Anthropogenic Climate Change

Karl Rove has some fairly monstrous tendencies, to the surprise of few. Cross-posted from the US Politics thread. http://tinyurl.com/h6clnmx

I am pretty sure even the worst case scenarios don't predict a complete extinction of humanity within 65 years...

edited 13th Dec '15 3:31:41 PM by SeptimusHeap

He probably wasn't referencing climate change specifically as the agent of mankind's destruction. The unredacted "logic" probably went something like: "The Christian God/Peak Oil/food shortages brought on by overpopulation/Nuclear War will kill us all off shortly before climate change will have, so we shouldn't bother with trying to live sustainably. The only moral, ethical thing to do is whatever we I want, all the time. Any attempts to tell us me otherwise are bullshit."

edited 13th Dec '15 4:30:35 PM by Artificius

Postmodernist ethic at its best, a round of applause everybody.

Huh. So today in the newspaper's editorial Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan wrote, mentioning the Paris accords and some of the measures the United Arab Emirates were taking in this regard, mentioning an increased investment in clean energies and other sort of stuff.

Could this mean that perhaps, just perhaps, the paris accords are going to actually give us something profitable enviromentally speaking...?

This is my basic opinion on climate change. It's a good thing I play violin.

edited 4th Mar '16 3:45:25 PM by SantosLHalper

Titanic? So you support climate change because you hate icebergs?

You monster.

The Id That Ate the Planet: An op-ed by Paul Krugman about the psychological origins of climate change denial.

@Artificus: If humans go extinct in the 21st/22nd century it's going to be due to a bunch of repel able crises coming to a head at the same time.

I think if humans go extinct soon, it is going to have almost nothing to do with global warming and almost everything to do with nuclear warheads. (and that probably won't get the job done)

It has probably been mentioned on the thread already, but the temperature required to boil away the oceans is really freaking high. I don't think anything short of that will kill off the last humans.

But if things get that bad, won't humanity try leaving Earth to find new worlds?

Humanity might, but I don't think there is enough rocket fuel on earth for everybody.

According to what I read, runaway greenhouse would occur if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was ten times what can be put up there by all the oil, coal and natural gas in the world. I think launching all of humanity into space would require that much fuel.

Maybe after we built those elevators.

Even if we were to find a new hospitable planet, one-way travel would probably take decades or centuries, and we're nowhere near the technological level where we could even survive a trip that long with the supplies you could realistically expect to fit in the sort of vehicles we might be able to build. We'd probably also need to terraform the planet to some extent, and that sort of thing takes centuries.

So let's say we find the perfect planet tomorrow and pool our resources to establish a viable colony ASAP. I don't think there's much of a chance of the first people to be able to live their whole life there until about 500-1000 years from now.

@war877: Actual human extinction wouldn't be a direct effect of climate change, but a nuclear exchange on the tail end of the climate changed induced collapse of human civilization might do the trick, and either way, climate change alone is certainly an existential threat to human civilization, and at that point, it's entirely possible for humans to go extinct through natural mechanisms. We are already in the midst of a anthropogenic mass extinction event comparable to the Cretaceous–Paleogene event in terms of the rate of species extinction; without major progress in the next few decades, it's only going to get worse.

edited 22nd Jun '16 1:44:35 PM by CaptainCapsase

When I was 11 I was sure the USA and USSR would end the world by the time I was about 25. I'm 40.

Doomsday scenarios have a track record of mostly being a pack of, if not outright lies, then quarter-truths. If that. Excuse me while I assume that we can probably survive in some capacity. Our species has survived several forms of climate change.

And, heck, the Earth has usually been a hell of a lot warmer than today for most of geological history. Ice caps aren't even the Earth average.

I don't know if ice caps are normal, but the earth, I heard, has several times been completely covered in ice. Also, global warming will be a never ending concern: The sun gets hotter over time.

Probably only about twice. Caused, probably, by the onset of life... and, then, more specifically plants.

Since then, mostly cap-free.

It is almost like, every time something novel evolves, the planet undergoes unexpected climate change.

It's got a cycle. Our latest one has been rather weird, though. And, by "latest" I mean... the entire Cenozoic. Not just the tiny wedge of it we evolved in. Ice Ages aren't new or anything... but, this one's taken the cake without actually going snowball.

edited 24th Jun '16 7:58:16 PM by Euodiachloris

@Euod: The threat of nuclear war never really went away; current arsenals aren't quite as apocalyptic as they were during the Cold War, but in the case of the major stockpiles, they're still way, way bigger than they need to be for deterrence. Moreover looking back at the records of the period, the fact that the Cold War didn't go hot was nothing short of a miracle; there were dozens of near misses, in one case predicated on the decision of a single Russian officer not to report an apparent attack to his superiors. While global tensions aren't what they were during the Cold War, there's no reason to assume things will stay that way forever.

ultimately there's a major difference between Doomsday predictions and the notion that the the survival of humankind is not guaranteed.

edited 27th Jun '16 4:52:28 AM by CaptainCapsase

http://www.businessinsider.com/methane-bubbles-siberian-permafrost-climate-change-2016-7?IR=T http://scitechdaily.com/nasa-study-reveals-that-historical-records-miss-a-fifth-of-global-warming/

We're fucking doomed.

That's the "permafrost gun", from what I know. The Tundra equivalent to the clathrate and their "clathrate gun".