Anthropogenic Climate Change

The real "tipping point", if you want one, is industrial agriculture collapsing because breadbaskets like the American midwest become too warm and experience reduced productivity (you can't just move the farms north because the soil isn't the same). That will raise food prices significantly, reducing the "carrying capacity" of the Earth such that a human population decline becomes inevitable. A fast one or a slow one we can't know right now, which should scare some people.

Eh, I think we'll simply find other crops, such as these employed by sub-Saharan Africa which are likely to expand north as the Sahara retreats anyway.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Nov 13th 2020 at 8:22:12 PM

There are hard limits to the cost-effectiveness of alternate crops. They are unlikely to be able to sustain 7+ billion people under current conditions, anyway.

Yeah, once you start losing big staples like rice, wheat, and potatoes, you're in real trouble.

So, like most people here, reading that article that we were past the point of no return hit me pretty hard today. I saw that someone posted Michael Mann's response that the model was inadequate, which helped, but this helped me too:

"Climate hopelessness is the new climate denial."

I still don't know if we can save anything, but this was a nice little pick-me-up and maybe it can help someone else.

Again, it helps if climate change was viewed not as apocalyptic but rather as a significant decline in global quality-of-life; thus even if we're too late to reverse the oncoming wave of destruction from happening in the first place, we are still plenty capable of minimizing the harm caused until we eventually reach the point where we can push it back.

Reducing our carbon footprint now is still the best way to save lives in the future.

The Arctic is boiling - temperatures across the Arctic are almost 7 degrees above average and this paper argues that this is part of an abrupt change in Arctic climate.

A study seems to suggest that degrading plastic products release greehouse gases into the atmosphere.

You know, I'm beginning to worry of there may not be any snow in the Mid-North of the USA.

Ars Technica: Aftermarket truck mods pollute as much as 9 million extra pickups

You know about coal rolling, that uniquely American (although I hear it happens in other countries as well) practice of installing equipment on a pickup truck that lets you alter the fuel-air mixture manually, belching out clouds of black, sooty exhaust to confound anyone whom you don't like? Well, it turns out that it and other aftermarket mods that defeat or alter pollution controls cause... a lot of pollution. Who knew?

The U.S. EPA has released a study showing that the practice is more prevalent than previously realized, with up to 550,000 medium-duty trucks having completely removed emissions controls from their vehicles. The study omits light-duty trucks and doesn't count "partial" emissions mods, so it's likely even worse. Combined, these trucks account for more pollution than was released by the infamous Volkswagen "Dieselgate" scandal, wherein VW lied about how much pollution its diesel cars emitted. That resulted in a $16 billion settlement.

To be clear, coal-rolling isn't the primary motive for tampering with emissions equipment: it supposedly results in superior fuel economy and/or engine power. It is also really prevalent in states like North Dakota and Texas that have laxer regulations.

We can build clean cars, we can demand better emissions and efficiency standards from manufacturers all we want, but if we don't stop people from intentionally defeating those standards, we're losing progress.

Banning diesel and gas engines would be a great start. Lets see them tamper with an electric motor.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 1st 2020 at 6:41:27 PM

Or mandatory emissions inspections every few years.

Or giving fines for polluting modifications. You can already get fined for modifications that make your engine too loud. You could do something similar here.

That would mean the states in question would have to pass those laws. Good luck with Republicans in charge.

Do you have noise regulations in the US? I know we have them in the Netherlands. They mostly apply to motorcycles, which are most prone to noise-increasing mods.

Don't quote me on this, but as far as I know most automobile regulations on owners and operators are handled by the states. Federal regulations apply to sales of new vehicles.

That's correct, but that's not a Constitutional thing—it's simply because the Federal Gov't rarely concerns itself with car ownership, regarding that as a local concern. This is clearly related to global warming, however, so enacting regulations under the Federal legal authority to protect the environment is a potential step. Watch the senate races in Georgia to see of the Dems can take the Senate.

I hear there is a proposal to dam off the North Sea if climate change and sea level rises gets real bad. The proposal calls for two dams, one between Norway and Scotland, the other between the western tip of France and England. This would also turn the North Sea into a freshwater lake. (Or we could polder the hell out of it, I guess.)

Apparently it would be cheaper than relocating 25 million people.

That's the one, yes.

As of 2020, the scheme is largely a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the extreme cost of engineered solutions to the effects of climate change. is the key sentence IMO. I am not even daring to check the price tag.

Also, with all due practicality, but relocating 25 million people isn't going to happen. Quite aside from all the practical issues in doing that there is evidence ([1], [2], [3], [4]) that the normal response of people to increasing sea level is to stay put. The Netherlands will become mega-Venice, not mega-Atlantis.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Dec 8th 2020 at 12:13:06 PM

I think it was something like 500 billion spread over decades to a century. The point of the article was that it is a comparatively cheap solution.

I think the more salient point here is that any way we deal with the impact of climate change on our society is going to be orders of magnitude more expensive than dealing with climate change here and now.

Solar geoengineering may not prevent strong warming from direct effects of CO2 on stratocumulus cloud cover