World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns

[Justtristo]

But hey, global warming is a fraud, right?

REF: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...sfeed=true

I for one totally agree with the projections which scientists have made for future climate change. Also that this climate change is a result of human activities adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like no tomorrow.

Also I have come to the conclusion that any measures to combat this being proposed is likely too little, too late. We need to find a way of getting net greenhouse emissions down to zero and ideally gradually reduce the level of greenhouse emissions back to pre-industrial levels in the long run.

Right now I can only think of seeding the oceans with iron that could that feat.

[BethK]

"Hm. We have too many people. Oh, I've a bright idea! Let's wax the lot!"

I've always maintained that 99% of the total world population should be shot for sheer stupidity (starting with the lawyers and politicians)

Actually, reducing the world population from 7 billion to 70 million would be a pretty good idea.

Starting with the lawyers has been suggested before. Willie Shakespeare said in Act 2 King Henry VI "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".

Some of you have the subtlety of a garbage truck driving through a nitroglycerin plant.

Why thank you!

Both sides of this are pretty disingenuous. The Christians with their evident hatred for contraception as well as abortion, and their "quiverfull" movement, shows that they are right on board with overbreeding humankind, while insisting, as their Bible says, they are the stewards of the earth - of God's creation. The green movement, or the ecology movement continues to have children, and are still leaving a huge footprint as compared to our ancestors.

So if you have children, calling for limits on population growth is disingenuous? Preposterous. Scale - you've no sense of.

Actually, the way to slow population growth is to START with limiting the number of children YOU have. Children are born one at a time, not millions or billions at a time. Anyone with the technology to them where they could possibly read this board are in the upper echelon of consumers, and thus their/our children would use more than children of primitive tribes.

There's something wrong with someone saying, "YOU need to limit the number of children you have.", while the person making that statement has children, they are unlikely to be taken seriously, or be labeled a bigot, or be labeled with supporting eugenics, then compounded with argumentum ad Hitlerum.

No Moros...I think BethK is just pointing out the hypocrisy of both sides. Which is basically my main point of angst.

You've got the main point. BOTH sides of the debate have a good deal of hypocrisy, which means that essentially nothing happens to stem the tide of population.

All this crap by governments to "reduce green house gases" is just ...
1. Doing to little to late (as padraic has stated)
2. Doing diddly squat to ACTUALLY reducing CO2 via legislation as others
have queried
3. Ignores the pollution issue and goes no where to addressing that
4. Relies on 'revenge' factor towards Big Corporations to get the average
Joe Schmo on board
5. So that the average Joe Schmo can be taxed even more.

And agreed.... the planet SHOULD have done something about this Pollution issue long before this. There have been inroads into reducing emissions..right now (here) we are finding that the current Diesel motors have a much lower footprint and emissions than say the LNG powered heavy-vehicles.

Still can't understand why we (Australia) don't have a huge Solar Power plant in each state.... then again there would be all those involved in BAU electricity production out of work and begging off the government.

Yes Moros...the scale is HUGE

You've got it. Something should have been done long ago, but everyone was extremely tied up with "us" having to give up more than "you" or "them". In reality, this is a problem for all of us.

At this point, continuing to burn fossil fuels - by anybody - for any reason - anywhere, is contributing to a problem, which it might be too late to fix at all.

Suppose something were to happen that would reduce the population by a large amount 90% or 99%. Yeah, nature would take care of all that "rotting flesh", although it would be something of a biohazard for the survivors for a period of time. We've got other problems, especially with chemical and biological waste being contained in some ways, buried in other ways, and it was in hope that somebody in the future could come up with an effective way to handle such waste. The containers won't last forever, and population could be too low or no one will know how to maintain the containers. And, it leaks out creating another problem up the road.

Active nuclear plants will also have some major problems, without sufficient people with sufficient tools or abilities to adequately man or control them.

Note that knowledge won't be lost, assuming this is something that only effects humans - such as a disease. Libraries will exist, information on computer disks will exist (for a period of time), and different people could learn the information.

For more of my upbeat look at the future, see cynics4bettertomorrow.org - or the blog on that.

[IATIA]

"Logan's Run" anyone?

[Autumnlicious]

Starting with the lawyers has been suggested before. Willie Shakespeare said in Act 2 King Henry VI "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".

I'll be the first to place a gun to your head.

Just saying, if we're going to stick with the fundamentalist reasoning, then I see nothing wrong with putting you to death by the sword you offer.

Some of you have the subtlety of a garbage truck driving through a nitroglycerin plant.

Why thank you!

You may thank National Lampoon for that joke.

Actually, the way to slow population growth is to START with limiting the number of children YOU have. Children are born one at a time, not millions or billions at a time. Anyone with the technology to them where they could possibly read this board are in the upper echelon of consumers, and thus their/our children would use more than children of primitive tribes.

Ok -- the reasonable follow up to this sentence would be "limit the number of children you have to meet zero population growth"... Let's see:

There's something wrong with someone saying, "YOU need to limit the number of children you have.", while the person making that statement has children, they are unlikely to be taken seriously, or be labeled a bigot, or be labeled with supporting eugenics, then compounded with argumentum ad Hitlerum.

Two bricks short of a load. Shame.

If you posess one to two children, then you've bore the replacements for you and your spouse. In this context, then stating to other breeding adults to limit to one/two is reasonable.

I challenge you to seriously explain why having less than or equal to the number of children for something like Zero Population Growth is not reasonable.

The argument that "people are unreasonable" is not a real argument, anymore than the argument offered against the teaching of evolution, where it is documented that researchers and other advocates have been called "bigots", "monsters" and "Hitler supporters" by their opponents. And yet we still teach evolution, regardless of the luddites who fight tooth and nail against it.

You've got the main point. BOTH sides of the debate have a good deal of hypocrisy, which means that essentially nothing happens to stem the tide of population.

Absolute bullshit. You've already gone on record implying that anyone who has kids (Note -- this is a fundamentalist "All or Nothing" paradigm) is a "hypocrite" in advocating against unrestrained population growth.

On the upside, you can remain happy in your disappointment, content that everyone on both sides is a hypocrite.

You've got it. Something should have been done long ago, but everyone was extremely tied up with "us" having to give up more than "you" or "them". In reality, this is a problem for all of us.

Incorrect. There are rich entities that have done more harm. There are rich entities, that by volume alone, disproportionately contribute to this problem.

The only fault of the consumer and Joe Schmoe is letting these entities rise up and corrupt the show.

The egregious fault of the consumer and Joe Schmoe is defending these rich entities, when they have more than a hundred man's resources to defend themselves with and hence do not need some 99%er defending the 1%er.

This absolute crap of "We're all to blame" plays perfectly into the hands of the rich and powerful keeping their power -- after all, if we are ALL to blame, then you can't blame SOME of us.

At this point, continuing to burn fossil fuels - by anybody - for any reason - anywhere, is contributing to a problem, which it might be too late to fix at all.

More fundamentalist rhetoric. You really should take a long hard glance at your local church.

The significance of greenhouse gas output matters in perturbing global climate -- burning gasoline in your lawn mower is paltry compared to the greenhouse gases emitted by the car you drive everywhere. Also, the rate at which GHGs are emitted also matters, as the Earth has a carbon sequestration system (that is being methodically destroyed by immediate for-profit entities for lumber (rainforests), food (ocean) and PCB dumping (ocean)).

So, no. The gross volume and rate matters -- the argument that everyone contributes is also bullshit because powerplant emissions contribute to a significant amount of greenhouse gases along with everyone's car. Technically, decomissioning coal, gas plants in favor of nuclear, solar power along with an overhaul of our power transmission infrastructure to waste as little as possible (and also making solar plants in the Southwest US be viable for serving the Western coast).

In the end run, do you want to blame yourselves or take up the challenge of building the next latest and greatest power plants? Do you want to have the luxury of not having coal plants pollute the local environment and sicken the locals?

More people sicken and die due to the pollution generated by coal burning power plants daily than nuclear power in an entire year. While the nuclear industry is famously secretive and prone to obfuscation (and that must change if nuclear is to be safe and viable), it doesn't have to be.

Suppose something were to happen that would reduce the population by a large amount 90% or 99%. Yeah, nature would take care of all that "rotting flesh", although it would be something of a biohazard for the survivors for a period of time.

It would also be a biohazard for any vector that works in human-like organisms (where human-like means diseases are virulent in target organism).

We've got other problems, especially with chemical and biological waste being contained in some ways, buried in other ways, and it was in hope that somebody in the future could come up with an effective way to handle such waste. The containers won't last forever, and population could be too low or no one will know how to maintain the containers. And, it leaks out creating another problem up the road.

A lot of buried waste (for example - nuclear) is expected to be inactive well before those tanks fail. Also, a lot of contaminants lose potency over time -- you'd have to point out the specific flaws.

Active nuclear plants will also have some major problems, without sufficient people with sufficient tools or abilities to adequately man or control them.

Old 1st and 2nd gens, without maintenance and care, run the risk of overheating and potential meltdown.

But it would give me no end of pleasure, seeing your fundamentalist rhetorical "all-or-nothing" style, to have, in this scenario, a full meltdown of some no-name 2nd gen nuclear plant and utterly poisoning the biosphere.

Note that knowledge won't be lost, assuming this is something that only effects humans - such as a disease. Libraries will exist, information on computer disks will exist (for a period of time), and different people could learn the information.

For more of my upbeat look at the future, see cynics4bettertomorrow.org - or the blog on that.

You're a fucking idiot. A lot of the knowledge from Mercury, Gemini and Apollo never left NASA and never was passed on. So much for books.

Knowledge storage is only as strong as the culture and people that utilize it.

And I assure you, a sudden holocaust of disease would lose a lot of knowledge.

Additional knowledge would be lost as magnetic drives do not last forever and the electronics are always quite sensitive to environmental conditions (as well as the primitive eletrical engineering ability of a survivor), further compounded by a lack of resources (ie power).

But please, let's all circlejerk to this suicide-fantasy. Yeah. That's what it really is, isn't it?

Unless you have some plan of escaping the masque of red death (which would make you the hypocrite that you rail oh so hard against), you will be dead. And boy oh boy, won't the humans of the future be oh-so-sorry for ruining their biosphere and falling victim to calamity. I bet that makes your day. How else would you explain this constant waxing poetic about callously hoping for the deaths of billions?

You're no different than the doomsday Christians and their hope for the rapture.

Well...

Welcome to my rapture.

[Justtristo]

I have no reason to doubt the reality of anthropogenic change, because the science behind it now is pretty solid. However there should be open debate about whether it would cost more to prevent climate change or deal with the consequences of climate change.

With something like the carbon tax just introduced here in Australia or emissions trading. It will help towards reducing greenhouse emissions. However we need weigh the benefits and costs of these policies versus say just dealing with the consequences of climate change.

However I have very good reasons to fear that climate change will happen in sudden bursts, rather than gradually. Which would wreck havoc on human civilization.

[houseofcantor]

I have no reason to doubt that most see ACC as evolved moral perspective. Sure, maybe. As for science... Remember Edward Lorenz? TV weatherman? Plugs twenty variables into his computer to simulate weather and out pops Chaos theory?

Sensationalism in the headline, sensationalism in the title; but the only thing of note was Moros blasting away. Good stuff. Designing simulation of global warming is useful occupation even if global warming is a scam. That's what morality is for, finding a point to a pointless existence. Just had some cat questioning the morality of my atheism, I got pretty pointy.

Pointy is cool. It relieves tension, provides entertainment, and reminds the civilized that a human is a dangerous predator.

Humanity is top of the food chain, pinnacle of universe, and good company; but there are certain areas where we haven't past our certification. Working together is one, fixing shit without knowing what is broke is another.

What is clearly broken is ethical standard, especially in terms of the global economy. There ain't one. There's predation, same as it ever was, only now it comes in living color, with advertising, marketing, and the practiced deception of proposing moral perspective as ethical code. That's the kind of shit we're good at, pointing fingers, getting heated; then following the herd, settling down, and getting back to what's important in life. Like playing Mass Effect.

Which is a moral perspective equally as valid as mounting up the white charger and going on a crusade.

Like Beth K over here. Let's just kill the extraneous six billion. Yay Beth! I'm a certified psychopath, I'm supposed to understand evil; and there's Beth, being all smiley about it. See how it goes? I earn the entitlement of Lucifer from decoding scripture and building the prototype of zero-state morality - which is a solution to this problem, by the way, and the day job - and here's Beth tutoring ol' Nick on evil. Gotta love it.

The answer is no, Beth. My simulations indicate that we are good with Gaia up until eleven billion monkeys. Overpopulation is a local rather than global problem, the affected municipalities are more qualified to assess and rectify the error in their ethical standard. Lucy does the global evil; and this shit right here, the internet, is the hypothetical vector for anti-viral meme once I get a workable production model. And this is paragon technology, thus intensely fragile; while this form of globalization is one of the universe's most valuable resources. A sword is still a sword, but the pen has evolved into virtuality and is now mightier than evolutionary imperative.

Evolutionary imperative provides the baseline for moral philosophy. Both the atheistic variable of empathy and the theistic hymnal of killing in the name of god apply - leave it to the theists to actuate the evil - because that is the same paradigm that has my dickhead government eyeballing Persia like an animal on the hunt...

Back to the topic. In terms of chaos mathematics, if humanity represents the tipping point through willful consumptive consumerism, then we're fucked. That is a very big if; it is also the kind of problem where the only solution is go forward. Go forward comes up a lot in solution sets. What doesn't come up, because it is entirely marketed fiction, is going backwards. There ain't no utopia to which one can return. And carbon tax is ridiculous; another thing we're good at is comedy. Most don't do so well separating the comedy from the fiction.

Which is to say Yours is the moral perspective that must be assessed, evaluated, and renormalized as necessary. Care should be first given to the fire in your house before addressing the inferno about to consume the world. Now that's that's said, I can get back on the Normandy, feeling like I did something.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

If you think for one minute that taxing the planetary populace and BUYING CARBON CREDITS is going to stop Climate Change or make one iota of difference to the global warming from pollution then I feel that you are not looking at the whole issue properly.

Agreed .

Apart from thinking the whole concept is horseshit,the target (5%) is cynical tokenism.. As far as I'm aware we needed a world wide reduction of 20% years ago. We'e probably ALREADY FUCKED.

I liked the kind of solution used by lateral thinker Edward De Bono.:

A factory was polluting a river with effluent from its factory situated on the river bank. De Bono's solution:made the factory move its intake valve BELOW its output valve.


I have no moral argument about the issue,not even certain there IS a problem. Not being paranoid, I simply have no reason to doubt the evidence or sources I've seen. However, the issue is hopefully academic to me.With any luck at all, I'll be dead before things get nasty,and my greedy, fuckwitted species destroys itself.

[Justtristo]

Let me clear up some misconceptions you might have of my position on this subject. I do believe that the current Australian federal government's emissions trading scheme is designed so it wont do anything. They only introduced it as the price of getting the Greens support which they needed to stay in government. A simple tax on carbon would be much effective.

A tax on carbon makes the price of certain fuels higher. That increased price forces consumers to reduce their use of petrol, electricity, etc which produces green house gases. By using less power, petrol or substituting them with fuels which produce less or no greenhouse gases.

As far as I'm aware we needed a world wide reduction of 20% years ago. We'e probably ALREADY FUCKED.

I would agree with you on this point, we need to thinking some extremely radical measures so that net greenhouse emissions go down to zero and ideally into negative levels. Because I do expect to live another 60 or 70 years, so I will be around even things go down the drain.