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NASA: Earth warming at unprecedented pace, unlikely to stay in Paris T° range

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Most scary part is that are people still denying it.

climate-change-comic.jpg
 
Wind and Solar are hitting record lows every year as their installation rates increase. We already have places in the US where wind is cheaper than gas, and solar is cheaper than gas.

Five years time you won't have to be in a unique area to have renewable energy be cheeper than conventional energy. The world is already installing more renewable energy than carbon based, the transition is already happening.

Anyone who says "omg it's tooo laaaaate :(" just needs to stop posting. Seriously. I take this subject as one of the top two in terms of global issues and how I vote in elections, I tend to try and stay up to date as much as possible. Going into every single thread about this subject isn't making me mad because of whatever news I'm reading, it makes me mad because I see a bunch of apathy from people who clearly just want to react all sad and gloomy because it's easy.

Lets read the thread title. Yes, Earth is warming at unprecedented rates, yea no shit, we've been talking about that for the last two decades. Staying within Paris target range of 1.5C is near impossible with current emission rates. Yea, no shit, that was openly talked about during the negotiations. Without more substantive emission cuts, we will fail to stay under 2C. Yes, once again, these were center point of the Paris talks last year that Paris alone will not solve our issues. These are not "dirty little secrets" that the man doesn't want you to know.

We fucking know this, anyone who spends 15 minutes reading up on the most historic global climate deal will understand what Paris was about. It's not the "OMG WE FIXED EVERYTHING WOOO!" deal, it never was. It was the framework to do something that we should have started 20 years ago, a framework to continuously come back to the table and figure out what each country can do to continue their emissions decrease.

Ten years from now the targets we put out will be obsolete because battery tech + renewable + EV's will be so far ahead that any projection from major energy institutions will be horribly out of date and simply wrong (you know, like how they have been for the last 15 years in terms of cost of Wind/Solar and total amount installed). We take these emission trends and bake in China hitting peak coal in 2020, with 2030 being their peek emission (at best), yet we now know they hit peak coal in 2013 and are having historic cutbacks on coal production and usage. We bake in these trends with horribly conservative estimates on renewable energy, even when we have learning rates putting coal into the danger zone of being too expensive than solar in a decade.

Also I swear to god if I see one more person post that study on how agriculture is somehow 50% of global emissions I'm going to break a fucking gasket.

Yes, this is scary stuff when looking at the numerous consequences of our failure to act, but just going around spreading apathy is literally one of the worst things you could do.

also agriculture accounts for around 15-20% of global emissions iirc, so anyone telling you it's somehow magically half of global emissions are quoting a single study that has been peer reviewed to death and heavily criticized in their methodology



That thread, and article was complete bullshit. I couldn't find a single source they quoted backing up their claim. The only thing I saw was a reference to IEA having an emissions scenario of having 3.5C baked in by 2080 or something. No current emission scenerio has the world hitting 3.5C in 20 years.

Thanks for the reasonable post. These article threads are always a chance to post shitty knee jerk "well were fucked thanks ignorant Americans/Chinese/rich oil tycoona/group I want to blame"

There is a lot of money in renewable and efficient energy and a lot of smart people involved in researching this stuff. If you really want to make a difference go to school and university and get involved and make a change with your life. I'm sure it pays well also.

I'm also proud to work for a big company that invests heavily into solar and energy efficiency for their retail locations and headquarters. We also.have electric vehicle charge stations at many stores and corporate.
 

CoolOff

Member
I'm just glad that I'm only 24 so I can judge how bad it gets within the next 10 years or so to see if I want the bring a child into this world.

I am cautiously optimistic though, at least for us in developed nations. Quality of life might suffer, but it's going to be the third world that takes the brunt of the negative effects.
 

Hermii

Member
Spoiler alert: We won't.

This is a long term problem and the US sucks shit at any sort of long term planning.

Not just the US, every democracy does. If a politician says their voters, donators needs to make sacrifices they dont get a lot of votes / donations.

I think one way we could fix this is by setting up some uncorruptable world enviromental agency and give them dictatorial powers. In other Words, it wont be fixed.
 
Did you see that "five years with the tea party" thread?

Gonna go out on a limb and say the people most likely to deny climate change are the ones who think the things on that cartoon's list don't benefit them.

Thats the problem isn't it. They think it won't benefit them, but it will. People are constantly misinformed even in this age.

The issue now is how do we inform these people that all of this are for their benefits their children's and their grandchildren.
 

Xe4

Banned
Yeah, it's pretty twisted. We could probably end world hunger tomorrow if everyone just agreed to boycott meat products but it seems that most people would rather have a ham sandwich
We have enough food to end world hunger today, meat eating or no. The problem is, and nearly has always been in food distribution.

That's not to say people shouldn't eat less meat, cause they absolutely should. We need to scale our meat consumption back and move it more towards fish and chicken than beef and pork which should be reserved as delacacies. Also artificial meat in the coming 20 years will help too. I plan on making the switch as soon as it's viably cheap.
 
Anyone remember this scene from Newsroom from like 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0uZ9mfOUI

Such innocent times.

When I saw this on youtube I wanted to throw my laptop into the wall.

"oh, we hit this major milestone that we knew we would hit, hey guys we're dead because reasons!" "Oh, well this show doesn't want actual news and good writing on topics, so I'm just going to be really edgy and say what the man doesn't want you to hear!"

God, what a horrible show, whats even sadder is that people actually take it seriously to reinforce some of their views.

That's how the 0.01% rule over everyone, even those not from their country.

Then please explain why the US is and has been installing more renewable capacity than natural gas capacity, or why the world as a whole is now installing more renewable capacity than conventional energy?

If "they" are just going to prevent progress, why have we had the last decade of solar and wind dropping off like a cliff in terms of costs. Why did "they" let the Paris deal be completed?

It's so easy to just say "they" won't let "stuff" happen. You want to think that even with this shit, there is still some type of plan by people above you, when in reality the issue is decades of economic growth and the need for constant economic progress in the face of politics. If nobody had to worry about re-elections in four years, we could put policy in place that focus on long term growth and energy progress. However our entire world depends on a continuous string of short term results. Thankfully, we're near and at the point where the technology is now economically viable to be supported by a short term system of growth, where our economic growth has been de-coupled with emission growth. Where we can close down coal plants in the US and simply replace them will wind/solar farms and the economy as a whole will not suffer (yes, local economies based on coal/gas will, however that's why we need federal programs to give a major cushion to these communities, because the end of coal is coming sooner than people think in developed countries).
 

noshten

Member
When I saw this on youtube I wanted to throw my laptop into the wall.

"oh, we hit this major milestone that we knew we would hit, hey guys we're dead because reasons!" "Oh, well this show doesn't want actual news and good writing on topics, so I'm just going to be really edgy and say what the man doesn't want you to hear!"

God, what a horrible show, whats even sadder is that people actually take it seriously to reinforce some of their views.

The video has already been fact checked but sure what a horrible show, it's so sad people take it seriously....

I'm beginning to see a pattern in your posts of downplaying climate change
 
The video has already been fact checked but sure what a horrible show, it's so sad people take it seriously....

I'm beginning to see a pattern in your posts of downplaying climate change

I'm' not downplaying anything, I'm simply not going to follow the "omg we literally can't do anything" manta. I'm optimistic in what can be done to prevent major, catastrophic climate change, that doesn't mean I'm downplaying the failure of action.

Yes, when the Earth warms and more carbon is in the atmosphere, ocean levels rise. However, the timescale of how those oceans rise is a pretty major point that wasn't addressed. We can talk about the danger of ice-shelves collapsing, however the timescale of collapse and retreat is THE issue at play. 50 years, 100 years, 500 total years? This is what I'm talking about, because the rate of sea level rise is nearly, if not as important as the overall total.

Also, the carbon-budget is correct. However, as renewable energy becomes cheaper and more prevalent, conventional plants that burn carbon will be forced to idle, driving up the price of their operational costs. When renewable energy, not if, becomes cheaper on a purely real time cost factor, not even adding in the costs that carbon energy is going to add due to damages to climate change, it's not going to be viable to try and retrieve the reserves we have. That's not even factoring in countries limiting their own carbon emissions and steeper regulations in the years to come for reducing emissions.

So yes, it is factually correct, however, like I said, it was drowned with "we are literally all going to die", and I simply don't view that as an option. I don't view pure apathy as a way forward in finding a solution, and people who entertain those notions are not going to be the ones trying to find a fix or have it be a major issue for stuff like elections, because in their mind it's already over.
 
I'm' not downplaying anything, I'm simply not going to follow the "omg we literally can't do anything" manta. I'm optimistic in what can be done to prevent major, catastrophic climate change, that doesn't mean I'm downplaying the failure of action.

Yes, when the Earth warms and more carbon is in the atmosphere, ocean levels rise. However, the timescale of how those oceans rise is a pretty major point that wasn't addressed. We can talk about the danger of ice-shelves collapsing, however the timescale of collapse and retreat is THE issue at play. 50 years, 100 years, 500 total years? This is what I'm talking about, because the rate of sea level rise is nearly, if not as important as the overall total.

Also, the carbon-budget is correct. However, as renewable energy becomes cheaper and more prevalent, conventional plants that burn carbon will be forced to idle, driving up the price of their operational costs. When renewable energy, not if, becomes cheaper on a purely real time cost factor, not even adding in the costs that carbon energy is going to add due to damages to climate change, it's not going to be viable to try and retrieve the reserves we have. That's not even factoring in countries limiting their own carbon emissions and steeper regulations in the years to come for reducing emissions.

So yes, it is factually correct, however, like I said, it was drowned with "we are literally all going to die", and I simply don't view that as an option. I don't view pure apathy as a way forward in finding a solution, and people who entertain those notions are not going to be the ones trying to find a fix or have it be a major issue for stuff like elections, because in their mind it's already over.

I see we are following the same pattern here of nobody who got called out for their doomsday posts bothering to reply and this thread sinking until the next "worlds over" climate change thread where we can repeat the process.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
Global warming wont kill off humanity. It will shrink areas that can grow crops and depress food production to the point where humanitarian aid is impossible. The people that will die off are those in third world countries, Middle East, and landlocked equatorial nations.

There will be a world wide migration northwards (or southwards) which will be met with armed resistance. Many will die in these fights along national boarders.

For Americans, in the future 90% of what we eat will be lab grown or made up of bugs, the entire south will be desert or arid and the majority of Americans will live in northern states.

Globalism will die for a while as nations shut down boarders in order to help their own.

The human population will lower to about 3 billion, the US population will lower to 150 million (mostly due to halted immigration and millennials not having children). Cities will become bigger and bigger as people flock to them for their automated climate control systems that keep them cooler than the surrounding country side.

Eventually scientists and engineers will devise a way to reverse global warming using technology. This tech and our new found knowledge will give us complete control over our planet, thus we will reach a Type 1 on the Kardeshev scale.

Humanity will adapt and survive like it always does. Warming wont end our species. The earth isn't going to turn into Venus because of humanity. If we were to completely die off (wont happen) the earth would eventually go back to normal.

The loss of life, both human and not, will be massive though. Millions of species will go extinct leaving us with a much less interesting world to re-inhabit once we fix the problem.
 
Global warming wont kill off humanity. It will shrink areas that can grow crops and depress food production to the point where humanitarian aid is impossible. The people that will die off are those in third world countries, Middle East, and landlocked equatorial nations.

There will be a world wide migration northwards (or southwards) which will be met with armed resistance. Many will die in these fights along national boarders.

For Americans, in the future 90% of what we eat will be lab grown or made up of bugs, the entire south will be desert or arid and the majority of Americans will live in northern states.

Globalism will die for a while as nations shut down boarders in order to help their own.

The human population will lower to about 3 billion, the US population will lower to 150 million (mostly due to halted immigration and millennials not having children). Cities will become bigger and bigger as people flock to them for their automated climate control systems that keep them cooler than the surrounding country side.

Eventually scientists and engineers will devise a way to reverse global warming using technology. This tech and our new found knowledge will give us complete control over our planet, thus we will reach a Type 1 on the Kardeshev scale.

Humanity will adapt and survive like it always does. Warming wont end our species. The earth isn't going to turn into Venus because of humanity. If we were to completely die off (wont happen) the earth would eventually go back to normal.

The loss of life, both human and not, will be massive though. Millions of species will go extinct leaving us with a much less interesting world to re-inhabit once we fix the problem.

there is just no way that this will not end in a major civil war within the USA
 

noshten

Member
I'm' not downplaying anything, I'm simply not going to follow the "omg we literally can't do anything" manta. I'm optimistic in what can be done to prevent major, catastrophic climate change, that doesn't mean I'm downplaying the failure of action.

Yes, when the Earth warms and more carbon is in the atmosphere, ocean levels rise. However, the timescale of how those oceans rise is a pretty major point that wasn't addressed. We can talk about the danger of ice-shelves collapsing, however the timescale of collapse and retreat is THE issue at play. 50 years, 100 years, 500 total years? This is what I'm talking about, because the rate of sea level rise is nearly, if not as important as the overall total.

Also, the carbon-budget is correct. However, as renewable energy becomes cheaper and more prevalent, conventional plants that burn carbon will be forced to idle, driving up the price of their operational costs. When renewable energy, not if, becomes cheaper on a purely real time cost factor, not even adding in the costs that carbon energy is going to add due to damages to climate change, it's not going to be viable to try and retrieve the reserves we have. That's not even factoring in countries limiting their own carbon emissions and steeper regulations in the years to come for reducing emissions.

So yes, it is factually correct, however, like I said, it was drowned with "we are literally all going to die", and I simply don't view that as an option. I don't view pure apathy as a way forward in finding a solution, and people who entertain those notions are not going to be the ones trying to find a fix or have it be a major issue for stuff like elections, because in their mind it's already over.

I see we are following the same pattern here of nobody who got called out for their doomsday posts bothering to reply and this thread sinking until the next "worlds over" climate change thread where we can repeat the process.

Except I've pointed out twice within this thread that the science is not conclusive regarding how quickly climate change on planetary level occur. So you might think that it might be something that would occur in 50 years but there is no guarantee that major catastrophic events aren't already in play without any realistic way to stop them in the next decade. Personally as I've already mentioned the majority of climate modeling has far more positive compared to the actual results occurring right now - hence scientists continue to be surprised by the tempo at which the ice is melting and the temperature is rising.

The last little ice age took place in a period of 15 years but no scientist is able to tell you exactly how long the actual changes took to occur.

There is no consensus regarding the time when the Little Ice Age began,[12][13] although a series of events preceding the known climatic minima has often been referenced. In the thirteenth century, pack ice began advancing southwards in the North Atlantic, as did glaciers in Greenland. Anecdotal evidence suggests expanding glaciers almost worldwide. Based on radiocarbon dating of roughly 150 samples of dead plant material with roots intact, collected from beneath ice caps on Baffin Island and Iceland, Miller et al. (2012)[6] state that cold summers and ice growth began abruptly between 1275 and 1300, followed by "a substantial intensification" from 1430 to 1455.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Dating

Now in the grand scheme of things the Little Ice Age is no where near as cataclysmic of an event as the one we are currently undergoing. But we have to stress that the changes occurring aren't the most extreme conditions - for examples most scientists have ruled out our capability to get to a run away greenhouse effect(similar to Venus's) due to emissions alone.
Simply put this could be the greatest change in our environment since the last Ice Age and continuing to propose that there is some scientific consensus regarding the speed at which it would occur is something which hasn't been reached. Most climatologists agree that the current weather models we utilize aren't advance enough to take into account many factors that effect Planetary climate. There are simply too many factors to take into account, which we have on way of measuring at the current time and that's not even getting into the humanitarian aspect of the crisis.

How exactly would already devastated regions would react to such a calamity, what is our capability to respond to a World Wide disaster, deceases spreading further due to warmer climates, famines, mass migrations, water shortages, etc etc

Besides as I've already pointed out in my previous posts - there is no point in my post that overviews the idea that humanity will die out. Simply such changes would effect the way the World is structured, there would be mass famines, there would be a huge strain caused by people living close to the coast move to safer areas, there would be more extreme weather - larger and more chaotic than previously recorded.
Warm ocean temperature would naturally lead to larger and larger cyclones and there is no guarantee that the Ocean's natural circulation will work the same way as currently. It's entirely possible that the changes in the water's temperature can effect things like the Gulf Stream leading to far less warm air/water from the Tropics being circulated towards Europe.

That's the entire point of our preparations being geared towards changing our society based on worst case estimates from the scientific community. Since that's pretty much the only option of addressing this issue with the needed severity. If there was a 1% chance of a an asteroid which could case a extinction level impact event and we knew about it a decade in advance we need to do the maximum of our capability to limit that chance to decimal points because thinking there is 99% chance of remaining unscathed is simply not enough when discussing events which can literally effect the entire population of the Earth.
 

Kazuhira

Member
As scary as it sounds, nobody will give a shit about this by tomorrow and we won't react until it's too late because we took the earth for granted.
Maybe the earth needs to become a wasteland so future generations can learn from our mistakes(If we ever colonize another planet in a distant future,of course).
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
As scary as it sounds, nobody will give a shit about this by tomorrow and we won't react until it's too late because we took the earth for granted.

I give a shit. I sold my Jeeps and bought myself very fuel efficient cars and I ride the Harley whenever possible which is even more fuel efficient. I eat less meat, I recycle whenever possible, and I will be installing solar panels within the next few years. After that I’d ultimately love to put geo-thermal heating and cooling in my house to save even more energy, but that is long term due to it’s cost. I’m also trying to convince friends and family to do similar things, and I am even having some success at that.

People do give a shit. Unfortunately we need a lot, LOT more people to give shits. It’s all very shitty honestly.


We are all in deep, deep murky shit. :(
 
As much as I'm all for personal change in order to help this along, there's ultimately only so far you can get by getting individuals to make sacrifices. Most people aren't going to make those kinds of sacrifices to their personal comfort without a) being forced to and/or b) being incentivized to do so. There's a reason that you ration during wartime and not just politely ask that everyone use less.

It's hard not to be pessimistic when a lot of country doesn't even think it's happening (and thus are unlikely to cut back on anything to help curb these issues) and so much of our political apparatus is incentivized to act like it's not happening due to who they're sponsored by. I feel like until you can change the political situation to encourage more individual change, we as a country are likely to be bigger drivers of climate change than we should be.
 

Kazuhira

Member
I give a shit. I sold my Jeeps and bought myself very fuel efficient cars and I ride the Harley whenever possible which is even more fuel efficient. I eat less meat, I recycle whenever possible, and I will be installing solar panels within the next few years. After that I’d ultimately love to put geo-thermal heating and cooling in my house to save even more energy, but that is long term due to it’s cost. I’m also trying to convince friends and family to do similar things, and I am even having some success at that.

People do give a shit. Unfortunately we need a lot, LOT more people to give shits. It’s all very shitty honestly.


We are all in deep, deep murky shit. :(

Mad respect for you sir.
 

ironmang

Member
As much as I'm all for personal change in order to help this along, there's ultimately only so far you can get by getting individuals to make sacrifices. Most people aren't going to make those kinds of sacrifices to their personal comfort without a) being forced to and/or b) being incentivized to do so. There's a reason that you ration during wartime and not just politely ask that everyone use less.

It's hard not to be pessimistic when a lot of country doesn't even think it's happening (and thus are unlikely to cut back on anything to help curb these issues) and so much of our political apparatus is incentivized to act like it's not happening due to who they're sponsored by. I feel like until you can change the political situation to encourage more individual change, we as a country are likely to be bigger drivers of climate change than we should be.

A lot of people probably don't even know the sacrifices they could be making, myself included. Some might even be too big of sacrifices like up where I live the roads suck and winters can be pretty harsh so fuel efficiency is less of a priority than simply getting safely from point A to B year round.
 

The Hermit

Member
I hope we can still fix that.

I would buy an eletric car If I had enough money, but my next car will surelly hybrid/tesla
 

The Hermit

Member
The world isn't unified on this because the world isn't equal in opportunity. Countries that depend on things that hurt the environment will continue hurting the environment because the alternative is just being more poor and worse off. Countries that could afford to do things won't because the money made lets them continue being as rich as they are now. Lives are two short for people to feel any of this impact besides reading ominous reports like this

There is literally nothing you can do. Even within the US you cannot get unity on what we should do about it, let alone every other country in the world.

Future
Member


Now thats what I call a hopless future.
 

friday

Member
TheLostBigBoss is making some very good points. If we want people around the world to get behind the idea that we need to combat climate change, then we need to stop with the doomsday arguments. When you make climate change about THE END OF THE WORLD it only serves to instill fear in people, or causes them to go into denial. What we need to do is spend our time talking about the positives of combating climate change. If you talk about cleaner air, cheaper energy, and better technology that benefits the world, then people can get behind that stuff. But if you spend all your time talking about super storms, heat waves, and fire acid raining from the skies then nothing will be done.

Basically, lets all chill the fuck out and figure out what we can do with what we have. We survived inventing nuclear weapons (an honest to god miracle), so I am sure we can figure this shit out.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
there is just no way that this will not end in a major civil war within the USA

It will happen over the next 100-150 years, not over night. The migration will be steady but slow as drinkable water becomes more and more scarce and temperatures rise destroying crop yields.


Texans will move to Texas 2, aka Montana.
 
It will happen over the next 100-150 years, not over night. The migration will be steady but slow as drinkable water becomes more and more scarce and temperatures rise destroying crop yields.


Texans will move to Texas 2, aka Montana.

Nah North Dakota will be Texas 2. Instead of drill baby drill, it will be frack baby frack!
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
Wind and Solar are hitting record lows every year as their installation rates increase. We already have places in the US where wind is cheaper than gas, and solar is cheaper than gas.

Five years time you won't have to be in a unique area to have renewable energy be cheeper than conventional energy. The world is already installing more renewable energy than carbon based, the transition is already happening.

Anyone who says "omg it's tooo laaaaate :(" just needs to stop posting. Seriously. I take this subject as one of the top two in terms of global issues and how I vote in elections, I tend to try and stay up to date as much as possible. Going into every single thread about this subject isn't making me mad because of whatever news I'm reading, it makes me mad because I see a bunch of apathy from people who clearly just want to react all sad and gloomy because it's easy.

Lets read the thread title. Yes, Earth is warming at unprecedented rates, yea no shit, we've been talking about that for the last two decades. Staying within Paris target range of 1.5C is near impossible with current emission rates. Yea, no shit, that was openly talked about during the negotiations. Without more substantive emission cuts, we will fail to stay under 2C. Yes, once again, these were center point of the Paris talks last year that Paris alone will not solve our issues. These are not "dirty little secrets" that the man doesn't want you to know.

We fucking know this, anyone who spends 15 minutes reading up on the most historic global climate deal will understand what Paris was about. It's not the "OMG WE FIXED EVERYTHING WOOO!" deal, it never was. It was the framework to do something that we should have started 20 years ago, a framework to continuously come back to the table and figure out what each country can do to continue their emissions decrease.

Ten years from now the targets we put out will be obsolete because battery tech + renewable + EV's will be so far ahead that any projection from major energy institutions will be horribly out of date and simply wrong (you know, like how they have been for the last 15 years in terms of cost of Wind/Solar and total amount installed). We take these emission trends and bake in China hitting peak coal in 2020, with 2030 being their peek emission (at best), yet we now know they hit peak coal in 2013 and are having historic cutbacks on coal production and usage. We bake in these trends with horribly conservative estimates on renewable energy, even when we have learning rates putting coal into the danger zone of being too expensive than solar in a decade.

Also I swear to god if I see one more person post that study on how agriculture is somehow 50% of global emissions I'm going to break a fucking gasket.

Yes, this is scary stuff when looking at the numerous consequences of our failure to act, but just going around spreading apathy is literally one of the worst things you could do.

also agriculture accounts for around 15-20% of global emissions iirc, so anyone telling you it's somehow magically half of global emissions are quoting a single study that has been peer reviewed to death and heavily criticized in their methodology



That thread, and article was complete bullshit. I couldn't find a single source they quoted backing up their claim. The only thing I saw was a reference to IEA having an emissions scenario of having 3.5C baked in by 2080 or something. No current emission scenerio has the world hitting 3.5C in 20 years.

Thanks for this post. I kinda brings me back some optimism.

I do wonder if these record years are because of El Niño phenomenon, which according to the article provided 20% of the heat increase this year (or something).
 

SoundLad

Member
No one's gonna give a shit until cities start getting submerged underwater. And by that time it'll probably be too late to reverse the damage. Sad.
 
The idea that the doomsday rhetoric gets us nowhere doesn't actually pan out. We've been talking about this subject for 30+ years at this point and the first 27 of them was nothing but optimism. And we did absolutely fucking nothing. Hell, we mocked an American President for wanting to invest in solar panels. The last 2-3 years has seen the huge uptick in doomsday rhetoric, mostly because the science supports it, and in that time we've made more progress in each of those 3 years individually than in the previous 27 years combined.

If anything, telling people "We're fucked" has actually gotten them off their asses.

Telling them if you don't go Vegan, your grand-children might need to live in Montana, not so much.
 

Senoculum

Member
I remember watching this strange movie, from the 70s or 80s, and took place in a high school on some alt future where global warming reached its peak. Some bullies tied a kid out in the sun so he could melt, but he had actually evolved like a plant or some shit and could photosynthesis. Anyone know what it's called?

That movie scarred me, and was the first piece of education in, "we're fucked, you know."

We need that green energy stat. And every new commercial building needs a lab grown forest at the top floor.

Maybe this is a little evil of me, but I almost want the World Cup in Qatar in 2022 to be so disastrous and to present to the world that there needs to be major strides in keeping our planet chill.
 

Cynar

Member
Even if the US were to do anything (which would be little things at a time), other countries like China are still gonna fuck it up for everyone else.
Please take your head out of the sand. China is working towards this more than the US at the moment.
 

noshten

Member
I love how AmericaGAF thinka they have the moral highground here.

Pretty much,
Nevermind that many 3rd World countries are run by a convenient dictator that only cares about staying in power not what impact selling of some resources might have on the planet. Nevermind that major polluters are sometimes corporations based in the West who pollute third world countries where there is far more lackluster regulation on their ventures. Those same corporations actually sue countries who try to pass legislation which try to tackle environmental pollution.
 
Pretty much,
Nevermind that many 3rd World countries are run by a convenient dictator that only cares about staying in power not what impact selling of some resources might have on the planet. Nevermind that major polluters are sometimes corporations based in the West who pollute third world countries where there is far more lackluster regulation on their ventures. Those same corporations actually sue countries who try to pass legislation which try to tackle environmental pollution.

Well, the USA could halve their per capita CO2 output and they would just reach the actual Chinese or European level.

It's insane what kind of super villain stuff the USA is doing right now. And the worst part of that story is that the large trade deficit even screws that stat even in favour of the USA.

People like to blame China but 33% of their CO2 output is related to exports.
 

pablito

Member
Damn. My red meat consumption is pretty low, but I have milk everyday with my coffee and that'll be near impossible for me to quit :|
 
I hope people aren't lumping in small farms who sell local and local only as part of the big picture of agriculture.

Having visited quite a few in the last month, I can say that their footprints seem to be tiny compared to factory like agriculture that ships their products everywhere.
 
It seems like heating and cooling are one of the biggest, and easiest ways that most households could make an actual difference. Are we seeing any kind of steady progress or breakthroughs in HVAC efficiency?
 
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