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[Leafsnail]

Yes but surely there's no possible act that falls under B and not A.

The question is whether breaching two points of a law is a more serious offence that breaching one.

[Frumple]

I'm sure plenty of Bay12 has read this article already.  I've been seeing it passed around a lot the last couple days.  Going to post it here, anyway.  It should be required reading for everyone on the planet.

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

I'm pretty well convinced that we are fucked.  I have very little hope for the future.  I sincerely regret having children, because it's painful to imagine the world they'll almost certainly be facing as they near adulthood.

oh hey, it's worse than we had predicted

Pretty much no one in the even most remotest of know is surprised, I imagine Honestly, I don't know what to say. A good three quarters or so of the people I've talked to with a fair grasp of the situation re:warming have just been kinda'... resigned. I mean, there's sorta' hope and usually passion to attempt change, but it's always underwritten by an air of, "Well, fuck. How the hell are we actually going to manage to do anything? Was too late when we first noticed, much less now, right? Please, someone say otherwise. Please."

At my more vindictive, I can only guess the bastards in power expect to be dead before everything goes tits up and the rest of the world rightly decides to kill them.

At my less, well. Future conditions factored in to the whole will-not-breed thing. Just hope they pass away of old age before shit goes too far south, SG. That's currently my plan, t'be honest. Die before it goes over the tipping point. Maybe do a little bit to try and influence things for the better, but... I'm quite seriously not sure what short of outright and coordinated violence would have a sufficient effect at this point.

Maybe greater protests, I'unno. One of the bigger problems is that the major powers continued insistence of not doing anything meaningful speaks of a mindset that just... I can't really adequately describe it. Worse, I'm not sure how to adequately communicate with it, to the extent those people actually and meaningfully shift their behavioral patterns. The prospecting thing mentioned in the article is a good example. 100 million a month into finding more unrenewable resources. Invest that into research and production of renewable resources and you have an investment that will theoretically pay off infinitely (effectively so, anyway).

And yet... instead of doing that, or investing nearly that much into a goddamn immortal golden goose, they're throwing all their money at the syphilitic cancer ridden goose that has the golden runs and have cut eternal dividends entirely out of the budget. It's just... not a mindset I can comprehend, really, and I don't know how to communicate with it. If someone I employed came to me and told me that it was a good idea to completely ignore investing in a market that could entirely likely pay off more in the long run than the entire history of my industry multiplied, and which we could invest in easily and still be goddamn ludicrously wealthy, I would fire that sumbitch right then and there. In these people's minds, that's somehow a position to agree with and promote.

How do you bridge that sort of gap?

[Gantolandon]

Maybe greater protests, I'unno. One of the bigger problems is that the major powers continued insistence of not doing anything meaningful speaks of a mindset that just... I can't really adequately describe it. Worse, I'm not sure how to adequately communicate with it, to the extent those people actually and meaningfully shift their behavioral patterns. The prospecting thing mentioned in the article is a good example. 100 million a month into finding more unrenewable resources. Invest that into research and production of renewable resources and you have an investment that will theoretically pay off infinitely (effectively so, anyway).

And yet... instead of doing that, or investing nearly that much into a goddamn immortal golden goose, they're throwing all their money at the syphilitic cancer ridden goose that has the golden runs and have cut eternal dividends entirely out of the budget. It's just... not a mindset I can comprehend, really, and I don't know how to communicate with it. If someone I employed came to me and told me that it was a good idea to completely ignore investing in a market that could entirely likely pay off more in the long run than the entire history of my industry multiplied, and which we could invest in easily and still be goddamn ludicrously wealthy, I would fire that sumbitch right then and there. In these people's minds, that's somehow a position to agree with and promote.

How do you bridge that sort of gap?

It's because our (western) civilization actually grew on nearly unlimited access to free, abundant energy source. Our economics can't even work properly without producing unnecessary shit which will soon be dumped and replaced by even more unnecessary shit. Using renewable energy sources requires completely different mindset, different culture, different structuring of society. And it won't happen unless it's obvious that current model is not working. So probably not yet.

It doesn't mean that these changes are irreversible - this has been done once by the first eukaryotes, after all, so it can be done again. Maybe we could replicate photosynthesis on a larger scale, for example? Still, it will be pretty costly, will require a lot of research and our society instead will reward someone who found some more CO2 buried somewhere.

Still, I don't think we are fucked as in "there is no hope". We just need to go through the usual cycle of revolutions, war, famine and other pleasantries, accompanied by climate shenanigans this time. This usually allows for defective society structures to collapse under increasing strains and help new, hopefully better ones to emerge in their place. Our children may probably face times more difficult than the ones we faced, but they may be the ones who will build a better world than us.

[Frumple]

It's just... it is obvious the current system isn't working. It's like we're in a car going ninety through a residential area, there's a solid brick wall up the road, and the only person that doesn't see it is the driver and maybe the seventy year old in the passenger seat.

Is it that there's simply no way to communicate that the bloody obvious problems are bloody obvious problems until the vehicle is pancaked against the wall? Simply because the driver's been able to go this fast and this blindly for the stretch of road leading up to the wall and thus refuses to acknowledge the wall's existence? Sure, it's a good car and someone will probably survive the wreck, but what about the rest of us?

The predicted ecological shifts if we don't preemptively act to mitigate what's happening... that's "there is no hope" to me. When someone tells you that the only solution is going to involve millions upon millions of unnecessary deaths and even more unnecessary suffering, how the hell are you supposed to react to that? That's not an acceptable solution. It might be the solution, but it's not an acceptable one.

That's what I'm asking. What's the better way? How do we convince the driver the wall's there? Research apparently hasn't worked. Activism hasn't worked. Legislation hasn't worked well enough. How do we exert enough influence to make a difference? Are the protests just not big enough, yet? What's it going to take to convince the driver to hit the breaks while it's still early enough to make a difference?

[Lagslayer]

If there is, indeed, such a wall in the middle of the road, it can go down one of two ways.

1. We deftly swerve right before hitting it. The new technology to fix the problem becomes more popular as the danger becomes more apparent/closer.

2. We slam into it, claw out of the wreckage, and make a new car. The shit hits the fan, but we keep going anyways.


Both have been known to happen. However, I don't see us dying off all together. Humans are more resilient than that. Nature is more resilient than that.

[kaijyuu]

Both have been known to happen. However, I don't see us dying off all together. Humans are more resilient than that. Nature is more resilient than that.

...As a whole. Individuals and individual pieces of nature won't be so lucky.

[andrea]

yes. it would take a really catastrophic event to drive human race into extinction. As a specie, we will survive, unless temperature goes above 50 C° even on the poles and we have no time to adapt ( as in, it happens in a decade or 2)

as for nature... as somebody said, the planet is fine. nature has seen worse and survived. It is us who are screwed.

[Leafsnail]

1. We deftly swerve right before hitting it. The new technology to fix the problem becomes more popular as the danger becomes more apparent/closer.

When my house is on fire, that's when I'll worry about installing fire exits.

[Frumple]

If there is, indeed, such a wall in the middle of the road, it can go down one of two ways.

1. We deftly swerve right before hitting it. The new technology to fix the problem becomes more popular as the danger becomes more apparent/closer.

2. We slam into it, claw out of the wreckage, and make a new car. The shit hits the fan, but we keep going anyways.


Both have been known to happen. However, I don't see us dying off all together. Humans are more resilient than that. Nature is more resilient than that.

Yeah, I mentioned hitting the wall and what happens from it. Some make it. Less than the amount that would if the folks driving would just see the wall and react appropriately. There's no guarantee the survivors still have all their limbs and no debilitating brain damage.

And swerving... it's not that simple. Technology isn't a miracle, and what we're dealing with isn't something that you can just throw shiny new tech at, snap your fingers, and have everything be okay... or at least it won't be, if we don't start throwing tech at it before the problem becomes even more evident. There's a reason so bloody many people are worried about this stuff, and worried about doing something about it sooner than later. The wall's not in the middle of the road, it's slam flat across it and there's no guarantee swerving would do anything but make it a sideswipe instead of a head-on, or, at best, "merely" clip the wall and kill one of the rear passengers. All that assuming the driver actually starts reacting soon enough to swerve.

It's not really an issue of extinction. That's a very edge case, even with us actively aiming to bugger everything up. The bigger issue is that... Just denying the wall's there, or going "oh, we'll fix the problem when we get there," or "Well, we're tough. Humans'll make it." That? That's going to see a lot of people dead, and put a lot more into a much worse situation than they'd be in if the folks with the resources, power, and opportunity would stop dicking around and start enacting preventative measures now. "Only two percent of the population died" is not goddamn acceptable.

But hell, who knows. A lot of this crap is pascal's wager with actual fucking consequences. I would be entirely damn happy if a good couple hundred years from now, the folks downplaying or ignoring the issues related to climate we're dealing with could go and say, "Told you so! No big deal." Problem is, if the folks shouting the skulls off about this are in the same situation...? "I told you so" for them is a seriously sickening prospect. Don't want vindication. Want prevention.

I just... want to know, somehow. How do we tap the driver on the shoulder and go, "Hey, maybe you're being a little reckless?" And then get them to actually react to that. Not slow down a mile and then speed up five. Just... something, you know? What's the option here besides hope I'm dead before the driver puts us through concrete? If there's genuinely no hope of changing the driver's mind, I'd like to know so I can just stop caring sooner than later.

[ChairmanPoo]

Di

If there is, indeed, such a wall in the middle of the road, it can go down one of two ways.

1. We deftly swerve right before hitting it. The new technology to fix the problem becomes more popular as the danger becomes more apparent/closer.

2. We slam into it, claw out of the wreckage, and make a new car. The shit hits the fan, but we keep going anyways.


Both have been known to happen. However, I don't see us dying off all together. Humans are more resilient than that. Nature is more resilient than that.

Dinosaurs were more resilient than that, too, and look how they ended up. Perfect-storms-of-unfortunate events do happen.  Quite frankly, our chief advantages as a species are that we have brains big enough to plan in advance and cooperate reasonably well. We should be planning in advance to avoid walls-in-the-way. Even if they aren't the one that does us in, it's sure to cause a lot of misery.

[kaijyuu]

Dinosaurs were more resilient than that, too, and look how they ended up.

As birds. There was a mass extinction event, yes, but "dinosaurs" as we define them did not completely die out. Their descendants live today.



The human race is probably gonna be okay. We'd have to kill off literally every livable habitat to kill ourselves off. The entire surface of the planet hasn't become unlivable since the moment it started being livable.

So, worst case scenario is essentially Mother 3. I'm not sure the mass brainwashing will be necessary though, nor will any fat pig themed dictators show up from outside time and space.

[andrea]

we could also revert to stone age or similar.

Still, even if I don't believe global warming will lead to extinction, I'd rather live a long, happy, life. Which means we should work on stopping it, or start to get ways to survive as well as possible.

[kaijyuu]

Oh definitely. Doomsday predictions are a bit ridiculous, but that doesn't mean this isn't a humungous fucking problem.

[Bauglir]

It's also worth noting that the current system, bizarrely, encourages people who already have economic clout to avoid innovation. Energy demand isn't likely to increase significantly if the supply does, so if it becomes abundant then their income goes down with the price. Because there's a significant barrier of entry to researching new energy sources (and they all therefore know they don't have to worry about somebody coming out of nowhere with the innovation that puts them all out of business), we may be largely fucked in this regard.

[Gantolandon]

The analogy with the car is not very good, because this is not the case of a stupid driver ignoring the wall. Most of the passengers are actually cheering him and telling him to fuck the wall and he is paid according to how fast he goes. Oh, and the car is that bus from "Speed" which will explode if he slows down. And someone disabled the brakes anyway.

It's also not that the effects of the climate change are irreversible. It's just that dealing with it may be very costly in term of resources and manpower and will offer no immediate profit, so it won't happen with the current political and economical system. The best way to deal with the problem is acknowledging it and trying to move beyond that, instead of clinging to it and hoping that the next batch of corrupt politicians will suddenly become more reasonable than all previous ones.