Global warming causes trouble in Siberia

[JarodRussell]

There is little significant difference between climate change deniers and flat earthers.

What about those who don't deny climate change, but accept that things simply change (man made or not)?

Since the overwhelming weight of the evidence supports humanities contribution to climate change, denying it would be a delusional position to take.

I think the general point I'm trying to make is this:

Should we have prevented this, or should we even revert it?

It is a fact that mankind has been systematically changing (some would say "destroying") the face of the entire planet for thousands of years. An increase of the global temperature is just one symptom of this effect we have on this planet. We make our own nature now, by design or by accident. And just like we've completely destroyed beautiful forests to live and work in concrete buildings, we change the climate because we need to produce energy, and we need to transport resources.

That doesn't mean that we should not use clean, renewable energy, and use energy efficient technology. But I don't think the whole notion that climate change is a negative thing, or a catastrophe, or the beginning of the apocalypse, is true.

I also accept that millions of cows have to be slaughtered each day so that I (and all my fellow citizens) can conveniently go grab a juicy sirloin steak from the local super market for $19.99/kg. I'm not even denying the fact that they are mass-slaughtered by the millions. But do they have to be treated like shit before they get slaughtered? Or is it acceptable that there a millions of tons of meat wasted because they produce way too much meat for way too few consumers? No, not at all, we should do the best we can. Under the circumstances. Because, eventually, they will get killed to be eaten.

If it's not necessary that the climate changes in order to keep our civilization's lifestyle, then let's change that and use more efficient technologies. But if it can't be avoided, I see no principle difference to the other environmental changes we've already been making for the last couple of thousand years.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Without unraveling your entire ball of wax there, no activity in human history has affected the planet the way the Industrial Revolution and its ensuing changes have. The invention of the wheel, the domestication of animals, the discovery of agriculture--none of these things ever threatened to destabilize the ecological balance of the planet the way our dumping of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere does.

 

[publiusr]

Asphault and albedo changes?--agriculture is pretty big...

 

[MacLeod]

Looks like Global CO2 emissions stalled in 2014.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31872460

Not the first time it has happened however.

 

[Davros]

What about those who don't deny climate change, but accept that things simply change (man made or not)?

Since the overwhelming weight of the evidence supports humanities contribution to climate change, denying it would be a delusional position to take.

I think the general point I'm trying to make is this:

Should we have prevented this, or should we even revert it?

Nobody is suggesting anything of the kind.

It is a fact that mankind has been systematically changing (some would say "destroying") the face of the entire planet for thousands of years. An increase of the global temperature is just one symptom of this effect we have on this planet. We make our own nature now, by design or by accident. And just like we've completely destroyed beautiful forests to live and work in concrete buildings, we change the climate because we need to produce energy, and we need to transport resources.

And we are only recently understanding the impact of those activities.

That doesn't mean that we should not use clean, renewable energy, and use energy efficient technology.

The GOP sure seems to think all of that is a waste of time that would destroy our economy.

But I don't think the whole notion that climate change is a negative thing, or a catastrophe, or the beginning of the apocalypse, is true.

Are you a scientist? Because a whole bunch of scientists seem to think it is a negative thing. What do you know that these people who have dedicated their lives to this subject don't know?

I also accept that millions of cows have to be slaughtered each day so that I (and all my fellow citizens) can conveniently go grab a juicy sirloin steak from the local super market for $19.99/kg. I'm not even denying the fact that they are mass-slaughtered by the millions. But do they have to be treated like shit before they get slaughtered? Or is it acceptable that there a millions of tons of meat wasted because they produce way too much meat for way too few consumers? No, not at all, we should do the best we can. Under the circumstances. Because, eventually, they will get killed to be eaten.

That's why we regulate the meat industry and probably should increase those regulations.

If it's not necessary that the climate changes in order to keep our civilization's lifestyle, then let's change that and use more efficient technologies. But if it can't be avoided, I see no principle difference to the other environmental changes we've already been making for the last couple of thousand years.

Then maybe you should have included an older picture on New York where it was covered in smog. There was also a little thing called the clean water act that seemed to end our problem of rivers catching on fire. There is no downside to increasing our energy efficiency and reducing our pollution. Industry time and again claims they cannot afford regulation but time and again they find a way.

 

[MacLeod]

Industry is all about money, if it's cheaper to go green they will. So for example if companies where charged for every ton of C02 they emit, they would soon look at ways to reduce that cost. Be it generating their own electricty either in whole or part or introducing green technologies to reduce the amount they emit.

 

[scotthm]

Industry is all about money, if it's cheaper to go green they will. So for example if companies where charged for every ton of C02 they emit, they would soon look at ways to reduce that cost.

It may be cheaper to replace the lawmakers than to reduce the CO2 emissions.

---------------

 

[MacLeod]

I suspect that depening on where in the world yo are that would be easier than other parts of the world as in certain parts of the world big buisness throws wheelbarrows full of money at certain candidates in return for certain political favours.

But who knows perhaps I'm just being cynical.

 

[Irishman]

But lets put it this way if we bring in greener tecnologies and they are wrong what are the consequence of that?

We would have expended a considerable amount of time, effort, resources and treasure on a useless endeavor that could have been employed elsewhere.

But wasn't.

And the oil companies would be out of business, or made to retool into some other businesses.

Gads!!

 

[Awesome Possum]

But lets put it this way if we bring in greener tecnologies and they are wrong what are the consequence of that?

We would have expended a considerable amount of time, effort, resources and treasure on a useless endeavor that could have been employed elsewhere.

But wasn't.

And the oil companies would be out of business, or made to retool into some other businesses.

Gads!!

No one ever considers the feelings of the wealthiest industry in the history of humanity.

 

[Hatshepsut]

Industry is all about money, if it's cheaper to go green they will. So for example if companies where charged for every ton of C02 they emit, they would soon look at ways to reduce that cost...

A carbon tax may not work as well as we think. Norway has one. But Norwegians drive compact cars, if any car: only 260K vehicles are registered there for its 5M citizens, versus nearly one car per person in the USA. They live in compact apartment housing while we live in McMansions on acre lots. It's fashionable to blame corporations for global warming but the real cause is our own consumerism, one household at a time.

Cutting into this American lifestyle, and the attitudes underlying it, would take a pretty steep carbon tax, say somewhere from $5 to $15 per kg of C equivalent emitted. Such a measure would hurt poorer Americans and likely introduce permanent recession into the economy unless the latter's basis were changed in a fundamental way. I doubt that more than symbolic carbon measures can pass in the USA.

 

[MacLeod]

You're several million cars out

http://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-reiseliv/statistikker/bilreg/aar/2015-03-25

According to that site it's 2.5 million cars registered in Norway.

The effects of climate change might have the ability to affect lifestyle not just to Americans but everyone at some point. So what's difference it affects people today or 40 years from now?

Or is it the simple fact is that many of us likely won't be around to see the full effects of climate change.

 

[JarodRussell]

Are you a scientist? Because a whole bunch of scientists seem to think it is a negative thing. What do you know that these people who have dedicated their lives to this subject don't know?

I just think that, as I am writing this sentence at a place that was covered by a glacier that was several kilometers thick thousands of years ago, the fact that ice melts is not a negative thing by default.

Back then, our current society would have panicked, and for example tried to prevent the glacier from retracting by covering it with plastic sheets.

And the fact that we mammals are right now dominating a planet that was previously dominated by now extinct dinosaurs, makes me also think that it's not the apocalypse if species go extinct due to environmental changes. Old species go, new species evolve.

If we can reduce our influence on the environment, let's do it. But I really don't see how it's inherently negative. I see that our society has a problem with change in general, because change is inconvenient. One region becomes a desert, while the neighboring region becomes a garden. Which means that people will start to wander, and that will cause conflicts. Some regions will get more and more draughts, and it will be expensive to provide an infrastructure. And insurance companies start to panic because of all the potential storm and flood damage to settlements near the coastlines (because, even in thousand years, we apparently haven't learned a single thing). And so forth and so on.

Apparently no one cares that this has been happening constantly, and that we are also the result of environmental changes. Maybe the dinosaurs killed themselves by farting. Was a terrible, terrible catastrophe for them. But it didn't kill the planet, and other species were very happy about it.

Europe is the result of the Migration Period, which was, among other things, caused by climatic changes as well. Was a terrible, terrible catastrophe for the Roman Empire.

I really don't think we're all going to die.


Taking measures to reduce human influence on the climate is inconvenient as well. It's just a question what's going to be cheaper (preventing it or living with it), and that's the route we're going to take eventually.

 

[Davros]

So I will take your answer as No you are not a scientist and you don't know anything the people who have dedicated their lives to studying this subject have. And nobody is saying everybody will die. Just a whole lot of people who don't have to if we do something about it. But sadly it is not the cheapest solution we will pursue as you predict, but the one that brings the most profit to those with power.

 

[Mudd]

The effects of climate change might have the ability to affect lifestyle not just to Americans but everyone at some point. So what's difference it affects people today or 40 years from now?

It matters to people now. In forty years it will matter differently to people then.

For possibly the first time since he began posting on TrekBBS JarodRussell is right, in however limited a sense. Climate change isn't going to destroy the world or end life on Earth. It's gonna be real uncomfortable for humanity, though, and may well bring our modern age of technological and social progress, as we're used to thinking of it, to a lingering end.

The thrust of what Hatshepsut says is observant: these big, monolithic "solutions" to big problems eventually devolve to depriving the poor and politically powerless. Back when the population explosion was everyone's favorite inevitable catastrophe we in the West were very interested in curbing the irresponsible reproductive habits of all those folk we had lately colonized and been pleased to use in great numbers as cheap or free labor. Stop having so many kids and you'll get magically rich was essentially what we told them then - the so-called "demographic shift" - when what we had actually done was quite different.

But what the hell, our lifestyles were at stake.

What's happening with climate change is real, but the proposed solutions are speculative at best. You can't sell people who have any real influence on the way they're governed on sacrificing the quality of their existence today on the premise that a certain course of action might or might not improve the world fifty or seventy or one hundred years from now. Therefore we're not doing these things, aren't going to be doing these things in time for them to matter, and humanity is just going to have to adapt to the changing climate as best we can.

 

[Hatshepsut]

You're several million cars out

http://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-reiseliv/statistikker/bilreg/aar/2015-03-25

According to that site it's 2.5 million cars registered in Norway.

I stand corrected. The source I consulted likely dropped a zero in their figure!

The climate change thing is a bigger challenge than earlier alarms about the environment. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was put to bed by banning DDT and the ozone layer likewise by banning CFC-12. There were substitutes for the chemicals and it all went down painlessly.

But there really are no good substitutes for fossil fuels in quantity. Nuclear and hydroelectric have already been nixed for good by environmental correctness. (Nor are they as carbon-free as we're led to suppose. The required cement making emits lots of CO2, for instance.) Wind and solar are fine, but they won't replace too much of the 90% of our energy we get from oil, gas, and coal.

With China and India wanting to join the middle class I'm not real optimistic. Given enough time, 500 years perhaps, we will have burnt all the fossil carbon in the Earth's crust and the problem will solve itself after that.

 

[Ithekro]

The presented solutions for today appear to be whatever puts the most money into the most pockets. Be it politicians (votes and cutbacks), corperations (governement money and people paying for things via price increases justified as "enviromentall friendly"), or scientist (funding for studies, projects, and "findings"). Regardless on if they are doing any good or not. It is easy money if you can spin it to your liking.

 

[MacLeod]

The effects of climate change might have the ability to affect lifestyle not just to Americans but everyone at some point. So what's difference it affects people today or 40 years from now?

It matters to people now. In forty years it will matter differently to people then.

For possibly the first time since he began posting on TrekBBS JarodRussell is right, in however limited a sense. Climate change isn't going to destroy the world or end life on Earth. It's gonna be real uncomfortable for humanity, though, and may well bring our modern age of technological and social progress, as we're used to thinking of it, to a lingering end.

The thrust of what Hatshepsut says is observant: these big, monolithic "solutions" to big problems eventually devolve to depriving the poor and politically powerless. Back when the population explosion was everyone's favorite inevitable catastrophe we in the West were very interested in curbing the irresponsible reproductive habits of all those folk we had lately colonized and been pleased to use in great numbers as cheap or free labor. Stop having so many kids and you'll get magically rich was essentially what we told them then - the so-called "demographic shift" - when what we had actually done was quite different.

But what the hell, our lifestyles were at stake.

What's happening with climate change is real, but the proposed solutions are speculative at best. You can't sell people who have any real influence on the way they're governed on sacrificing the quality of their existence today on the premise that a certain course of action might or might not improve the world fifty or seventy or one hundred years from now. Therefore we're not doing these things, aren't going to be doing these things in time for them to matter, and humanity is just going to have to adapt to the changing climate as best we can.

Surely the aim should be to leave a better world for our children and our childrens children.? By not taking steps today to reduce our impact on the enviroment aren't we possible making things worse for them?

Is when you add up all those little things we as individuals can do that a difference could be made.

For example

Driving a more fuel efficent car
Possible walking instead of taking the car if you can
Buying more energy efficent appliances/light bulbs

Not saying you have to rush out now and buy a more fuel efficent car or energy efficent appliance just next time that you have to replace them. If Hundreds of millions if not billions of people do that a difference can be made without any real impact on quality of life.

And in the end you save money because you spend less on fuel for your car and your home.

 

[Ithekro]

Those things wil happen over time regardless as the older products ware out. (aside from the walking I suppose).

 

[Mudd]

But there really are no good substitutes for fossil fuels in quantity...

With China and India wanting to join the middle class I'm not real optimistic. Given enough time, 500 years perhaps, we will have burnt all the fossil carbon in the Earth's crust and the problem will solve itself after that.

Exactly so.

Surely the aim should be to leave a better world for our children and our childrens children.?

"Should" is seldom a useful word. People won't trade today for a century from today.

The car I drive now easily gets twice the mileage of an equivalent vehicle of forty years ago and releases a great deal less pollution of all kinds. That ain't gonna do it. As Hatshephut suggests, the Chinese like them some cars - and they like big ones, particularly German-built SUVs.

Oil and coal offer the best combination of energy density and transportability by far. And we're swimming in oil, at the beginning of a glut that has no end in sight; apparently there's a lot more of the stuff in the ground than we were telling each other a decade or two ago. I hate what it's doing to my 401K but I gotta admit it's satisfying to watch the big energy companies struggling to maintain their profit projections, based on a scarcity model that doesn't apply now.

You know what people in America do as soon as oil prices drop fifty cents or so? They trade in for bigger cars.