Climate Change in the Trump Era

Chou Toshio

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So, given how urgent global warming has become, what do you guys think the prognosis is for humanity now with Trump and his new EPA pick?

Are we fucked? Are we majorly fucked? GG humanity? Or is there actually a fare shot of technology and the renewables private sector literally pulling our asses out of the fire?

At this point, policy, domestic and global, is probably going to fail at any meaningful action. I think the only chance we got is in the escalation of innovation and incentive in the market for alternative energy and carbon/methane removal solutions. At this point, everything is counting on technology.
 
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Cresselia~~

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I do believe we are fucked.
It's not just USA that's politically in favor of climate change deniers, it's Australia and many other countries as well.
That and, I believe UK will switch back to Labour next election too, in which Labour is pro-coal and climate change denying.
 
Global warming is not even proved yet, meteorologists only gather data for the last 100 years, how could they predict the climate change patterns of planet that is billions of years old, give me a fucking break, i think you need a video or an article to support your argument.
 
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It really bumbs me out as a Republican to see how much climate denial there is. I think I might start voting Democrat just for the environment because the economy will fix itself eventually. The environment will not (at least in any feasible time). I just get really sad thinking about it.
 

Soul Fly

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We were fucked a long time back, entire communities in Asian and African countries have long been wiped out, pollution indices in developing countries have reached alarming highs and we're on average wiping out multiple species of flora and fauna everyday. Everyday an untold cost is being paid for first world consumerism. Most of the world is critically short on energy and don't have clean drinking water. Think of it as US, Europe, (and perhaps China) having one big party with the rest of the world's credit card.

Thanks to the vast inequality in wealth and privilege the majority of the posters in this US/EU dominated website have had the good fortune of being distanced from the ravages of this change.
So much so that a few can subscribe to bullshit like "the jury is still out" or other pseudo-scientific conclusions, very much against an overwhelming scientific consensus while pumping out some of the largest carbon footprints in this world (like post #3 does). It's probably very easy to question solid science with 24/7 heating, potable tap water, and your own car/ubiquitous public transportation. If you are going to have a debate about whether or not climate change is real, might as do ourselves a favour and close this thread right now.

All that has happened now is that this fuckery just accelerated big time.
USA's advocacy on this matter is particularly huge, as most other world powers at this stage are fine with just mouthing platitudes while playing realpolitik behind the scenes. Russia is too busy being Machiavelli, and China/India don't give two shits about the Climate, nor do most African countries, they're too busy clawing their way out of shit-filled bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy). No country would ever consider adhering to non-binding climate-change pacts without the soft-power applied by the US in these matters. We breached the 1 degree warming mark irreparably ages ago, if the US chooses not to honor the hard-fought Paris Agreement, then we're pretty much solidly on our way to breaching the 2 degree mark easy.

GG humans. Nothing short of a technocratic miracle will save us now. #dicksoutforelonmusk

 
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Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
We were fucked a long time back, entire communities in Asian and African countries have long been wiped out, pollution indices in developing countries have reached alarming highs and we're on average wiping out multiple species of flora and fauna everyday. Everyday an untold cost is being paid for first world consumerism. Most of the world is critically short on energy and don't have clean drinking water. Think of it as US, Europe, (and perhaps China) having one big party with the rest of the world's credit card.

Thanks to the vast inequality in wealth and privilege the majority of the posters in this US/EU dominated website have had the good fortune of being distanced from the ravages of this change.
So much so that a few can subscribe to bullshit like "the jury is still out" or other pseudo-scientific conclusions, very much against an overwhelming scientific consensus while pumping out some of the largest carbon footprints in this world (like post #3 does). It's probably very easy to question solid science with 24/7 heating, potable tap water, and your own car/ubiquitous public transportation. If you are going to have a debate about whether or not climate change is real, might as do ourselves a favour and close this thread right now.

All that has happened now is that this fuckery just accelerated big time.
USA's advocacy on this matter is particularly huge, as most other world powers at this stage are fine with just mouthing platitudes while playing realpolitik behind the scenes. Russia is too busy being Machiavelli, and China/India don't give two shits about the Climate, nor do most African countries, they're too busy clawing their way out of shit-filled bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy). No country would ever consider adhering to non-binding climate-change pacts without the soft-power applied by the US in these matters. We breached the 1 degree warming mark irreparably ages ago, if the US chooses not to honor the hard-fought Paris Agreement, then we're pretty much solidly on our way to breaching the 2 degree mark easy.

GG humans. Nothing short of a technocratic miracle will save us now. #dicksoutforelonmusk

You're actually mistaken about China, they're quite committed to converting to green energy now that they've realized that it's real and the people would soon revolt if their environment became even more polluted and uninhabitable. I think it's a result of their authoritarian government that controls the country, including the energy sector, rather than in America where oil and coal corporations obviously have an insanely huge incentive to pour as much as money into lobbying to quash green energy as possible.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/china-green-energy-superpower-charts

Honestly, the Europeans are marching towards green energy quite quickly too, it's really just the American Republicans that are holding everything back. Kind of amazing how a crowd of about 500 bought off congressmen and senators can destroy the world, isn't it?
 

Deck Knight

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All that needs to be said about the EPA is that exactly zero people were fired after the EPA's own bureaucrats contaminated a river system.

Most of the world is critically short on energy and don't have clean drinking water.
300 years ago it was nearly the entire world, bar the few civilizations that could live by a spring or a river. The only parts of Africa and Asia that do not have these problems are the industrialized nations. Industrialization is the very reason why energy and clean drinking water have proliferated to previously inhospitable or downright uninhabitable areas. By the laws of physics unencumbered by human invention, Las Vegas, Nevada should not even be possible.

Climate Change (the natural process by which nature renders the weak and maladapted unfit while the flexible and adaptive survive) is real.
So are extinction level catastrophes like meteor strikes, plague, and volcanic eruptions, which have destroyed more species than mere humanity could ever aspire to.

The unpleasant fact is that only in Western societies do we even have the capacity to navel gaze about what we are doing to mother nature.
Every single "clean" technology was and remains an invention of a post-industrial society.
Only in societies where we generally recognize human rights is an organized concern for the environment of non-humans a tenable subject of national discussion.

TL;DR pollution is a problem and we should have a pollution policy, and create incentives for waste removal and clearing technologies.
Western Societies and the power grids they operate on are the only societies with the intellectual capital and political will to do this, so let's not destroy them with idiotic carbon taxes and propaganda about polar bears.
 

Soul Fly

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1. No one's is making a case against technology here. I signed off on my last post by claiming the solution probably lies in a technocratic miracle rather than a hopeless bureaucracy.

2. Nice irrelevant factoid on EPA. What's your point? I can also do that, watch me: let's count number of police officers let off scot-free for murdering people of colour. ooooooh. :O worthless organization this policing business lets scrap them yooo... your turn.

3. Your Analysis of Energy and Water Crisis are... how do I describe it, inspired bullshit. Again no beef against industrialization, but rising sea levels rendering Bangladeshi floodplains uninhabitable, or increasingly irregular weather patterns drastically risking food security and water table stress are very real; they are direct effects of climate change. As great as industrialization is, it is unsustainable and impossibly non-ubiquitous in it's current form. As a thought experiment imagine if everyone on Planet Earth were able to suddenly access the same quality of life and resources as an average bloke living in London or New York, the planet would buckle under its own load and become a wasteland in a matter of months. That's how high the consumption-cost is for the few nations that ARE industrialized. It's the luxury of the select at the cost of many.

tl;dr: don't strawman this out as an assault on industrialization just because you suck at actually making a case. Sustainable spread of technology (that bring all these great things you mentioned) are possible only if these technologies reduce their carbon footprint and go green. A climate change skeptic in bed with the coal/oil lobby isn't going to help this. Or is lobbying and vested interests also a liberal propaganda?

3. The above cannot happen if "idiotic" carbon taxes are discounted and fossil fuel industries are allowed to sabotage green efforts. the binary between "pollution" and "climate change" is a false one, and honestly as far as I can tell one you've pulled out of absolutely thin air to sustain a ridiculous delusion. The speed-up of greenhouse gas warming and the wanton severeness of weather are directly linked to emissions from factories and cars among a host of other complex causal relationships. And even otherwise I don't understand your retarded case anyways. Green technology stays well below the carbon footprint stipulations, and are perfectly capable of developing and even thriving under such stipulations. For example stipulations have ensured that solar technology are about to break even on cost v. performance and collateral environmental impact it causes during production. A technology that would have failed to to reach this stage if the state hadn't incentivized certain sectors to invest in this technology through intervention.
How is innovation of green technology in westernized nation hampered by regulations? Write one substantiated line. Go on.
Tell us, is the Tesla Model S - an electric that can perform on par better than any gasoline car while having a 70% smaller carbon footprint even when using coal generated electricity - is that also a vile propaganda?
Where is the link? Why are you so confident about posting this absolute rubbish? God.



oh also, almost forgot,
4. Nope, man-made climate change is real. There is hard data to back it up, I not even going to engage your prosaic perversion falsely equating it to a fucking volcano or a meteorite.

Climate Change (the natural process by which nature renders the weak and maladapted unfit while the flexible and adaptive survive) is real.
ARE YOU FOR FUCKING REAL MATE. That's the singe-most conceited, misinformed, and arrogant line I have read in this forum in a long time. BEING RANDOMLY BORN INTO AN INDUSTRIALIZED NATION ISN'T DARWINISM, WTF. Let's have you move to Sahel and see how your ultra-adaptive highness survives.

Cite evidence - legitimate and peer reviewed, or don't make blatantly false claims. This isn't a matter of opinion. It only serves to derail an otherwise potentially constructive discussion.
 

macle

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Global warming is not even proved yet, meteorologists only gather data for the last 100 years, how could they predict the climate change patterns of planet that is billions of years old, give me a fucking break, i think you need a video or an article to support your argument.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/how-do-scientists-study-ancient-climates

thats how the scientists are getting data from the past to predict the changes. I suggest you actually learning about climate change before posting saying its not even proven since you dont even know basic things lol.



is that really all you have to say about the epa LOL. thats like saying all that needs to be said of bush's presidency is that he let 9/11 happen.


Climate Change (the natural process by which nature renders the weak and maladapted unfit while the flexible and adaptive survive) is real.
nice making up some bull shit definition.


So are extinction level catastrophes like meteor strikes, plague, and volcanic eruptions, which have destroyed more species than mere humanity could ever aspire to.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/20/sixth-mass-extinction-study/29028887/

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ds-of-wild-animals-by-2020-major-report-warns

like i dont think you understand that we, humans, are causing a mass extinction now lol. we will wipe out this planet.


TL;DR pollution is a problem and we should have a pollution policy, and create incentives for waste removal and clearing technologies.
Western Societies and the power grids they operate on are the only societies with the intellectual capital and political will to do this, so let's not destroy them with idiotic carbon taxes and propaganda about polar bears.
do you really think a carbon tax will destroy western society? thats a pretty extreme stretch lol
 

Chou Toshio

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I think we're at a really interesting crossroads, a crux in this story that will make or break it.

On one hand we are breaking into an era of technology where suppoting our consumer culture on 100% renewables is becoming increasingly realistic.

On the other hand we're at the breaking point where lots of other chain reactions are about to potentially make the change spiral out of control (carbon/methane previously trapped in ice spews out, coral reefs and photosynthesizing ocean organisms die off in masses and stop consuming c02, the Amazon and other forests begin to die off/drop their C02 consumption-- basically the point where what we've set off makes it so that climate change really does become driven by non-human processes; and we forfeit major control. The breaking point, so to speak.
 
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Bughouse

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I don't take offense to the suggestion that climate change renders some, maybe many, species unfit. I mean, yeah, that's true. Climate has changed before and extinctions have happened before and life goes on. This is all true. Nothing has ever managed to totally wipe life off the face of the earth since it started.

But I take offense to the idea that we are somehow superiorly fit to survive through whatever it is. Yeah you and me will and our kids and our grandkids and probably their kids too, etc.

But modern humanity with towns+ (ie not just hunter gathering and certainly not counting ancient predecessors like Lucy) has been around for about 12,000 years at the most. That is a blip on the geologic time scale. We really have no way of knowing how adaptable humanity is. Our key evolutionary strengths that have allowed us to thrive have been our intelligence and ability to communicate at a high level and solve problems as groups, nothing about our physical capacity to thrive in radically different environments.

The time to solve it is before not after. That's how we use our fitness most effectively. Insistence on a magical technological solution rather than policy solutions is shortsighted. Especially when these are the same people who have resisted any public investment to help spur said technological solutions. No, they need to be saved by a modern day John Galt individually brilliant if only he weren't held back by stifling government investment.
 

shade

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i'm applying for an MSc in climate change sciences and i planned on avoiding this thread because i expected bad bait posts like grey knights in post #3 but this quote irked me.

So are extinction level catastrophes like meteor strikes, plague, and volcanic eruptions, which have destroyed more species than mere humanity could ever aspire to.
it is widely accepted that current extinction rates are way ahead of background extinction rates, in fact in some groups of animals some studies suggest that extinction rates are over 200 times higher than background extinction rates. i'll let people who have done studies on this explain it for you:

Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived? / Amphibian Decline or Extinction? Current Declines Dwarf Background Extinction Rate / Re-Assessing Current Extinction Rates / Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction
(idk if you have access to these outside of an institutional login but a couple of the full texts can be found online. if not just read the abstracts i guess)

unless you are saying that human induced species loss will never add up to the amount of species that have been lost throughout the earth's history. well i guess you are right if you are saying that, but isn't that obvious? the permo-triassic mass extinction wiped out like over 90% of all species on earth, so i guess as long as we fall below that then we are doing just fine ye. the fact is, humans have been on this planet for a painfully short time. the time that humans have been pumping out pollutants since the industrial revolution is absolutely minute when compared to the history of the earth. to have such a huge (and potentially irreparable) effect on the biosphere in ~200 years is frankly ridiculous. like you said, though, there's no point trying to fix the problems caused by anthropogenic climate change because hey that meteor in the K-Pg extinction killed every tetrapod bigger than a dog.

just for a visual aid, here is how long humans have been on earth for when scaled on to a 24 hour clock. have a think where the 'industrial revolution' would be on this clock:



i'm not even trying to say the world is a worse place for us humans, because it isn't. i'm sat here in the rich united kingdom typing this on my personal laptop. i'm trying to say that the jury is well and truly out on anthropogenic climate change and its negative impacts on the biosphere. there should be no place for damaging/laissez-faire opinions on the matter, especially in the relevant government post in the most powerful country in the world
 
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Deck Knight

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Honestly Soul Fly a single question should define pretty much all parameters of these discussions:

Compared to what?

What problems would be worse if industrialization never took place that currently exist in any of the worst affected zones now? This exchange likely is the impacts of immediate runoff pollution (which we both agree should be addressed) vs general inability to inhabit the area whatsoever. Naturally, industrialization has had impact on which parcels of land were habitable vs uninhabitable based on how they used / abused natural resources, but overall I do not think a credible argument exists that resources are more scarce after industrialization than they were if it never occurred.

Our selection of energy technologies makes little difference. Solar panels are not "green." They require a vast array of massive mines to procure the relevant minerals used within the components. Coal is arguably cleaner than solar in carbon impact. Windmills are not "green." They are basically engines of bird and bat genocide that generate zero net energy output. Nuclear has a lot of unwanted byproducts but provided we find a better mechanism for removal, it seems like the most sustainable long term option.

As far as the climate generally: For reference, I live in a place that was under a sheet of ice a mile thick a mere 10,000 years ago. What is presently Kansas has within recent history (relative to the planet) been both entirely underwater and under the same glacier my own geographic reference point was getting crushed under. None of these massive changes in the environment came about because of SUVs and slant drilling. Our planet's own natural systems dwarf our human capacity to alter it.

I find the notion a 2 degree increase in global temperature is going to irreparably damage the earth (rather than, say, revitalizing the Vineyard industry in Greenland) a very hard sell. It's certainly more hyperbolic than my my claim that carbon taxes could destroy human progress. Humanity has never failed to respond to slow-moving doom scenarios, what skeptics take issue with is the alarmism that says we need to give climate hucksters billions (trillions in the case of huckster governments) of dollars now so they can maybe save us in fifty years.

Also we need to qualify negative effects and put them in a relative perspective because, again, the climate will change and there will be trade-offs. If we were heading into the next Ice Age (which was the theory of the hucksters in the 1970s), we would certainly be facing more dire consequences. Relatively speaking, cooling down a population during times of oppressive heat is a much easier task than heating up a population that is freezing to death. In the reverse instance where we could be sure the global temperature was going to fall 2 degrees in, say, 50 years, wouldn't we be ramping up industrialization hoping it would force the temperatures warmer?

Also because this thread isn't nearly controversial enough, we are discovering new species daily and the entire thrust of evolutionary theory is that new species are propagating to replace the old steadily. How many resources should humanity dump into an endeavor (maintaining earth's present biospheric species at current levels) which is functionally as useful as fighting the tides by cursing the moon?
 
"discovering new species daily" means we're finding them, not that they're evolving overnight as you seem to be implying

why do you think that a 2 degree increase in temperature won't massively impact things? This isn't just a case of the place feeling a bit warmer, the atmosphere and biosphere are extremely sensitive systems- just look at how thoroughly the great barrier reef is getting fucked. Other posters have mentioned a number of mechanisms by which an increase could have a calamitous effect, but even something as simple as rising sea levels makes a lot of sense- a two degree increase in temperature across all the world's oceans would represent a massive expansion in volume

Also have you looked up the average global temperature for your "ice sheet a mile thick" period? The difference is in line with the changes being discussed in relation to global warming

The comparison with an ice age is stupid because the rates of change are vastly different- what we've accomplished in less than two hundred years would normally take thousands of years to occur.

Also if you're going to make a claim as absurd as coal having a smaller carbon footprint than solar you better provide some sources
 

EV

Banned deucer.
Our selection of energy technologies makes little difference. Solar panels are not "green." They require a vast array of massive mines to procure the relevant minerals used within the components. Coal is arguably cleaner than solar in carbon impact. Windmills are not "green." They are basically engines of bird and bat genocide that generate zero net energy output. Nuclear has a lot of unwanted byproducts but provided we find a better mechanism for removal, it seems like the most sustainable long term option.
I'm curious to see the upfront carbon impact on mineral extraction for solar panels and ongoing operation versus the upfront / ongoing carbon impact of coal extraction / burning. I have a feeling that solar panels are greener in the long run, however.
As far as the climate generally: For reference, I live in a place that was under a sheet of ice a mile thick a mere 10,000 years ago. What is presently Kansas has within recent history (relative to the planet) been both entirely underwater and under the same glacier my own geographic reference point was getting crushed under. None of these massive changes in the environment came about because of SUVs and slant drilling. Our planet's own natural systems dwarf our human capacity to alter it.
It won't take another Ice Age to fuck over mankind. For instance, sea levels have been rising at a rate of 1.2 inches per decade since 1992. (This is a really short summary from NOAA trust me!!) This is important because about 40% of the US population lives along coastal areas. Rising sea levels are only one example of how a rapidly changing climate will affect us.
Humanity has never failed to respond to slow-moving doom scenarios, what skeptics take issue with is the alarmism that says we need to give climate hucksters billions (trillions in the case of huckster governments) of dollars now so they can maybe save us in fifty years.
What other slow-moving doom scenarios were you thinking of when you wrote this?
Also because this thread isn't nearly controversial enough, we are discovering new species daily and the entire thrust of evolutionary theory is that new species are propagating to replace the old steadily. How many resources should humanity dump into an endeavor (maintaining earth's present biospheric species at current levels) which is functionally as useful as fighting the tides by cursing the moon?
It's not new science for disappeared species to be replaced by the new. We wouldn't be here if the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct (probably). Pointing to the murdering of entire species and natural process of re-specialization as a hallmark of Nature's creativity is genuinely confounding, however, considering we are the responsible party for the extinctions. Like literally Orangutans will probably be extinct in our lifetime because of deforestation and maybe some other ape or monkey might be able to fill the niche left in that particular biosphere but how is that something to celebrate???

Also, what Ortheore said. New species discovery is more related to us becoming better detectives than anything else. For example, the WWF says we've discovered 1,200 new species in the Amazon alone in the decade between 1999 and 2009, or about 1 every 3 days. Species are not "created" that quickly. We're just getting better at finding them.
 
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Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
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Why do you have such a hard-on for making this about industrialization? It's a non-sequitur.
That's like responding to people trying to control drug-resistant tuberculosis by saying, "imagine how we would have fared without medicines?". No one is arguing that medicines aren't important.

Our selection of energy technologies makes little difference. Solar panels are not "green." They require a vast array of massive mines to procure the relevant minerals used within the components. Coal is arguably cleaner than solar in carbon impact. Windmills are not "green." They are basically engines of bird and bat genocide that generate zero net energy output. Nuclear has a lot of unwanted byproducts but provided we find a better mechanism for removal, it seems like the most sustainable long term option.
That's..... just wrong. It is funny that you are willing to look at human impact on the planet in terms of geological cycles, but when it comes to the development of renewable energy sources you are concerned with this crap. That's hypocrisy.

You are either not reading or selectively reading some very fucked up shit. While it is true that the manufacturing process involved in the production of solar panels, or making a prius battery produced harmful byproducts, that is an outmoded reality. Your case against windmills... is literally incomprehensible crap that exhibits zero understanding of physics. Every source of power is "zero net energy", the difference is whether or not that power is usable by us, and at what cost.

me from my last post you obviously didn't pay attention to said:
For example stipulations have ensured that solar technology are about to break even on cost v. performance and collateral environmental impact it causes during production. A technology that would have failed to to reach this stage if the state hadn't incentivized certain sectors to invest in this technology through intervention.
sources: https://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/solar-panels-repay-their-energy-debt-study
https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-panels-have-been-benefitting-climate-since-2011

funny how you also just never responded to that tangent... like at all.

As for the answer to your simple question:

COMPARED TO DEVIATIONS AND FALLOUT RECORDED IN ACTUAL SUSTAINED SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

(like just read... it's right there, in the post above you. what more can you ask for. are you even reading anything?)

I'm tired of this "we don't have enough data" myth. We do. Are you even familiar the methodologies of meteorological research? We have near exact records of climate patterns for the past 10-12,000 years and a rough estimation of the last few geological eras, this is non-controversial to anyone with an actual degree in the sciences. Your big picture analysis are worthless, and no one really gives a crap about what you think. You still aren't providing legit peer-reviewed sources, because there is more than enough to make a handy case for man-made climate change. Your David Attenborough narration about Kansas is NOT evidence. It's... nothing tbh. I'm at least done over here if you are going to continue to post ignorant shit without a shred of evidence. Congrats on derailing a potential conversation about climate change with your denialist privilege.

The only thing currently dwarfing human capacity to alter it is your inane daffiness and refusal to engage properly.
 

Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
Our selection of energy technologies makes little difference. Solar panels are not "green." They require a vast array of massive mines to procure the relevant minerals used within the components. Coal is arguably cleaner than solar in carbon impact. Windmills are not "green." They are basically engines of bird and bat genocide that generate zero net energy output. Nuclear has a lot of unwanted byproducts but provided we find a better mechanism for removal, it seems like the most sustainable long term option.
the garbage you peddle is mind numbing, Deck Knight. It takes two seconds in google to prove this wrong.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es071763q
 
As far as the climate generally: For reference, I live in a place that was under a sheet of ice a mile thick a mere 10,000 years ago. What is presently Kansas has within recent history (relative to the planet) been both entirely underwater and under the same glacier my own geographic reference point was getting crushed under. None of these massive changes in the environment came about because of SUVs and slant drilling. Our planet's own natural systems dwarf our human capacity to alter it.

I find the notion a 2 degree increase in global temperature is going to irreparably damage the earth (rather than, say, revitalizing the Vineyard industry in Greenland) a very hard sell. It's certainly more hyperbolic than my my claim that carbon taxes could destroy human progress. Humanity has never failed to respond to slow-moving doom scenarios, what skeptics take issue with is the alarmism that says we need to give climate hucksters billions (trillions in the case of huckster governments) of dollars now so they can maybe save us in fifty years.
A 2 degree difference is enough to alter ocean temperatures to basically totally fuck up marine life.

But honestly '2 degrees' isn't even the issue, the issue is that the warmer the planet gets, the more quickly it continues to warm (and vice versa - the colder it gets, the more quickly it gets cold). It's like kicking a boulder - it doesn't move that much from the kick, but it moves really goddam fast when it starts rolling down the hill.

Finally, you're completely missing the fact that the change we've made has happened in 300 years. Similar changes in temperature/carbon dioxide levels have taken tens of thousands of years when left to the planet's natural processes.
 
Global warming is not even proved yet, meteorologists only gather data for the last 100 years, how could they predict the climate change patterns of planet that is billions of years old, give me a fucking break, i think you need a video or an article to support your argument.
And what will you do when you prove to be wrong? What are you willing to bet on that? Especially when most scientists agree that climate change is real, and we need to do something, should have done something years ago? The only information you seem to be getting is from sources paid by Big Energy, so they can keep making huge profits.

Sorry if I come off as snippy, but this whole thing is undemocratic and sucks. Can't believe that several hundred idiots get to decide our fate due to technicalities.
 

verbatim

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im pretty sure most climate deniers won't be convinced until nola and miami are underwater
And then many of them will say shit like "it's God's will" or "it's a natural event", or "it's to late to do anything, it would be a waste of money to act now". Of course, at this point, I'll want to kill any climate deniers who have any authority, so they stop getting in the damned way.
 
And then many of them will say shit like "it's God's will" or "it's a natural event", or "it's to late to do anything, it would be a waste of money to act now". Of course, at this point, I'll want to kill any climate deniers who have any authority, so they stop getting in the damned way.
This got me thinking about a segment I watched on a tv show called The Newsroom here.
While the findings and reactions of the show are quite possibly, and quite probably, romanticized, you can't help but think. What if it's too late? Is climate change inevitable at this point? That's what I'm starting to think, because to reverse the trend at this point will basically never happen, due to the need for drastic and immediate changes to many Americans' lifestyles, and changes in several ways companies do business, which politicians in DC will never pass. Even someone like Bernie will roll back climate regulations when he gets a gigantic riot of angry citizens at his doorstep.

Why not do nothing to stop climate change, due to its inevitability, and just focus on preserving the natural resources of the United States? Curb all outflow from Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, etc. to build up reservoirs, stop outsourcing energy, increase solar+wind power, not as an alternative to fossil fuels but to supplement our energy supply. Stop food exports and flash freeze food to preserve perishables. Build up our military to protect our resources. Curb population growth to prevent depletion.

I'm actually 100% not joking here so someone respond to my batshit crazy idea before I start to put it into action please.
 

Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
This got me thinking about a segment I watched on a tv show called The Newsroom here.
While the findings and reactions of the show are quite possibly, and quite probably, romanticized, you can't help but think. What if it's too late? Is climate change inevitable at this point? That's what I'm starting to think, because to reverse the trend at this point will basically never happen, due to the need for drastic and immediate changes to many Americans' lifestyles, and changes in several ways companies do business, which politicians in DC will never pass. Even someone like Bernie will roll back climate regulations when he gets a gigantic riot of angry citizens at his doorstep.

Why not do nothing to stop climate change, due to its inevitability, and just focus on preserving the natural resources of the United States? Curb all outflow from Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, etc. to build up reservoirs, stop outsourcing energy, increase solar+wind power, not as an alternative to fossil fuels but to supplement our energy supply. Stop food exports and flash freeze food to preserve perishables. Build up our military to protect our resources. Curb population growth to prevent depletion.

I'm actually 100% not joking here so someone respond to my batshit crazy idea before I start to put it into action please.
no, what you're saying is completely rational. If there is a coming storm, it makes sense to prepare for it so that it can weathered.
 

verbatim

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Climate change is also not something that's "coming".

http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/socie...re-even-chinas-pollution-fades-insignificance
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/07/asia/india-new-delhi-smog-pollution/

Places like China and India started taking drastic measures AFTER things got inconceivably horrible. The idea is to avoid the worst of their pains by reducing emissions now (and by switching to something less deadly, like nuclear energy!).


Expect Louisiana to be one of the first Republican majority states to acknowledge the issue, as they are one of the mainland states most susceptible to Global Warming related issues.
 
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