The Environment Thread

[Stickman]

U.S., Russia, Saudis, Kuwait unite to not endorse UN climate report

[Stickman]

See Jeff Goodell Explain How U.S. Is Subverting Efforts to Curb Climate Change

[Stickman]

Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048

[bune]

I don't know what's worse: The CO2/Jews comparison or the subtle usage of past-tense there.

[Bi_3]

This is just in from 13 year old climate justice activists:

https://thebulletin.org/2019/03/adults- ... to-strike/

[McParadigm]

[bune]

Looking at the short-side-view: food's going to get a lot more expensive.

[McParadigm]

Excerpt from “FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?” by Bill McKibben.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... nge-817310

Oh, it could get very bad.

In 2015, a study in the Journal of Mathematical Biology pointed out that if the world’s oceans kept warming, by 2100 they might become hot enough to “stop oxygen production by phyto-plankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis.” Given that two-thirds of the Earth’s oxygen comes from phytoplankton, that would “likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans.”

A year later, above the Arctic Circle, in Siberia, a heat wave thawed a reindeer carcass that had been trapped in the permafrost. The exposed body released anthrax into nearby water and soil, infecting two thousand reindeer grazing nearby, and they in turn infected some humans; a twelve-year-old boy died. As it turns out, permafrost is a “very good preserver of microbes and viruses, because it is cold, there is no oxygen, and it is dark” — scientists have managed to revive an eight-million-year-old bacterium they found beneath the surface of a glacier. Researchers believe there are fragments of the Spanish flu virus, smallpox, and bubonic plague buried in Siberia and Alaska.

Or consider this: as ice sheets melt, they take weight off land, and that can trigger earthquakes — seismic activity is already increasing in Greenland and Alaska. Meanwhile, the added weight of the new seawater starts to bend the Earth’s crust. “That will give you a massive increase in volcanic activity. It’ll activate faults to create earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis, the whole lot,” explained the director of University College London’s Hazard Centre. Such a landslide happened in Scandinavia about eight thousand years ago, as the last Ice Age retreated and a Kentucky-size section of Norway’s continental shelf gave way, “plummeting down to the abyssal plain and creating a series of titanic waves that roared forth with a vengeance,” wiping all signs of life from coastal Norway to Greenland and “drowning the Wales-sized landmass that once connected Britain to the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.” When the waves hit the Shetlands, they were sixty-five feet high.

There’s even this: if we keep raising carbon dioxide levels, we may not be able to think straight anymore. At a thousand parts per million (which is within the realm of possibility for 2100), human cognitive ability falls 21 percent. “The largest effects were seen for Crisis Response, Information Usage, and Strategy,” a Harvard study reported, which is too bad, as those skills are what we seem to need most.

[JuanHamm]

That is terrifying, but what can we do about it? Recycling my plastic waste doesn't seem like enough.

[Green Habit]

[darth_vedder]

Reading this thread and stories like https://www.apnews.com/aaf1091c5aae40b0a110daaf04950672 just make me feel so helpless. Fucking humans man, we're the worst.

[Bi_3]

Hmmmm.... mitigation to buy time? If only we were allowed to try that.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6135 ... te-change/

[Bi_3]

[B]

Meh. End of society, but there will be some kinda human running around.

[Bi_3]

Meh. End of society, but there will be some kinda human running around.

In your life time or some point in "the future"?

[McParadigm]

It’s gonna be a planet full of heavily armed nations responding out of fear and alarm. Should be fine.

[Bi_3]

It’s gonna be a planet full of heavily armed nations responding out of fear and alarm. Should be fine.

Status quo


But in all seriousness, does anyone here honestly believe that humanity will be wiped out by climate change in their lifetime? (vs. say nuclear war or global pandemic)

[verb_to_trust]

It’s gonna be a planet full of heavily armed nations responding out of fear and alarm. Should be fine.

Status quo


But in all seriousness, does anyone here honestly believe that humanity will be wiped out by climate change in their lifetime? (vs. say nuclear war or global pandemic)

You're right. Let's just ignore it.

[Bi_3]

It’s gonna be a planet full of heavily armed nations responding out of fear and alarm. Should be fine.

Status quo


But in all seriousness, does anyone here honestly believe that humanity will be wiped out by climate change in their lifetime? (vs. say nuclear war or global pandemic)

You're right. Let's just ignore it.

Do you believe that humanity will be wiped out by climate change in your lifetime?

[Mickey]

Excellent, insightful line of questioning. Good work.