Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lagslayer]

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.

I figure the wall analogy is poor because it's not completely established that there even is a wall there at all. And there are consequences for suddenly changing everything to avoid the potential wall. Massive social upheaval, riots in the streets, WW3, the list goes on. Additionally, something like that would require everyone's unconditional compliance with the new rules, and who is going to enforce those rules? Just one country not following them is going to have a domino effect, and lessen the efforts of everyone else even if it doesn't snowball.

It's not merely an economic issue, it is also a social and political issue. It's all tied together.

[kaijyuu]

Uh, yes, the wall has been completely established to exist. More so than a lot of things we assume to be true. Some questions linger as to how much we are to blame, and there are questions as to how much power we have to stop it, but those are becoming clearer and clearer and pointing more and more to "we fucked up."

[SalmonGod]

I'm.... very skeptical of the notion that, yes, it will be a huge catastrophe but the human race will survive.  I mean... yeah, it's unlikely that the effects of global warming will make the entire planet completely uninhabitable to any human population, but probably most of it.  Think of how the various consequences effecting the planet's ability to support human civilization will add up.

1.  Rising ocean levels.  Large amounts of dry land gone.

2.  Of the dry land that's left, much of it will probably become too hot to be inhabitable.

3.  Of the inhabitable dry land left, much of that will not be able to support large-scale agriculture.

4.  The inhabitable dry land left that can support agriculture will have its natural ecosystems completely destroyed by human overcrowding.

5.  Even without #4, the environment is changing at a pace that evolution cannot match.  The ongoing mass extinction is going to continue to accelerate, throwing every ecosystem around the world into chaos.  Even resilient species that can survive the climate change are interdependent with other species that cannot.  We're already losing amphibians, an entire class of species, whose populations are in rapid decline around the world.  The oceans especially are fucked.  The vast majority of aquatic species are extremely sensitive to changes in acidity and temperature, and this is already causing huge problems.  Then there's overfishing and other forms of pollution, such as freakish vortexes of plastic literally the size of fucking Texas.

6.  And there are less obvious problems, too, such as giant methane pockets trapped under melting permafrost in cold regions.  The greenhouse effect of methane gas is said to be 300 times stronger than CO2.  This methane is being released into the atmosphere at an increasing rate as temperature rises, causing a positive feedback system.  Most sources I've seen on this issue say that we've already passed the point of no return on that problem, where the rate of gas release is already enough to self-perpetuate and continue acceleration of global warming even without human contributions.  I've seen some claims that there's enough trapped methane to poison the entire atmosphere.  This is a problem that scientists have only been aware of for a relatively short period; less than 10 years, I believe.  It's hard to find reliable sources on it, because it's drawn the attention of conspiracy theory groups on the internet that have flooded Google with their garbage.  Reliable sources are out there, though, and I encourage you to look it up.  I just can't do it right now.  I'm sure there are even more obscure problems associated with the general issue of global warming that we're not even aware of yet.

And global warming is only one of many current ecological disasters.

In summary:  Only 2% of the population would be a miracle.  In fact, I think anything less than decline into some sort of post-apocalypse scenario would be a miracle.  This problem is already so advanced that I don't even know what we can do about it at this point, and I don't have any reason to believe that anybody with the power to do anything about it is going to even try.  I think the perspective of the 1% is that they will always be able to hop in their private jets and fly somewhere comfortable.  In the worst case scenario, they might need to hire some mercenaries when competition for habitat gets fierce.  In any case, they'll be the last ones standing, and I think that's all that matters to them.  They live by a winner-take-all philosophy, after all, and it drips from every word, movement, and policy.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This is not even remotely an extinction threat to humanity. The only threat is to modern civilization. You couldn't hope to drive humanity to extinction with a nuclear war, much less climate change.

Furthermore, life on this planet is all very adaptable. I might remind you all that there have been multiple extreme extinction events in the past, ones that killed off the vast majority of existing life on the planet, and that which was left obviously managed to thrive.

Even if all, and I mean literally all of the ice on Earth were to be melted (a feat even under liberal estimates of temperature change) it still wouldn't flood all that much land. We'd lose a bunch of coastline cities and low areas, but most would stay high and dry.

Plenty of agricultural plant species could still be grown even if warming were to go total. They aren't that fragile to begin with, and are even less so now that GM strains are out there.

As for overcrowding, understand that every human being alive today could fit in the city of Los Angeles. We don't really take up that much space, and if push comes to shove you can fit a lot of people in a relatively small area. It isn't paradise, but it's doable.

And all of that, all of that, assumes a worst case scenario where no one does anything to stop climate change at all. In reality, environmentalism is mainstream politics in the US regardless of denialist Republicans.

[Il Palazzo]

Worst thing can happen, we'll end up having a bit of soylent green for breakfast.
Tasty, tasty soylent green.

[Frumple]

[snip]

... so only one billion or so dead instead of three? Only five instead of seven? Only six and some change instead of the whole shebang? Or are we talking really lucky and only losing a few tens or hundreds of millions? What you're describing still has a death toll unseen in human history. I'd like to know ahead of time what to expect, so we can start trying to figure out ahead of time how to deal with all the corpses.

S'just... yeah. I've reached a point of damned morbid now. Throwing out a few comments, then eating supper and throwing in for the night. And for the record, MSH, I wish to hell I could see this issue like you seem to, right now. You seem to be considerably more optimistic, or at least less hopeless, about it.

Even if all, and I mean literally all of the ice on Earth were to be melted (a feat even under liberal estimates of temperature change) it still wouldn't flood all that much land. We'd lose a bunch of coastline cities and low areas, but most would stay high and dry.

The relocations alone you mentioned would cause an absolutely massive systematic shock to the countries that are forced to push them through, and the loss of life fallout from that would be (will be?) horrendous.

You do realize that the vast majority of the human population lives in those coastline cities and low areas, right? Moving them is definitely possible, but the logistics of doing so is terrifying.

Plenty of agricultural plant species could still be grown even if warming were to go total. They aren't that fragile to begin with, and are even less so now that GM strains are out there.

Plenty of strains could be, maybe. Why aren't they now? The states alone are going to be taking a massive hit to at least one of our primary food crops this year. It's not quite so simple to go from "having viable species that can survive in GW situation" to "growing enough to feed the human population." Throwing shiny new tech at the problem only does so much if it's not done preemptively.

Furthermore, life on this planet is all very adaptable. I might remind you all that there have been multiple extreme extinction events in the past, ones that killed off the vast majority of existing life on the planet, and that which was left obviously managed to thrive.

The life that managed to thrive after the major extinction events did so after expanses of time longer than the history of mankind... that's not very comforting to most macrofauna, including humans. To put it a different way, yes, life has survived multiple extreme extinction events. The verdict's still incredibly out on whether humans going to be able to survive this one, and more importantly, what sort of shape it's going to be in if we do. It's pretty damn likely we will if any non-insect megafauna does, but the shape we're in at that point...?

As for overcrowding, understand that every human being alive today could fit in the city of Los Angeles. We don't really take up that much space, and if push comes to shove you can fit a lot of people in a relatively small area. It isn't paradise, but it's doable.

Sticking people in small spaces causes massive issues. Logistics, psychological, and physiological issues we still haven't fully been able to deal with, as well as a very, very notable reduction in quality of life for tremendous swaths of the population involved.

"Isn't paradise" is a massive understatement of how bad what you're describing would be for much of that population.

And all of that, all of that, assumes a worst case scenario where no one does anything to stop climate change at all. In reality, environmentalism is mainstream politics in the US regardless of denialist Republicans.

Yeah, it's mainstream politics. The bigger issue is if it's mainstream business. If huge swaths of populations across the world are saying, "Do something about this goddamn now," and the powers that are actually funding the major sources of the problem are saying, "Nah." what the hell do we do?

[Heron TSG]

Holy shit, this is terrifying to me. I... wow. I am completely blown away. Luckily I'm going to a college with a focus on green energy and biology and whatnot. I just have a decision to make: Go for the space route and try to forward human expansion into the hostile environments of space, possibly changing that into making our soon-to-be-hostile planet habitable once more, or... clean energy. I could try for that, but it would take some doing.

It's not much, and I'm sure it seems naive and silly, but I'm going to try my damnedest to help fix this.

[kaijyuu]

If you become humanity's savior, I'll make sure they build a statue of you.

[kaenneth]

Worst case scenario, we can induce artificial winter.

Everyone will just have to stay indoors for 2 weeks every few years while we blast slightly radioactive dust into the upper atmosphere.

I really don't see the problem.

[kaijyuu]

I see no potential catastrophes from such a plan.

[ChairmanPoo]

I'm in. What could possibly go wrong?

[lordcooper]

I'm in. What could possibly go wrong?

There's only a million to one chance of anything messing up.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Worst case scenario, we can induce artificial winter.

Everyone will just have to stay indoors for 2 weeks every few years while we blast slightly radioactive dust into the upper atmosphere.

I really don't see the problem.

There's actually an old DOS game where this is the backstory.

[lemon10]

Damn, and here I thought my plan to use nuclear winter to combat global warming was slightly original.

[SalmonGod]

There's actually an old DOS game where this is the backstory.

Holy shit that game looks incredible.  Thanks for pointing me to it.  I've never heard of it.