"While a world where the average temperature was, say, five degrees higher might be perfectly inhabitable, or even a rather nice place, changing from our current climate to that climate is likely to be excruciatingly economically painful."
What's impressive is that this is not exactly a subtle and immensely complicated point; it is not an insight available only to those with degrees in climatology.
Instead, it's a point that any third-grader should be able to understand, and it's apt to occur to many sixth-graders.
Wait, this started with a post on NRO? Never mind.
So instead waves of hairy Germans invading Rome, our civilization succumbs to waves of waves. Mars here we come.
The warming deniers need to read a bit of paleo. Lot's of areas might end up rather nice, eventually. But typically one of the immediate consequences of rapid climate change is mass extinctions.
Mmmm. Mass extinctions.
1: Yeah, it is blindingly obvious, isn't it. As you say, this is NRO we're talking about.
According to the GPS I'm living 341 feet above sea-level now. Let 'em eat krill.
Yeah, it is blindingly obvious, isn't it.
yeah.
The other thing (well, one other thing) they don't understand is that this warming trend is not, like, an abrupt process. We are introducing energy into a dynamic system, and dynamism in weather systems is, at least from the human perspective, quite dangerous. It's like heating water; you can't make steam without some awfully turbulent roiling going on.
I'm on a pretty tall hill myself, but I do like using the subways. Canoe commuting only works if you have somewhere to go.
This is one of several issues that make me fear that this summer's visit with my parents may finally get unpleasant on the political front. Apparently cultural resentment trumps critical thinking every time. And they're intelligent, capable, good-hearted people.
changing from our current climate to that climate is likely to be excruciatingly economically painful.
homo economicus
blindingly obvious
can I just switch to being opinionated grandma?
homo economicus
blindingly obvious
big black nemesis
parthenogenesis
Huh, looks like the elevation where I live is only 15 feet. Time to do something about global warming, people!
9: Welcome to human civilization. Would you like some water for the table or cocktails before you order?
We have an incredible capital investment which depends on the availability of cheap fossil fuels also. Burning all the fossil fuel resource may or may not have seriously bad climate effects. Running out of fossil fuels appears almost certain to have bad economic and political effects.
13: But worth noting that for Americans of the sort that politicians care about, the economic dislocation caused by climate change will bring lots of economic opportunity. If you're making money and you're confident that you and yours will be able to find a nice place in Greenland when the time comes, the status quo doesn't look so bad. It's not like we don't have a fair bit of experience at not doing things to make life in Bangladesh suck less.
But that's really not what's going on with my parents. For them, it all gets hung up in the politics of who's for doing something about climate change and who's against it. They deeply, fundamentally can't identify themselves with Al Gore/treehuggers/clueless but self-important liberal types who dissed them 40 years ago. They can engage with climate change a bit on an intellectual level, but that's as far as it goes.
16: Not to mention folks that get their news from Rush.
But I gather that that's what Rush does: he provides a narrative for people to explain away conflicts between their political allegiance and information that might be expected to cause them to reconsider that allegiance.
They deeply, fundamentally can't identify themselves with Al Gore/treehuggers/clueless but self-important liberal types who dissed them 40 years ago
Who dissed them 40 years ago? Am I being dense here? (okay to say so)
19: I'm just talking about random culture-clash sort of stuff. When you're a small-town working-class kid, raised Republican, going forth into the world of educated folk, you don't necessarily have the tools to distinguish between clueless self-righteousness and The Very Face of the Left. How that manages to persist 40+ years later is a bit more complicated, but it's still deeply wrapped up with self-image and what parts of one's life one takes as defining one's true self and what parts have to be kept at arms' length. (Not defending, just trying to describe.)
21: Okay. I take it this is a bit like my own family being absolutely clueless about what I'd call the truth of the matter about things in the world. Talking to them about current affairs is, shall we say, like banging your head against a wall. Sort of mutual blank stares. Basically, we don't talk about it; or I hear shit I can barely stand, and take it with the most deadpan expression I can manage.
Capital invested on the oceanside of mean high water plus 16 feet is at risk. In LA, the ground levels at the Ports of LA and Long Beach are easy to raise by 16 feet (at least not too hard) - they are moving stuff like container cranes and huge volumes of earth all the time. They can add to the breakwater and build a couple higher bridges. People in the port are mobile. We are not talking about a sudden flood in 1-2 days.
What about the apartment buildings and stucco houses? One can raise them without vast effort (ask Ted Stevens in Alaska). Most houses and apartments in LA are not build to last over say 40-50 years and most are pretty old.
Loss of ocean front property is not good, but not "the world is ending" awful.
What is to keep us from using the new water as an avenue for travel - build dikes and canals as in Venice CA, Venice Italy, Florida?
If LA/LB can adjust without necessarily dropping the US into an economic black hole, why not China, EU, East Coast?
It is not ok to keep pumping out CO2 like it is harmless, but let's not forget that people can adapt and prosper like no other species.
If LA/LB can adjust without necessarily dropping the US into an economic black hole, why not China, EU, East Coast?
The U.S. and EU will be largely be able to adapt. But lots of people in the world aren't living in rich countries. Shitloads of people in South America, Africa, and Asia are going to be seriously fucked.
I always assumed high-value costal cities would just dutchize themselves. Maybe thats prohibitivly expensive, but more likely than getting rid of auto culture.
This is why I am buying mountain property in Costa Rica. Screw the beach. Let it come to me!
23 - No no no no no no no nononononono.
That would be OK if resources were infinite. I'm afraid that we are genuinely talking about "the world is ending" awful. My fear for climate change is that it is going to mean more catastrophic failures on the order of Katrina/New Orleans. A lot more, say one or two of those per decade. In my state, my specific fears are:
flooding in the Sacramento/San Joaquin - loss of major cities, costs of billions of dollars every time until we give up replacing them
wildfires in LA and SD, with not enough water to fight the fires, costs of billions
collapse of Delta levees in an earthquake, flood surge, costs of a couple billion dollars to build an emergency Peripheral Canal.
So, imagine one of those per decade, and California could still make it.
Usual risk of an earthquake, unrelated to climate change.
BUT, I don't see how California can afford those, on top of the incremental costs you're talking about. Raising the Port of Oakland, Port of LA? Doable, probably for only several hundred million dollars. But you also have to build twenty foot levees around the SF and Oakland Airports. You have time to do that, say, twenty years, and it will probably only cost what, a hundred million dollars each? Creating new canals for transport? Raising all sewer and stormwater systems so the new ocean levels don't backwater them? Abandoning and re-building old coastal rail-lines? Each of those probably only cost tens of millions of dollars, but they will ALL have to be done. Put in a couple more reservoirs, to accommodate longer droughts and catch flashier floods? Easy billion each. And that is to have the level of infrastructure we have now. We have to spend that money to stay in place in the face of climate change.
I don't understand where that money is going to come from, and I especially don't understand it when energy costs are rising constantly and water is about to become more scarce. I really and truly don't understand how we're going to pay the creeping incremental costs of adjusting AND the occasional catastrophic failure.
And how are the feds going to bail out California if Florida is going under faster, and there are more tornados in the Midwest, and New York would like to keep its subway above water?
15:What he said.
Peak Oil. Peak Oil. Peak Oil.
Really solve Peak Oil and you will have solved global warming. And Peak Oil is hitting us hard right now.
Energy = food = people. The American "waste" is a cardboard box for the computer which creates a job in Indonesia and a lumberjack in Sumatra and a farmer to feed both of them.
Decreased energy use = less people. Simple as that. Unacceptable.
27:
Yes, but think of all the cool natural disaster pictures!
Closer to home, I'm a little concerned about how many people are going to want to spend their money in Waikiki when there's a levee between it and the ocean and the climate is like DC in August pretty much all the time.
I do love flood pron, but we can't afford it all the time.
What Megan said. :)
70% of world agricultural production depends on fossil fuels.
There is a good energy plan over at Kos if you want a link. Thing is, we have to do it right now, while we can use oil to make the solar panels and ship them from China, and bring the copper up from Chile. Twenty years from now we will be broke, the world will be dying, and every drop of oil will go to Fighter Jets.
I don't see how solving Peak Oil is going to solve this problem, unless you're imagining that we get a nuclear power plant on every corner and cold fusion in every garage to power our electric Jetson cars. (I don't see how not solving Peak Oil is going to solve this problem, except in the very long term.) How many wedges would we get if magically all cars in the US were plug-in hybrids? Two? Because China sure as hell isn't going to go that route.
I want to know how one finds out the elevation of a given property; we're seriously considering this in looking for a house, but I can't seem to find out the information. Anyone?
Altimeter-barometer. Outing stores have them.
I'm not sure about elevation itself, but if you're interested in elevation as a proxy for flooding, you could go straight to .
I'd actually appreciate some more information - links - about whatever the current state of discussion about Peak Oil is. It was 6 months ago or so that I last read anything detailed. I suck.
Kos, you say? Alright, I'll look.
And. It's all about the food, please don't forget.
Trying again:
Straight to FEMA's floodplain maps.
food = people
McManus is talking soylent green. I'm reporting you to the FDA, buster.
35: What does "solving Peak Oil" even mean?
36: http://www.terraserver-usa.com.
I also find it hard to reconcile assertions of hugely wasteful water usage and vast percentages of food production going to feed livestock so we can eat meat with "we're going to run out of water and starve". Surely we'll have brown lawns and eat smaller hamburgers instead?
If you use this tool and drag the pointer over the spot you are interested in, the elevation will show up in the side bar.
Twenty years from now we will be broke, the world will be dying
There's alternatives to keep us going. Between our coal reserves, Canda's tar sands, oil shales, etc., we're not just going to wake up one day to no energy. But poor countries aren't going to have the know how and the money for that kind of thing, and they're going to be hosed.
I get most of my Peak Oil info from the Oil Drum, but they're a little bit crazy in a sort of Burning Man/Paul Ehrlich way.
coal reserves, Canda's tar sands, oil shales
Awesomely enough, these are all much worse in terms of greenhouse gas emission than current sources of oil.
Awesomely enough, these are all much worse in terms of greenhouse gas emission than current sources of oil.
Yeah, not fantastic alternatives. I'm just saying that contra Bob, we're not just going to sit around and starve as traditional OPEC oil sources get low.
Ooh, looks like my preferred neighborhood is at 100 feet above sea level. Safe! ish.
43:
I also find it hard to reconcile assertions of hugely wasteful water usage and vast percentages of food production going to feed livestock so we can eat meat with "we're going to run out of water and starve". Surely we'll have brown lawns and eat smaller hamburgers instead?
I don't understand. Is this some sort of naysaying?
50: Durham is at about 450 feet, B. You could come be our kids' nanny.
Though for real safety, we'll all be crashing at Farber's. Gary, go get more couches.
52: Sure, I'll nanny for your brats.
51: I had trouble getting his point too.
51: Just saying that no matter how attractive the prospect of massive societal collapse followed by violent revolution is, it's probably not going to happen.
And it's not going to happen exactly beacuse we currently use water like it's free, and we all eat meat even though it takes ten times the acerage to feed people with cows than just with whatever the cows eat, so rather than everyone dying of starvation and thirst, people will eat roasted veggies and not play golf. There's a lot of slack in the system.
In the US, and probably Europe. Large parts of Africa and Asia are going to be fucked.
40:Peak Oil Information at theoildrum.com and places they link to. 46 is right all threads there lead to the Fall of the Roman Empire.
40:Energize America by 2020 ...this is what I was talking about at Kos. I think they are underestimating the costs.
45:"...they are going to be hosed" Umm, they will not sit & starve either, or if so, they will be really pissed. And if America tries to survive with a roof over each head and 1500 calories, America will get really pissed. Think 70s times ten.
I couldn't take a doubling of energy costs here in Dallas. We probably spend 10-15k a year now. Would I move to Kentucky? There goes the job, the IRA, the healthcare at age 60. I'll move to the DC Mall.
48 -- speaking of Google Maps, has anybody checked out their new Street View feature yet? Kinda cool though the coverage is limited as yet -- if anybody's into stalking LB we could probably get an image of her apartment window.
Everybody talks about Peak Oil as though the effects will be felt far in the future. But look what's happening right now -- resource wars and rumors-of-resource wars all over the world. Even if we don't hit the theoretical Peak Oil tipping point for 5 or 10 or 20 years, the knowledge that a finite resource is being consumed at an ever-faster pace is already motivating people to make specific political decisions, mostly bad ones.
I think its probably too much to hope for that we spiral into some kind of V for Vendetta-like, brittle, authoritarian oligarchy. It's probably going to be a lot more like The Sheep Look Up. The fortunate people in the developed world will keep bopping along, oblivious to the cause of their malaise, while the disposessed get destroyed in ever-more horrific ways. Look at Los Angeles now -- one of the richest cities in the world, and Rodeo Dr. reeks of bums' urine. Don't fear the climate change, rather, fear the waves of chaos that will spread through the dynamic system of society as a result.
Every commodity you produ--oh, never mind.
Sure, Jake, probably nothing is going to happen. After all, completely fucking up the ecosystem and environment, depleting the soil, and poisoning the waters shouldn't hurt anybody or anything. Least of all us. All it takes is money.
If it's like The Sheep Look Up, does that mean that a genetically engineered supervirus will turn us all into good '70s liberals who don't like Christianity but are in touch with our sensitive nurturing side? Or was that The Stone that Never Came Down?
Sure, Jake, probably nothing is going to happen.
That's not what he said.
61 - I also read Jake as saying that we would have to take up the slack, which would mean a significant change in resource-intensive lifestyles. I think he's saying we'll do that before complete revolution and collapse.
And I'm totally with you Minneapolitan; the effects are starting now.
49 is the "we'll find the technology when we need it."
Not necessarily. Well, in fact, using "technology" broadly, an awful lot of civilizations and cultures died because they couldn't adapt quickly enough. In fact every one of the fuckers so far. Do I need to read Jared Diamond so I can throw Mayans at ya? I don't know. I got him around
Now existing in all those prior collapses were sufficient resources to support a bunch of people. But they couldn't adapt, and were dependent socially, politically, and psychologically on the existing structures. A Roman without Rome is just another dirt farmer who doesn't know why he should bother. Move somewhere they have hot baths, or die trying.
49 is the "we'll find the technology when we need it."
Do I need to read Jared Diamond so I can throw Mayans at ya? I don't know. I got him around
Feel free, I've read him too.
Like Jake, what I'm saying is that there's some options for the richer countries that will ease the transition. Poor countries, not so much.
AND, a lot of those technologies took advantage of the existing stocks of low-entropy, easy to access wealth. We blew through those in eighty years. Timber stands of huge trees, clean aquifers so full they had artesian flows, ocean fisheries of big fish, tens of feet of topsoil, the list goes on. And that's before you look at energy stocks.
Technology may address some stuff, but our parents' lifestyle was based on mining incredible wealth. We won't have that available to us when technology has to solve climate change. We're more likely to live like our grandparents.
This guy seems to be panicked about a lot of things for no good reason, but I can't avoid believing what he says about the environment and fuel. So...that means I believe there is no hope at all. But I can't act as if I believe that. Why am I not acting as if I believe that? Because nobody I see in real life or the mainstream media seems to believe it's a crisis. But it is. So there's no hope.
68: I happen to think the technology is out there and with twenty years of Manhattan project could be even better. But is gonna cost, and global warming will cost, and maintaining the Welfare state will cost, and maintaining defense in a chaotic world will cost. Who's gonna pay? Whose std of living gets hosed?
Revolution & collapse. I won't predict that. I won't predict an FDR/Reagan level re-alignment, although that is my hope. Marginal income & corporate taxes at least back to pre-Reagan. If conservatives & others go along peacefully, then no revolution. Could happen.
Third possibility is everyone under the top quintile gets hosed. I don't deny that could happen too, in fact that is the Bush plan. Neo-feudalism. Meet me on the Mall.
Considering the difficulty we've had so far making small, low-cost "think ahead" changes, and the amount of rage that any suggestion we should do so unleashes within the mentally-ill-conservative third of the population, I find it hard to be optimistic about bigger changes forced by a crisis. The consumer lifestyle has been established as the essence of America and Christianity, and the wingers are already in a rage even though nothing bad has happened yet.
but I can't avoid believing what he says about the environment and fuel
I have a hard time taking him seriously as he thinks the 2004 election was stolen.
That's true, but I can't avoid believing what he says about the environment and fuel. James Howard Kunstler too, of course.
If something is unsustainable, it will stop.
72: I meant the beginning part, where the air and sun are toxic, and clean water is rationed even for the corporation-protected upper middle classes.
I hope everyone appreciates my self-discipline, as evinced by the fact that I am not ladening my comments with the many Crass lyrics which apply so well to this discussion.
72 s/b 62
"And wasn't the Holocaust terrible!
Good thing it wasn't for real.
Yes, of course I've heard of H-block --
It's the 'baccy with 'man-appeal.'"
Randomly, I'll meet you on the Mall, Bob.
The Sheep Look Up I have always liked, if that's the word. Any of John Brunner's long works. But, you know, you're supposed to be embarrassed if you're moved by that stuff.
Third possibility is everyone under the top quintile gets hosed. I don't deny that could happen too, in fact that is the Bush plan. Neo-feudalism. Meet me on the Mall.
Pretty much.
Also, re: John Brunner. Check out the game shows he imagines in The Shockwave Rider -- they're exactly like reality TV, except just a tiny bit more brutal. But that's coming soon, I'm sure.
This is the one to really read.
How fast can public opinion change?
Maybe the best thing that could happen would be an international financial panic that destroys the wealth of all the entities powerful enough to extract fossil fuels.
Or a mega-Katrina event this summer might convince people that the situation is dire enough that unimagined sacrifices are inevitable. When will people be convinced of that?
I don't have anything interesting to say, just wanted to mention that I am currently at an altitude of 14,000 feet above sea level. So fuck all y'all.
You won't think it's so funny when you have to pay $85 to run your SUV over the bones of the dead and dying, Neil.
I'm frightened, I'm really frightened. My hunches about what things are inevitable are usually pretty good.
Personally, I was just happy to see a reference to The Tick.
It's what he said, modified.
Sure, where "modified" means "grossly and uncharitably exaggerated."
88: Sigh. I'm sorry. The whole "technology will solve everything" for those of us in societies with enough money basically burns my ass.
I consider that grotesque.
What Ned said in 86: I'm frightened. I think we all should be. I don't give a shit whether people here in certain areas of this US of A might think we'll survive just fine. We have a responsibility to the entire fucking planet.
I just see a lot of the commentary on this thread as the sort of millenialist thinking that would fit right in to the next book in the Left Behind series.
Even now, people who actually work for GM are bitching about the shitty mileage their SUV gets, and talking about trading it in for a smaller car. Arnold Schwartzenegger is proposing revolutionary greenhouse gas policy changes. George Bush is going to be out of office in less than two years, and it's widely believed that the Democrats will take back the White House.
There are plenty of well understood and characterized changes that could make prompt meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage, that have not been implemented because a) the current administration is unusually craven, and b) people aren't yet being hit hard in their pocketbook. There's no reason to believe that either of those are permanent.
But no, let's all sit around and fantasize about the inevitable collapse of society and congratulate each other on how serious we are.
When Jake comes to raid my food stores, I'm totally going to shoot him.
Cheap/free clean(ish) energy really is the key. Solve that, everything else gets fixable. Don't solve it, and we're pretty much fuxxored.
Anybody here read the Kim Stanley Robinson trilogy starting with Forty Signs of Rain, or the John Barnes book Mother of Storms? Gradual climate change doesn't freak me out nearly the way sudden climate change does.
There are plenty of well understood and characterized changes that could make prompt meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage, that have not been implemented because a) the current administration is unusually craven, and b) people aren't yet being hit hard in their pocketbook.
Nothing at all is being done right now. No mass-media figure is expressing the urgency that is appropriate. No politician wants to give the voters bad news, which tends to make me think that the politicians who are actually sincere in their nonsensical optimism will be the ones to get elected.
People are going to have to get hit really really hard in their pocketbook, really really soon, to realize the changes that will have to be made.
I don't want to say "If Al Gore had been elected president in 2000 the earth might have been saved"...because even he hasn't been expressing as much urgency as he could be. That's the one thing that gives me hope, actually, because Gore knows the reality of the situation.
Doesn't he?
Elitist Great Books Reading List
http://www.optimates.us/Greatbooks.htm
No thanks, we've already made our own elitist great books reading lists.
83: Where the hell are you? On top of Mount Rainier?
I just see a lot of the commentary on this thread as the sort of millenialist thinking that would fit right in to the next book in the Left Behind series.
Fuck you, Jake, you're a nasty idiot. Your first post was so poorly written no one responded, but I sort of thought this was what you meant.
91: I would expect nothing less. But I think the stockpile in my back yard should last me for a while, and hopefully make you use up most of your ammo on the first couple waves of looters.
EGMRL: Isidore of Seville sucks. He was a fucking Visigoth, for Christ's sake.
looters
I have a theme-restaurant concept.
Fuck you, Jake, you're a nasty idiot
Jake might get mad about that, Emerson, but I find such concern for the future from one so elderly admirable.
99: I'd be careful about underestimating gswift's ammo reserves. Just a hunch.
97: They have intertubes at 14,000 feet on Aconcagua? Wow.
(Hey, mrh -- fourteen and a half games, dude. Fourteen and a half fucking games.)
Is it really fourteen and a half?
I am having SO MANY Youkilis babies right now.
whoa whoa whoa, there, emerson.
isidore of seville may not look like much right now, but he was an incredible bright spot of culture, learning, and enlightenment for about 1000 miles and 200 years in either direction.
sure it was all watered down, misunderstood, fourth-hand roman copies of fifth-hand greek commonplaces, like something out of a parable by borges.
but give the guy his props. for his time and place.
106: Careful, their thick little goatees scratch on the way out.
Tied with Tampa Bay. Ignominious!
Let us attend a Yankees home game and shout "Expansion team".
98: talking about going to the barricades is mostly harmless. but to the extent that people continue to think that doing anything about global warming means changes so drastic that they're as bad as the consequences of global warming itself so we might as well throw another log on the fire, that causes a real problem.
104: That's why I'll sneak in under the cover of night. I've actually plotted ways to get out of my city in the event that all the overpasses fall down in an earthquake. But mainly for fun.
Also, the news coming out of Saudi Arabia regarding oil production is pretty seriously disturbing. I think $4/gallon is probably going to arrive soon and not go away.
On the bright side, this may actually lead to some grand bargain on health care where the US Gov't bails out the domestic automakers retiree costs in exchange for them ditching this silly SUV thing and actually making small cars.
I'm at a mine, actually. And Flickr is down right now, so this link is good for nothing.
A mine is boring and lonely.
I've actually plotted ways to get out of my city in the event that all the overpasses fall down in an earthquake. But mainly for fun.
Hee. I plan my emergency evacuations too, for fun. Flood on the Sacramento not the same as Folsom Dam breaking on the American is not the same as a dirty bomb in San Francisco.
You're an engineer too, aren't you?
114: Of course. I was also surprised to learn that a smallish nuclear bomb of the sort "rogue nations" might be able to build, if smuggled into San Francisco Bay on a ship and set off at the Ferry Building, almost certainly wouldn't kill me. Even if I was on my couch in the living room.
Almost makes having to walk twenty minutes to get to a good bar worthwhile.
Yeah, and the radioactivity won't make *you* sick, because of the prevailing westerly winds. Which is why a girl would need to head north on the 5 first for a few hours, then cut back west to the coast.
Of course, if it's an airburst, the broken glass from the windows will kill me on my couch, while the decreased fallout will leave you in much better shape.
One of my old offices was more or less directly across 101 from the Blue Cube in Sunnyvale. In an actual Russian-style nuclear war, I was so screwed.
Maybe the best thing that could happen would be an international financial panic that destroys the wealth of all the entities powerful enough to extract fossil fuels.
Ah, the old "make shit even worse for everyone SO THEY'LL FINALLY LISTEN TO MEEEE!!!" heighten-the-contradictions argument. Can't help but think a few wind turbines wouldn't help more.
There was a New Yorker cartoon during the last year, with an elderly couple sitting on their front porch in front of a parched and destroyed landscape, with the woman saying, "It really is a shame those terrible people wre right about global warming."
I'm just talking about random culture-clash sort of stuff. When you're a small-town working-class kid, raised Republican, going forth into the world of educated folk, you don't necessarily have the tools to distinguish between clueless self-righteousness and The Very Face of the Left.
WACO KID: You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the New West.
I think global warming is a hugely serious problem. I also think that Jake has a point that we're looking at a gradual slide rather than a cataclysm. (I don't agree with Jake that there's a "smaller hamburgers" stage -- a "no hamburgers except for the rich" seems more likely.)
Of course, the gradual slide will be faster, and worse, for many poor countries, and of course we have a responsibility to them. It's going to be tough to sell the line "produce less CO2 for the sake of the Bangladeshis," however.
I have guarded optimism that a Democratic government and certain market pressures can have a positive effect.
talking about going to the barricades is mostly harmless. but to the extent that people continue to think that doing anything about global warming means changes so drastic that they're as bad as the consequences of global warming itself so we might as well throw another log on the fire, that causes a real problem.
This, absolutely.
Also, Youkilis babies for everyone! Beckett's 8-0, bitches.
(I don't agree with Jake that there's a "smaller hamburgers" stage -- a "no hamburgers except for the rich" seems more likely.)
Ask GM. Customer preference for the surface area and poundage of automotive hamburgers has shifted sufficiently to really fuck up their business.
Greenland wasn't ever green (at least not since the last ice age). There were only ever two small Viking settlements in two inlets on the largest island in the world and they could barcely support a handful of cows. The Inuit population subsisted (still do) mainly on fish and seals.
Jake's assumption of a smooth incremental decline was just silly. Nothing important ever happens that way. There will big losers and small, and a lot of anger, and a lot of people will use their losses as a pretext to settle scores (e.g., by blaming gays or immigrants).
Ah, the old "make shit even worse for everyone SO THEY'LL FINALLY LISTEN TO MEEEE!!!" heighten-the-contradictions argument.
No, it's not that at all. If it became physically impossible tomorrow to extract fossil fuels, the earth would be saved.
I've wanted the price of gas to rise, a few cents a week, but inexorably, for what seems like thirty years now. Slow enough to avoid to avoid lines and riots, but much faster than it has.
But the impact on the poor, even in this country, will be heavy. It has been argued that with the exception of events like the dust bowl, the Great Depression did not make life for the rural poor that much worse, as they mostly fed themselves anyway and had been suffering already since after WWI.
I think on the Great Plains, where there was a cash-crop, extensive agriculture highly monoculture and dependent on price, there was immense hardship and a huge number of foreclosures, but in the common subsistence farms everywhere East of the Mississippi, and literally millions of Americans and Canadians lived that way then, the impact was surprisingly muted.
But that wouldn't be true today. Everywhere in the country and even the suburbs people drive great distances to shop and work and socialize, and mostly have very inappropriate vehicles to absorb price increases in the short run.
Worse, then - it's the "well, I don't think that much of humanity anyway, although for some reason I'm not applying this thesis to my own fine self, and am sticking around to bother everyone else with my nonsense" argument.
Jesus, I'm being a cranky bugger today. Anyway, this is trivially true but not terribly helpful. The earth will be fine in the end - after all, is there a normatively right temperature for it? was the Carboniferous somehow "wrong"? - it's us we should be worrying about.
With 72 terawatts or thereabouts of wind available in the top three site classifications compared to total energy use of about 14TW, to say nothing of solar, marine, biomass, etc, and both solar and wind capacity doubling every two years, I'm actually quite optimistic.
119: "Don't trust anyone over thirty", "If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem" didn't make for inclusion. Neither did those "Let 'em freeze in the cold and dark" bumper stickers on cars from Texas during the 70's gas crunch.
Well, if Alex is optimistic, seeing as his island will become an uninhabitable ice-rock if the gulf stream shifts a few points, then I feel a bit better.
Not really - that's recently been dropped from the list of Stuff To Worry About by the sciency ones. Apparently if it gets hot enough to shift the North Atlantic Current, it's going to be hot enough that it'll still be too hot.
The uncertainty of what actually will happen is a reason to be especially careful and especially fearful, but is used by denialists to prove that we don't have to worry.
Even if the ultimate climate is objectively superior to the present climate (a long shot but not impossible proposition), it will be a long time before the transition costs are paid off. And as I said, costs and benefits will be distributed unevenly, and a lot of fragile social, political, and economic systems are likely to break down.
Alex, do you have a link for that? Not that I doubt you, but it was pretty high on my list of things to freak the fuck out about, and so I'd like to be reassured about it. A shift in the N.A. stream was always below desertification, though, so if you have a link to assuage my concerns about that, I'd appreciate it, too.
If it became physically impossible tomorrow to extract fossil fuels, the earth would be saved.
You're cool with the killing off a few hundred million people part of that proposition?
134, I think any plausible global-warming scenario in which the status quo of carbon production continues will also lead to a few hundred million people being killed off, as well as the earth as we know it.
Might there be scenarios involving neither an immediate end to all use of fossil fuels nor the continuation of the status quo?
Yes, but among the two grossly simplified scenarios I mentioned, the one that doesn't involve the destruction of the earth is better.
I disagree, but that's not really the point. The point is that most of us care more about people than about the earth in the abstract (and what does "the destruction of the earth" mean, exactly? The thing's been here for a while and will continue to be, whatever happens to the species that currently inhabit it) and more about people who are living today than about people who will be born in the future. Any policy argument that starts from the premise that a shitload of us just need to die already isn't likely to be persuasive to most people.
I took some pictures of the coastline for reference.
Really, this is an OT attempt to one-up ogged's local beach, but it certainly will be a shame to lose places like this.
Left behind for the left leaning indeed. When have politicians ever been able to say that things are bad?
Technological fixes to modify earth's albedo are unpalatable now, but will look better in a few, though
vacations involving jets will seem pretty weird. What about the wyoming supervolcano for real disruption?