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err posted:Dumb question: Why is "climate change" being adopted as the contemporary scientific term for what's going on? Wasn't it coined by a conservative during the Bush years to diminish the seriousness of the warming to the public? It was adopted because it's more accurate. The Bush lot liked it because it focus tested as less threatening and imminent.
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Dec 14, 2011 10:31
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duck monster posted:I personally think that the names and personal details of the major denialists and their funders, ought be recorded for posterity , so that the next generation knows who needs to be punished for their predicament. This is a ain that will be harshest on generations to come, whilst these rich old bastards will escape it.  So we should punish the children and/or grandchildren of climate denialists/sceptics because they have a different opinion on climate change? Of course, the vested interests are solely on the side of Big Oil, the green lobby has zero incentive to overly dramatize climate change, no sir none at all... Keep dreaming. Every side of the debate has only one interest: to keep the gravy train of government subsidies and tax credits running in their direction. Big Oil doesn't want to lose its fossil fuels business - green tech is gonna kill them off in the end when oil becomes scarce, they know this and are fighting a long battle but they're gonna lose in the end. Until then, there's a lot of money to be made. Many green NGOs and other environmentalist orgs float on government subsidies and grants and that is at risk as long as governments around the world remain skeptical of climate change. What to do? Inject fear and dramatize. Big Oil downplays the effects of climate change and on the other side green activists do the exact opposite. If you want a meaningful discussion on this most important issue, get rid of both extremes.
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Dec 14, 2011 10:32
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McDowell posted:The 21st is gonna be a 3000 ft drop cutting edge steel coaster with triple inverted loops, water effects, and magnetic acceleration.
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Dec 14, 2011 11:14
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VideoTapir posted:Their grandchildren (and to a lesser degree, almost all first worlders, and the middle and upper classes of pretty much every country) will be the main beneficiaries of the gains made at the expense of literally everyone else on the planet. True as that might be it's still a pretty hosed up thing to punish people for something their ancestors did and over which they no choice or control. Besides, if we had perfect records I doubt anyone could boast of a pristine sinless lineage. It's not by chance that we are here today, our ancestors were better at loving over others for their own benefit. Of course you could argue that that is precisely why we should punish their descendants, as a deterrent to others that if you gently caress society your progeny will pay the price. But really, do you think any of the people profiting from this would give a poo poo about that? And even if they did, at the end of the day you'd still be punishing innocent people.
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Dec 14, 2011 11:19
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MeLKoR posted:True as that might be it's still a pretty hosed up thing to punish people for something their ancestors did and over which they no choice or control. Why do you think rich people are suddenly deciding to give a poo poo about space travel? If you have to ask how much a one-way ticket is, you can't afford one.
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Dec 14, 2011 11:45
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:Big Oil downplays the effects of climate change and on the other side green activists do the exact opposite. If you want a meaningful discussion on this most important issue, get rid of both extremes. Would you say the truth is somewhere in the middle? 
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Dec 14, 2011 12:33
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MeLKoR posted:They'll be dead long before your children (more like grandchildren) really start getting it. Would you punish their grandchildren? Thats not the time table the boffins are talking about at the moment, I'm afraid. Its potentially a bit more dire than that. But y'know. The sons of israel are still rooting out the old concentration camp guards from their worm holes, which I totally support, and whilst not QUITE comparing the two evils, I think its a handy template. The people doing this have names and those names should be recorded.
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Dec 14, 2011 12:40
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Sometimes I wonder if global warming and related environmental hazards explain the Fermi paradox. Maybe the reason there aren't von Neumann probes all over is because every planetary civilization is unwilling to halt the inertial force of dirty industrialization before succumbing to it and having a chance to build them, in a cosmic tragedy that keeps playing out over and over.
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Dec 14, 2011 12:41
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err posted:Dumb question: Why is "climate change" being adopted as the contemporary scientific term for what's going on? Wasn't it coined by a conservative during the Bush years to diminish the seriousness of the warming to the public? It's not a propaganda thing. "Climate change" has been used for a long time, probably just as long as global warming. Here's a NASA article on the two.
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Dec 14, 2011 12:43
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:
No. I'm talking about the people responsible. The time scale being talked about might not have room to put grandchildren under the worst projections. The consequences are happening right now. Its not theoretical anymore. And quit calling the scientific community "The green lobby". Most scientists want nothing to do with politics except as much as it might avert a catastrophe. In fact thats part of the whole problem, there really isn't much of a green lobby to speak of, save a handful of die-hard greenies in each city. Meanwhile the oil lobby has a slick multinational network of think-tanks and lobbyist groups. Worried scientists vs the right-wing mega is a very asymmetrical battle. quote:Every side of the debate has only one interest: to keep the gravy train of government subsidies and tax credi Yeah I stopped reading at this point. Its a loving stupid and profoundly incorrect talking point. Being a climate change researcher is not a "gravy train". Its a loving hellworld of harassment both from cranks and a political establishment desparate to debunk it to make it go away. I've witnessed it in my own family with a sister that was systematically threatened and gagged for years over reports about the effect of climate change on australian ground water. Like many other climate scientists, she quit the field to go work somewhere where she can be a scientist that gets actually paid properly and not a person under crank siege. duck monster fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Dec 14, 2011 |
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Dec 14, 2011 12:44
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Karpaw posted:Sometimes I wonder if global warming and related environmental hazards explain the Fermi paradox. Maybe the reason there aren't von Neumann probes all over is because every planetary civilization is unwilling to halt the inertial force of dirty industrialization before succumbing to it and having a chance to build them, in a cosmic tragedy that keeps playing out over and over. Its a variation of the old "all societies will eventually discover the nuclear bomb (or antimatter bomb) and wipe themselves out" self-limiting theory of civilization. Probably a more probable one either since energy use would apparently increase with knowledge and carbon fuels likely to be discovered before renewables in the scheme of things. Infact heck, maybe climate change tend to wipe out life before sapient life even emerges usually, and we're a bit of a fluke.
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Dec 14, 2011 12:48
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duck monster posted:Thats not the time table the boffins are talking about at the moment, I'm afraid. Its potentially a bit more dire than that. I mean, yeah, if you can prove that they knew they were spewing bullshit and knew the consequences of that bullshit to the rest of the world then by all means put them on trial for crimes against humanity. But punishing people for simply being wrong or punishing the children of the guilty is a terrible concept.
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Dec 14, 2011 13:03
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MeLKoR posted:I mean, yeah, if you can prove that they knew they were spewing bullshit and knew the consequences of that bullshit to the rest of the world then by all means put them on trial for crimes against humanity. But punishing people for simply being wrong or punishing the children of the guilty is a terrible concept. At this point, ignorance is not a legitimate defense. The scientific consensus is clear, and has been for decades. Deliberately trying to silence legitimate scientists who disagree with your vies (those scientists being the vast majority) is also an action where the ignorance defense falls apart.
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Dec 14, 2011 13:05
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:If you want a meaningful discussion on this most important issue, get rid of both extremes. Or, you know, pay attention to the side with actual evidence.
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Dec 14, 2011 13:25
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duck monster posted:I personally think that the names and personal details of the major denialists and their funders, ought be recorded for posterity , so that the next generation knows who needs to be punished for their predicament. dont worry, man, their names are all stored on the internet... oh wait
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Dec 14, 2011 14:52
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Fatkraken posted:the goal of TRULY clean coal is coal with CCS (carbon capture and storage). Calling anything short of that "clean" is bullshit corporate greenwashing, if there's still CO2 coming out of the stack, that coal is not clean. I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about some of the mechanical engineering work he and his colleagues are doing and he brought up a really interesting piece of research that seems like it would make clean coal a lot more real and a lot more viable. They're experimenting with burning coal while immersed in supercritical water. I think the general term is Supercritical water oxidation, but they would be putting it to a specific use: If you draw up water from deep saline aquifers and bring it up to supercritical, when you burn the coal, any emitted CO2 (or other pollutants) would remain within the fluid. You would transfer the heat of that working fluid to a noncritical (and nonsaline) water supply, which would create steam to turn turbines. You could then pump the CO2 saturated working fluid back down below bedrock where (if you picked the site properly) tons of calcite would precipitate, sequestering the CO2 with stability on geological timescales. To me, the most interesting part is that apparently the oxidation reaction of the coal actually has a greater potential energy when it occurs in this supercritical medium due to some crazy rear end entropy effects that I don't understand. Its greater by enough that it actually could offset the energy input required to get the initial saline water up to supercritical. There is still a LOT of coal out there, so any real, meaningful efforts to clean it up are really exciting.
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Dec 14, 2011 19:47
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duck monster posted:Infact heck, maybe climate change tend to wipe out life before sapient life even emerges usually, and we're a bit of a fluke. Considering the past mass extinction events there have been on this planet alone, this is pretty much the case.
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Dec 14, 2011 20:18
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OK, climate change isn't going to wipe out humanity let's not get too crazy. Unless we fail to adapt to whatever new climate we end up with, we'll end up at about half a billion people living in the Arctic circles subsisting on whatever's left. Maybe we'll have some form of civilization! That'd be nice. Of course it means the death of six and half billion people at least, which is atrocious. We wont die out from this though, but we have to survive through the severe climate change without nuclear war. So there's that too. Whatever debates about climate change you want to have, we need to get beyond the "is climate change real or not." Those are conservations for people who believe whatever they feel like believing. Even if you maintain that there is some infinitesimal possibility that the sceptics are right and everybody else is wrong, the potential cost of not doing enough when we need to do something is much greater than the cost of doing more than is necessary to fight global warming. The conservations we need to be having are a) how do we get our emissions down and b) what do we do when we pass 450 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Dreylad fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Dec 15, 2011 |
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Dec 15, 2011 01:20
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It's going to be EXACTLY like Adventure Time.
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Dec 15, 2011 03:15
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Dreylad posted:Even if you maintain that there is some infinitesimal possibility that the sceptics are right and everybody else is wrong, the potential cost of not doing enough when we need to do something is much greater than the cost of doing more than is necessary to fight global warming. Yet the cost/benefit argument is not getting any traction. Even arguing the benefits of overhauling our industrial and energy systems on their own merits gets nowhere. Lots of good and interesting ideas, noone wants to spend the R&D on them. It's hard to resist the inference that "climate change is harmful education-wise to your belief-structure".
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Dec 15, 2011 03:23
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Can we just talk about space please? http://youtu.be/7SECSxUbXTA We pretty much have to choice but to expand to other planets to consume/trash them, for better or for worse.
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Dec 15, 2011 03:55
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Has anyone written a book or good article taking a look at the more sociopathic actions that world governments might take in the future, if climate change is as bad as it looks, and doesn't get stopped? I've been thinking about all of this, and I'm more concerned about the human element in a global disaster than with the disaster itself. Nukes and germ/chemical warfare seem to be pretty much guaranteed in the midst of land-grabs and multiple waves of violent migration, etc... and it's even more disturbing to imagine the think-tanks that are being run right now within governments who might be looking at ways to solve those human element problems while holding onto their borders and farmable land. *edit* I'm really not sure why I'm going down this line of thought or asking for more of it... it kind of just piles more depressing poo poo on an already awful situation. 
Locus fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Dec 15, 2011 |
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Dec 15, 2011 06:00
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McDowell posted:Can we just talk about space please? We're going to lose most of our infrastructure long before we get into space if that's all we focus on.
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Dec 15, 2011 06:46
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McDowell posted:Can we just talk about space please? Expending intense amounts of energy on a project that will probably fail and kill everyone involved in a crisis that roughly equates to "We are expending too much energy and heating poo poo up" isn't necessarily a wise move. I mean in a sense it makes a lot of sense. Our animal biology gives us an expansionist instinct to increase our numbers whilst securing freedoms and safety for ourselves and offspring, and in that respect I think eventually we're going to have to get off thia planet and go all star-trek styles. But realistically this is a 500+ year project involve us utterly nailing the laws of physics, and gaining ourselves such a deep knowledge of biology that we can manage a food production cycle that can be sustainable in depths of space. Heck it could be a thousands-of-years project because it probably involves terraforming some planet, and with the closest suitable candidate we're aware of, some 600 light years away (we think!), thats not going to happen anytime soon. Or I guess geo-stationary space-station habitats. We can probably do those pretty soon. its the getting on and off the planet thats the problem, and the only feasible way I can see that working without enacting carnage on the atmosphere involves space elevators, an option that might actually be impossible if we dont have some serious advances in material physics. duck monster fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Dec 15, 2011 |
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Dec 15, 2011 07:49
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McDowell posted:Can we just talk about space please? We can't even organise ourselves to lower CO2 emissions over the course of a few decades. The type of century or millennia long thinking needed to colonise space is simply beyond our civilisation's and possibly even our species ability to do so. If you really want to colonise space you should join the Roman Catholic Church. They're the only organisation that has survived in one piece long enough to develop the kind of planning skills needed.
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Dec 15, 2011 07:54
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McDowell posted:Can we just talk about space please? There are plenty of choices other than this one. Also, while the expansion of our species throughout the solar system/universe would be awesome we simply do not have the technology nor means (and I think in both of these we're very far away as well) to do it in any sort of way that would be beneficial to helping us with today's problems.
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Dec 15, 2011 07:59
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Again, not talking about colonization, just good old fashioned exploitation. Better out there then here. First you just take raw mineral wealth from the moon, then you find a way to develop biological wealth. Nuclear and Space tech can be great peaceful outlets for industrial might. That lays the first pavers for Mars colonization. The first terraforming ingredient is CO2 emissions, and we've mastered that 
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Dec 15, 2011 08:22
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Yeah I was talking about exploitation too. We don't have the technology nor means. Not to mention the moon doesn't have anything on it that's going to help us meaningfully expand economically. Then again, with current technology nothing is worth getting out of space, even hydrocarbons.
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Dec 15, 2011 08:25
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duck monster posted:Expending intense amounts of energy on a project that will probably fail and kill everyone involved in a crisis that roughly equates to "We are expending too much energy and heating poo poo up" isn't necessarily a wise move. You're vastly overestimating the amount of time and scientific advancement required to build any kind of long term colonization. Hell, we could've built colonies in the 70s were there sufficient desire to. (And no, terraforming projects would never be anything more than vanity projects.) I also don't think it would "fail and kill everyone involved" But your point remains true enough that Earth's future needs more present day focus than colonization. I think colonization is something, in general, extremely important for us to think about and do, but right now we need more exploration and scientific inquiry in space, which will undoubtedly give us greater insight and ability to deal with Earth's problems.
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Dec 15, 2011 08:32
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At this stage colonization is simply unfeasible and until we start facing serious shortages of rare minerals nobody is going to invest a shitload of money into asteroid harvesting. I suspect it will take seriously rising costs in advanced electronics manufacturing to push us to space and once we are up there we should kill two birds with one stone and get serious with solar satellites / microwave transmission and solar shades to try to reverse the warming damage done. But none of this will help one iota with global warming and fossil fuel shortage in the meanwhile. That will be solved (or not) by nuclear.
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Dec 15, 2011 13:25
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Talking about space colonization as a solution to ANYTHING related to environmental collapse (other than *possibly* a severe shortage of specific elements like ultra rare minerals or isotopes of helium) is weird. Living in orbital or deep space is HARD. Living on mars or the moon is HARD. Harder than living in the Sahara. Harder than living in Antarctica. Harder than living on a floating platform in the middle of the ocean. On Earth it might be hot and dry, or cold and windy, but you still have access to air and are not bathed in hard radiation. However nasty conditions become on Earth, or currently are in specific regions, there will never be ANYWHERE that is as inhospitable as space or extraterrestrial planets within the solar system. It would be cheaper and easier to build underground arcologies or hollow out mountains than anything to do with space.
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Dec 15, 2011 14:10
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Given a choice between the cost of space exploration and a resource war, resource wars will win every time.
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Dec 15, 2011 14:16
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eh4 posted:Given a choice between the cost of space exploration and a resource war, resource wars will win every time. But space exploration won't pay off for years or decades! I can make money from a resource war RIGHT NOW.
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Dec 15, 2011 15:07
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Can anyone speak to the viability of geoengineering? Some of what I'm seeing on the subject seems incredibly pie-in-the-sky, but I also can't help but wonder how many might be one or two breakthroughs away from actually working, just as the Wright brother sat on the first viable flying machine until an engine powerful enough became light enough. Also, what's the viability of just planting a trillion trees? I've read that Freemon Dyson, the legendary physicist and mathematician, calcualted that about a trillion trees would solve our problem for some time. And as trees are wonderful, I'm heavily biased in favor of this.
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Dec 15, 2011 16:14
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Radd McCool posted:Can anyone speak to the viability of geoengineering? Literally nothing is going to change or get better unless someone 1) figures out how to make money from it 2) Capitalism goes away and we stop using, "can I make money from this" as the only metric that matters. Sucks but its true.
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Dec 15, 2011 16:26
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Radd McCool posted:Also, what's the viability of just planting a trillion trees? I've read that Freemon Dyson, the legendary physicist and mathematician, calcualted that about a trillion trees would solve our problem for some time. And as trees are wonderful, I'm heavily biased in favor of this.
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Dec 15, 2011 16:41
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Radd McCool posted:Can anyone speak to the viability of geoengineering? Geo-engineering is a last ditch effort to control cooling and stop things like methane pockets in the Arctic from melting and sending the heating spiralling out of control. But we'll probably have to use it at some point until we get our emissions down. What kind of geo-engineering we use is dependent on how much time scientists have to figure out the best solution, and whether or not there's an international accord not to use any kind of geo-engineering unless there's an agreed need and solution. This will be very tricky.
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Dec 15, 2011 16:59
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duck monster posted:Or I guess geo-stationary space-station habitats. We can probably do those pretty soon. its the getting on and off the planet thats the problem, and the only feasible way I can see that working without enacting carnage on the atmosphere involves space elevators, an option that might actually be impossible if we dont have some serious advances in material physics. Space gun (maybe a smallish Launch loops) for material goods, rockets for people. Space elevators are pretty much a big no. Maybe a Skyhook, but who wants to trust the nerds to get something like parking a huge rock in low earth orbit right on the first try?
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Dec 15, 2011 17:24
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Deleuzionist posted:It's actually a good question: what is the viability of planting a trillion trees? Did Dyson do anything but calculate the amount of trees needed to reduce carbon in the atmosphere? Does he have any idea where they should be put, with what resources, what they should use for nourishment, and what other impacts on the environment would they have? Probably not. I would say very low. There are only less than half a trillion trees in the world right now, which cover about 1/3 of the land surface. Essentially we would have to cover nearly 100% of the land with trees, including the land which is currently not suited to tree growth like deserts and Antarctica. You could probably get this down quite a bit by going for super dense plantings, plantations tend to have a lot more trees per hectare than natural forests, but even so it's a lot of land for trees and not much left for food. In a sci-fi scenario, maybe you can make it work if we plant enormous plantations and switch our staple foods to tree-fruits (plantain is pretty good, and nuts are very energy rich), browsing animals and understorey plants that can grow under full tree cover. In a real world scenario forget it.
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Dec 15, 2011 18:00
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Dreylad posted:Geo-engineering is a last ditch effort to control cooling and stop things like methane pockets in the Arctic from melting and sending the heating spiralling out of control. But we'll probably have to use it at some point until we get our emissions down. What kind of geo-engineering we use is dependent on how much time scientists have to figure out the best solution, and whether or not there's an international accord not to use any kind of geo-engineering unless there's an agreed need and solution. This will be very tricky. The problem is, as Dyer has mentioned, it is likely that it will be a last ditch effort of the first victims of major climatic shifts. It only takes some relatively basic technology to put particles high enough in the atmosphere to affect a 1-2 degree cooling. That's the problem: it is actually so easy to do that the decision to do it won't be after global discussions, it will be as a knee-jerk reaction to immediate crisis. THAT is why we should not rely on geoengineering as a panacea and should do everything in our power to stop the runaway effects before they happen. Once those rockets or planes go up to deposit large volumes of stratospheric aerosols, the game is off and we wait for what's next.
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Dec 15, 2011 18:06
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