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[Trekkin]

If you've got bits, spill the beans and gib data pls

No, that isn't how this works. See, in exchange for being able to publish freely, access to actual data is restricted to people who value it enough to pay for it. That both maximizes how much we can do (since we're not paying $4000 open-access fees out of our grants) and helps sort the signal from the noise, since most of the crackpots out there don't want to pay to get access to data they wouldn't understand and aren't affiliated with institutions who do it for them.

Unfortunately, it also means that discussions like this rapidly and inevitably devolve into unqualified and underinformed people arguing over whose fault it is while using their helplessness to justify doing nothing but laughing at the stupid sheeple who don't agree with them. It's just not a productive discussion to have in public, really.

[Loud Whispers]

No, that isn't how this works. See, in exchange for being able to publish freely, access to actual data is restricted to people who value it enough to pay for it. That both maximizes how much we can do (since we're not paying $4000 open-access fees out of our grants) and helps sort the signal from the noise, since most of the crackpots out there don't want to pay to get access to data they wouldn't understand and aren't affiliated with institutions who do it for them.

Hahaha isn't that cute, illustrates our current year predicament well nice and proper. Mankind imperiled, "actual" data which could illumine what perils are faced in the face of apparent public ignorance - and no one can see it! Haha

Unfortunately, it also means that discussions like this rapidly and inevitably devolve into unqualified and underinformed people arguing over whose fault it is while using their helplessness to justify doing nothing but laughing at the stupid sheeple who don't agree with them. It's just not a productive discussion to have in public, really.

m9 we can ignore the smug valley people who use words like sheeple. Cos the people who know don't want anyone to know, the people who don't know aren't doing anything, the people who do know aren't capable of doing anything, all in all - nothing is done, but there's nothing to be lost in learning what happens and what can be done. In particular I take issue with your immediate dismissal of impending doom thread despite the existence of only one prior such thread, and that thread went exceptionally well, we are not so resigned and cynical that we have anything to lose by discussing, unless we are to accept that the sum of mankind is so totally ignorant that they couldn't possibly fathom the reality of actual data and ergo, humanity is fucked.

Now yeah, we're fucked, but I also say it's never too late for damage control. For starters, do you believe publicly available data on plastic pollution or greenhouse gases is not actual data, and that we are incapable of discussing its observable effects - and what consequences it has upon us as a species? I think you've given up before the discussion begun m9

[ChairmanPoo]

Unfortunately, it also means that discussions like this rapidly and inevitably devolve into unqualified and underinformed people arguing over whose fault it is while using their helplessness to justify doing nothing but laughing at the stupid sheeple who don't agree with them. It's just not a productive discussion to have in public, really.

[Xantalos]

This seems relevant

[Baffler]

If you've got bits, spill the beans and gib data pls

No, that isn't how this works. See, in exchange for being able to publish freely, access to actual data is restricted to people who value it enough to pay for it. That both maximizes how much we can do (since we're not paying $4000 open-access fees out of our grants) and helps sort the signal from the noise, since most of the crackpots out there don't want to pay to get access to data they wouldn't understand and aren't affiliated with institutions who do it for them.

Unfortunately, it also means that discussions like this rapidly and inevitably devolve into unqualified and underinformed people arguing over whose fault it is while using their helplessness to justify doing nothing but laughing at the stupid sheeple who don't agree with them. It's just not a productive discussion to have in public, really.

I can use my university credentials to look at whatever paper you send me a link to. I'll be happy to screencap it and post it in the thread for everyone's benefit, too. Uses like that for journal articles are expected and in fact encouraged, which is the reason institutions pay such enormous sums of money for access to them. And people actually do very frequently pay to get published. A spot in a prestigious journal like Nature might cost a group as much as $1,000 depending on how many colorful graphs are in their paper.

But the truth though is that there isn't some research group out there that's got all the answers written out in an easily digestible format but it's somehow eluded the general public and/or been suppressed by nonspecific people who want to continue making money dumping hydrochloric acid directly into the world's oceans. It's an extremely messy problem, and perhaps more importantly it's not one that climate scientists are actually qualified to solve. That requires a multidisciplinary approach on a level that doesn't really even exist anywhere else. The problem is compounded exponentially by the fact that all of those people have different opinions on what should be done or even what's possible to do in the first place (and sometimes what constitutes 'acceptable losses') and there's not really any way to test any solution beforehand because our climate models are still woefully inadequate because of the sheer number of knock on effects. A sense of urgency doesn't just lead to more resources being thrown at a problem, it means people are less willing to give ground on solutions too. The outcome could be disastrous if we choose wrong after all. So for every prospective geoengineer, you've got someone talking about how dumping whatever thing in the water to correct its pH will severely destablize ocean currents if it's done on a timescale short enough to actually make a difference. The end result is overall strategic paralysis but with some whittling away at the margins. It's something, but it won't be enough.

[Yoink]

My favourite band, Bell witch, are releasing their new album. 'Tis a continuous, 83-minute passage of music that I have not yet had the chance to listen to, but which I have no doubt will be every bit as beautiful, heart-wrenching and thoughtful as their previous work. Here's hoping they release a cassette version at some point... though this might be an important enough album to warrant shelling out for an overpriced wax frisbee.

A number of other excellent doom bands, such as Chrch and Year of the Cobra, also have new music imminent. Exciting times.
And this is after the flurry of music releases that was already occurring!

(Yes, I may have wrongly interpreted the thread's title at first glance, oh well.)   

[TheDarkStar]

WE'RE ALL DOOMED

carry on

But more seriously, yeah, the climate is not on a good path right now. It's not just carbon emissions, either (although those are a big part of it): pollution is still building up, especially plastic waste and especially in the oceans; ocean acidification continues (admittedly related to carbon emissions); habitat destruction is still occuring, both directly with land being developed and indirectly as poisons kill off specific species (like bees). I wonder what it will take for a country like the US to change? Presumably a disaster long-lasting and impactful enough that the average person will think "hey, this isn't good but there's something we can do about it", or better yet " ahhh make it stop" (hopefully without too much long-term damage).

[Sheb]

PTW

[Helgoland]

What he said.

[Egan_BW]

My favourite band, Bell witch, are releasing their new album. 'Tis a continuous, 83-minute passage of music that I have not yet had the chance to listen to, but which I have no doubt will be every bit as beautiful, heart-wrenching and thoughtful as their previous work. Here's hoping they release a cassette version at some point... though this might be an important enough album to warrant shelling out for an overpriced wax frisbee.

A number of other excellent doom bands, such as Chrch and Year of the Cobra, also have new music imminent. Exciting times.
And this is after the flurry of music releases that was already occurring!

(Yes, I may have wrongly interpreted the thread's title at first glance, oh well.)   

I approve of this usage of the thread title.

[Max™]

Hey, hands up everyone doomsaying about how there's "nothing we can do" who has actually read the primary literature on climate change and proposed solutions. Not pop science articles, not summaries, but the actual data.

/

Though I'm not sure what one is going to elucidate by staring at the data rather than the research.

[wierd]

You really need both.

Data without the research is ambiguous. You don't know the methods, and thus cannot determine rigor.

Research without data just gives methods, without results. You can't evaluate validity of the reported finding with any confidence.

[ChairmanPoo]

Eehh, what he is saying is very much bovine waste.  Not everyone needs to check all the primary data on any given subject all the time, even working within the field.  We'd get nowhere that way, and you'd quickly lose perspective.  That's why review articles and guidelines are a thing, among other things.


I kind of wonder if he has, himself, but honestly I don't give a flying turd about that, or about whether he's really a climate change denier or not.  I'm guessing this was a bait to get questioned about this thing and boast that he has read some article or another.    By the tone his last few posts I'd hazard he has discovered Ayn Rand, LessWrong, or somesuch and therefore feels very enlightened.

[Paxiecrunchle]

Well at least 100 years from now those eroded plastic beaches will feel nice and comfy between our toes, right?

[Trekkin]

Eehh, what he is saying is very much bovine waste.  Not everyone needs to check all the primary data on any given subject all the time, even working within the field.  We'd get nowhere that way, and you'd quickly lose perspective.  That's why review articles and guidelines are a thing, among other things.


I kind of wonder if he has, himself, but honestly I don't give a flying turd about that, or about whether he's really a climate change denier or not.  I'm guessing this was a bait to get questioned about this thing and boast that he has read some article or another.    By the tone his last few posts I'd hazard he has discovered Ayn Rand, LessWrong, or somesuch and therefore feels very enlightened.

It wasn't bait, it was overwhelming pessimism. It was me pointing out that it's par for the course on these forums for people to confidently claim things wildly at odds with reality, like that you can see the moon landers through a telescope or onions release sulfuric acid when cut or a dozen other things that are simply wrong on an elementary level. I know this is going to sound really snotty, moreso than anything I've said yet, but it's really depressing to realize how little effort people make to correct themselves when I've worked as a scientist so long that I check everything I can reflexively. More than I should, really, but there you go.

And then you see a thread like this. Admittedly, about the only unqualifiedly accurate thing in Baffler's post is his description of the scale and complexity of the problem, but in that he's spot-on: this is huge and complicated, and the figures the government releases are only part of the problem and an incomplete description even of that. Temperature measurements and carbon levels are meaningless without some sense of what they imply for the climate and projections of climate change are more subtle than a lot of public-facing articles really have the space to articulate. So they go with dire but vague warnings how the whole planet's going to melt and burn and die, and I can see how that would feel kind of hopeless in general but the details really do matter.

I'm not denying climate change. Anthropogenic global warming is real and is definitely passing catastrophic levels, but catastrophes aren't apocalypses and we've got more tools than ever before to deal with them. People are worried about viruses coming out of the permafrost and that's a real problem, but it's one to which the rational design of peptide viral entry inhibitors is providing solutions with increasing rapidity. You can find the figures on how much farmland we're going to lose to desertification and those figures are real, but unfortunately the order-of-magnitude improvements in the efficiency of aeroponic systems that would make it way more feasible to grow crops in those deserts anyway aren't published yet.

So I am, I suppose, a denier of the inevitability of the apocalypse, not because there's a single paper out there with the perfect answer on how to undo a century of ecological abuse but because we're rapidly accumulating the means to ameliorate its specific effects. People haven't put the parts together yet in ways that make it obvious what they can do for these specific problems, but that's a political problem of a sort we're increasingly able to model to real, predictive effect. So I'm hopeful.

I'm just not hopeful for reasons I can show to you all without Herculean effort; laying aside the requisite copyright infringement, the theoretical background to counter the inevitable knee-jerk "it'll never work" would by itself take years to impart and almost nobody willing and able to put in that effort hasn't already done so -- and that's fine, because most people are irrelevant anyway. So no, this wasn't bait. I'm not willing to put in the effort required to convince you of anything in any way that actually matters (rather than just by cudgelling you with links until you shut up, as is standard operating procedure on here), so boasting of reading "some article or other" would ultimately be pointless. I'm just venting, because it pisses me off when ignorant people call what I do futile based on nothing but what they want to be true and I've learned there's no stopping them. (See all the people advocating for genocide to "prevent overpopulation" and then being all cool and edgily misanthropic.)