I'd say human extinction from a nuclear war caused by climate change is a real possibility.
I don't think so. There are really only 2 countries with end the world level of nukes. The US and Russia, at 1600 deployed and about 6k total warheads, neither of which are going to be the most hurt by climate change. Everyone else has 300 warheads or less- the US conduct over 1000 nuclear tests just as a point of reference.
Now something more regional - most likely India and Pakistan - is something I can see happening.
America’s hottest oil patch is producing so much natural gas that by the end of last year producers were burning off more than enough of the fuel to meet residential demand across the whole of Texas. The phenomenon has likely only intensified since then.
Flaring is the controversial but common practice in which oil and gas drillers burn off gas that can’t be easily or efficiently captured and stored. It releases carbon dioxide and is lighting up the skies of West Texas and New Mexico as the Permian Basin undergoes a massive production boom. Oil wells there produce gas as a byproduct, and because pipeline infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with the expansion, energy companies must sometimes choose between flaring and slowing production
Anytime someone tries to claim that companies are inherently efficient show then this.
This practice should be illegal. Polluting like this because you can't be arsed to store what you're pumping is ridiculous.
(and before anyone chimes in: yes I know this is old and common. It's still ridiculous)
building and installing the extra infrastructure to handle extra gas production could be more environmentally costly than just burning it. I remember doing a comparison of how to handle emissions from a small test field.
The emissions had some NOx, so regulation demanded that it be controlled either by flaring it, storing it, and pumping it back into the ground (rightfully so). Flaring it required that they burn as much natural gas (flow wise) as the emissions coming out of the storage tanks. Pumping it back into the ground required installing another compressor system, whose energy cost was more than the natural gas consumption for burning it. I don't have a good idea of the cost increase for turning an atmospheric storage tank into a pressurized vessel, but it's not trivial.
The best answer to the excess gas production is to rebuild our electric power infrastructure; if there's enough gas production we should reward producers for putting power back onto the grid (they can use the gas to run generators locally).
America’s hottest oil patch is producing so much natural gas that by the end of last year producers were burning off more than enough of the fuel to meet residential demand across the whole of Texas. The phenomenon has likely only intensified since then.
Flaring is the controversial but common practice in which oil and gas drillers burn off gas that can’t be easily or efficiently captured and stored. It releases carbon dioxide and is lighting up the skies of West Texas and New Mexico as the Permian Basin undergoes a massive production boom. Oil wells there produce gas as a byproduct, and because pipeline infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with the expansion, energy companies must sometimes choose between flaring and slowing production
Anytime someone tries to claim that companies are inherently efficient show then this.
This practice should be illegal. Polluting like this because you can't be arsed to store what you're pumping is ridiculous.
(and before anyone chimes in: yes I know this is old and common. It's still ridiculous)
It's up to enforcement. I read an article about this in South Dakota, where wells are required to capture at least 90% of the gas released, but ignore the law and just burn off over half, to the point that in infrared satellite pictures the field is the brightest thing visible.
building and installing the extra infrastructure to handle extra gas production could be more environmentally costly than just burning it. I remember doing a comparison of how to handle emissions from a small test field.
The emissions had some NOx, so regulation demanded that it be controlled either by flaring it, storing it, and pumping it back into the ground (rightfully so). Flaring it required that they burn as much natural gas (flow wise) as the emissions coming out of the storage tanks. Pumping it back into the ground required installing another compressor system, whose energy cost was more than the natural gas consumption for burning it. I don't have a good idea of the cost increase for turning an atmospheric storage tank into a pressurized vessel, but it's not trivial.
The best answer to the excess gas production is to rebuild our electric power infrastructure; if there's enough gas production we should reward producers for putting power back onto the grid (they can use the gas to run generators locally).
They also had the option of just slowing down production some in order to not destroy our planet. $$$ took precedence
building and installing the extra infrastructure to handle extra gas production could be more environmentally costly than just burning it. I remember doing a comparison of how to handle emissions from a small test field.
The emissions had some NOx, so regulation demanded that it be controlled either by flaring it, storing it, and pumping it back into the ground (rightfully so). Flaring it required that they burn as much natural gas (flow wise) as the emissions coming out of the storage tanks. Pumping it back into the ground required installing another compressor system, whose energy cost was more than the natural gas consumption for burning it. I don't have a good idea of the cost increase for turning an atmospheric storage tank into a pressurized vessel, but it's not trivial.
The best answer to the excess gas production is to rebuild our electric power infrastructure; if there's enough gas production we should reward producers for putting power back onto the grid (they can use the gas to run generators locally).
They also had the option of just slowing down production some in order to not destroy our planet. $$$ took precedence
good luck convincing a company to slow production down; its akin to asking someone to take a pay cut "just because"
building and installing the extra infrastructure to handle extra gas production could be more environmentally costly than just burning it. I remember doing a comparison of how to handle emissions from a small test field.
The emissions had some NOx, so regulation demanded that it be controlled either by flaring it, storing it, and pumping it back into the ground (rightfully so). Flaring it required that they burn as much natural gas (flow wise) as the emissions coming out of the storage tanks. Pumping it back into the ground required installing another compressor system, whose energy cost was more than the natural gas consumption for burning it. I don't have a good idea of the cost increase for turning an atmospheric storage tank into a pressurized vessel, but it's not trivial.
The best answer to the excess gas production is to rebuild our electric power infrastructure; if there's enough gas production we should reward producers for putting power back onto the grid (they can use the gas to run generators locally).
They also had the option of just slowing down production some in order to not destroy our planet. $$$ took precedence
good luck convincing a company to slow production down; its akin to asking someone to take a pay cut "just because"
I mean, yeah, in no way do I expect a corporation to voluntarily slow down. It's not "just because," of course, it's "because you are destroying the planet you silly goose." But I still don't expect them to.
I'd say the answer is regulation, but according to Hevach it already is illegal and no one in the government cares. So... shrug, go vote?
Maybe in South Dakota there's regulation for it, but there is none that I'm aware of in LA. The sad state of affairs is that the LA government just doesn't care and any and all progress on environmental policy here has been staff and corporate policy deciding that it deserves consideration.
An example; did work for a client in "Cancer Row", the land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans along the Mississippi River. An old, about to retire mechanic who made his way into document control / maintenance was telling me that this firm just dumped all used lube oil down the drain. Any argument of how much that pollutes the land and the waterways fell on deaf ears. Management eventually started to recycle it once this guy proposed that by recycling it they can make money from the sale.
Jesus this thread has been pessimistic so far (not without cause, but still). A little optimism:
I'm feeling pretty good about our chances of substantially reducing meat consumption over the next decade or so. With companies like Impossible doing good work, I think it's just a matter of time before we can effectively replicate meat using plant-based foods. I'm the kind of person who could barely even envision becoming a full-on vegetarian just five years ago, but today I'm starting to feel like at least significantly reducing my meat consumption could be feasible very soon. Hell, I'm already strongly considering cutting beef out of my diet entirely, maybe in a matter of months.
Renewable energy is damn near a solved problem technologically and is on the right trajectory to replace fossil fuels if we can just get a little more public investment to encourage it along.
Most humans either already do or will live in cities, and some cities are already taking substantial measures to shift our built environment into a sustainable form, like Minneapolis doing away with parking minimums and single-family zoning across pretty much the entire city. We need a hell of a lot more of that, and it is a politically difficult problem to crack. I think this is the thing I have the most doubt and concern about so it's what I'm trying to spread the most awareness of. But it's not entirely intractable as a problem and are seeing some movement away from the sprawl form.
The biggest cause for pessimism is the short time frame we have to work with and the stubbornness of boomers in making the changes needed. But I don't think we can assume the pace of change we're on now is going to hold. When the boomers start dying off in high numbers I hope and expect that change will accelerate dramatically. Hopefully it's soon enough to make the situation merely bad as opposed to catastrophic.
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My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
Jesus this thread has been pessimistic so far (not without cause, but still). A little optimism:
I'm feeling pretty good about our chances of substantially reducing meat consumption over the next decade or so. With companies like Impossible doing good work, I think it's just a matter of time before we can effectively replicate meat using plant-based foods. I'm the kind of person who could barely even envision becoming a full-on vegetarian just five years ago, but today I'm starting to feel like at least significantly reducing my meat consumption could be feasible very soon. Hell, I'm already strongly considering cutting beef out of my diet entirely, maybe in a matter of months.
Renewable energy is damn near a solved problem technologically and is on the right trajectory to replace fossil fuels if we can just get a little more public investment to encourage it along.
Most humans either already do or will live in cities, and some cities are already taking substantial measures to shift our built environment into a sustainable form, like Minneapolis doing away with parking minimums and single-family zoning across pretty much the entire city. We need a hell of a lot more of that, and it is a politically difficult problem to crack. I think this is the thing I have the most doubt and concern about so it's what I'm trying to spread the most awareness of. But it's not entirely intractable as a problem and are seeing some movement away from the sprawl form.
The biggest cause for pessimism is the short time frame we have to work with and the stubbornness of boomers in making the changes needed. But I don't think we can assume the pace of change we're on now is going to hold. When the boomers start dying off in high numbers I hope and expect that change will accelerate dramatically. Hopefully it's soon enough to make the situation merely bad as opposed to catastrophic.
Boomers got like a decade till retirement and tons of them have a real noticable problem where they don't think anyone but them could be in charge.
I've drastically reduced my beef and pork consumption. Still eat a ton of chicken a b turkey, which being meat still isn't amazing for the environment, but better than beef. Basically the only beef i eat these days is in Pho once every couple of weeks, and maybe a fancy burger on special occasions every few months.
building and installing the extra infrastructure to handle extra gas production could be more environmentally costly than just burning it. I remember doing a comparison of how to handle emissions from a small test field.
The emissions had some NOx, so regulation demanded that it be controlled either by flaring it, storing it, and pumping it back into the ground (rightfully so). Flaring it required that they burn as much natural gas (flow wise) as the emissions coming out of the storage tanks. Pumping it back into the ground required installing another compressor system, whose energy cost was more than the natural gas consumption for burning it. I don't have a good idea of the cost increase for turning an atmospheric storage tank into a pressurized vessel, but it's not trivial.
The best answer to the excess gas production is to rebuild our electric power infrastructure; if there's enough gas production we should reward producers for putting power back onto the grid (they can use the gas to run generators locally).
They also had the option of just slowing down production some in order to not destroy our planet. $$$ took precedence
good luck convincing a company to slow production down; its akin to asking someone to take a pay cut "just because"
This is why pretty much every economist that does not work for a conservative think take will say externalities often mean companies to need be internalized so the companies bear those costs or there needs to be regulation to limit those externalities. Externalities are a really basic idea and why people should expect profit oriented effiency to cause harm that needs to be regulated.
Edit: Because Republicans reject even market based reforms like a carbon tax or discriminatory taxes designed to favor cleaner methods over dirtier ones in much the same way they reject market based health care reforms, they almost always support companies not having to bear any of the costs.
On board for what though? Right now everyone is arguing about sections of a bill that doesn't exist, even on paper.
On the one hand it seems dumb for people to oppose stipulations that don't exist.
On the other it seems dumb for people to have reached a deadlock in negotiating the wording of a deal before it's even in the rough draft phase.
So far the only thing to even get ink to paper was a non-binding resolution that said that Congress should write a deal, and even that was shot down.
Nothing is in the Green New Deal, because no one has written even a rough draft of it yet.
People criticize the Green New Deal for not being concrete enough but you have to start with a big vision before you can get to the concrete details. When JFK called for us to land on the moon in a decade no one knew how the heck we were gonna do it exactly.
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
edited May 2019
Indonesia is planning on moving its capital city from Jakarta to somewhere off the island of Java partially due to climate change. The city is already sinking while the seas rise and current estimates are that 95% of the city will be submerged within thirty years. It's not uncommon for countries to move their capitals, but it's something we'll probably be seeing a lot more of in the coming decades.
The Mauna Loa observatory on Hawaii reported 415,26 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, the highest level in 3 million years. At that time, sea levels were several meters higher than today, and the Antarctic was covered in lush forests.
We are going full speed towards a state very different from that humanity and civilization evolved in, says Ralph Keeling, leader of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's CO2. All of humanity's history has been in colder climate than it is today.
We can expect this year's CO2 increase to be the highest ever, 3 ppm (average is 2.5 ppm). A level of 350 ppm is required to avoid the effects of climate change.
We do not see the full consequences of 451 ppm today. It will take mankind a thousand years to pay the price for what we do today, says Prof. Rob Jackson of Stanford University.
Source: NRK (Norway's public broadcaster; in Norwegian.)
This is exactly why there isn't any such thing as "finding middle ground" or "negotiating baby steps" with the GOP and climate deniers.
The industries causing the most harm to the planet fucking knew what was happening and straight-up lied to us about it. If they had actually wanted us to start solving this with less-extreme measures decades ago, they could have done so. But they literally put short-term profits above our survival.
This is exactly why there isn't any such thing as "finding middle ground" or "negotiating baby steps" with the GOP and climate deniers.
The industries causing the most harm to the planet fucking knew what was happening and straight-up lied to us about it. If they had actually wanted us to start solving this with less-extreme measures decades ago, they could have done so. But they literally put short-term profits above our survival.
There's a long term side to it, too. Not a better side, but a side: The same companies have basically had a stranglehold on the energy industry since it came into existence, and have managed to entrench themselves globally with some very generous deals from basically every government. Even while the main fuels and the government sweetheart deals have changed, the actual market players have been quite stable.
BP especially has boasted about the money they spend in solar and wind research. They're not lying, but they are competing outside their wheelhouse a decade behind their competition. The next round of long term government sweetheart deals are, for the first time effectively ever, not going to go to them the way things stand, and right now they're not closing the gap. So they move the goalposts just hoping they'll land a hail mary in the next down.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
So I've basically been avoiding this thread because I can't seem to control my nihilism around this topic, which in turn leads me to having decision paralysis about decisions regarding the future. I'm working through it, but you generally probably won't see me around these parts, but i felt the need to share some rare good news.
E: whoops, hit post. Editing in now, if you read this come back in 5.
Climate change is decimating coral reefs. As humans put greenhouse gasses into Earth’s atmosphere, they warm the planet before settling back down into the oceans and making the water more acidic. These combined factors have caused coral die-offs around the world. But now researchers have found a set of corals in Hawaii’s Kāne’ohe Bay that can already tolerate warmer temperatures and more acidic waters. Scientists are calling them “supercorals.” These corals even bounced back after sewage decimated the bay less than 30 years ago. Scientists say the discovery offers hope for reef resilience.
...
Kāne’ohe Bay hugs the island of Oahu’s eastern coast. Between 1930 and 1970, dredging, coastal development, and sewage dumped into the bay destroyed up to 95 percent of the reefs. But once sewage outputs were relocated around 1978, the corals bounced back. Within two decades, coral cover blossomed to between 50 percent and 95 percent. Even more astounding is that the reefs rebounded in waters that are already warmer and more acidic than neighboring waters.
“I began to realize that the temperature and chemistry conditions in Kāne’ohe Bay are very similar to the conditions that many people predict will kill corals off globally, yet the reefs in the bay seem to be thriving, making the area incredibly valuable as a possible window into the future,” Jury said.
The researchers collected branches of three dominant coral species from about two dozen colonies in Kāne’ohe Bay and Waimānalo Bay, just 11 miles to the southeast. Then, back in the laboratory, they exposed some of the corals to warm or acidic waters in aquariums for five weeks.
They found corals from Kāne’ohe Bay tolerated warmer and more acidic waters better than the corals from Waimānalo Bay. The corals from Kāne’ohe Bay also grew more than twice as fast as the Waimānalo Bay corals, the team reported Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
“In contrast with many projections, we find that at least these corals do in fact harbor a lot of individual variation for temperature and chemistry tolerance and that the hardy members of the population were able to drive rapid reef recovery in Kāne’ohe Bay in spite of the warmer, more acidic conditions found there,” Jury said.
Additionally, while i know this concept is borderline mastubatory for all the good it does big picture, I'm going to start actively contributing to https://www.cooleffect.org/
Carbon offsets aren't the answer. But they're an answer, or a part of a larger answer that is something which would be needed, and while I'm working on my footprint (just got a significantly more efficient furnace and HVAC, I limit myself to beef one meal a week and go pescetarian two days a week, we pay a lot more to live close to work such that I put relatively few miles on my car annually, I've basically drawn a line in the sand on our next car being minimum plug in hybrid, etc), I just feel like this might be the step that makes me feel like I'm doing something more. I hate that most people who do them seem to fall into the category of "well, I've offset MY usage so my conscience is clean", and I'm not going to stop there, but at the same time it's a way to kinda feel less guilty about visiting family and such.
Planet earth is going to be just fine. It's us that's gonna be fucked by climate change.
For me its a question of whether humanity or other future intelligent life can hit the technological singularity (which I define as complete independence from natural systems) and make it off Earth permanently. Can technological advancement outpace the environmental destruction it causes? If our economic capability drops below a threshold, key industries required for the singularity will no longer be sustainable.
If we can't, that is a pretty nihilistic scenario, since being trapped on the Earth is a death sentence as our star is going to expand and bake the atmosphere right off in a few billion years.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Planet earth is going to be just fine. It's us that's gonna be fucked by climate change.
For me its a question of whether humanity or other future intelligent life can hit the technological singularity (which I define as complete independence from natural systems) and make it off Earth permanently. Can technological advancement outpace the environmental destruction it causes? If our economic capability drops below a threshold, key industries required for the singularity will no longer be sustainable.
If we can't, that is a pretty nihilistic scenario, since being trapped on the Earth is a death sentence as our star is going to expand and bake the atmosphere right off in a few billion years.
I'm not... I'm not sure that's what the Singularity is.
Like, the singularity is generally understood, I thought, as "the point at which we can no longer keep up with the advancement of technology, because it's rate outpaces our ability to keep track"
But the thing you're talking about... I'm not sure that's really a thing in a materialistic universe? like, we'll always have to coexist with natural systems in some capacity, unless somehow a manner in which to reshape the basic foundations of reality itself is discovered.
Getting off earth and being able to utilize the resources of the greater universe may allow us to live in something more harmonious to existing ecosystems (harnessing solar power, gathering mineral resources from otherwise lifeless celestial bodies, etc.) without having to raze them to continue existence. But ultimately we're going to always have to keep in mind some kind of balance to make sure we're not fucking over the ability for life as we know it to survive by the method we're using to keep ourselves going currently.
EDIT: Unless like, you just mean "naturalistic systems" to mean a closed ecosystem with limited resources, in which case a certain level of technological advancement should be able to help us get away from that, but we'd still need to be smart and careful about how we use the resources we find in the wider solar system and beyond.
Planet earth is going to be just fine. It's us that's gonna be fucked by climate change.
For me its a question of whether humanity or other future intelligent life can hit the technological singularity (which I define as complete independence from natural systems) and make it off Earth permanently. Can technological advancement outpace the environmental destruction it causes? If our economic capability drops below a threshold, key industries required for the singularity will no longer be sustainable.
If we can't, that is a pretty nihilistic scenario, since being trapped on the Earth is a death sentence as our star is going to expand and bake the atmosphere right off in a few billion years.
I'm not... I'm not sure that's what the Singularity is.
Like, the singularity is generally understood, I thought, as "the point at which we can no longer keep up with the advancement of technology, because it's rate outpaces our ability to keep track"
But the thing you're talking about... I'm not sure that's really a thing in a materialistic universe? like, we'll always have to coexist with natural systems in some capacity, unless somehow a manner in which to reshape the basic foundations of reality itself is discovered.
Getting off earth and being able to utilize the resources of the greater universe may allow us to live in something more harmonious to existing ecosystems (harnessing solar power, gathering mineral resources from otherwise lifeless celestial bodies, etc.) without having to raze them to continue existence. But ultimately we're going to always have to keep in mind some kind of balance to make sure we're not fucking over the ability for life as we know it to survive by the method we're using to keep ourselves going currently.
By natural systems I mean Earth's biospheric natural systems. For me, the singularly means directly harnessing the power of the sun into what we want and need instead of relying on Earth's natural systems to process that power for us in the form of biochemical processes and ocean-atmosphere systems. The Earth only captures a marginal cross section of the Sun's energy output, and as we capture more and more of that energy, more and more becomes feasible. Right now we rely on the stored biochemical energy of eons ago.
The two definitions are largely equivalent. Achieving one would be achieving the other.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Planet earth is going to be just fine. It's us that's gonna be fucked by climate change.
For me its a question of whether humanity or other future intelligent life can hit the technological singularity (which I define as complete independence from natural systems) and make it off Earth permanently. Can technological advancement outpace the environmental destruction it causes? If our economic capability drops below a threshold, key industries required for the singularity will no longer be sustainable.
If we can't, that is a pretty nihilistic scenario, since being trapped on the Earth is a death sentence as our star is going to expand and bake the atmosphere right off in a few billion years.
I'm not... I'm not sure that's what the Singularity is.
Like, the singularity is generally understood, I thought, as "the point at which we can no longer keep up with the advancement of technology, because it's rate outpaces our ability to keep track"
But the thing you're talking about... I'm not sure that's really a thing in a materialistic universe? like, we'll always have to coexist with natural systems in some capacity, unless somehow a manner in which to reshape the basic foundations of reality itself is discovered.
Getting off earth and being able to utilize the resources of the greater universe may allow us to live in something more harmonious to existing ecosystems (harnessing solar power, gathering mineral resources from otherwise lifeless celestial bodies, etc.) without having to raze them to continue existence. But ultimately we're going to always have to keep in mind some kind of balance to make sure we're not fucking over the ability for life as we know it to survive by the method we're using to keep ourselves going currently.
By natural systems I mean Earth's biospheric natural systems. For me. the singularly means directly harnessing the power of the sun into what we want and need instead of relying on Earth's natural systems to process that power for us in the form of biochemical processes.
The two definitions are largely equivalent. Achieving one would be achieving the other.
That actually finally clicked for me after I posted, does my edit follow your meaning?
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I don't think so. There are really only 2 countries with end the world level of nukes. The US and Russia, at 1600 deployed and about 6k total warheads, neither of which are going to be the most hurt by climate change. Everyone else has 300 warheads or less- the US conduct over 1000 nuclear tests just as a point of reference.
Now something more regional - most likely India and Pakistan - is something I can see happening.
Anytime someone tries to claim that companies are inherently efficient show then this.
This practice should be illegal. Polluting like this because you can't be arsed to store what you're pumping is ridiculous.
(and before anyone chimes in: yes I know this is old and common. It's still ridiculous)
The emissions had some NOx, so regulation demanded that it be controlled either by flaring it, storing it, and pumping it back into the ground (rightfully so). Flaring it required that they burn as much natural gas (flow wise) as the emissions coming out of the storage tanks. Pumping it back into the ground required installing another compressor system, whose energy cost was more than the natural gas consumption for burning it. I don't have a good idea of the cost increase for turning an atmospheric storage tank into a pressurized vessel, but it's not trivial.
The best answer to the excess gas production is to rebuild our electric power infrastructure; if there's enough gas production we should reward producers for putting power back onto the grid (they can use the gas to run generators locally).
It's up to enforcement. I read an article about this in South Dakota, where wells are required to capture at least 90% of the gas released, but ignore the law and just burn off over half, to the point that in infrared satellite pictures the field is the brightest thing visible.
They also had the option of just slowing down production some in order to not destroy our planet. $$$ took precedence
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good luck convincing a company to slow production down; its akin to asking someone to take a pay cut "just because"
I mean, yeah, in no way do I expect a corporation to voluntarily slow down. It's not "just because," of course, it's "because you are destroying the planet you silly goose." But I still don't expect them to.
I'd say the answer is regulation, but according to Hevach it already is illegal and no one in the government cares. So... shrug, go vote?
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An example; did work for a client in "Cancer Row", the land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans along the Mississippi River. An old, about to retire mechanic who made his way into document control / maintenance was telling me that this firm just dumped all used lube oil down the drain. Any argument of how much that pollutes the land and the waterways fell on deaf ears. Management eventually started to recycle it once this guy proposed that by recycling it they can make money from the sale.
Progress everyone *face palm*
I'm feeling pretty good about our chances of substantially reducing meat consumption over the next decade or so. With companies like Impossible doing good work, I think it's just a matter of time before we can effectively replicate meat using plant-based foods. I'm the kind of person who could barely even envision becoming a full-on vegetarian just five years ago, but today I'm starting to feel like at least significantly reducing my meat consumption could be feasible very soon. Hell, I'm already strongly considering cutting beef out of my diet entirely, maybe in a matter of months.
Renewable energy is damn near a solved problem technologically and is on the right trajectory to replace fossil fuels if we can just get a little more public investment to encourage it along.
Most humans either already do or will live in cities, and some cities are already taking substantial measures to shift our built environment into a sustainable form, like Minneapolis doing away with parking minimums and single-family zoning across pretty much the entire city. We need a hell of a lot more of that, and it is a politically difficult problem to crack. I think this is the thing I have the most doubt and concern about so it's what I'm trying to spread the most awareness of. But it's not entirely intractable as a problem and are seeing some movement away from the sprawl form.
The biggest cause for pessimism is the short time frame we have to work with and the stubbornness of boomers in making the changes needed. But I don't think we can assume the pace of change we're on now is going to hold. When the boomers start dying off in high numbers I hope and expect that change will accelerate dramatically. Hopefully it's soon enough to make the situation merely bad as opposed to catastrophic.
Boomers got like a decade till retirement and tons of them have a real noticable problem where they don't think anyone but them could be in charge.
This is why pretty much every economist that does not work for a conservative think take will say externalities often mean companies to need be internalized so the companies bear those costs or there needs to be regulation to limit those externalities. Externalities are a really basic idea and why people should expect profit oriented effiency to cause harm that needs to be regulated.
Edit: Because Republicans reject even market based reforms like a carbon tax or discriminatory taxes designed to favor cleaner methods over dirtier ones in much the same way they reject market based health care reforms, they almost always support companies not having to bear any of the costs.
It won’t solve everything, but can’t fucking hurt.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
:snap:
On the one hand it seems dumb for people to oppose stipulations that don't exist.
On the other it seems dumb for people to have reached a deadlock in negotiating the wording of a deal before it's even in the rough draft phase.
So far the only thing to even get ink to paper was a non-binding resolution that said that Congress should write a deal, and even that was shot down.
Nothing is in the Green New Deal, because no one has written even a rough draft of it yet.
I thought this was lovely.
People criticize the Green New Deal for not being concrete enough but you have to start with a big vision before you can get to the concrete details. When JFK called for us to land on the moon in a decade no one knew how the heck we were gonna do it exactly.
We are going full speed towards a state very different from that humanity and civilization evolved in, says Ralph Keeling, leader of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's CO2. All of humanity's history has been in colder climate than it is today.
We can expect this year's CO2 increase to be the highest ever, 3 ppm (average is 2.5 ppm). A level of 350 ppm is required to avoid the effects of climate change.
We do not see the full consequences of 451 ppm today. It will take mankind a thousand years to pay the price for what we do today, says Prof. Rob Jackson of Stanford University.
Source: NRK (Norway's public broadcaster; in Norwegian.)
Fuck...
For those that want the estimated ppm and temp impact they came up with, and the link to the pdf https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/1982 Exxon Primer on CO2 Greenhouse Effect.pdf
The industries causing the most harm to the planet fucking knew what was happening and straight-up lied to us about it. If they had actually wanted us to start solving this with less-extreme measures decades ago, they could have done so. But they literally put short-term profits above our survival.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
There's a long term side to it, too. Not a better side, but a side: The same companies have basically had a stranglehold on the energy industry since it came into existence, and have managed to entrench themselves globally with some very generous deals from basically every government. Even while the main fuels and the government sweetheart deals have changed, the actual market players have been quite stable.
BP especially has boasted about the money they spend in solar and wind research. They're not lying, but they are competing outside their wheelhouse a decade behind their competition. The next round of long term government sweetheart deals are, for the first time effectively ever, not going to go to them the way things stand, and right now they're not closing the gap. So they move the goalposts just hoping they'll land a hail mary in the next down.
E: whoops, hit post. Editing in now, if you read this come back in 5.
E2: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/05/15/some-corals-in-hawaii-thrive-in-warm-acidic-water/#.XNyNnZNKhTY
Carbon offsets aren't the answer. But they're an answer, or a part of a larger answer that is something which would be needed, and while I'm working on my footprint (just got a significantly more efficient furnace and HVAC, I limit myself to beef one meal a week and go pescetarian two days a week, we pay a lot more to live close to work such that I put relatively few miles on my car annually, I've basically drawn a line in the sand on our next car being minimum plug in hybrid, etc), I just feel like this might be the step that makes me feel like I'm doing something more. I hate that most people who do them seem to fall into the category of "well, I've offset MY usage so my conscience is clean", and I'm not going to stop there, but at the same time it's a way to kinda feel less guilty about visiting family and such.
For me its a question of whether humanity or other future intelligent life can hit the technological singularity (which I define as complete independence from natural systems) and make it off Earth permanently. Can technological advancement outpace the environmental destruction it causes? If our economic capability drops below a threshold, key industries required for the singularity will no longer be sustainable.
If we can't, that is a pretty nihilistic scenario, since being trapped on the Earth is a death sentence as our star is going to expand and bake the atmosphere right off in a few billion years.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
It makes me sad that humanity might die out while there's still so much to learn about the universe.
I'm not... I'm not sure that's what the Singularity is.
Like, the singularity is generally understood, I thought, as "the point at which we can no longer keep up with the advancement of technology, because it's rate outpaces our ability to keep track"
But the thing you're talking about... I'm not sure that's really a thing in a materialistic universe? like, we'll always have to coexist with natural systems in some capacity, unless somehow a manner in which to reshape the basic foundations of reality itself is discovered.
Getting off earth and being able to utilize the resources of the greater universe may allow us to live in something more harmonious to existing ecosystems (harnessing solar power, gathering mineral resources from otherwise lifeless celestial bodies, etc.) without having to raze them to continue existence. But ultimately we're going to always have to keep in mind some kind of balance to make sure we're not fucking over the ability for life as we know it to survive by the method we're using to keep ourselves going currently.
EDIT: Unless like, you just mean "naturalistic systems" to mean a closed ecosystem with limited resources, in which case a certain level of technological advancement should be able to help us get away from that, but we'd still need to be smart and careful about how we use the resources we find in the wider solar system and beyond.
By natural systems I mean Earth's biospheric natural systems. For me, the singularly means directly harnessing the power of the sun into what we want and need instead of relying on Earth's natural systems to process that power for us in the form of biochemical processes and ocean-atmosphere systems. The Earth only captures a marginal cross section of the Sun's energy output, and as we capture more and more of that energy, more and more becomes feasible. Right now we rely on the stored biochemical energy of eons ago.
The two definitions are largely equivalent. Achieving one would be achieving the other.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
That actually finally clicked for me after I posted, does my edit follow your meaning?