[Discussion] Climate Change

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

Prederick wrote:

The One War That the Human Species Can’t Lose

Oh, we can lose, and we already are.

Keldar wrote:
Prederick wrote:

The One War That the Human Species Can’t Lose

Oh, we can lose, and we already are.

The sooner the better.

Mixolyde wrote:
Keldar wrote:
Prederick wrote:

The One War That the Human Species Can’t Lose

Oh, we can lose, and we already are.

The sooner the better.

You are cheering on the end of life on Earth?

kazar wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
Keldar wrote:
Prederick wrote:

The One War That the Human Species Can’t Lose

Oh, we can lose, and we already are.

The sooner the better.

You are cheering on the end of life on Earth?

Life on Earth will continue. It just probably won't include eight billion of humans.

George Carlin's famous bit has aged poorly, but the core of it still rings true: the Earth (and life on it) will be fine, but humanity and civilization as we know it will be f*cked.

The only good thing is that humans are very adaptable species with a proven ability to survive--and bounce back from--extinction-level events.

That isn't certain. The greenhouse effect could spiral out of control and leave the Earth much like Venus.

And who knows what the extremophiles that exist today could evolve into over the next five billion years before the Sun goes Red Giant and turns the Earth into a charcoal briquet.

OG_slinger wrote:

And who knows what the extremophiles that exist today could evolve into over the next five billion years before the Sun goes Red Giant and turns the Earth into a charcoal briquet.

I'm going to guess that IF humanity survives another billion years (which is when the Sun would become too hot to allow life IIRC), we will have developed enough to migrate to a cooler place.

But that doesn't seem all that likely, to be fair.

A billion years will let us advance to the point of annihilation a few times before we find the right balance of ease of life vs breeding ignorance to take us to the stage where we can colonize the stars. I mean we have only been around for ~50K years. A billion years buys you a hell of a lot of 50K year reboots and odds are that we won't have to reinvent the wheel each time. I'm guessing that we can only really annihilate ourselves back to the bronze age. So we only need reboot the last 5k years in perpetuity.

It doesn't even make sense to think on that time scale. We won't be humans as we know them in that time span.

Considering neura link, we won't be humans as we know it in 25 (10-15?) years.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/2...

I see it as a race between probabilities. I agree that absent "special circumstances", humanity will reboot rather than be eliminated entirely. However, over a billion years, special circumstances like asteroid impacts that make the dinosaur's extinction look like childs play, or gamma ray bursts that scour the planet of all biologic life, not just humans, start to come into play.

So it's a race between lasting long enough before a reboot to either get off planet in large enough numbers and/or transcend into digital existence, and that special circumstance occurring.

Even if neither of those transpires, a billion years of evolution alone means that referring to billion-years-hence humans as "humans" is meaningless.

Happy thoughts all around. It's a been a goo... uhm... It's been a run.

Modern homo sapiens humans haven't even hit significant fraction of a million years yet, so a billion years is pretty far out there. Heck, the general category of primates only originated ~75 mya. We're adaptable, but we're not one of the really long-lasting groups like sharks (400 mya), lice (parasites on dinosaurs/birds 115 mya), or crocodiles (85m for crocodylians, but survivors of crocodylomorpha 205m).
IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Homo_lineage_2017update.svg/1920px-Homo_lineage_2017update.svg.png)

Earth will, for the foreseeable future, remain the only significant human-habitable place. All of the alternatives are worse than even the worst projection for Earth, absent a complete Venus-scenario.

fangblackbone wrote:

A billion years will let us advance to the point of annihilation a few times before we find the right balance of ease of life vs breeding ignorance to take us to the stage where we can colonize the stars. I mean we have only been around for ~50K years. A billion years buys you a hell of a lot of 50K year reboots and odds are that we won't have to reinvent the wheel each time. I'm guessing that we can only really annihilate ourselves back to the bronze age. So we only need reboot the last 5k years in perpetuity.

One drawback I've seen argued about reboots is that we'll have less fossil fuels available for the second go-round, so the energy sources will be radically different without coal and oil. Metals are another issue, since we've extracted most of the easy-to-get bits.

Something I haven't seen discussed as much is what ecological collapse will mean for a hypothetical rebuilding. No bees, no pollination, huge loss of vital plants. Early humans existed in a very rich biosphere. Even a few hundred years ago there were vast flocks of birds that filled the sky. Now we're living in a time of vanishing insects. Post-civilization humans will have a very different context.

Will none of our human biomass convert to fossil fuel over that time frame? Im asking from total ignorance. I have no idea how fossil fuel forms.

polypusher wrote:

Will none of our human biomass convert to fossil fuel over that time frame? Im asking from total ignorance. I have no idea how fossil fuel forms.

After educating myself a tiny bit, no we won't turn into oil. Fossil Fuel comes from plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil...

I guess the next go around will feature bamboo, hydro electric and solar then
Well and honey farms to repopulate bees.

Wouldn't seem too bad to have these:
IMAGE(https://i2.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/leonardo-da-vincis-tank-invention1.jpg?resize=600%2C525&type=vertical)
IMAGE(https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/4/2018/11/The-Mechanical-Clock-p.-17-%E2%80%93-Su-Song-clock-tower-illustration-by-Aubrey-Smith-5379e1c.jpg?quality=90&resize=620,413)

fangblackbone wrote:

I guess the next go around will feature bamboo, hydro electric and solar then
Well and honey farms to repopulate bees.

Wouldn't seem too bad to have these:
IMAGE(https://i2.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/leonardo-da-vincis-tank-invention1.jpg?resize=600%2C525&type=vertical)
IMAGE(https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/4/2018/11/The-Mechanical-Clock-p.-17-%E2%80%93-Su-Song-clock-tower-illustration-by-Aubrey-Smith-5379e1c.jpg?quality=90&resize=620,413)

Seems like an obvious next step for the Civ series:
Civ 7: Post Civ

Saw her on FOX in the office today:

'Anti-Greta' teen activist to speak at biggest US conservatives conference

A German teenager dubbed the “anti-Greta” – climate sceptics’ answer to the schoolgirl activist Greta Thunberg – is set to address the biggest annual gathering of US grassroots conservatives.

Naomi Seibt, 19, who styles herself as a “climate sceptic” or “climate realist”, will this week address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington, joining speakers including Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence.

Seibt is in the pay of the Heartland Institute, a thinktank closely allied with the White House that denies established science showing humans are heating the planet with dangerous consequences.

CPAC will be the biggest stage yet for Seibt, a so-called “YouTube influencer” who tells her followers Thunberg and other activists are whipping up unnecessary hysteria by exaggerating the climate crisis.
“Climate change alarmism at its very core is a despicably anti-human ideology,” she has said.

The teenager, from Münster in western Germany, claims she is “without an agenda, without an ideology”

Huh, well...

But she was pushed into the limelight by leading figures on the German far right and her mother, a lawyer, has represented politicians from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in court.

Ah.

In a sting operation carried out for German broadcaster ZDF and investigative outlet Correctiv, the Heartland Institute strategist James Taylor told journalists posing as potential donors his thinktank had signed up Seibt to record climate change sceptic videos for young people.

Seibt has admitted that she receives “an average monthly wage” from the institute. According to official figures, the average net monthly income in Germany is just under €1,900 (£1,590, $2,066).

..............Ah.

I knew they were all Crisis Actors!

“without an agenda, without an ideology”

Good to see self-awareness is still basically non-existent in at least half the political spectrum.

Demosthenes wrote:
“without an agenda, without an ideology”

Good to see self-awareness is still basically non-existent in at least half the political spectrum.

That's unfair, blatantly lying requires self-awareness.

Prederick wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
“without an agenda, without an ideology”

Good to see self-awareness is still basically non-existent in at least half the political spectrum.

That's unfair, blatantly lying requires self-awareness.

Fair, though I'd add an addendum that intelligently lying requires it. Trump lies all the live long day, and I still don't think he has an ounce of self-awareness about him.

Or if he does, it's crouching somewhere in the dark recesses of his skull, in fear of another beating if it tries to step into his rotation of thoughts...

So it hit a buck twenty-seven in Iraq today.

As I've said in this thread, if you're so concerned about migration, you should be extra concerned about climate change, because if climate change makes some parts of the world essentially unlivable, people aren't just going to stay put and die.

(Which, let's be honest, is what a lot of those people who are concerned about migration would like.)

Prederick wrote:

So it hit a buck twenty-seven in Iraq today.

As I've said in this thread, if you're so concerned about migration, you should be extra concerned about climate change, because if climate change makes some parts of the world essentially unlivable, people aren't just going to stay put and die.

(Which, let's be honest, is what a lot of those people who are concerned about migration would like.)

Clearly they should have saved up six months wages as an emergency fund to deal with the impending climate apocalypse.

Mixolyde wrote:
Prederick wrote:

So it hit a buck twenty-seven in Iraq today.

As I've said in this thread, if you're so concerned about migration, you should be extra concerned about climate change, because if climate change makes some parts of the world essentially unlivable, people aren't just going to stay put and die.

(Which, let's be honest, is what a lot of those people who are concerned about migration would like.)

Clearly they should have saved up six months wages as an emergency fund to deal with the impending climate apocalypse.

Exactly.

Just like the billionaire sports owners that are borrowing against their teams to get $350mm loans from Goldman Sachs? The "self-made" crowd? The socialism for me but not for thee crowd.

I went back and looked, and apparently I've made that mass migration point like 5 times already, using the exact same language.

Prederick wrote:

I went back and looked, and apparently I've made that mass migration point like 5 times already, using the exact same language. :lol:

I appreciate your consistency!

The great green wall of Africa sounds like positive news.

slazev wrote:

The great green wall of Africa sounds like positive news.

Did Mexico pay for it?