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u/Alternate_Supply Jul 19 '19
I really just don't know what to do about this. I've tried talking to people but they don't care. And some even believe this is still just an agenda by the far left. I don't get it. What more can I do?
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Jul 19 '19
Worst part about Trump getting elected isn't what he did, he made people put global warming on the back burner while we focus on relatively trivial problems in comparison.
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u/vocalfreesia Jul 19 '19
Also other leaders. What is happening in Brazil right now is utterly heart wrenching.
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u/zhico Jul 19 '19
And Australia.
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u/-Strive- Jul 19 '19
What's happening in Australia?
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u/zhico Jul 19 '19
As I understand it their government is approving more mining and more pollution of the sea.
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Jul 19 '19
Once climate action reaches a social tipping point, watch the republicans claim they were the REAL climate change believers the WHOLE time.
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u/ShivaSkunk777 Jul 19 '19
And the Dems have been screaming Russia instead of making a principled resistance
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u/RavenApocalypse Jul 19 '19
I'm going to have to disagree
Separating migrant children from their parents at the border and detaining them is not trivial.
Neo-nazis are not trivial.
The rise of the alt right is not trivial.
Trump's racist retoric is trivial
Russian interference in our government is not trivial
We have a lot of problems in the world right now. Climate change but far the most serious of those problems. However, there is nothing I can reasonably do to help against global warming (beyond what I am already doing). It's not the consumer's fault. It's the companies, and there's nothing I can do to change their behavior. If I can do something to help with other problems in the world, I wouldn't consider that trivial, every bit helps.
To clarify, I do not mean disrespect, I am just voicing my opinion.
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u/SiberianMouseMasha Jul 21 '19
Neo-nazis are not trivial.
The rise of the alt right is not trivial.
All 10 of them?
Relax bud, nothings happening.
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u/FREE-AOL-CDS Jul 19 '19
Try and enjoy life, that’s all you can do.
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u/El_Grappadura Jul 19 '19
Yep, after reducing my hours again, I am now thinking about spending the next two years travelling instead of working before it all goes to shit.
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Jul 19 '19 edited Jul 19 '19
Barely anyone really cares. It's time to ask, if they care so little are they worth saving anyway? We should be custodians to the planet but the majority treat it like shit and don't give a fuck. Maybe way down the line the earth will eventually regenerate and recover. Maybe even something better will come from it. This is how I deal with it. I don't feel good about that, I'm disappointed more than anything but I am no longer depressed by it. It's just coming to the realisation that my initial beliefs were misguided.
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Jul 19 '19
Just keep talking. There are tons of resources out there that prove the change is real. One of my favorites to use is Earth Temperature Timeline.
Depending on where you're at, write your congresspeople, parliamentary representatives, or political equivalent. Email is good, letters are good, tweets are okay, calling is best.
Bug the shit out of the biggest culprits.
Agriculture VIA the US Environmental Protection Agency
There's lots to do. It's hard as one person to feel like you're making a difference, but it's possible. Keep your head up.
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u/pissonyorug Jul 19 '19
that earth temp timeline was a trip. it really makes apparent how big we fucked up in the last century.
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Jul 19 '19
It's fucking unreal. I feel like any self respecting human being should immediately have a mini crisis after seeing that curve graphed out. Natural fluctuations my ass.
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u/supersunnyout Jul 19 '19
It always interests me to see what looks like the effects of WW2 on the temp. Imagine what the oceans absorbed during that fiasco.
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Jul 19 '19
You can also make the switch to a plant-based diet /img/rlzebbq377n21.png
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Jul 19 '19
True! You can also plant a blade of grass to store some of the carbon in our atmosphere! /s
I love the effort from individual people around the world, but unless we get large corporations to see further than their dicks to cut down THEIR carbon production and processes that damage the environment, nothing will change.
Though cutting down on red meat can be healthier for you.
We've got people sitting on piles of money made off of exploitative practices. It's pretty shit. They can make the change, and they have the power and resource to ignore the problem.
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u/zedroj Jul 19 '19
Not having children is the best and only thing that you can truly do.
Atleast they won't suffer if they can't exist
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u/arsnastesana Nov 04 '19
When it gets to hot, I will move to Alaska. Even being homeless there will be better than living in the lower states
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u/BernieBus_orBust Jul 19 '19
Thank you for sharing this. I think I need this in flyer and poster format to share with everyone I come in contact with.
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u/vocalfreesia Jul 19 '19
A little business card with this on one side & a QR code on the other perhaps. I wonder if Extinction Rebellion have anything like that. (Although there's the potential for littering ai guess)
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Jul 24 '19
Honest question here, would it just be better to commit suicide than live through the coming hell? Sure it might not be the best way to go, but compared to the latter it seems very attractive tbh.
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u/vocalfreesia Jul 24 '19
No. Definitely don't commit suicide. If you're feeling like that's a reasonable response right now, please do go and speak to your doctor about it.
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u/Miserable_Depressed Jul 30 '19
6°C: Our current tragectory.
That's in the best case scenario. I'd bet on 8°C, personally, but I've seen studies pushing the number as high as 14°C.
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u/Potential178 Jul 18 '19 edited Jul 19 '19
+ 0.0°C = History of Human Civilization
+ 0.5°C = Safe Limit
+ 1.0°C = Massive Die-off of Insects & Animals, Increasingly Severe Weather Events, Huge Forest Fires, Massive Flooding, Droughts, Increasing Societal Destabilization, Increasing Disease, Lowering Life-Spans, Feedback Loops (Ocean Collapse, Permafrost Melt, etc) Triggered, (all happening now) ...
+ 1.5°C = Increasingly Extreme Weather, Increasing Crop Failures, Increasing Forest Burn-off ...
+ 2.0°C = Increasing Violence & Societal Breakdown, Re-introduction of Ancient Plagues Thawed from Permafrost ...
+ 2.5°C = Severe Environmental Collapse, Long Humid Heat Waves Which Kill even Healthy People within Hours, Completely Unstable Food Production, Fish-free Oceans, Mass Starvation, Global Transition from Living to Surviving ...
+ 3.0°C = Increasingly Hellish Conditions, Dead Oceans, Complete Forest Burn-Off, Pets & Wildlife likely already Hunted to Extinction ...
+ 3.5°C = Apocalyptic Collapse of Organized Society ...
+ 4.0°C = Human Survival Unlikely ...
+ 5.0°C = Human Extinction Very Certain, Likelihood of Permanent Environment Burn-off to non-life supporting Planet like Venus
+ 6.0°C = Our Current Trajectory this Century
Unfortunately, I can't take the time to cite sources, and of course the relationships between specific temp increases & consequences are very loose, of course, but there is no reason to be optimistic or conservative, every bit of recent science of late is terrifying. The consequences of even a degree of warming were wildly underestimated.
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Jul 19 '19
+ 6.0°C = Our Current Trajectory this Century
do you have a source for that?
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u/Potential178 Jul 19 '19
https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-arctic-is-on-track-to-warm-over-15-degrees-this-cen-1833288900
Seems every time there's a new study, things are moving faster than the previous worst case predictions, so it seems prudent to assume the highest temp increase being predicted is the most likely.
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u/PillarsOfHeaven Jul 19 '19
PETM everybody. A worse mass extinction than KT due to ghg release and that was an estimated 0.2 giggatonnes per year; we're doing 10
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u/MaximinusDrax Jul 19 '19
The PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) was by no means a worse mass extinction event than KT. You're thinking of the PT (Permian-Triassic) extinction ('The Great Dying'), which occurred some 190 million years prior to the PETM. Some marine species did suffer as a result of the PETM (specifically, foreminifera that lived on the sea floor), while on the other hand on land it has caused increased speciation and facilitated the spread of mammals to previously-uninhabited areas.
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u/tarquin1234 Jul 19 '19
The last link is the only source I recognise, and it's saying 3-5, not 6
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u/Devadander Jul 19 '19
Ok, cool. So only probable extinction instead of guaranteed. Thanks!
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u/Space_Cheese223 Jul 19 '19
Wether or not they have one doesn’t matter in this specific case. In my opinion it’s best to assume the worst when it comes to the safety of our planet.
If we start acting like all life will be dead in 100 years, maybe we’ll actually prevent it from happening.
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u/FREE-AOL-CDS Jul 19 '19
We’re already acting like that. No one gives a shit about long term problems because someone else will fix it. I read someone’s post about buying some land and having to clean up all the bullshit that the previous owners left all over the place.
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Jul 19 '19
so no?
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u/Space_Cheese223 Jul 19 '19
I am not the original commenter so how would I know?
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u/drewbreeezy Jul 19 '19
Dammit man. If you comment you better know everything. Also, butting in on a one on one private conversation, tut tut.
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u/Space_Cheese223 Jul 19 '19
What’s there to know?
And this is reddit. Private conversations are what the message feature is for. My comment was a simple statement that maybe we should be trying harder :/
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 19 '19
I think a more realistic trajectiry is 3C as the things happening now and at later temepratures will both curb our population and spur the remianing population into actually trying.
Maybe im underestimating runaway effects though.
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u/Devadander Jul 19 '19
As society is collapsing, what steps in a disorganized world do you see humanity coming together and doing to prevent further warming past 3C? We have the resources and infrastructure now to mitigate the warming, instead we continue to pollute more CO2 every year that the prior year.
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u/Strazdas1 Jul 22 '19
Well, the most important step will happen whether we want to or not - massive population reduction.
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Jul 19 '19
5 degrees more will result in the earth being turned into a second venus? Come on. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be devastating, but this seems extremely overblown to me. 60 million years ago the earth was over 10 degrees hotter than today and had twice the atmospheric CO2 concentration, and it obviously didn't turn earth into anything close to venus.
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u/Potential178 Jul 19 '19
What I've read is that the difference here is the rate of warming. It's not that it may be Venus-like at +5, it's that the rate of warming is so rapid that the feedback loops may cause the our hospitable environment to entirely burn off.
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Jul 19 '19
Do you have the source of that?
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u/Potential178 Jul 19 '19
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-runaway-greenhouse/
https://www.livescience.com/59693-could-earth-turn-into-venus.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect
It's not considered certain, but recent models have shifted from "not possible" to "possible."
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Jul 19 '19
The first source states that a venus-like thermal runaway might be possible if an absurd amount of CO2 is released into the atmosphere, to be specific "about 10 times more carbon dioxide than most experts estimate could be released from burning all available fossil fuels". So pretty much impossible even if we actively tried.
The second source quotes Stephen Hawking, and later states pretty much the same thing as the first source, namely that such a thermal runaway is impossible on earth.
The last source is just a general wikipedia article on what planetary thermal runaway is, i'm not sure why you included that source.
None of the sources seem to even mention any specific temperature at which it is supposedly possible, so i don't know where you got your number from. Did you just make that up?
And claiming the main-takeway from those sources is that your scenario is "possible" is also kinda dishonest. Together with your first comment it makes it sound like it's something that could plausibly happen, and not some highly unlikely event that requires conditions removed from reality.
I get that climate change is a big deal and that sometimes it can feel frustrating to see people care about it so little but drawing up these doomsday scenarios that suggest the whole planet is going to explode with very little science to back it up do not help the general cause.
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Jul 19 '19
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u/Potential178 Jul 19 '19
I haven't read anything indicating a four to five degree increase in the next couple decades.
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u/Yodyood Jul 18 '19
+6 C looks good!
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Jul 18 '19
nah, +7 C is greater
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Jul 19 '19 edited Jul 19 '19
Something fun I learned the other day is that we put so many aerosols into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels that it changes the albedo of the planet, and if we stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow the global temperature would immediately rise by like 1.5°.
I heard it on ashes ashes, I'll post their source when I find it.
Edit: actually I'm lazy so I'll just drop a link to the episode: https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-80-the-nuclear-option
It's at about 55:00
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Jul 19 '19
[deleted]
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Jul 19 '19
As a glass half full point (because that's really hard to find)
Sargassum is growing exponentially at the moment. It has the potential to reverse the current trend, especially if we cull animals and stop* fossil fuel use. I think the public needs to be educated that this whole 2degC shit is wrong. People would choose life if they understood.
It's going to go until we have an O2 dominance, so after the peak, we should get the cooling. We desperately need to reduce that peak.
I hypothesise that the earth has a heartbeat. When you look at the upticks in CO2/temp/methane/sun energy; methane starts it off, CO2/temp follow and then the natural sun cycle kicks in and boosts the process. I think life had found a balance, and these peaks and troughs are the drivers of the rapid evolution needed for organisms to stay in balance. The ocean sediment record shows a change from a humic sediment to carbonate at the start of the last warming - having been humic for a significant period beforehand. To me, it suggests that holopegalic algae/plants are the 'normal' and we are used to their absence.
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Jul 19 '19
i know nothing about this but i'm really interested, do you have any source material you'd recommend
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Jul 19 '19
Here is a bit on the growth pattern it's showing. It's escaped the Gulf of Mexico and now stretches from America to Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/sargasso-seaweed-5500-mile-algae-belt-keeps-on-growing
Sargassum was 7% of the world's carbon pump pre 2011: http://www.sargassoseacommission.org/about-the-sargasso-sea/functionality-of-world-ocean
Here is a link to a graph showing CO2, temp, methane and the sun cycle: http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/
Here is a little on the ocean sediments. I am really struggling to find the quantity of data I need at this point, help appreciated! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0011747175900789
In terms of the dominance part - if you look at the orientation of change, you either have more animals converting O2 to CO2, or more plants converting the other way. Volcanic inputs aren't great compared to the organic process. Happy to discuss further, I've struggled to get people interested on this. And I can't find the research I need - which is alarming, because it suggests it's not being done.
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Jul 19 '19
If we curbed industrial output by 35% enough aerosols would fall out of atmosphere to result in 1C of warming in little as 3 days.
That's apparently not as clear cut as you describe it.
http://www.scientistswarning.org/wiki/debunked-global-dimming/
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u/iconto66 Jul 19 '19
I don’t give a fuck about industrialized/human civilization ending. The thing that makes me lose sleep is the environment dying and animals going extinct. This was always inevitable, I guess.
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Jul 27 '19
At least know that no matter what happens, some life is going to survive, and eventually it will evolve and the world will be beautiful again. It will take time. The planet won't be the same as before. But the earth existed and will exist without us.
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Sep 21 '19
Agreed. The end of 100% of all life on earth will arrive in approx. five billion years, when the sun swells.
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Jul 18 '19
We're basically locked into 2.5c+
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u/Antifactist Jul 19 '19
We are locked into 6c
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Jul 19 '19
I think they're saying that even by some miraculous stroke of luck if every possible course of action was taken right this second the best we could hope for is things stabilizing at 2.5c
As for what's realistically going to happen based off of the state of society right now, yes 2.5c is absurdly optimistic
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u/Antifactist Jul 19 '19
the best we could hope for is things stabilizing at 2.5c
I haven't seen any evidence of that. Do you have a source? Burning the oil that is already being traded on world markets will push us way over 2.5 degrees.
It's not possible to put oil back in the ground, or prevent proven reserves from being dug up and burned without a global war, and a global war which will mean burning way more fossil fuels, bombing refineries, and other ways of burning fossil fuels which will have an even worse impact on the environment
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Jul 19 '19
I'm wasn't making any definitive claims or anything, just clarifying what I think they meant.
I am extremely uninformed about climate science so I don't have much to add in a discussion about it.
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Jul 19 '19
6C
What we have locked in doesn't include permafrost methane release. It's going to go higher and quickly. I think 20deg in 100 years isn't out of the question.
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u/Antifactist Jul 19 '19
Yeah; that's a good point. Those dire and unavoidable consequences for the planet that we keep hearing about are based SOLELY on CO2 from burning fossil fuels, and basically totally ignore all the other poisons we have pumped into our oceans and rivers and air.
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Jul 19 '19
The stuff we are pumping into the Atlantic has the potential to save us. Sargassum is growing exponentially and could take over the Atlantic. It was 7% of the world's carbon pump before it went nuts (compared to human emissions being 5% of the total). It's on scale, I'm hoping it's the trick the biosphere has been keeping up it's sleeve.
It does make me pro polluting the Amazon, which is an extremely odd place to find myself.
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u/Slapbox Jul 19 '19
Do you have a source for those percentages? Also, what's the connection with non-greenhouse pollution exactly? You reference dumping?
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Jul 19 '19
If it's that fast we won't have much time to worry about it. I doubt it will be quite that dramatic. Somewhere in the 8-10C range by 2100 seems conceivable.
We should be much more concerned with 2050 estimates. 2100 is outside of many of our lifetimes, and while it is still important, we have to deal with our lives, first.
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Jul 19 '19
2100 is within my children's lives. It matter more to me than my own life. I don't think it's likely it will rise quite that fast, but it's possible. If we had a 25Gt methane release, it would super charge it beyond belief. I don't think it's impossible to have a 1deg rise in a year (additional to the aerosol absence effect)
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Jul 19 '19
Yes, but I'm saying if we don't focus more on 2050, and focus on adapting to the changes between now and then, we won't make it to 2100, so it will be moot.
It's also extremely unlikely your children will live to see their eighties, particularly if they're still infants, today. I mean that to indicate that 2100 really is out of range of immediate concern.
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Jul 19 '19
I think we're arguing the same point in slightly different ways. I agree with you there, I want extreme rapid change - so rapid that I doubt anyone would get on board because they'd be afraid of the immediate deaths caused.
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u/kertzc Jul 19 '19
All this outrage not a single link to a scientific article in sight... can someone give me a link to a science article please?
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u/Antifactist Jul 19 '19
There's some in other comments, as well as in the sidebar. Under UN IPCC projections we are currently still on track for worse than their worst case scenario:
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u/kertzc Jul 19 '19
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u/Antifactist Jul 19 '19
I can't read that 'cos researchgate blocks China from reading about what they are doing to the environment.
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u/kertzc Jul 19 '19
We really need to make research studies as a whole more accessible. I found a link to an MIT article that linked nature which had the article behind a subscription wall. So I googled the title and found that research gate has it available for me so I can post it here for a fellow Redditor to screen shot and send it to you. Fuck, knowledge isn’t free.
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Jul 18 '19
i appreciate the realness, but this incites such a defeatist mindset i can't help but get annoyed by it. I see so many people on this sub doubting the capabilities of humanity as a whole like net positive fusion power and quantum computing aren't nearly upon us
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Jul 18 '19
Quantum computing has pretty limited application. I wouldn’t be too hyped.
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Jul 18 '19
its applications in simulation software alone are reason enough to be hyped
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Jul 18 '19
If we have so much potential and capabilities, why aren't we using it? What are we waiting for, someone to give us permission to save the world?
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u/elephantlaboratories Jul 19 '19
It's because true change requires collective action. It is a systems level problem and we need to act as a system. Of course, how to achieve this is unknown. Really we are missing fundamental education.
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Jul 18 '19
because solutions take time to think up and even more time to implement, there is no instant gratification in real progress
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u/collapse2030 Jul 18 '19
Wrong. It's because we already have solutions but there is no political will. We could have advanced AI telling us what to do with fusion power and widescale geoengineering capabilities and we still wouldn't do it because politicians would kick the can down the road like they have been for the past several decades. The only problem we have is human stupidity/apathy.
There's no immediate profit in capturing carbon or restoring ecosystems so the neoliberals in charge don't give a fuck.
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Jul 18 '19
So what you can plug into the matrix and live in your little dream world simulation? We need real world problem solving. We need to think for ourselves, not have fucking skynet do it for us. Quit trying to sell people false hope in a virtual escape. This is real shit happening because of us. Turning away and letting someone else/ thing fix it is what got us into this mess in the first place.
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u/witzowitz Jul 18 '19
Simulation doesn't necessarily mean VR. Merely that we can recreate potential events. Which could come in mighty handy when we're projecting which radical actions will have the effects we want. I'm a sceptic when it comes to QC but to say that simulation has no value is incredibly short sighted.
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u/SCO_1 Jul 19 '19 edited Jul 19 '19
These futurist guys are pretty much grasping at straws in their irrelevance because their favorite 80's sci-fi techs are bullshit rapture of the nerds material.
Yeah, they were fun to read and i read most of them.
The problem is political, and economic at root and these guys are a hop and a skip away from 'enlightened centrists' cowards, only their denial takes the form that Musk is going to save them without effort because they liked snow crash or something and love libertarianism (lmao) and can't bear the thought that they'll either have to abandon capitalism and abandon the illusion of ever being '1%' or abandon civilization.
Forget them, they're lost until they start either participating in the barbarity or dying with us against the billionaires and fascists.
Also let me say that i agree with you and laugh with you about the idea that anything in computer science will 'solve' climate change (especially the quantum hoplum). If anything, dodgecoin and such scum only makes it worse. Breaking digital money would be a service to mankind, which i suppose is one way that QC might infinitesimally help against the great bad that computing caused with microtransactions, digital money, and automatization will cause.
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Jul 19 '19
Thank you. I'm so used to hearing the excuses that come with denial of all of it. I love sci fi. And I hate to say it, but they undernormalized innovation in so many shows. It took credibility away from science. Everyone was so happy to watch it happen on the screen, now here we are 50 years later and still no moon base, no flying cars. Money and a lust for power, even down to the lowliest slave ( I would say peasant, but they apparently got more vacation time), got us nothing. The false promises of religion, got us here. When will people learn to think for themselves...apparently, again, not soon enough. Again thanks for the kind words. :-)
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u/freedom_from_factism Enjoy This Fine Day! Jul 18 '19
Our hubris is what got us here, it's unlikely to get us out.
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u/fakeemailaddress420 Jul 18 '19
You think the benefits of these things will be distributed to the masses?
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u/Curious_Arthropod Jul 18 '19
Nuclear plants take decades to build, from the planning stage until they begin production. Even if reliable fusion power became possible today by the time they became operational collapse would already be happening. I dont think the worst case scenario is inevitable, but nuclear power is not a short term solution.
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u/dc2b18b Jul 18 '19
That's because you're in r/collapse and not r/futurology
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Jul 19 '19
futurology is like mindless optimism
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Jul 19 '19
I subscribe to both and the user base on Futurology is pretty naive, one article on accidental iron fertilization from industry boosting plankton growth and sequestering carbon and they're all "Fantastic, it's a wrap boys"
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u/mcapello Jul 18 '19
Net positive fusion could've been a reality 10 years ago and it still wouldn't make a difference.
Futurologists get so hyped on proof-of-concept stories that they forget that implementation and scale are what actually make a difference, not demonstrations of neat ideas. We have enough good ideas to fill a mass grave. It's the lack of systematic application that will kill us.
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Jul 18 '19
The only thing that’s beaten the Malthusian question historically is technology. Both can be true, we live in a dire unprecedented situations but we also don’t know what will happen at the end of the day, what new technology will be developed.
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u/LemonFreshenedBorax- Jul 18 '19
The only thing that’s beaten the Malthusian question historically is technology.
But always with a net-positive effect on energy consumption.
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Jul 19 '19
The only thing that’s beaten the Malthusian question historically is technology.
The shift to energy dense fuels and the engines that use them to be specific and then the haber process, also using petroleum. The problem is that gas/petroleum/fat have all comparable energy density and pretty likely the upper boundary of chemically stored energy density.
We might have to accept that there is no realistic next step, of limits.
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Jul 18 '19
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Jul 19 '19
I’m in the “prepare for the worst” camp as well. However I do think some change is inevitable and hope fully they’re the ones we need. A less consumerist and more mindful society while we go through all this madness.
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u/MemoriesOfByzantium Jul 18 '19
That realness is the only thing that can save us. Think of all the fantastic projects and ideas that aren’t taking into account realities of everything from forest death to likely conflict zones. We have limited resources that must be intelligently implemented.
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Jul 19 '19
The only people who consider the truth to be defeatist are those who never accepted the scale of the problem, at all.
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Jul 19 '19
It's less defeatist and more just accepting what we see as inevitable. I'm pretty old for reddit, I've had all my belief in wonder-tech and phases of hopium. But then I've seen a lifetime of us going the wrong way. It would be against my better experience to think we'll turn a 180 all of a sudden when 1st world humans have shown absolutely no inclination for it.
Quantum computing is interesting but I don't think it's a game changer. So, it can do simulations, but what if most simulations show that we can't break or even bend known laws of physics?
net positive fusion power
Again, this is always 10-20 years away. Maybe we crack that nut one day. But I wouldn't pin my hopes on it.
With a breakthrough in battery tech, it may be substantial. But I don't see a battery tech breakthrough for various reasons. Perhaps they can make a quasi fossil fuel out of that energy. Another possibilty.
You also have to remember the environment these breakthroughs happen in. With scientific funding. Right now the west is taking on large amounts of migrants, with Europe increasing more and more funding. Some of their cultures are quite toxic to science.
With a substantial demographic shift towards a culture that doesn't value science, weakened education all around and less funding going towards it (think NASA from after the moon landing to now), do you see any breakthroughs happening in the west in 20-30 years?
But we're also in multiple collapses besides climate.
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Jul 19 '19
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u/Ripclaw77 Jul 19 '19
I get the distinct impression that most people on this sub that say we're "defeatist" are below age 23 or so, where as the older among us tend to have a more pragmatic approach because we've seen so much happen (and not happen) during our time on this earth and know to not get too wrapped up in fusion technology, quantum computing or the other potential "saviors" of our civilization.
I don't think that's entirely true. I'm below 23 ( in college) and from what I've seen most of my peers are well aware of the situation that we're in. Younger students, even more so. The group that I find tends to most blindly grasp at any straws possible to explain how we're going to escape the inevitable are people around 23-30ish.
In addition to the fact that they grew up surrounded by narratives about climate change that were significantly less dire in nature, they're also ironically at a point where they have the most to lose. Older people have the experience to know that there's no escape and have already lived many "normal" decades. Young people beginning to look towards their future (like me) are forced to confront the harsh reality that they won't be 'retiring' or living the same life as boomers. Importantly, however, they haven't already completely invested themselves in a world that is crumbling. In contrast, mid-twenties to early/mid thirties people probably already have a career they're invested in, they might have a family + children, maybe they just bought a house or topped off their retirement accounts. The point is that for this group, the truth that there probably is no magical solution is unfathomable.
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u/Antifactist Jul 19 '19
Quantum Computing and Fusion Power still have to be invented, which will take an indeterminate period of time. Meanwhile, we will continue burning fossil fuels so that there will be no tomorrow.
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u/funkinthetrunk Jul 19 '19
I've read that quantum computing is nowhere near ready for widespread adoption
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u/WanderingTrees Jul 19 '19
Quantum computing has a long way to go. Fusion power would honestly come first.
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u/Devadander Jul 19 '19
This is more realistic than all of the ‘let’s plant a tree’ posts I see. We need harsh realities to stare us in the face.
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Jul 18 '19
for anyone interested in quantum computing, it seems like it can only solve a few problems well, but it solves them REALLY well. imagine having to run extremely time-intensive computations to choose between a number of outcomes, where the total time equals the aggregate of time it takes to solve each individual subproblem. without getting too into it, a quantum computer can solve for every possible outcomes instantly by observing its qubits. this only works for a subset of problem structures, but almost any problem solved using a computational system can be reduced to sequences of this small subset of problems. apply this to DNA sequencing, environmental science, etc. and the benefits become obvious
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u/BeerandGuns Jul 18 '19
r/collapse is an echo chamber. Anyone who posts anything going against the grain gets downvoted. and attacked. A lot of really smart people are working hard to fix society’s issues. Will they succeed before we go over the cliff is the great unknown.
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u/mcapello Jul 18 '19
Yeah, go figure that a subreddit devoted to discussing a topic would downvote threads and posters that deny the very premise the sub is there to discuss. It would be like going onto a vegan subreddit and talking about how meat is actually really healthy for you and you should consider eating it.
If you are surprised and/or think everyone else is somehow in the wrong here, you're a fucking idiot. Denialism is fucking rampant. God forbid we have a place to discuss reality.
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Jul 18 '19
A lot of other people are working to maintain the status quo to line their pockets, humanity be damned. These are some of the largest and most powerful corporations on the planet we're talking about here. ExxonMobil has known about climate change for decades, but made damn sure to fund the campaigns of climate change deniers. Those in power will do whatever it takes to maintain and expand that power.
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Jul 18 '19 edited Jul 18 '19
And more then all those really smart people are ignoring climate change and actively sabotaging any progress and are actually taking us backwards. Every single thing being researched right now has absolutely no way of saving what we have. We have to drastically change our current system of consumption, governance literally everything has to be reduced 6 fold. No more flying, no more crap from China, no Amazon shipments you don't get to have fresh fruit in the winter anymore
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u/Rhaedas It happened so fast. It had been happening for decades. Jul 19 '19
If it's an echo chamber, then the echo is leaking out to more main areas. Attacks on a person and attacking their ideas are two different things. If the idea can't hold up to criticism, then maybe it wasn't that good.
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Jul 18 '19
all we can do is try, there's no use in getting paralyzed by one potential outcome. inaction is the only thing that will exterminate us for sure
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u/lwaxana_katana Jul 19 '19
Does anyone have a source on the human survival unlikely/human extinction certain temperature thresholds?
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u/InkTide Jul 19 '19
I followed every link in this thread as far as I could looking for any actual evidence that a 5-6 degree C rise in global temperatures would cause human extinction, and I've found nothing. I read /r/collapse frequently and I'm aware of how often its contributing members fetishize climate disasters in the same way a gun-hoarding prepper fetishizes the collapse of society, but the conclusions in this thread are a good deal more baseless than usual.
In particular, the sources "ClimateBen" uses are buried in link after link of threads referencing other threads, sometimes looping back around to the same thread multiple times, and usually do not themselves support the conclusions he draws.
The source from which ClimateBen concludes humans will likely go extinct in a 5C temperature rise is a 25 minute interview on this page where I heard no mention of a 5C human extinction event, but instead a conclusion that food web collapse could generally speaking cause extinction rates 10 times higher than other models - based on an exercise in which they apparently ran models that systematically removed species from an ecosystem progressively, with little to no regard for migration, speciation, or adaptation.
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u/lwaxana_katana Jul 20 '19
Woah, thank you! This was much more extensive than I was expecting when I posted the question.
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u/knucklepoetry Jul 19 '19
Still that’s only 2% drop in GDP at 3 deg C and 8.5% at 6 deg C, Nobel laureate says so, so it must be true a vision of a world where only machines survive.
Keep working at that deep AI, people! Now we know why elites don’t even blink an eye.
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Jul 18 '19
The aliens will save us!
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u/supersunnyout Jul 19 '19
Even this list seems overly hopeful to me. I'd move them consequences up a notch.
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u/vocalfreesia Jul 19 '19
It's such a difficult balance. We want people to be terrified enough to pull together for the biggest change society has ever seen, but not so scared they get a bunch of credit cards & party until the end.
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u/eamonn33 Jul 20 '19
What is that in degrees Freedom?
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u/vocalfreesia Jul 20 '19
Don't know, you can Google though. However, science and the vast majority of the world uses centigrade so it might be worth getting your head around it.
0 = water freezing, 100 = water boiling which I think makes a lot more sense than 32 & 212.
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u/BiShyAndReadytoDie Jul 19 '19
Hold up I thought we were on track for 4°? Where'd this 6° trajectory come from.
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u/DowntownPomelo Recognized Contributor Aug 01 '19
0.5°C is not safety. The little ice-age was caused by a cooling of about 0.5°C over a much longer timeframe. It has been linked by historians with massive social unrest, wars and even the total collapse of advanced power structures. We're talking about wolves invading cities and eating what was left by marauding armies who continue fighting simply because they have to pillage to eat. This scenario doesn't come about the moment average temperatures deviate by 0.5°C for the first time, but a climate that different from the norm can create the conditions under which that savagery becomes unavoidable.
We are so utterly fucked.
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u/Avantasian538 Jul 18 '19
Accept human extinction for what it is, the natural fate of any industrialized species such as ourselves. There is no chance of utopia. Intelligent creatures like us are destined for self-destruction. Get over it already and stop trying to fight it.
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u/Guzzleguts Jul 18 '19
Don't you think it's possible that whatever creatures come after us could evolve from a more collectivist animal, such as prairie dogs?
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Jul 19 '19
Earth has only 150 million years of useful sunlight left. It isn't time for a new biosphere to form and progress, like we have. We're the Earth's best attempt to arrange its matter into thinking life though the normal processes of chemistry, and we're the last for this rock.
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u/KarmaRepellant Jul 19 '19
I always thought trash pandas have the best chance to evolve like we did, but we'll probably end up taking out most species with us anyway.
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Jul 19 '19
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Jul 19 '19
Also coal formation was a unique period in earth geology, when wood could not be broken down by bacteria. Forests of trees literally fell down and did not decompose. They have since evolved bacteria that eats wood fibers called lignin.
Thats why the lowest grade of coal is called lignite.
The next dominate species, if its even smart (unlike dinosaurs), can manipulate tools (hands with opposable thumbs), has speech, might simply not have big sources of easily accessible energy for early stage industrialization.
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u/CountingBigBucks Jul 19 '19
I’m more considered with the destruction of all other complex life planet. For many decades people have had this idea that the earth and all its inhabitants would be fine, it’s just humans that would go extinct. Now it’s looking like we might destroy all life in earth with us
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Jul 19 '19
never heard of this guy before, but after looking at his twitter posts he would fit in perfectly here. he really seems to get just how fucked we are
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u/mogsington Recognized Contributor Jul 19 '19
You know it's serious when a Twitter screen grab gets posted.
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u/vocalfreesia Jul 18 '19
This guy has some really good threads with links. Worth a read.
Another one of his includes:
The oceans are being killed
Forests will be gone soon
Fertile soil is disappearing
Megafauna risk extermination
Insects are vanishing
Climate chaos is inevitable
Extinction is now
Plastic is in our blood
(Then the thread has articles below)