed to failure.
My opinion is we're facing the classic curse: "May you live in interesting times." Nations may fall, war may spread and erupt in places that haven't seen it for nearly a century, but it would take a lot more than even a major nuclear exchange to end technological human civilization outright. As long as the ability to generate electrical power at industrially useful levels remains, we'll eventually return from whatever chaotic detour we get pushed down.
but as for what I'm doing personally, I compost, let it mellow, and my kids take baths one after the other or my littlest showers with me. I recycle my aluminum and plastic bags (sadly, my county renigged on the recycling bins we were supposed to get). I grow my own herbs and dry them as well.
I limit my clothes washer and this summer, I'll be using my clothesline. I turn my heaters off during the day and turn them back on at night. Two of my three air conditioners are 'smart' units that turn off when they hit a certain temp.
It won't help one damn bit in the long run, but I'll keep doing it till roving bands of water snatchers force me to retreat to the wilderness where I'll certainly die of some mosquito borne illness.
Timescale is also a critical factor in any analysis for solutions or mitigating actions. For example, we're pretty sure parts of the Antarctic melt is unstoppable and in the next 200 years we'll see somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 meters of sea level rise; that means any engineering projects (notably city planning or any dike construction around areas too valuable to abandon) need to move just fast enough to handle - on average - all the consequences of one meter every 40 years. This does still remain a significant problem if you have nowhere to build higher than 5 meters up from your current location or if you flat out don't have the money to make these adjustments, but it will not be a universal problem worldwide.
For thornier issues like climate shifts impacting agriculture, steps can be taken to similarly stay one step ahead. We've been quite proactive on the issue of preserving wilder varieties of our useful plant crops, so while there may be 'brief' periods of crisis it's unlikely we'll have Potato Famine 2: Famine Harder. There have already been a few examples of us working around this precise issue (see: bananas, at least twice now), both through natural means and targeted gene manipulation.
For cases where any of these are considered a complete crapshoot and Earth is lost, we've got an answer to that:
Expensive, almost a crapshoot on its own in some ways, but not necessarily doomed to failure.
My opinion is we're facing the classic curse: "May you live in interesting times." Nations may fall, war may spread and erupt in places that haven't seen it for nearly a century, but it would take a lot more than even a major nuclear exchange to end technological human civilization outright. As long as the ability to generate electrical power at industrially useful levels remains, we'll eventually return from whatever chaotic detour we get pushed down.
"Welp I'm over my daily calorie allotment my 5% so fuggit let's go to DQ and get a blizzard!"
This is my stance. We're boned, and any individual contributions that I make to be better add insignificant fractions to when the planet become uninhabitable. Of course anything I do to make it worse also adds insignificant fractions the other way, still meaning nothing.
We don't care, we're not going to care, and though our children are the ones that are going to suffer for it we still don't have any fucks to give.
I say live it up while you can.
I plan to go to Glacier National Park this year before it melts.
I want to see Belgium and the Netherlands now, before they either cease to exist or build newer, bigger seawalls all around the country.
I'd like to keep living here, so the sooner the walls go up the better.
Incidentally, tomorrow I have to go vote for... erm... the people who are in charge of making sure we don't all get flooded while keeping our water drinkable. I'm not sure there's an English word for that department.
Timescale is also a critical factor in any analysis for solutions or mitigating actions. For example, we're pretty sure parts of the Antarctic melt is unstoppable and in the next 200 years we'll see somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 meters of sea level rise; that means any engineering projects (notably city planning or any dike construction around areas too valuable to abandon) need to move just fast enough to handle - on average - all the consequences of one meter every 40 years. This does still remain a significant problem if you have nowhere to build higher than 5 meters up from your current location or if you flat out don't have the money to make these adjustments, but it will not be a universal problem worldwide.
For thornier issues like climate shifts impacting agriculture, steps can be taken to similarly stay one step ahead. We've been quite proactive on the issue of preserving wilder varieties of our useful plant crops, so while there may be 'brief' periods of crisis it's unlikely we'll have Potato Famine 2: Famine Harder. There have already been a few examples of us working around this precise issue (see: bananas, at least twice now), both through natural means and targeted gene manipulation.
For cases where any of these are considered a complete crapshoot and Earth is lost, we've got an answer to that:
Expensive, almost a crapshoot on its own in some ways, but not necessarily doomed to failure.
My opinion is we're facing the classic curse: "May you live in interesting times." Nations may fall, war may spread and erupt in places that haven't seen it for nearly a century, but it would take a lot more than even a major nuclear exchange to end technological human civilization outright. As long as the ability to generate electrical power at industrially useful levels remains, we'll eventually return from whatever chaotic detour we get pushed down.
Unfortunately, the projects won't start until something gets wrecked in a way that's undeniably due to sea level rise (see: upgrades to New Orleans' seawalls and flood handling systems that didn't get underway until they broke). Still doesn't mean they won't eventually get going, but there will be more time pressure on the worst-affected areas that didn't get started early.
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I'm very thankful I already live in a region that's expected to weather the storm of global warming relatively comfortably (Washington state). Provided, of course, forest fires don't consume the eastern side of the state, and an earthquake doesn't shatter the western side...
The belief that global industrial civilization can and should be saved, and that a population of 7-10 billion is in some way sustainable, mitigates against any realistic individual/collective solutions to the problem.
On the contrary, this attitude is precisely what prevents any collective solution to the problem. If your starting position is "the world can only sustainably feed about 4 billion people", the response will obviously be "okay, but there's 7 billion people now, so who gets to eat and who gets to starve?"
The unspoken response is, of course, that the first world gets to eat and developing countries can go starve, and developing countries reject this and instead continue to increase their rate of fossil fuel consumption (faster than the first world countries can reduce their consumption rates even if they wanted to).
If your solution doesn't provide a path forward for expected actual population levels, it's as unrealistic as one that relies on perpetual motion machines.
"Welp I'm over my daily calorie allotment my 5% so fuggit let's go to DQ and get a blizzard!"
This is my stance. We're boned, and any individual contributions that I make to be better add insignificant fractions to when the planet become uninhabitable. Of course anything I do to make it worse also adds insignificant fractions the other way, still meaning nothing.
We don't care, we're not going to care, and though our children are the ones that are going to suffer for it we still don't have any fucks to give.
I say live it up while you can.
I plan to go to Glacier National Park this year before it melts.
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
edited March 2015
I feel lucky to have walked around the insides of a living glacier during the carefree days of my adolescence. The Gries Glacier, I believe. Located in the Goms Valley, Switzerland. It was beautiful. Very cold, and very, very blue. Like something out of a dream sequence in a Terry Gilliam film. I hope I can take my nephew to see it before everything goes to shit.
Of course, that would require me to have money to spend, and hahahaha nope I'm poor as fuck. Thanks, Baby Boomers.
what would be really helpful is if people stopped trying to make the solar boondoggle work (by which I mean shit like THIS STUPID CRAP ) and invest that money into making geothermal heating and cooling subsidies.
3.7 million to power 2-3 houses a year ....
congratulations morons, you could have bought 300 geothermal systems (OR 10 times as much if you looped a neighborhood) for that money.
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
So this spring and summer I plan to start working on my little 1/3rd of an acre plot. Other than the usual stuff (compost, raised vegetable beds, maybe some chickens), does anybody have any handy stuff about, say, good types of trees and whatnot? Or other little projects that can make me feel better.
So this spring and summer I plan to start working on my little 1/3rd of an acre plot. Other than the usual stuff (compost, raised vegetable beds, maybe some chickens), does anybody have any handy stuff about, say, good types of trees and whatnot? Or other little projects that can make me feel better.
"Welp I'm over my daily calorie allotment my 5% so fuggit let's go to DQ and get a blizzard!"
This is my stance. We're boned, and any individual contributions that I make to be better add insignificant fractions to when the planet become uninhabitable. Of course anything I do to make it worse also adds insignificant fractions the other way, still meaning nothing.
We don't care, we're not going to care, and though our children are the ones that are going to suffer for it we still don't have any fucks to give.
I say live it up while you can.
I plan to go to Glacier National Park this year before it melts.
This is unhelpful and represents the difference between everything going to shit and everything going to shit but you have a garden to supplement your food budget in the intervening years, for example.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I'm kind of chuckling at the idea that a total collapse of the biosphere and the "ocean being uninhabitable" within 90 years means knowing how to hunt and grow herbs in your backyard garden is going to do anything.
But then I'm also of the opinion that however slow, we eventually find a way to go on. It's going to be pointlessly devastating for a lot of people because we could've done a lot more, but I feel that with technology and economic pressures we'll find solutions. That's kind of what human beings do.
If it wasn't, we never would've gotten to this position in the first place.
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I'm kind of chuckling at the idea that a total collapse of the biosphere and the "ocean being uninhabitable" within 90 years means knowing how to hunt and grow herbs in your backyard garden is going to do anything.
But then I'm also of the opinion that however slow, we eventually find a way to go on. It's going to be pointlessly devastating for a lot of people because we could've done a lot more, but I feel that with technology and economic pressures we'll find solutions. That's kind of what human beings do.
If it wasn't, we never would've gotten to this position in the first place.
Personally, I'm not expecting my back yard to save the world, or even me and mine.
But I feel like it's one of those things where if you aren't committing to some kind of personal change, it's going to be harder to commit/get others to commit to some kind of global change. Or something touchy feely like that. Be the change etc.
Plus it results in some great tomatoes, if the ones my neighbor gave me are anything to go by.
"Welp I'm over my daily calorie allotment my 5% so fuggit let's go to DQ and get a blizzard!"
This is my stance. We're boned, and any individual contributions that I make to be better add insignificant fractions to when the planet become uninhabitable. Of course anything I do to make it worse also adds insignificant fractions the other way, still meaning nothing.
We don't care, we're not going to care, and though our children are the ones that are going to suffer for it we still don't have any fucks to give.
I say live it up while you can.
I plan to go to Glacier National Park this year before it melts.
Just a reminder to my friends here, I'll have my smithy in my backyard before too long, so when the shit hits the fan, I'll be on the forefront of restarting the dirty industries that we will have lost while making horseshoes and blades to provide an income for my family.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I'm kind of chuckling at the idea that a total collapse of the biosphere and the "ocean being uninhabitable" within 90 years means knowing how to hunt and grow herbs in your backyard garden is going to do anything.
But then I'm also of the opinion that however slow, we eventually find a way to go on. It's going to be pointlessly devastating for a lot of people because we could've done a lot more, but I feel that with technology and economic pressures we'll find solutions. That's kind of what human beings do.
If it wasn't, we never would've gotten to this position in the first place.
Personally, I'm not expecting my back yard to save the world, or even me and mine.
But I feel like it's one of those things where if you aren't committing to some kind of personal change, it's going to be harder to commit/get others to commit to some kind of global change. Or something touchy feely like that. Be the change etc.
Plus it results in some great tomatoes, if the ones my neighbor gave me are anything to go by.
Oh hey, totally! Everybody should do stuff because that's what it takes. I didn't mean to make fun of that idea. And gardening is fun and educational and tomatoes are delicious.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
So this spring and summer I plan to start working on my little 1/3rd of an acre plot. Other than the usual stuff (compost, raised vegetable beds, maybe some chickens), does anybody have any handy stuff about, say, good types of trees and whatnot? Or other little projects that can make me feel better.
not that it makes TOO big a difference, but herbs (especially oragano, rosemary, thyme, and sage) are VERY easy to grow, dry, and store.
I'm debating growing mushrooms as well, but I haven't yet found a variety I like enough to easily grow.
The big thing in sustainability is permaculture design. Basically, construct systems which produce maximum output (food, soil building, wood for building, whatever) while requiring a minimum of input (labor, fuel, chemical fertilizer, watering). You may want to install a tree guild to maximize space utilization and keep maintenance to a minimum. Done properly, it looks like a natural landscape feature as opposed to a farm in the middle of your yard. In this example, comfrey is used as a 'chop and drop' plant - its tap root draws nutrients from deep in the soil which are then made available to nearby plants by striking the comfrey and letting it decompose in place. Depending on your needs and preferences, you'll just limit how 'tall' you go. In your back yard, for example, it would be sensible to perhaps plant a dwarf fruit tree and expand from there. In my small garden, this principle is applied by growing wild onion and strawberry in the same patch. The onion grows vertically and forms a relatively deep root ball, while the strawberry only needs shallow roots and covers the ground, helping retain moisture for the onions.
On mushrooms:
The two big ones for home cultivation are white oyster and shiitake. The latter are probably easier for the novice, since you can order what's called plug spawn and drill them into fresh hardwood logs. Moderate moisture and shade and they'll produce every year until the log is depleted. In either case, since the limiting factor on fresh mushroom availability is the difficulty of transporting and storing them, prices are relatively high (over $14/lb at my local market) so you can always give them away. If we're talking about the apocalypse, very promising work has been done on shiitakes as a source of Vitamin D; drying them in the sun (or any UV light) converts certain chemicals into a form of Vitamin D that's bioavailable in humans, and present in massive amounts to the point that international aid organizations are looking into shiitake farming as a way of maintaining food security since the dried material stores very well and a gram is more than enough to meet an individual's daily requirement.
I'm kind of chuckling at the idea that a total collapse of the biosphere and the "ocean being uninhabitable" within 90 years means knowing how to hunt and grow herbs in your backyard garden is going to do anything.
But then I'm also of the opinion that however slow, we eventually find a way to go on. It's going to be pointlessly devastating for a lot of people because we could've done a lot more, but I feel that with technology and economic pressures we'll find solutions. That's kind of what human beings do.
If it wasn't, we never would've gotten to this position in the first place.
There's a difference between "My backyard is going to save the world" and "my back yard is going to make it easier for me and mine to survive a lean winter or a massive food shortage".
Most people are probably doing so with the latter in mind.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Now on the other hand, I live in Florida and we have to consciously make career/housing decisions based on how likely the place we're living is going to be above water in the next few decades.
How do I do this? Cause I feel terrible about eating all those animals but hamburgers.
Incrementally! It's important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good - especially with dietary choices for some reason, I tend to see people say "Welp I'm over my daily calorie allotment my 5% so fuggit let's go to DQ and get a blizzard!"
'Meatless Mondays' work for some people as a way to experiment without upending their entire routine. If you find dishes and habits and routines that work for you and want to expand them, awesome! If it's really challenging for whatever reason (maybe you share the grocery shopping with non-participating roommates or your only grocery access is the local convenience store) and you want to hold steady or go to every other Monday, then you're still better than you were before you tried it.
If you like I can dig up some guides but I'm not familiar with any off the top of my head. I will say that concerns about protein are largely fiction if you eat vegetables. Going meatless and subsisting on poptarts and cheeze-its not only defeats the purpose from an environmental perspective, it's not going to be healthier or cheaper. Meat substitutes are okay - generally expensive and anything fancier than a black bean burger is quite processed, but if it helps ease the transition then go nuts. Just be wary that if you go in expecting a hamburger you might be setting yourself up for disappointment. Homemade should be your goal.
I was raised on meat sauce spaghetti, burgers, and tacos. Going Vegan or vegetarian will require retraining my brain and some of those things are too tasty. I think if I could find actual good vegan/vegetarian recipes that are not difficult I would at least try to meet my bad habits half way. That blackbean burger recipe looks good I'll try it this weekend. thanks!
Seems to me the biggest danger from global warming isn't the gradual warming, but rather the social upheaval that will occur when ecosystems change and long-established industries will fail.
If nuclear bombs end up in the hands of desperate revolutionaries, who knows?
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Seems to me the biggest danger from global warming isn't the gradual warming, but rather the social upheaval that will occur when ecosystems change and long-established industries will fail.
If nuclear bombs end up in the hands of desperate revolutionaries, who knows?
In this vein, something that is encouraging to me is the the Defense Department has been upfront about this very problem and are taking steps to address it. One of the largest groups to make green technology and sustainable energy useful and dependent is the US Navy.
They also aren't keen about the idea of having to rebuild all their shipyards and ports because the docks too low for predicted sea level rise.
Since glaciers and etc. are melting at in incredible pace, won't that ultimately mean a lot of water will be entering our current system?
Like how we've had far more rain and snow in a lot of places recently.
It all drains to the ocean, fucks the delicate balance of salinization required for the ecology, and as the ocean goes so does the rest of the planet. Time to evolve/innovate/move.
Since glaciers and etc. are melting at in incredible pace, won't that ultimately mean a lot of water will be entering our current system?
Like how we've had far more rain and snow in a lot of places recently.
It all drains to the ocean, fucks the delicate balance of salinization required for the ecology, and as the ocean goes so does the rest of the planet. Time to evolve/innovate/move.
aren't most of the glaciers/icebergs (such as in the arctic), just frozen salt water?
Seems to me the biggest danger from global warming isn't the gradual warming, but rather the social upheaval that will occur when ecosystems change and long-established industries will fail.
If nuclear bombs end up in the hands of desperate revolutionaries, who knows?
In this vein, something that is encouraging to me is the the Defense Department has been upfront about this very problem and are taking steps to address it. One of the largest groups to make green technology and sustainable energy useful and dependent is the US Navy.
They also aren't keen about the idea of having to rebuild all their shipyards and ports because the docks too low for predicted sea level rise.
If I was king of America, I'd put our energy independence into the hands of the Navy. They've run nuclear reactors for 67 years with nary an incident (quick Google-fu shows two subs sunk for reasons not having to do with their plants).
Since glaciers and etc. are melting at in incredible pace, won't that ultimately mean a lot of water will be entering our current system?
Like how we've had far more rain and snow in a lot of places recently.
Some land will get more rain, some will get less, and overall we'll see a big shuffle in terms of what land is arable and what isn't, which isn't great when there's seven or eight billion mouths to feed.
Seems to me the biggest danger from global warming isn't the gradual warming, but rather the social upheaval that will occur when ecosystems change and long-established industries will fail.
If nuclear bombs end up in the hands of desperate revolutionaries, who knows?
In this vein, something that is encouraging to me is the the Defense Department has been upfront about this very problem and are taking steps to address it. One of the largest groups to make green technology and sustainable energy useful and dependent is the US Navy.
They also aren't keen about the idea of having to rebuild all their shipyards and ports because the docks too low for predicted sea level rise.
If I was king of America, I'd put our energy independence into the hands of the Navy. They've run nuclear reactors for 67 years with nary an incident (quick Google-fu shows two subs sunk for reasons not having to do with their plants).
And you could do that, they could perform the task flawlessly, and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference at this point.
I think it's a bit hyperbolic to say you won't have kids because of Climate Change. I also think it's a bit obnoxious when people complain about tree huggers and the permit process to build nuke plants just a couple years after Fukushima. As much as I would like to see more nuclear power, care is definitely called for. But anyway.
There's not going to be a single answer to Climate Change, and there is most certainly going to be a lot of pain. However, a lot of the problems that Climate Change is exacerbating would be problems regardless. Phoenix and Vegas were going to run dry Climate Change or not. A few seasons of drought aren't going to be the tipping point for the Ogallala Aquifer. These are things that people have identified as a problem long before anyone heard the term 'Climate Change' or 'Global Warming' and for all intents and purposes Climate Change doesn't move the 'time until boned' bar much.
People have been good at adapting to many different problems - famine / scarcity, natural disasters, localized ecological collapse, etc since prehistory. Lots of times the answer was a lot of dying or moving / invading, but people aren't going extinct anytime soon. Granted, that's more than we can say for a shitload of species, but at least it's something.
Pretty much, Climate Change is slow enough that people will have time to adapt. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but chicken littling that we're going to be Venus in a generation is as unhelpful as putting your fingers in your ears and saying 'but it's COLD'.
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For thornier issues like climate shifts impacting agriculture, steps can be taken to similarly stay one step ahead. We've been quite proactive on the issue of preserving wilder varieties of our useful plant crops, so while there may be 'brief' periods of crisis it's unlikely we'll have Potato Famine 2: Famine Harder. There have already been a few examples of us working around this precise issue (see: bananas, at least twice now), both through natural means and targeted gene manipulation.
For cases where any of these are considered a complete crapshoot and Earth is lost, we've got an answer to that:
My opinion is we're facing the classic curse: "May you live in interesting times." Nations may fall, war may spread and erupt in places that haven't seen it for nearly a century, but it would take a lot more than even a major nuclear exchange to end technological human civilization outright. As long as the ability to generate electrical power at industrially useful levels remains, we'll eventually return from whatever chaotic detour we get pushed down.
coming soon to a country near you!
but as for what I'm doing personally, I compost, let it mellow, and my kids take baths one after the other or my littlest showers with me. I recycle my aluminum and plastic bags (sadly, my county renigged on the recycling bins we were supposed to get). I grow my own herbs and dry them as well.
I limit my clothes washer and this summer, I'll be using my clothesline. I turn my heaters off during the day and turn them back on at night. Two of my three air conditioners are 'smart' units that turn off when they hit a certain temp.
It won't help one damn bit in the long run, but I'll keep doing it till roving bands of water snatchers force me to retreat to the wilderness where I'll certainly die of some mosquito borne illness.
Like hell you do.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782
This is my stance. We're boned, and any individual contributions that I make to be better add insignificant fractions to when the planet become uninhabitable. Of course anything I do to make it worse also adds insignificant fractions the other way, still meaning nothing.
We don't care, we're not going to care, and though our children are the ones that are going to suffer for it we still don't have any fucks to give.
I say live it up while you can.
I plan to go to Glacier National Park this year before it melts.
I'd like to keep living here, so the sooner the walls go up the better.
Incidentally, tomorrow I have to go vote for... erm... the people who are in charge of making sure we don't all get flooded while keeping our water drinkable. I'm not sure there's an English word for that department.
Unfortunately, the projects won't start until something gets wrecked in a way that's undeniably due to sea level rise (see: upgrades to New Orleans' seawalls and flood handling systems that didn't get underway until they broke). Still doesn't mean they won't eventually get going, but there will be more time pressure on the worst-affected areas that didn't get started early.
See, this is why we will die malnourished, cold, and afraid.
On the contrary, this attitude is precisely what prevents any collective solution to the problem. If your starting position is "the world can only sustainably feed about 4 billion people", the response will obviously be "okay, but there's 7 billion people now, so who gets to eat and who gets to starve?"
The unspoken response is, of course, that the first world gets to eat and developing countries can go starve, and developing countries reject this and instead continue to increase their rate of fossil fuel consumption (faster than the first world countries can reduce their consumption rates even if they wanted to).
If your solution doesn't provide a path forward for expected actual population levels, it's as unrealistic as one that relies on perpetual motion machines.
Hurry.
The business end of a very big rocket. Specifically it's an early estimate of SpaceX's endgame, something that can loft 700 tons to orbit at once.
Of course, that would require me to have money to spend, and hahahaha nope I'm poor as fuck. Thanks, Baby Boomers.
3.7 million to power 2-3 houses a year ....
congratulations morons, you could have bought 300 geothermal systems (OR 10 times as much if you looped a neighborhood) for that money.
I swear.
@TL DR, maybe?
not that it makes TOO big a difference, but herbs (especially oragano, rosemary, thyme, and sage) are VERY easy to grow, dry, and store.
I'm debating growing mushrooms as well, but I haven't yet found a variety I like enough to easily grow.
This is unhelpful and represents the difference between everything going to shit and everything going to shit but you have a garden to supplement your food budget in the intervening years, for example.
But then I'm also of the opinion that however slow, we eventually find a way to go on. It's going to be pointlessly devastating for a lot of people because we could've done a lot more, but I feel that with technology and economic pressures we'll find solutions. That's kind of what human beings do.
If it wasn't, we never would've gotten to this position in the first place.
But I feel like it's one of those things where if you aren't committing to some kind of personal change, it's going to be harder to commit/get others to commit to some kind of global change. Or something touchy feely like that. Be the change etc.
Plus it results in some great tomatoes, if the ones my neighbor gave me are anything to go by.
It is expected to be melted before the end of the year.
Oh hey, totally! Everybody should do stuff because that's what it takes. I didn't mean to make fun of that idea. And gardening is fun and educational and tomatoes are delicious.
The big thing in sustainability is permaculture design. Basically, construct systems which produce maximum output (food, soil building, wood for building, whatever) while requiring a minimum of input (labor, fuel, chemical fertilizer, watering). You may want to install a tree guild to maximize space utilization and keep maintenance to a minimum. Done properly, it looks like a natural landscape feature as opposed to a farm in the middle of your yard. In this example, comfrey is used as a 'chop and drop' plant - its tap root draws nutrients from deep in the soil which are then made available to nearby plants by striking the comfrey and letting it decompose in place. Depending on your needs and preferences, you'll just limit how 'tall' you go. In your back yard, for example, it would be sensible to perhaps plant a dwarf fruit tree and expand from there. In my small garden, this principle is applied by growing wild onion and strawberry in the same patch. The onion grows vertically and forms a relatively deep root ball, while the strawberry only needs shallow roots and covers the ground, helping retain moisture for the onions.
On mushrooms:
The two big ones for home cultivation are white oyster and shiitake. The latter are probably easier for the novice, since you can order what's called plug spawn and drill them into fresh hardwood logs. Moderate moisture and shade and they'll produce every year until the log is depleted. In either case, since the limiting factor on fresh mushroom availability is the difficulty of transporting and storing them, prices are relatively high (over $14/lb at my local market) so you can always give them away. If we're talking about the apocalypse, very promising work has been done on shiitakes as a source of Vitamin D; drying them in the sun (or any UV light) converts certain chemicals into a form of Vitamin D that's bioavailable in humans, and present in massive amounts to the point that international aid organizations are looking into shiitake farming as a way of maintaining food security since the dried material stores very well and a gram is more than enough to meet an individual's daily requirement.
edit: sadly, I'm not a huge fan of shiitake .... maybe the grocery store ones were just gross and I'd like fresh better.
plus I'd imagine the inedible stems would make great compost additives.
There's a difference between "My backyard is going to save the world" and "my back yard is going to make it easier for me and mine to survive a lean winter or a massive food shortage".
Most people are probably doing so with the latter in mind.
I was raised on meat sauce spaghetti, burgers, and tacos. Going Vegan or vegetarian will require retraining my brain and some of those things are too tasty. I think if I could find actual good vegan/vegetarian recipes that are not difficult I would at least try to meet my bad habits half way. That blackbean burger recipe looks good I'll try it this weekend. thanks!
If nuclear bombs end up in the hands of desperate revolutionaries, who knows?
In this vein, something that is encouraging to me is the the Defense Department has been upfront about this very problem and are taking steps to address it. One of the largest groups to make green technology and sustainable energy useful and dependent is the US Navy.
They also aren't keen about the idea of having to rebuild all their shipyards and ports because the docks too low for predicted sea level rise.
Since glaciers and etc. are melting at in incredible pace, won't that ultimately mean a lot of water will be entering our current system?
Like how we've had far more rain and snow in a lot of places recently.
It all drains to the ocean, fucks the delicate balance of salinization required for the ecology, and as the ocean goes so does the rest of the planet. Time to evolve/innovate/move.
aren't most of the glaciers/icebergs (such as in the arctic), just frozen salt water?
I'll die cold, malnourished, and smug.
If I was king of America, I'd put our energy independence into the hands of the Navy. They've run nuclear reactors for 67 years with nary an incident (quick Google-fu shows two subs sunk for reasons not having to do with their plants).
Some land will get more rain, some will get less, and overall we'll see a big shuffle in terms of what land is arable and what isn't, which isn't great when there's seven or eight billion mouths to feed.
And you could do that, they could perform the task flawlessly, and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference at this point.
There's not going to be a single answer to Climate Change, and there is most certainly going to be a lot of pain. However, a lot of the problems that Climate Change is exacerbating would be problems regardless. Phoenix and Vegas were going to run dry Climate Change or not. A few seasons of drought aren't going to be the tipping point for the Ogallala Aquifer. These are things that people have identified as a problem long before anyone heard the term 'Climate Change' or 'Global Warming' and for all intents and purposes Climate Change doesn't move the 'time until boned' bar much.
People have been good at adapting to many different problems - famine / scarcity, natural disasters, localized ecological collapse, etc since prehistory. Lots of times the answer was a lot of dying or moving / invading, but people aren't going extinct anytime soon. Granted, that's more than we can say for a shitload of species, but at least it's something.
Pretty much, Climate Change is slow enough that people will have time to adapt. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but chicken littling that we're going to be Venus in a generation is as unhelpful as putting your fingers in your ears and saying 'but it's COLD'.