'Global Warming's Terrifying New Math'

[may be rude]

20 hours ago, iococoi said:

 

does not accurately capture it at all. the difference between 2 and 3 is the difference between all world powers acting perfectly starting now and continually for decades (impossible hypothetical), versus a more realistic best case scenario. the difference between 3 and 4 is the difference between the best case scenario and what could happen if world powers remain oil-influenced for decades through the century. the difference between 4 and 5 is between that and if we're just overall bad at even trying and just resign to push the thing off the cliff, buying bullshit about geo engineering that will of course not reverse anything but rather further the destabilization. the difference between 5 and 6 is much of the same but at that point it doesn't make much difference because somewhere around 4 may be where the strain on societal stability is so bad that it seems like there's a high risk of broader wars that could result in a nuclear armaggeddon. 

 

funny thing about the "x degree" threshold is it takes... 2 decades of average temperature past that threshold! we already had a full year of average 1.5c hotter. by the time we're officially at 1.5 degrees it will be more than 2 degrees. by the time it's 2 degrees it will be 3 degrees. great. who came up with that? someone fix that.

[ignatius]

3 hours ago, may be rude said:

does not accurately capture it at all.

it's a conceptual thing meant to create emotion in people and a sense of fear/urgency. no one is pulling up this hand/table saw art at a climate conference to explain science/geo politics/human predicament. 

that being said.. a number of climate scientists are arguing that 2 degrees would a line up by the shoulder taking off the entire arm. basically saying 2 degrees will be catastrophic for a large number of people and larger number of wildlife

edit:

Shorter videos on specific people/places

Edited April 23 by ignatius

[may be rude]

On 4/22/2024 at 10:09 PM, ignatius said:

On 4/22/2024 at 10:00 PM, may be rude said:

does not accurately capture it at all.

it's a conceptual thing meant to create emotion in people and a sense of fear/urgency. no one is pulling up this hand/table saw art at a climate conference to explain science/geo politics/human predicament. 

it misinforms though, it doesn't accurately convey the urgency and risk. the real harm is way, way worse. that graphic is something the fossil fuel companies would put out to confuse people and delay action. 

4+ is where we're heading. at 4, avoiding nuclear armaggeddon will be tough. past 4 is basically russian roulette with 5 bullets. people fail to connect the nuclear armaggeddon component. we cannot afford for world governments to descend into chaos and broader war. 

Edited April 25 by may be rude

[ignatius]

3 hours ago, may be rude said:

it misinforms though, it doesn't accurately convey the urgency and risk. the real harm is way, way worse. that graphic is something the fossil fuel companies would put out to confuse people and delay action. 

3 or 4 is where we're heading and avoiding nuclear armaggeddon will be tough. past 4 is basically russian roulette with 5 bullets. people fail to connect the nuclear armaggeddon component. we cannot afford for world governments to descend into chaos and broader war. 

then make a new one

edit: they should've made it w/cock and balls. 

Edited April 23 by ignatius

[may be rude]

5 hours ago, ignatius said:

then make a new one

[iococoi]

 

[ignatius]

the nuts and bolts of all the things. 

big picture stuff about human beings as a "super organism" and all that nate hagens type stuff. well done documentary focusing a lot on perspective and shifting that to something based in reality of the human predicament. 

edit:

 

Edited May 10 by ignatius

[may be rude]

 

[ignatius]

heat dome in mexico

 

 

[geosmina]

14 minutes ago, ignatius said:

heat dome in mexico

 

 

Mexican here... Yes, I've never experienced a heat this magnitude before... Total apocalypse...

[ignatius]

4 minutes ago, logakght said:

Mexican here... Yes, I've never experienced a heat this magnitude before... Total apocalypse...

i know about the water situation. apparently even cops protested.  i know it gets jungle hot in mexico but the heat dome must be awful. we had one here years ago and it sucked. had forest fires at the same time that got close enough to smoke out the whole valley. had my windows and doors taped up. couldn't go outside w/o great risk. 

talked to my mom who's in south florida and she said w/the heat index it's 112 degrees. key west hit 115 w/the heat index. 

monkeys falling out of trees from heat/thirst is big sads. i hope you all get some good rains down there soon. 

[geosmina]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

i know about the water situation. apparently even cops protested.  i know it gets jungle hot in mexico but the heat dome must be awful. we had one here years ago and it sucked. had forest fires at the same time that got close enough to smoke out the whole valley. had my windows and doors taped up. couldn't go outside w/o great risk. 

talked to my mom who's in south florida and she said w/the heat index it's 112 degrees. key west hit 115 w/the heat index. 

monkeys falling out of trees from heat/thirst is big sads. i hope you all get some good rains down there soon. 

thanks my friend, hope you're good too

[ignatius]

was already well aware of efficiency problems w/fossil fuels vs electrification. still skeptical. but it's interesting data. someone give me $20k to get fancy heat pump and new insulation?

 

[chim]

On 9/27/2023 at 8:53 PM, cern said:

People want to do good for the climate and also more and more people getting poorer and poorer.. 
Why can't just the people ask themself truly: Is it really a good Idea to have kids? 

Kids are a social construction for the middle class to brag about the fact that they can afford to have them. 

Hey, now we're asking the real questions. Watmm antinatalist thread/subforum when? 

If you want to improve your footprint there's no better alternative... except maybe going postal on the middle class. 

[Nebraska]

Quote

The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there is now an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will mark the first calendar year with an average temperature that temporarily exceeds 1.5C above pre-industrial levels - up from a 66% chance last year.

Speaking about the findings, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized how quickly the world was heading in the wrong direction and away from stabilizing its climate system.

"In 2015, the chance of such a breach was near zero. We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell. The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s." Guterres said in a speech marking World Environment Day.

With time running out to reverse course, Guterres urged a 30% cut in global fossil fuel production and use by 2030.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/world-hits-streak-record-temperatures-un-warns-climate-hell-2024-06-05/

[Rubin Farr]

 

[ignatius]

 

[beerwolf]

Fucking freezing in the UK all June. Think I prefer that to 109 degrees though.

Edited June 16 by beerwolf

[Walter Ostanek]

25 minutes ago, ignatius said:

kraut vid

People have this weird "forest = natural = good" hangup. Almost all forests in Europe are plantations. Wood factories. The biodiversity in them is shit. Even here in Canada there's far less old-growth forest than people seem to assume by default (e.g. there's almost none in Ontario or Quebec until you get into the taiga and lowlands, which don't really count because they're not really forest. Yes - those endless forests you see out of the plane window are up to half a dozen generations of planted regrowth away from being natural).

Good to see them paying attention to trees that will survive future climates, though. That's certainly not something that any municipal government bothers to think about. But the end result will be a better wood factory not a biodiverse mixed woodland

Not really much of a point to my comment, just a tangent for its own sake lol 

[Bubba69]

 

On 4/23/2024 at 11:40 AM, may be rude said:

it misinforms though, it doesn't accurately convey the urgency and risk. the real harm is way, way worse. that graphic is something the fossil fuel companies would put out to confuse people and delay action. 

4+ is where we're heading. at 4, avoiding nuclear armaggeddon will be tough. past 4 is basically russian roulette with 5 bullets. people fail to connect the nuclear armaggeddon component. we cannot afford for world governments to descend into chaos and broader war. 

 

Where does this theory originate? That 4 degrees will lead to nuclear armageddon. Some analysis someone did somewhere I can read?

[ignatius]

3 hours ago, Walter Ostanek said:

People have this weird "forest = natural = good" hangup. Almost all forests in Europe are plantations. Wood factories. The biodiversity in them is shit. Even here in Canada there's far less old-growth forest than people seem to assume by default (e.g. there's almost none in Ontario or Quebec until you get into the taiga and lowlands, which don't really count because they're not really forest. Yes - those endless forests you see out of the plane window are up to half a dozen generations of planted regrowth away from being natural).

Good to see them paying attention to trees that will survive future climates, though. That's certainly not something that any municipal government bothers to think about. But the end result will be a better wood factory not a biodiverse mixed woodland

Not really much of a point to my comment, just a tangent for its own sake lol 

that's pretty much what they talk about in the video. mono crop trees for wood production post ww2 wasn't well thought out in terms of variety etc.. just quick resource production for all the things. bark beetle is doing them a 'favor'. seems like they'll figure out something resilient for the region.

in terms of 'old growth forests' it's a tiny amount of what used to be. there's patches of it but nothing like what it was.  the ecosystems get wrecked whenever there's any development and harvesting.. so protecting what's left is good idea.. regenerating where it makes sense also a good idea.. but yeah.. can drive up to mt st helens and look at the signs of when it was all replanted.. after the top blew off.. but also logging and everything else. 

to get the biodiversity back to anything like what it was it all needs to be regenerated some and left the fuck alone for a long ass time.. 

anyway.. it's one of the few "positive" stories i've seen lately. there's others but they mostly sound like hopium. 
 

edit: also PFAS, republicans, Wisconsin. 

Wisconsin Republicans block PFAS cleanup until polluters are granted immunity
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/15/wisconsin-pfas-cleanup

Edited June 16 by ignatius

[may be rude]

14 hours ago, Bubba69 said:

On 4/23/2024 at 2:40 PM, may be rude said:

it misinforms though, it doesn't accurately convey the urgency and risk. the real harm is way, way worse. that graphic is something the fossil fuel companies would put out to confuse people and delay action. 

4+ is where we're heading. at 4, avoiding nuclear armaggeddon will be tough. past 4 is basically russian roulette with 5 bullets. people fail to connect the nuclear armaggeddon component. we cannot afford for world governments to descend into chaos and broader war. 

 

Where does this theory originate? That 4 degrees will lead to nuclear armageddon. Some analysis someone did somewhere I can read?

professional people speak more carefully than i do, and use terms like "political instability" because they don't want to sound alarmist. i'm not sure if there are a lot of public studies about what geopolitical scenarios could play out. i'm publishing my analysis to watmm. 

humanity has a way of not thinking about nukes. north korea became a nuclear power under trump, the 9th nuclear power, while trump was writing love letters to kim jong un, and no one brings it up as an example of trump's record. the nuclear threat, despite being extremely significant to everyone all the time, people avoid talking about. 

filling in the picture of what's described as "political instability" means thinking through conditions like depression, famine, water scarcity, migrations, heat waves and flooded cities, not to mention worsening and more powerful natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires. earthquakes and volcano eruptions are part of geothermal systems that are interconnected with atmospheric and oceanic thermal systems. geopolitical stability being limited in the first place, increasing likelihood of such conditions means greater unpredictability of what the modern militaries of the world will be doing. it's easy to imagine scenarios deteriorating in ways that impact the threat of nuclear war. 

one recent book called The Uninhabitable Earth focused on what a world with 4 degrees of warming would look like, and how that's where we're heading. i listened to some interviews with the author and he tries to paint a more vivid picture for the audience, based on the data. "climate conflict" is a chapter in the book and it deals with political instability. so, that's an example of how political instability is generally expected by people to be something we will need to worry about, though i think the author doesn't focus on nukes.

it stands to reason that decreased stability of governments generally means worse threat of nuclear armaggeddon. the risk of this threat already exists but can become higher probability. it's hard to measure probability for nuclear war but we know which direction it's moving, as a result of climate change. in particular, i worry about prolonged periods of war, depression, and civilizational instability, and how a modern world war could invite nuclear armaggeddon. 

it's a connection that's obvious to people who think about nuclear war, and who are familiar with the trajectory of the climate problem. 

Edited June 16 by may be rude

[Bubba69]

3 hours ago, may be rude said:

it's a connection that's obvious to people who think about nuclear war, and who are familiar with the trajectory of the climate problem. 

 Thanks for taking the time to answer. I was a little bit afraid this was the answer, but also half expected it. I understand your perspective here a bit more. I'm deeply afraid of nukes, maybe 50/50 w/ the raw effects of climate change. Both are awful, awful futures I see our world heading towards. That book sounds interesting, I'll check it out

[chenGOD]

I just want to say that some of the takes on the first page of this thread are wild.

[chenGOD]

On 6/6/2024 at 2:18 AM, chim said:

Hey, now we're asking the real questions. Watmm antinatalist thread/subforum when? 

If you want to improve your footprint there's no better alternative... except maybe going postal on the middle class. 

OK I take it back, this is a wild take, especially in a thread about the survival of the human species.

On 6/16/2024 at 12:19 PM, Walter Ostanek said:

People have this weird "forest = natural = good" hangup. Almost all forests in Europe are plantations. Wood factories. The biodiversity in them is shit. Even here in Canada there's far less old-growth forest than people seem to assume by default (e.g. there's almost none in Ontario or Quebec until you get into the taiga and lowlands, which don't really count because they're not really forest. Yes - those endless forests you see out of the plane window are up to half a dozen generations of planted regrowth away from being natural).

Good to see them paying attention to trees that will survive future climates, though. That's certainly not something that any municipal government bothers to think about. But the end result will be a better wood factory not a biodiverse mixed woodland

Not really much of a point to my comment, just a tangent for its own sake lol 

I used to work for Western Canada Wilderness Committee. They're a bunch of drug-addled (ok that was mostly me) hippies (not so much me) who care about old-growth forest in BC. They've had some success in outreach and education, and some policy/legal successes. They also managed to spread out a bit from BC and have offices in the Peg and the centre of the universe: https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/

They're a decent org and most of their funding goes to the actual work and not the workers (I can confirm that, I made very little money when I worked there lol).

Monoculture forests suck, but they're better than nothing and you gotta start somewhere. Next steps would be to increase diversity in replanting and legislate logging bans on those areas for a couple of hundred years. Pipe dreams though, logging is still a huge industry.