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So apparently we won't have a North Pole in 20 years...
manwiththemachinegun
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/11/arctic-ice-free
So, how screwed are we really?
I've read all sorts of stuff from enviromentalists who say we're either all going to be dead in 50 years, or that climate change will cause large disruptions, but not collapse. What most people agree on is 10% of species dying within 50 years, sea levels rising, and possible crop failure.
Basically what I'm asking is, is the future going to look like Blade Runner/Ghost in the Shell? Cause I can handle that. I'm a selfish human being, I can admit that. If it's me or the whales, then fuck those whales (in terms of survival, not stupid stuff). My contributions to the enviroment include throwing cans in recycling and working near where I live. Just as long as things aren't like the Road Warrior I can deal with it.
So, how screwed are we really?
I've read all sorts of stuff from enviromentalists who say we're either all going to be dead in 50 years, or that climate change will cause large disruptions, but not collapse. What most people agree on is 10% of species dying within 50 years, sea levels rising, and possible crop failure.
Basically what I'm asking is, is the future going to look like Blade Runner/Ghost in the Shell? Cause I can handle that. I'm a selfish human being, I can admit that. If it's me or the whales, then fuck those whales (in terms of survival, not stupid stuff). My contributions to the enviroment include throwing cans in recycling and working near where I live. Just as long as things aren't like the Road Warrior I can deal with it.
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Somehow I doubt it's going to be quite that bad, my personal prediction is the first world is going to suffer continuing economic hardships (the bulk of the suffering put onto the shoulders of the poor who cant just move or pay higher food prices) and more frequent disasters and the third world (as always) is going to get completely fucked before anyone takes Global Warming seriously.
We're facing down the barrel of the gun and the bullet's already been fired, it just hasn't bored through our skull yet.
The projections of 20 years were based on linear models of area alone. When you measure the volume, the decline is much faster, because the ice melts on the bottom first. And the best part? With the arctic ice melted, it'll speed up climate change even more, by melting methane-rich permafrost, and replacing white, heat reflecting ice with dark, heat absorbing water.
But like override says, the first and worst effects of global warming will be in the third world, so we've got that going for us I guess.
Good thing soil conditions and growing season are exactly the same as you head north! Those plants have no need to worry about anything but heat.
Sorry, poor people! I know it already sucks being you, but it's about to suck to be you even harder than it already does in the coming decades.
Oh, and don't expect an apology from the people who are at fault for this whole thing. Most of them flatly refuse to believe this whole thing is even happening, so...
I'd imagine the most noticeable effects to the first world will be increased economic hardship (with it being tilted towards certain professions) and higher prices for basic goods like fuel and food, and the whole thousand tornadoes in a month thing.
I've heard everything from "global warming will make the shitty conditions of poor countries even shittier" to "nearly everything in the ocean will die, including the plankton that create much of the oxygen we breathe, leading to nearly everything that breathes oxygen dying (including humans), resulting in Earth being populated by simple life forms until evolution starts producing more complex organisms that are suited to the world's new conditions."
This is coming from a guy who is fairly conservative in most things.
This may be a case of confirmation bias, but it seems like there's been a lot more severe weather in Georgia this year. I should probably plan on getting the fuck out sooner or later.
BTW, I've heard that the vast majority of tornadoes occur in the continental United States? I don't know if that's true, but if it is, why?
http://www.cracked.com/article_17562_5-horrifying-apocalyptic-scenarios-that-have-already-happened.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event
He'll relocate to Atlantis.
Bad children will start receiving chunks of coral.
What did he expect them to do with it? Draw movingly accurate charcoal portraits?
That said, anyone making the claim that humanity will die because of global warming is outright wrong. We might be reduced to domes and biocows (actually, there are better options, but that's another post), and we might lose all entire countries (say ... India) but humanity won't all die. If you really want a good idea of what the world will be like, your best bet is to find a time period that matches where you expect the environment to end up, and see what that was like. My bet (sticking to the US now) is that the midwest will become a mix of swamp and rivers and that food production will move to areas that are currently too high or too prone to winter as those warm up. Call it a 20-30 year time line.
Here's the thing though, a lot of guesses are being made without considering that humans will, eventually, attempt to oppose this. When that happens, it won't be subtle. When we decide that its more important to build dams and dikes than it is to fund DoD, we'll see what sort of a dent money can make in the environment when people are actually trying. For example: Adjusting for inflation, Hoover dam would cost 782 million dollars. DoD's 2010 budget is 663 billion dollars. You can build 847 Hoover dams for that kind of money, which means you can wall off an area of 3,171 square miles with a 726 foot tall wall. For comparison, the state of New Jersey is around 7,000-8,000 square miles. So, ok, you can't wall of the equivalent of a state to that height, but if you're willing to settle for a 100 foot tall wall you can get 155,000 square miles (1) or roughly half of Texas (actually, about 3/5) with a hundred foot wall. So, is turning the country into the Netherlands is a truly expensive task, you'll need about 18,000 miles of walls (2) or 12.9 times that Texas number or about 8,500 Billion dollars. The IMF says the US GDP for 2010 was 14,657,800 Billion dollars. Turns out turning the US into the Netherlands is relatively cheap. To be fair here, there are a lot of extra costs I'm not considering (3) but if the US decides it wants to actually spend some money to make sure climate change is someone else's problem the money is there. Note that having to switch to full bore domes and biocows may be a bit more expensive.
1: That assumes that you can't thin the wall down after you reduce the height, which is wrong. On the other hand, it assumes that you don't pay more to construct it when you're spread across a huge area, so maybe it works out.
2: If you get to ignore the US/Mexico and US/Canada border, and write off Alaska and Hawaii then you can drop this down to less than 12,000.
3: Construction occurring across vast stretches of land, controlling rivers, dealing with storms and storm surges, dealing with water height increases beyond 20 meters, and that's just the couple that came up off the top of my head.
edit: converted # Trillion to # x 1000 Billion to keep units consistent
Bring it the fuck on :^:
I mean, if we are as fucked as you guys say, might as well be excited for it.
edit: how the fuck do you thumbs up?
The worst part is that most of those people will believe it is god punishing humanity for whatever cockamamie reason they come up with rather than that "liberal lie" of global warming. I could honestly see things getting violent; as rather than dealing with the problem as best we can, crazy people (who are completely unable to accept the fact of global warming) decide to finally take matters into their own hands. (ie, alot of these nuts seem to think that a lot of our problems are due to our acceptance of gender equality...)
But yeah, I don't see anything being done about it, apart from reactive measures.
Forget the Zompocalypse, I will be preparing for the Climapocalypse.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7967973.stm
The actual, likely effects are bad enough to warrant reducing its ultimate severity, but we aren't talking about doomsday.
excessive use of fossil fuels has caused the artic to melt giving humans exactly what they need to combat the crisis- more fossil fuels
as long as GRRM finishes asoif I'm good
Like I said, I can deal with that. I have no illusions people will change out of the goodness of their widdle old hearts. It'd just be nice to have a world that's quasi-functional when I get around to having kids.
At least we live in a time of history where we have pain killers (and I mean advil not coke
Maybe not directly. But if things go bad enough and people start fighting over resources we could see anything from local nuclear exchanges to full blown nuclear war. MAD doesn't work when doing nothing means you die cause your country isn't habitable anymore.
Extinction events have happened before for lesser reasons. Technology can hedge our chances a great deal but even that won't be enough past a certain point.
If we've got about 20 years I don't think the odds are in our favor on that one.
As for the world being quasi-functional for the kids if it's going to fall apart I want it to fall apart before I get old.
I'm embarrassed to admit I laughed at this.
edit: for comparison, the last I heard it was the Chicxulub impact that killed the dinosaurs. That was equivalent to 96 teratons of TNT. The Soviets designed a bomb with a theoretical gigaton yield, but they only ever produced a bit over 100 megatons with it I believe. It was way too big to go into a missile (hell, it was pretty much to big to be strapped to a plane!). Even if global yield is in the tens of gigatons we're still 3 orders of magnitude short.
edit Russia: Between them and everyone else making claims on the Arctic these days, I don't see this as ending in anything less than a lightweight shooting match. Maybe there will be a diplomatic solution, but too many people want those resources really badly for me to believe it.
We should actively work to reduce global warming, but a lot of people have started to get into serious fearmongering. Some of it is to scare people into getting shit done (ethically debatable) and while others do it to sell you special lightbulbs (profiteering assholes).
The intermediate term problems are more of the changing agricultural issues, melting glaciers affecting drinking water (apparently this is a large issue for La Paz, Bolivia, in particular), etc. than the "Oh God, Amsterdam/New York/London/Venice (well... Venice maybe) are underwater!" issues you hear about as a global warming result.