Anthropogenic Climate Change

You.joke but I'm becoming more and more adept to the idea that No Country deserve to.have large ecosystems for themselves

Watch me destroying my country

I can imagine that 50 to 100 years down the line, when climate change ramps up and becomes an immediate threat to the sustainability of our current civilization, armed coalitions invading countries that generate a lot of pollution or are otherwise damaging the environment could become a thing.

It would be more efficient to just take that budget and use it to pay Brazilian officials to protect the forest.

Oh it certainly wouldn't be a first response. But if we start paying people to actually care about and protect the environment, you can bet the more unscrupulous ones are gonna try to start milking it. At that point you hit them with the diplomatic reprisals. If nothing else works, and at that point time is very likely gonna be a premium commodity, I can see more direct methods being on the table.

Of course, if we could develop more eco-friendly methods of farming, power generation, and other industry, and it gets widespread adoption, encouraged along by subsidies, possibly just give them the technology free outright, then that may not even have to become an issue, except for those deeply entrenched in the old industries.

Sweden didn't do that before Brazil did it anyway?

Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 21st 2019 at 11:43:44 AM

Watch me destroying my country

Amazingly apropos: The right-wing populist wave is a threat to the climate

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

As I mentioned in the the Brazil thread, people are calling for war with Brazil over this.

Why does it seem like every country is having a far-right wave?

A reactionary response to increasing globalism, I expect, combined with the loss of jobs to automation in more developed countries and as people become more concerned with environmentalism.

And like I already mentioned, while nobody may be willing to go to war yet and are content to let idiots be idiots and destroy the Earth, their tunes are gonna change pretty quick when coastlines get swallowed up and the average temperature creeps ever upward.

Edited by danime91 on Aug 22nd 2019 at 4:00:17 AM

BTW, Philosophy Tube had recently released a video that is germane to climate change.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 22nd 2019 at 5:26:56 AM

Man, it's like the world's collection of power-holding assholes and evildoers are tripping over themselves to make my current forum title^note Latin for "let justice be done, even if the world burns" more and more justified.

If Bolsonaro and his cronies is anything like my country's rulers, they may very well just pocket the lion's share of that money, and when the remaining scraps are predictably expended they'll just whine about how the problem is too expensive to solve.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 22nd 2019 at 3:51:54 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

So more and more people are freaking out about the rain forest. I can't say I'm there just yet, but how likely is it that this latest round of fires could wipe it off the face of the earth?

Not. The rainforest is fucking huge and has faced big fires before. This barely rates, even if it is another chip in the wall.

The Computer wants you to take these happy pills and relax. The Computer is your friend.

Edited by Ramidel on Aug 22nd 2019 at 5:59:18 AM

It's more that the rainforest is a huge carbon sink, and reducing it in size isnt going to help global warming.

So everyone's just having an extreme case of overreaction?

Fairly slim odds I think, because the Amazonian rainforest is truly huge. Only 17% of it has been destroyed so far, I believe.

Catch is, it is said that losing over 20% of it would basically cause catastrophic, irreversible damage to both the forest and the world environment. We're basically fast approaching the point of no return for the Amazonian rainforest.

Edited by Gaon on Aug 22nd 2019 at 7:03:33 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Said by whom, may I ask?

A new study on deforestation by a joint team of two Brazilian scientists and two dutch ones as per an article in the scientific magazine Nature Climate Change, apparently.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

x3 Why is it always fucking irreversible?!!

It isn't, yet.

Watch me destroying my country

That study is based on a hypothetical scenario, and I wouldn't take the specific numbers as necessarily highly valid. Still, the idea that the Amazon might reach some tipping point beyond which carbon release and forest fragmentation combine to start some sort of runaway ecological change bears thinking about.

Well if it reaches the "ah, its time for apocalypse in our life time" state, I suppose at least... Actually, in that hypothetical scenario, how long it would take for everyone to die? Or would it be scenario of "Well, lots of people die but not everyone in this generation at least"?

@kkhohoho: It's not an overreaction. An environmental crisis is an inevitability at this point, but we can still mitigate and slow it down. Deforestation of the Amazon will hugely accelerate global warming, not to mention endanger all its unique native species.

Life is unfair...

Obviously. But everyone that's talking about this on Twitter and whatnot think the forest is in danger of being completely destroyed by this current batch of fires alone, and that's what they're reacting to. Hell, I just talked to someone who thought that.

I wish everyone would stop worrying about everyone dying. There is no scenario, up to and including a general nuclear war, in which everyone dies. The Amazon burning is not going to kill large numbers of people. It's going to degrade civilization a few years before that would have happened without it (like 10% or 20% sooner). At worst, large parts of the Amazon effectively become savanna. That will have unforeseen negative effects on local and global climate, but it's not an apocalypse.