Current projections are 4 degrees Celsius average increase globally by 2100. That's pretty bad. And potentially irreversible. 2 degrees is definitely happening based on everything I've read.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Its hard to not be hyperbolic in tone when we've sat around for 20 years when we could have taken simple actions to resolve much if climate change and now we're at the point where if we do all we can, and get a bit of good technological fortune we can avoid 90% of people dying in the next 150 years.
90% of what subset? If you're talking total global population, then that's possibly the most ludicrously hyperbolic thing I've heard for several months.
People who are alive today.
90% of the people alive today being alive 150 years from now would require an incredible medical revolution more than it would require fixing climate change. Until we "fix" the fact that people age, even with perfect medical care and highly effective treatments, living past 100 is pretty damn unlikely, and 150 years from now a good fraction of people would be 200+.
I'd call it a longshot if anybody currently alive was alive 150 years from now.
I ate an engineer
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
This is why people don't give a fuck about climate change.
The article you posted is a hyperbolic clickbait piece of dogshit. It's outright lying, starting off by overestimating a known effect by more than an order of magnitude, and then continuing by taking new science that's already extrapolating with a "maybe this means X" and stating that X is definitely going to occur, and in a way, way worse fashion than the original research even suggested might happen.
Yeah, climate change is happening. That doesn't mean I'm supposed to shout from the rooftops that we're all going to die, and that doesn't mean I'm supposed to feel bad about pointing out when people are misinformed just because that misinformation tends towards my side. In fact, I find it morally repugnant that your stance is literally "I'm right, so who gives a fuck about ethics?"
Even if outright lying to people in order to get them to care more about climate change works in the short term (which it won't), it won't work in the long term; actual studies will be forced to conform to the bullshit hyperbole being pushed by people ostensibly working for "the right cause" or won't get funding, so real research and real understanding will be crippled, while the issue will be polarized even more because your doomsday predictions and hardline positions drive away moderates.
I'm perfectly fine with presenting the facts as they are. They're already scary, and I don't particularly care if they do scare people. But acting as if your goal should be to lie, bullshit, and misinform people, in order to make them act irrationally with fear, as long as it's for the right cause? That's fucking disgusting.
Oh my god, one article about one component of climate change might be wrong, therefore we must immediately dial back all rhetoric and shouting lest we be painted as loony toons alarmist doomsayers!
News flash, pal: we're not alarmists anymore. We're sounding the alarm. I don't know if you've noticed, but whole island nations are having to be evacuated of their entire populations because of swelling sea levels. Bangladesh alone has seen a displacement of millions of its citizens from the coastal wetlands to the crowded metropolitan interior of Dhaka.
You know why people don't care about climate change? It's not the overblown rhetoric; it's the belief that it won't affect them. Articles like the one I posted contextualize the impact and effect climate change will have on our major (and particularly: American) coastal population centers. It shows people what could become The New Normal if they don't start acting now, today, shit's gonna get irreversibly bad. You squeeze all the ketchup out of a bottle, you're not getting it back in with your fingers, etc.
And really, if you want to refute the article I posted, post an article of your own that refutes it. Don't quote a ghost at me. No shadowboxing allowed.
The point isn't about the one article, it's about the attitude of discussion surrounding it.
The article is incorrect and overblown. That much is certain. The response to that should not be, paraphrasing, "you aren't a true climate change believer. Bullshit and lies are OK if it gets people to act. I'd rather people be misinformed and afraid than well-informed, because it works better." If your article is wrong, you don't double down by insulting the people who read it critically and attempting to brute force it through by claiming it's important.
Any further discussion with you is a waste of my time.
milski on
I ate an engineer
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
You don't get to say an article is incorrect or wrong if you don't post an article/study that refutes the findings of the one posted. You are not being critical; you are being contrarian. Your argument literally boils down to "Nuh uh because I said so!"
EDIT: And don't quote another post from reddit as your refutation.
Hacksaw on
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Yeah, we really should be panicking at this point. Just because you haven't personally been affected by climate change yet doesn't mean other's haven't. As Hacksaw said, millions have already been displaced by climate change. The drought in the western states and the radical shift in weather patterns over the east have both been positively attributed to climate change by way of a DRAMATIC shift in the jetstream. The motherfucking Brookings Institute says 27 MILLION people have been displaced by climate change in the last 5 years.
Saying that nothing dramatic will happen in our lifetimes is worse than wrong. It's misleading in a way that is causing harm to the entire movement. Climate change is happening RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
There was a leftwing editorial in my newspaper this week that raised the point that Syria had a major water crisis through mismanagement/changed climate in the few years before the protests started. They wanted to be selfsufficient for food, which caused them to ignore warnings that water was being used quicker than it was being replenished, and then it ran out/was made expensive quickly. This caused a lot of farms to fail in northern Syria, and drove unemployed young people to cities, who were quite angry with Assads policies. And when the protests intensified is when it all went to shit in Syria.
That's not to say climate change caused the creation of ISIS, but it read like a plausible factor in an unstable region.
Its hard to not be hyperbolic in tone when we've sat around for 20 years when we could have taken simple actions to resolve much if climate change and now we're at the point where if we do all we can, and get a bit of good technological fortune we can avoid 90% of people dying in the next 150 years.
90% of what subset? If you're talking total global population, then that's possibly the most ludicrously hyperbolic thing I've heard for several months.
People who are alive today.
I'd call it a longshot if anybody currently alive was alive 150 years from now.
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Arguably the Day After Tomorrowing of environmentalist doomsayers in the 90s and 00s is why it's so hard to convince people now to do things.
Absolutely we should be aware of the issues we are facing. Absolutely we should be honest about the impacts and dangers we face as a species. They're pretty bad! Droughts, famine, and disease are both coming and already here for many people.
But you're literally going to convince no one that the world is ending because in a western country you just aren't going to see those drastic effects unless climate change runs rampant for a couple centuries. What you can point out is the intensity of hurricanes is increasing, they are changing where they're going (Florida hasn't had a major landfall in a long time while NYC has had two in the last four years). Droughts are more intense in the southwest (though that's less to do with climate change and more to do with overuse and building East Coast designed cities in the fucking desert). Temperature extremes are more extreme (winters are colder and summers are hotter).
But to shout that now is the time for panic isn't inherently useful, though it may feel satisfying.
A better solution is having things like the Living Green H/A thread, talking about the steps you're making and trying to make those kinds of things the Thing To Do. Changing our culture to be more friendly to the climate is going to go a lot farther than throwing ash on your forehead and wailing in the streets.
This assumes that the intent of a conversation is to actually see action. If the intent is to be angry and preach to the choir in an attempt to motivate the troops to go out and convert, the sackcloth routine may have some amount of utility.
Even hurricane intensity is a tricky one, because there's a multi-decade cycle of active and inactive Atlantic storm periods where you either have very few or a large number of storms. The last quiet cycle ended around 1994, and our active cycle won't begin abating for another five or so years; if too much weight is pinned on that activity rather than the average number and strength of those storms, then as soon as it ends it looks like you've been contradicted all over again.
Arguably the Day After Tomorrowing of environmentalist doomsayers in the 90s and 00s is why it's so hard to convince people now to do things.
Absolutely we should be aware of the issues we are facing. Absolutely we should be honest about the impacts and dangers we face as a species. They're pretty bad! Droughts, famine, and disease are both coming and already here for many people.
But you're literally going to convince no one that the world is ending because in a western country you just aren't going to see those drastic effects unless climate change runs rampant for a couple centuries. What you can point out is the intensity of hurricanes is increasing, they are changing where they're going (Florida hasn't had a major landfall in a long time while NYC has had two in the last four years). Droughts are more intense in the southwest (though that's less to do with climate change and more to do with overuse and building East Coast designed cities in the fucking desert). Temperature extremes are more extreme (winters are colder and summers are hotter).
But to shout that now is the time for panic isn't inherently useful, though it may feel satisfying.
A better solution is having things like the Living Green H/A thread, talking about the steps you're making and trying to make those kinds of things the Thing To Do. Changing our culture to be more friendly to the climate is going to go a lot farther than throwing ash on your forehead and wailing in the streets.
This assumes that the intent of a conversation is to actually see action. If the intent is to be angry and preach to the choir in an attempt to motivate the troops to go out and convert, the sackcloth routine may have some amount of utility.
In the past, panic tends to lead to action, even if it's isn't the best action. Almost nothing is being done about climate change. I think we do need the choir riled up. Considering Florida lawmakers have banned the terms climate change and global warming, we need more people preaching the word of action. The Army Corps of Engineers should be building seawalls around the entire atlantic seaboard. FIMA needs to be expanding emergency shelters. DOE needs to get off their asses and start approving the construction of new nuclear power plants (not just retrofitting existing facilities). At this point there really is nothing the average citizen can do to fend off the effects without government assistance. At the State and Federal levels we NEED dramatic action. This thread will have accomplished its goal if it motivates even one person to contact their representatives and demand action.
Arguably the Day After Tomorrowing of environmentalist doomsayers in the 90s and 00s is why it's so hard to convince people now to do things.
Absolutely we should be aware of the issues we are facing. Absolutely we should be honest about the impacts and dangers we face as a species. They're pretty bad! Droughts, famine, and disease are both coming and already here for many people.
But you're literally going to convince no one that the world is ending because in a western country you just aren't going to see those drastic effects unless climate change runs rampant for a couple centuries. What you can point out is the intensity of hurricanes is increasing, they are changing where they're going (Florida hasn't had a major landfall in a long time while NYC has had two in the last four years). Droughts are more intense in the southwest (though that's less to do with climate change and more to do with overuse and building East Coast designed cities in the fucking desert). Temperature extremes are more extreme (winters are colder and summers are hotter).
But to shout that now is the time for panic isn't inherently useful, though it may feel satisfying.
A better solution is having things like the Living Green H/A thread, talking about the steps you're making and trying to make those kinds of things the Thing To Do. Changing our culture to be more friendly to the climate is going to go a lot farther than throwing ash on your forehead and wailing in the streets.
This assumes that the intent of a conversation is to actually see action. If the intent is to be angry and preach to the choir in an attempt to motivate the troops to go out and convert, the sackcloth routine may have some amount of utility.
In the past, panic tends to lead to action, even if it's isn't the best action. Almost nothing is being done about climate change. I think we do need the choir riled up. Considering Florida lawmakers have banned the terms climate change and global warming, we need more people preaching the word of action. The Army Corps of Engineers should be building seawalls around the entire atlantic seaboard. FIMA needs to be expanding emergency shelters. DOE needs to get off their asses and start approving the construction of new nuclear power plants (not just retrofitting existing facilities). At this point there really is nothing the average citizen can do to fend off the effects without government assistance. At the State and Federal levels we NEED dramatic action. This thread will have accomplished its goal if it motivates even one person to contact their representatives and demand action.
Ok, no. Chill for a second.
Governor Scott is a moron. Lots of people in Florida Government are still acting in response to climate change and are just (presumably) banned from talking about it. State and local leaders have been working on plans for where and if seawalls would even be useful given the unique geography of Florida and where our population centers are. Stuff is happening and it is legitimate and ongoing. The fact it isn't published in all capital letters and appearing on the Daily Show doesn't change that fact.
Pessimistic sea-level rise is between three and five feet over the next hundred years on the eastern coast of North America. This could be catestrophic for most of south Florida and many, many, many cities along the shores of every state. Seawalls and and emergency shelters aren't going to do much good with the scale we are talking about here, unless they are built literally everywhere, and as with New Orleans that is a bandaid solution. Most places are instead condemning new build-up construction within floodplains and are only allowing high-value shore land to remain as public parks or be driven to high-end single family homes for this purpose. New construction of city fixtures is being moved inland because sea level rise is a thing and the only real way to deal with that on a construction basis is to push back away from it.
FEMA shelters along the coast is silly, not cost effective, and won't serve any purpose. We arent talking about "TODAY: everything normal. TOMORROW: EVERYONE IS UNDERWATER OH GOOOOOD WHYYYY". We are looking at slow and inevitable condemnation of shorline structures over time. This isn't an immediate housing problem, it is an evolving housing problem. It means that you will always have high-value beach-side properties that rich folk will want, but also that these structures are likely to be transient, lasting maybe 50-100 years at most before the water reaches them. That means you need more effective piping and utility infrastructure that can be taken down over time (which is annoying but hardly impossible) and to expect that you will be buldozing houses along the coast as time goes on. The poor don't typically own beach-side housing. They live in apartments and can move inland to alternative options over time.
Major urban centers like Miami and Tampa have serious cost-benefit issues facing them, and they are already looking into their options. There are lots of stories on this. Most have already changed their 100 year plans to accomodate this and are starting to kernel new city centers farther inland or in places they can build up higher for new development. This will sort itself out. New York City has a more serious problem ahead of it given the scale and development, but most centers will either shift inland over time or will find reasonable solutions funded by their taxpayers to deal with the problem as it occurs and are already doing so).
Turkey Point is the real problem, and there are already several plans on how to deal with the sea level rise with the nuclear reactors. In addition they are building new reactors on site, not just retrofitting the old ones, which makes this point rather questionable to begin with. Nuclear is actually a less stable solution with sea level rise as, while it is immediately cleaner, the damage it can do in flooding situations is far more drastic to alternatives.
As far as reacting to sea level rise, that is already happening. Now that's addressing the symptoms and shit is real and problematic right now. But this sort of frenzied attitude is the reason no one takes the problem seriously at the national politics level. The alternatives are "frantic, arm flailing crazy man" or "idiot business crony." In between are serious engineers, urban planners, and environmental scientists actually working on the problem and just arent entertaining enough for modern news.
Also, lack of cold winter is going to make insect problems a lot worse, right?
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Case in point: the Greater Orlando Metropolitan area. Currently a suburban sprawl only slightly better than most due to our extensive tree cover. Orlando had regional tiny towns expand into a metropolis of single family home suburbs literally bigger in square miles than Tokyo for not even a tenth of the population. In the mid-90s this was identified as being problematic at state, county, regional, and local levels as infrastructure costs were more than tax income (and thats before issues like massive waste in water spending, the city not having a solid transportation structure and only relying on cars, making air quality a long term problem, and us operating using an aging and inefficient coal plant to power the city).
Since the mid-90s, a massive amount of quiet initiatives have been implemented to push people into a smaller, tighter series of urban cores to reduce land consumption footprint, make air and water quality better, and make the entire system far more efficient. Much of this is long term construction based, identifying a series of Urban cores and slowing (or totally halting in some counties) construction of any kind aside from infill in these areas. To help make things more sustainable, these cores will be linked by cheap and effective light rail that will slowly expand in use over time. The first series of these rail stations launched last year, with three to five additional lines being planned over the next fifteen years. Construction on these cores is already booming, with requirements for medium and lower income mixed used blocks being the norm.
The idea is to turn the white sprawl into the yellow cores, connected by the orange rails:
Spoilered for big.
This is not the only place this sort of work is being done. This is a nation-wide initiative that is gaining more and more traction each year by regional governments and is seeing both profitable and environmentally beneficial results. It will be the best means to solve the problem of global warming as a systemic issue, by re-imagining how we live and work in a more efficient and pleasant way. But it takes time. These plans are 20-50 years from bearing fruit, and aren't sexy, authoritarian power trips. If you have FEMA kicking down doors and demanding how people live and work you will get armed insurrection against them in days regardless how need driven and immediate you feel such actions need to be. It's counter productive.
Solving problems isn't quick or clean or without muddy compromises. You have to be in it for the long haul and re-do things the right way. China thinks they can just build a green city and then demolish the old one. That won't work because people live organically, you cant force them into a colony and expect an economy or society to thrive. You have to slowly guide the evolution of that society to where it needs to be for sustainability via incentivizing good behavior and making bad actions prohibitively expensive to maintain.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Also, lack of cold winter is going to make insect problems a lot worse, right?
Sort of; it's going to make mosquito problems a lot worse, but those can be counteracted by introducing fish that dine on mosquito larvae into their newfound spawing grounds.
Of course, that's ecoengineering on a scale only a well-coordinated government agency can handle, so...
Hacksaw on
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
To be clear, I was not specifically referring to rising sea levels in my post. I heard a statistic on NPR a while back about this crazy jump in the number of Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes over the last decade. It's a fact that the sewer and water handling infrastructure in the US is in dire shape. We are already running on borrowed time with the northeast. Over the next couple of decades the eastern seaboard will inundated with more severe storms than the current system can handle. Homes all over New England are still using CESSPOOLS. They aren't even connected to a working sewer system or proper septic tank. From 1958 to 2011 the North East has seen a 77% increase in heavy precipitation. Bad storms are going to be getting more and more frequent causing widespread flooding east of the Appalachians. Slowly rising sea levels will only ensure that flooded areas stay flooded for longer until they just stay underwater.
20-50 years just isn't fast enough for what is happening. I think we need FEMA breaking down people's doors, telling them they have to pack up and move, like what China is doing. As I Florida native (no longer living there, thank god), the state has always been run by a group of train chimps. The people living there aren't much better. They elected Jeb Bush Governor TWICE. I am glad to hear they are at least starting to make plans. Fema Shelters would be more for those displaced by severe weather over the next several decades. The seawalls would be to act as a breakstop for offshore storms. They would probably have to take the form of massive man made islands running up and down the east coast. Those 2 measures would be the absolute LEAST the government should do. With those minor measures we might have enough time to redesign our urban centers. If we don't take large scale, dramatic action NOW the people who will need this these new urban centers most will be homeless before it gets built and moving west of the Appalachians. Cities like Memphis, Nashville, and Littlerock would have to absorb millions of new residents over the next few decades and are totally unequipped to do so. They have neither the tax base to fund expation or the leadership with enough foresight to see it coming.
If people don't want to leave their 1940s era, cesspool home, we either need to force them to leave or prepare for their eventual displacement. I can live with either one, but we NEED to do something drastic NOW. Building nuclear power plants, breaker islands and shelters isn't going to get cheaper or easier over the next decade.
To be clear, I was not specifically referring to rising sea levels in my post. I heard a statistic on NPR a while back about this crazy jump in the number of Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes over the last decade. It's a fact that the sewer and water handling infrastructure in the US is in dire shape. We are already running on borrowed time with the northeast. Over the next couple of decades the eastern seaboard will inundated with more severe storms than the current system can handle. Homes all over New England are still using CESSPOOLS. They aren't even connected to a working sewer system or proper septic tank. From 1958 to 2011 the North East has seen a 77% increase in heavy precipitation. Bad storms are going to be getting more and more frequent causing widespread flooding east of the Appalachians. Slowly rising sea levels will only ensure that flooded areas stay flooded for longer until they just stay underwater.
20-50 years just isn't fast enough for what is happening. I think we need FEMA breaking down people's doors, telling them they have to pack up and move, like what China is doing. As I Florida native (no longer living there, thank god), the state has always been run by a group of train chimps. The people living there aren't much better. They elected Jeb Bush Governor TWICE. I am glad to hear they are at least starting to make plans. Fema Shelters would be more for those displaced by severe weather over the next several decades. The seawalls would be to act as a breakstop for offshore storms. They would probably have to take the form of massive man made islands running up and down the east coast. Those 2 measures would be the absolute LEAST the government should do. With those minor measures we might have enough time to redesign our urban centers. If we don't take large scale, dramatic action NOW the people who will need this these new urban centers most will be homeless before it gets built and moving west of the Appalachians. Cities like Memphis, Nashville, and Littlerock would have to absorb millions of new residents over the next few decades and are totally unequipped to do so. They have neither the tax base to fund expation or the leadership with enough foresight to see it coming.
If people don't want to leave their 1940s era, cesspool home, we either need to force them to leave or prepare for their eventual displacement. I can live with either one, but we NEED to do something drastic NOW. Building nuclear power plants, breaker islands and shelters isn't going to get cheaper or easier over the next decade.
Well, I'm glad everyone I know and love is arguably a little better than trained chimps because of the governor position.
It's folk like you that make people actually doing things to help not get taken seriously. But please, continue with the derisive rhetoric, inane panic and fearmongering and make our lives that much more difficult to get things done.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I will admit to waxing hyperbolic. It's kind of trendy in political circles these days. #realtalk Seawalls, nuclear power, and emergency shelters are super important and we should be building them.
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
In more depressing news, current circulation in the Atlantic Ocean is slowing down. As these currents slow, warm southern waters are less able to mix with colder northern waters. This has already caused a shift in the jetstream over the US, resulting in heavier storms and more widespread flooding all along the east coast. If predictions over the next century pan out this circulation could come to a complete stop. With no more mixing of warm and cold water, storm season will extend through the entire year rendering most low lying land east of the Appalachians directly in a floodplain.
Those emergency shelters and breakwaters are sounding more and more necessary as time goes on.
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I already made a post about that earlier. A fight ensued. Someone quoted a post from reddit.
Mistakes were witnessed.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure breakwaters will help flooding in Appalachia, but they might help you yankees deal with the hurricanes barreling toward you every year now.
Once upon a time a patient told me that "climate change" is something that happens every couple hundred years and that this is no big deal. I asked him if 3 billion year old polar ice was in a habit of melting that often and he said, "Well obviously, it's cyclical!" to which a bystander said, "How can ice be 3 billion years old if it melts every couple hundred years?" His brow furrowed as he realized he had been lied to for years.
Since then, he has started one of the larger local-grown food co-ops in the area. It's pretty neat.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
We committed to cutting greenhouse emissions by 25% at the UN today.
Of course that was a promise to the UN by a member of the executive branch, so it has about as much legal force as my foot.
Once upon a time a patient told me that "climate change" is something that happens every couple hundred years and that this is no big deal. I asked him if 3 billion year old polar ice was in a habit of melting that often and he said, "Well obviously, it's cyclical!" to which a bystander said, "How can ice be 3 billion years old if it melts every couple hundred years?" His brow furrowed as he realized he had been lied to for years.
Since then, he has started one of the larger local-grown food co-ops in the area. It's pretty neat.
3 billion? Where'd you get that number?
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
The problem with that analogy is that most people will simply assume that the Earth is far less sensitive to temperature change compared to a person.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
So it seems the US DOI has approved the Arctic drilling leases that weee promised to Shell in 2008. You can read about it here.
Sidenote: now might be a good time, my fellow Washingtonians, to send some angry letters and emails to Jay Inslee for failing to be at all very proactive about this issue. If he wants to call himself the greenest governor in the US, he's got to prove that he's worthy of the title. Right now, he's not doing anything to prove it.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
edited April 2015
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knitdan on
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I've put this in the History and Interesting Facts threads, but if anyone doesn't read those and but would be interested in helping out scientific research on climate change and its effects on migration timing, you can transcribe records for the North American Bird Phenology Program. I was thinking about reposing that here also but I don't know how many times the mods would tolerate it.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
edited April 2015
Updated the Green Living thread with some information about biochar. It's not a magic bullet (magic bullets do not exist by definition because there's no such thing as magic) but if used properly and extensively it does show a lot of promise for mitigating climate change and improving soil yields.
Also a note about opting out of credit card offers; that tiny bit won't save the planet, but we all hate those things so we might as well prevent that waste and clutter.
I grew up in northern california. Lived through two droughts during which we had severe water restriction.
This is merely the first time that southern calfornia has been subjected to water restriction. The non-desert parts of the state have experienced it before. It makes sense, right? I mean, if there is a drought you obviously need people in the rainy parts of the state to take 2 minute showers with a stopped up drain and then bail their bathwater out into their yards in a vain attempt to keep a few plants alive because how else will the desert regions be able to fill their swimming pools?
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90% of the people alive today being alive 150 years from now would require an incredible medical revolution more than it would require fixing climate change. Until we "fix" the fact that people age, even with perfect medical care and highly effective treatments, living past 100 is pretty damn unlikely, and 150 years from now a good fraction of people would be 200+.
I'd call it a longshot if anybody currently alive was alive 150 years from now.
Oh my god, one article about one component of climate change might be wrong, therefore we must immediately dial back all rhetoric and shouting lest we be painted as loony toons alarmist doomsayers!
News flash, pal: we're not alarmists anymore. We're sounding the alarm. I don't know if you've noticed, but whole island nations are having to be evacuated of their entire populations because of swelling sea levels. Bangladesh alone has seen a displacement of millions of its citizens from the coastal wetlands to the crowded metropolitan interior of Dhaka.
You know why people don't care about climate change? It's not the overblown rhetoric; it's the belief that it won't affect them. Articles like the one I posted contextualize the impact and effect climate change will have on our major (and particularly: American) coastal population centers. It shows people what could become The New Normal if they don't start acting now, today, shit's gonna get irreversibly bad. You squeeze all the ketchup out of a bottle, you're not getting it back in with your fingers, etc.
And really, if you want to refute the article I posted, post an article of your own that refutes it. Don't quote a ghost at me. No shadowboxing allowed.
The article is incorrect and overblown. That much is certain. The response to that should not be, paraphrasing, "you aren't a true climate change believer. Bullshit and lies are OK if it gets people to act. I'd rather people be misinformed and afraid than well-informed, because it works better." If your article is wrong, you don't double down by insulting the people who read it critically and attempting to brute force it through by claiming it's important.
Any further discussion with you is a waste of my time.
You don't get to say an article is incorrect or wrong if you don't post an article/study that refutes the findings of the one posted. You are not being critical; you are being contrarian. Your argument literally boils down to "Nuh uh because I said so!"
EDIT: And don't quote another post from reddit as your refutation.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/10/displacement-climate-change-un
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2014/05/21-climate-change-displacement-ferris
Saying that nothing dramatic will happen in our lifetimes is worse than wrong. It's misleading in a way that is causing harm to the entire movement. Climate change is happening RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
That's not to say climate change caused the creation of ISIS, but it read like a plausible factor in an unstable region.
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Absolutely we should be aware of the issues we are facing. Absolutely we should be honest about the impacts and dangers we face as a species. They're pretty bad! Droughts, famine, and disease are both coming and already here for many people.
But you're literally going to convince no one that the world is ending because in a western country you just aren't going to see those drastic effects unless climate change runs rampant for a couple centuries. What you can point out is the intensity of hurricanes is increasing, they are changing where they're going (Florida hasn't had a major landfall in a long time while NYC has had two in the last four years). Droughts are more intense in the southwest (though that's less to do with climate change and more to do with overuse and building East Coast designed cities in the fucking desert). Temperature extremes are more extreme (winters are colder and summers are hotter).
But to shout that now is the time for panic isn't inherently useful, though it may feel satisfying.
A better solution is having things like the Living Green H/A thread, talking about the steps you're making and trying to make those kinds of things the Thing To Do. Changing our culture to be more friendly to the climate is going to go a lot farther than throwing ash on your forehead and wailing in the streets.
This assumes that the intent of a conversation is to actually see action. If the intent is to be angry and preach to the choir in an attempt to motivate the troops to go out and convert, the sackcloth routine may have some amount of utility.
In the past, panic tends to lead to action, even if it's isn't the best action. Almost nothing is being done about climate change. I think we do need the choir riled up. Considering Florida lawmakers have banned the terms climate change and global warming, we need more people preaching the word of action. The Army Corps of Engineers should be building seawalls around the entire atlantic seaboard. FIMA needs to be expanding emergency shelters. DOE needs to get off their asses and start approving the construction of new nuclear power plants (not just retrofitting existing facilities). At this point there really is nothing the average citizen can do to fend off the effects without government assistance. At the State and Federal levels we NEED dramatic action. This thread will have accomplished its goal if it motivates even one person to contact their representatives and demand action.
Ok, no. Chill for a second.
As far as reacting to sea level rise, that is already happening. Now that's addressing the symptoms and shit is real and problematic right now. But this sort of frenzied attitude is the reason no one takes the problem seriously at the national politics level. The alternatives are "frantic, arm flailing crazy man" or "idiot business crony." In between are serious engineers, urban planners, and environmental scientists actually working on the problem and just arent entertaining enough for modern news.
Agricultural land moving, ocean acidity, shifting habititats for plants wildlife and disease...those are going to hit just as hard, if not worse.
Since the mid-90s, a massive amount of quiet initiatives have been implemented to push people into a smaller, tighter series of urban cores to reduce land consumption footprint, make air and water quality better, and make the entire system far more efficient. Much of this is long term construction based, identifying a series of Urban cores and slowing (or totally halting in some counties) construction of any kind aside from infill in these areas. To help make things more sustainable, these cores will be linked by cheap and effective light rail that will slowly expand in use over time. The first series of these rail stations launched last year, with three to five additional lines being planned over the next fifteen years. Construction on these cores is already booming, with requirements for medium and lower income mixed used blocks being the norm.
The idea is to turn the white sprawl into the yellow cores, connected by the orange rails:
This is not the only place this sort of work is being done. This is a nation-wide initiative that is gaining more and more traction each year by regional governments and is seeing both profitable and environmentally beneficial results. It will be the best means to solve the problem of global warming as a systemic issue, by re-imagining how we live and work in a more efficient and pleasant way. But it takes time. These plans are 20-50 years from bearing fruit, and aren't sexy, authoritarian power trips. If you have FEMA kicking down doors and demanding how people live and work you will get armed insurrection against them in days regardless how need driven and immediate you feel such actions need to be. It's counter productive.
Solving problems isn't quick or clean or without muddy compromises. You have to be in it for the long haul and re-do things the right way. China thinks they can just build a green city and then demolish the old one. That won't work because people live organically, you cant force them into a colony and expect an economy or society to thrive. You have to slowly guide the evolution of that society to where it needs to be for sustainability via incentivizing good behavior and making bad actions prohibitively expensive to maintain.
Sort of; it's going to make mosquito problems a lot worse, but those can be counteracted by introducing fish that dine on mosquito larvae into their newfound spawing grounds.
Of course, that's ecoengineering on a scale only a well-coordinated government agency can handle, so...
20-50 years just isn't fast enough for what is happening. I think we need FEMA breaking down people's doors, telling them they have to pack up and move, like what China is doing. As I Florida native (no longer living there, thank god), the state has always been run by a group of train chimps. The people living there aren't much better. They elected Jeb Bush Governor TWICE. I am glad to hear they are at least starting to make plans. Fema Shelters would be more for those displaced by severe weather over the next several decades. The seawalls would be to act as a breakstop for offshore storms. They would probably have to take the form of massive man made islands running up and down the east coast. Those 2 measures would be the absolute LEAST the government should do. With those minor measures we might have enough time to redesign our urban centers. If we don't take large scale, dramatic action NOW the people who will need this these new urban centers most will be homeless before it gets built and moving west of the Appalachians. Cities like Memphis, Nashville, and Littlerock would have to absorb millions of new residents over the next few decades and are totally unequipped to do so. They have neither the tax base to fund expation or the leadership with enough foresight to see it coming.
If people don't want to leave their 1940s era, cesspool home, we either need to force them to leave or prepare for their eventual displacement. I can live with either one, but we NEED to do something drastic NOW. Building nuclear power plants, breaker islands and shelters isn't going to get cheaper or easier over the next decade.
Well, I'm glad everyone I know and love is arguably a little better than trained chimps because of the governor position.
It's folk like you that make people actually doing things to help not get taken seriously. But please, continue with the derisive rhetoric, inane panic and fearmongering and make our lives that much more difficult to get things done.
The only prescription is more cowbell.
Those emergency shelters and breakwaters are sounding more and more necessary as time goes on.
Mistakes were witnessed.
Since then, he has started one of the larger local-grown food co-ops in the area. It's pretty neat.
Of course that was a promise to the UN by a member of the executive branch, so it has about as much legal force as my foot.
3 billion? Where'd you get that number?
The problem with that analogy is that most people will simply assume that the Earth is far less sensitive to temperature change compared to a person.
Sidenote: now might be a good time, my fellow Washingtonians, to send some angry letters and emails to Jay Inslee for failing to be at all very proactive about this issue. If he wants to call himself the greenest governor in the US, he's got to prove that he's worthy of the title. Right now, he's not doing anything to prove it.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Also a note about opting out of credit card offers; that tiny bit won't save the planet, but we all hate those things so we might as well prevent that waste and clutter.
So long, and thanks for all the almonds.
This is merely the first time that southern calfornia has been subjected to water restriction. The non-desert parts of the state have experienced it before. It makes sense, right? I mean, if there is a drought you obviously need people in the rainy parts of the state to take 2 minute showers with a stopped up drain and then bail their bathwater out into their yards in a vain attempt to keep a few plants alive because how else will the desert regions be able to fill their swimming pools?
The climate allows a year-round growing season. It's the chief reason why practically everything is grown in California.