[Discussion] Climate Change

This thread is just to post interesting news, thoughts, opinions about climate change.

farley3k wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

It's a tie between leases and a shocking number of managers and bosses who have a compulsive need to physically see their minions slaving away.

Well they realized if they don't have minions to watch they actually have nothing to do. Work goes on, profit gets made, and they are not needed. So it could be a bit of self protection.

These, and a severe lack of trust. Companies continuing to support remote work are accomplishing great things.

I don't see how Seattle is back to pre pandemic traffic with Amazon largely working from home, still. I think it's still the city's largest employer. I took a Lyft through downtown earlier in the week though and there were lots of pedestrians and cars so I do see the evidence.

Las Vegas is down to less than 20 days of drinkable water and scrambling to deal with it. Kind of speaks for itself. Las Vegas is a city of 645,000 people, the largest in NV. This is larger than Baltimore, Raleigh NC, Miami FL and Atlanta GA.

Why is this not blaring out over the media? Why are my friends still retiring to Arizona and Florida? WTF, people?

NM?
AZ and FL I guess they are betting on dying before it gets too bad

For years, that's what many of my conservative friends would say. "Regardless of whether climate change is happening, I'll be dead by the time it's bad, so who cares?"

I guess as long as it twists the libs tails they are good with $500m per day on climate-related problems...

Robear wrote:

Las Vegas is a city of 645,000 people, the largest in NM.

Close, but wrong state.

Yeah, the whole screw everyone else while I'm alive and screw em when I die has never been a good look. f*ck you Ayn Rand, Reagan, Federalist Society, Energy lobbyists and the Christian Coalition...

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Close, but wrong state.

One letter. One letter! Geez...

Is FL having potable water problems as well?

De Santis would never let us know.

Florida's water issues, as I understand them as an out-of-stater, center on saltwater intrusion along the coast, and the failure of the Everglades as a fresh-water filter) and the essential deregulation of water use from Lake Okeechobee (which is Florida's largest lake, but only averages 9 feet deep, and has issues with highly toxic pollutants and, yes, saltware intrusion).

For example, it's common in coastal communities not to have sewer lines, probably because the water is so close to the surface. However, there was room for septic systems. So as the saltwater intrusions occur (because of freshwater wells drawing down underground reserves) the septic systems become vulnerable to rising water in the soil. This may not show immediately, but when a good soaking rain causes floods, the septic systems can be overcome by groundwater. And those freshwater wells will gradually succumb to both toxic chemical migration and saltwater moving in. This means that entire neighborhood housing markets in many coastal cities and towns are starting to crash, as people realize that its not just flooding that is a big, intermittent threat, but that their drinking water and sewage systems may become unusable after storms, and eventually for good.

It's only going to get worse.

OG_slinger wrote:

Flooding of the Indus River in Pakistan. August 31, 2021 vs. August 31, 2022. The width of the image is 290 kilometers.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/H39SbLY.png)

FYI, it's still bad in Pakistan.

I know I'm a broken record here, and I apologize, but anyone truly concerned about migration needs to be super concerned about climate change, because people are not just going to stay in increasingly unlivable parts of the world and die (moreover, I'd wager none of them want to leave anyway, they're being forced to!).

Pretty sure the people super concerned about migration would be perfectly happy with the idea that the people migrating should stay and die. They're going to see it as a personal choice to live there and dying from a "natural" disaster is just a consequence (you see, its natural, so it's not like it's their fault), the same way they see living in poverty as a personal choice.

Well, yes, that part is also 150% true. I wouldn't even say "be perfectly happy," I'd say "prefer and actively advocate for, without necessarily saying it explicitly."

Oh they are perfectly content now with saying the quiet parts out loud

Prederick wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Flooding of the Indus River in Pakistan. August 31, 2021 vs. August 31, 2022. The width of the image is 290 kilometers.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/H39SbLY.png)

FYI, it's still bad in Pakistan.

I know I'm a broken record here, and I apologize, but anyone truly concerned about migration needs to be super concerned about climate change, because people are not just going to stay in increasingly unlivable parts of the world and die (moreover, I'd wager none of them want to leave anyway, they're being forced to!).

Video of the city of Khairpur Nathan Shah shot from a helicopter. The city--where 250,000 people used to live--is now entirely underwater.

I hate headline writers.

Florida reels from Ian's 1-in-1,000 year rains

The Earth is billions of years old. Sure it may statistically be 1 in 1000 but that means we could have this kind of thing every freaking year for the next 50 but then not again for the 200,000,000 following years and be at that average (well I didn't do the math but just picked numbers so it may be off)

The way they state the headline we are supposed to have a bit of relief that this hardly happens but because of of climate change it is going to happen more and more.

Well, except that over that timeframe it's probably not 1 in a thousand. Also, if it starts happening regularly, then we'd simply adjust the odds to reflect that. It's obviously not set in stone.

But yeah, this will be more common, most likely, than it was in the past. How much more is really hard to say.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeAQjIXXgAE_MNh?format=jpg&name=large)

Mostly, I'm just annoyed that the man is so smugly, incalculably dense that I can't really enjoy Top Gear reruns anymore.

I wish new outlets would put things more in context. I keep seeing stories about Sanibel Island and how people won't be able to live there because it is now cut off from the mainland, stores about people swimming through storm surge to save their mother, etc. And they are heart wrenching stories of human suffering but we as a species are doing this to ourselves and we are unwilling (or unable) to change our behaviors to stop it.

Throwing sh*t at paintings is annoying and counterproductive to the point of being an oil industry op but they are correct that none of this sh*t is gonna matter in a few years.

Alienating people from their cause was a concern, said Alex De Koning, a Just Stop Oil spokesperson, who spoke to the Guardian outside the gallery after the room was cleared. “But this is not The X Factor,” he added. “We are not trying to make friends here, we are trying to make change, and unfortunately this is the way that change happens.”

It's not. But I understand why they do this, or the tire-deflators in London and NYC. It's the only control they can exert. If you feel this is this level of existential, possibly extinction-level crisis, and pressure on government or on these corporations is changing zilch (or that they aren't reacting with the immediacy you think this needs), you turn to other avenues, even if they ultimately have no actual impact or value.

I personally view this stuff as acts of frustration. They've been stymied from making actual, meaningful change, but they don't want to give up, so protest becomes essentially tantrums.

So long and thanks for all the fish (and shrimp, crabs, worms, clams, brittle stars, snails, algae, and sponges)?

Yes I wonder what could possibly have happened to snow crabs that require cold water to survive. Such a mystery!

I fish for lobsters on the east coast in the winter from Dec 1st until May 30th. My relationship with ocean water temperature is very close. It means everything to me. If the average Joe (or Jane) could understand what has happened to ocean temperatures in the last 8-10 years they wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning. It's a slow motion catastrophe with no real solution at this point. The solution left the garage a long time ago.

But I keep fishing and doing what I do because what else is there?

Blame it on human nature, misinformation, stubbornness, whatever you please, but this definitely seems like one of those issues so vast, so interconnected, and that requires such massive change to fight, that people won't care until it walks up and bites them on the ass. Much, much, much harder than it is at the moment.

By which point, of course, we are probably turbo-f*cked.

Homard wrote:

I fish for lobsters on the east coast in the winter from Dec 1st until May 30th. My relationship with ocean water temperature is very close. It means everything to me. If the average Joe (or Jane) could understand what has happened to ocean temperatures in the last 8-10 years they wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning. It's a slow motion catastrophe with no real solution at this point. The solution left the garage a long time ago.

But I keep fishing and doing what I do because what else is there?

For those that don't know, the Gulf of Maine is warming much faster than the average ocean, and it's warming faster that 99% of the rest of the world's oceans.
About the only thing you can do is have an exit strategy from the industry, hopefully one that let's you sell your boat and gear before the lobsters do whatever the crabs did. The warm temps have already started driving the lobsters further north, and it's just going to get worse.

With all due respect Prederick I think that's the point that is maybe being missed. We're already turbo-f*cked and have been for at least a decade. It's just a matter of whether me or my kids have to deal with everything we know being under water or burning.

At least inland land values in Maine, especially arable land with good fresh water supplies, will be going up over time. We're going to need a lot of space for climate refugees.

Robear wrote:

At least inland land values in Maine, especially arable land with good fresh water supplies, will be going up over time. We're going to need a lot of space for climate refugees.

*laughs in PFAS*