|
I wonder about personal change models and theories and feel they can be useful to examine. For instance, suppose you were thoroughly unconvinced of any meaningful planetary consequences resulting from the last several centuries of industrial activity on the planet. How would you live in that case? Even if there were no environmental consequences, would equity still be a question? Would equity be connected to the enactment of the industrial era or not? More interesting to me, take the case in which you are already living as if there were no planetary anthropocenic effects. If you then became persuaded that there were various consequences such as: reduction of biodiversity, climate change, ocean acidification, institutionalized inequity, compromised soil and food systems, etc. how then would you need to alter your own way of living to be ethically consistent with that understanding? Of course if you were persuaded of these things you might be considering large systemic changes, but I am asking at the level of your own sense of identity and participation. I don't simply mean 'I would drive a hybrid and recycle'. I mean, would it have any effect on who you imagine yourself to be? If it would, what sort of changes would be implied? How would you feel about those changes? What process would be involved in making those changes? How do you feel about that process? I feel this is important to clearly understand, particularly in the case of someone arguing against the possibility of climate change and anthropocenic effects. It is usually (strategically) buried or deleted altogether. This is true for corporate entities as well as communities and individuals. Edit: IIRC 'all models are wrong, some are useful' is a quote from the systems thinker Jay Forrester.
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2013 20:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 22:26 |
|
|
Any other blogs suggested that cover climate change/environmental justice issues? The one on the previous page was pretty useful.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2013 01:59
|
|
|
http://www.theoildrum.com/ Is a good source of articles relating to energy issues, especially if you like graphs.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2013 02:07
|
|
|
err posted:Any other blogs suggested that cover climate change/environmental justice issues? The one on the previous page was pretty useful.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2013 03:29
|
|
|
HighClassSwankyTime posted:Hop on over to the prison thread to see what's in store for you! So... what are people doing about this? Individual action isn't meaningful. China is a lost cause and the American government is paralyzed by a minority party that has gerrymandered itself into a stranglehold on legislation. India, Africa and the Middle East are just going to increase their emissions. Europe's governments could turn off everything that runs on fossil fuels tomorrow and it wouldn't save us. So what's going to happen? Are we just going to pump carbon out of the ground and into the atmosphere and watch civilization be forced into a new shape by calamity after calamity?
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2013 16:20
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:So... what are people doing about this? Individual action isn't meaningful. Yes. I'm sorry. Short of a radicalizing movement, with even then poor prospects for success, I don't see any realistic options. And, even then, any group with serious radical ambitions is going to be ferreted out by the surveillance state and subjected to the prison system. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw more COINTELPRO handicapping any such radical groups in the womb. Checkmate, we lost. The odds were always stacked against any serious environmental movement, but it all seems kinda moot. I got panned for posting in the Buddhist thread earlier in this discussion, but I gotta say I'm rather at peace with the whole dismal situation. And honestly, I have more faith in China ultimately doing something rather than the US taking the lead at this point. Yes, they're going to keep developing their economy, but if there ever is a solution they're going to be better enabled to implement it, should they so choose. We're going to wallow in ungovernability, whether we like it or not.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2013 16:42
|
|
Yiggy posted:Yes. I'm sorry. Checkmate, we lost. Who cares anyway, I got my Triple Absinth Frappucino with quadruple Latte, Bob Dylan authentic guitar and Cliff Boddhisattva's Koan Compendium. Can't wait to get my new Google Plexus VII next week. Defeat's never been this radical, dude.
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 11:54
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Are we just going to pump carbon out of the ground and into the atmosphere and watch civilization be forced into a new shape by calamity after calamity? Yes, that's exactly what's going to happen. I'd like to believe otherwise, but I can't find the slimmest justification for hope.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 13:48
|
|
|
"So it begins"...?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 15:27
|
|
|
Maybe not. Also, why does that graph never show the whole season?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 16:38
|
|
|
Kafka Esq. posted:Maybe not. Also, why does that graph never show the whole season? You can find the full chart here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ Bonus: it's interactive!
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 17:20
|
|
|
So, looking at the threats to the long term survival of humanity like climate change, disease, meteors, etc... it seems that a reasonable priority for humanity should be to establish self sustainable human outposts somewhere other than earth. There's really nothing else that gives us the same level of long term survival. Unfortunately, assuming you agree with that, we're at least 100+ years off from being able to do something like that. That means that the disruptions from climate change are going to impact any timelines for getting off this rock. Since mass refugee migrations, famine, and coastal flooding probably aren't conducive to large space budgets. What I'm getting at, is it's really going to suck if we have to postpone the colonization of the solar system by 500 years because we can't stop pumping out CO2 and get wiped out by Ebola 3.0 in the meantime. The only exception that I can think of is that if things get so bad that we simply have to leave to survive, but I think we'd all prefer a slow planned colonization of the solar system vs. on a lifeboat leaving a dying planet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 18:03
|
|
|
funkatron3000 posted:So, looking at the threats to the long term survival of humanity like climate change, disease, meteors, etc... it seems that a reasonable priority for humanity should be to establish self sustainable human outposts somewhere other than earth. There's really nothing else that gives us the same level of long term survival. There's no real reason that non-weather related events should be any worse than they were in the past (ie, Meteors aren't more likely to hit earth because we have tons of carbon in the air). Worrying about stray diseases also seems like an empty gesture because people are becoming more able to combat disease, not less. If the whole world industrializes and growth rates trend the way they have in developed countries, the killer of humanity might just be our own education, not a hurricane.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 18:09
|
|
|
computer parts posted:There's no real reason that non-weather related events should be any worse than they were in the past (ie, Meteors aren't more likely to hit earth because we have tons of carbon in the air). Worrying about stray diseases also seems like an empty gesture because people are becoming more able to combat disease, not less. What I'm saying is that climate change will delay our ability to come up with ways to deal with events like meteors, species ending diseases, and other humanity ending events, not that it would increase the chance of them happening or make them worse.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 18:15
|
|
|
funkatron3000 posted:What I'm saying is that climate change will delay our ability to come up with ways to deal with events like meteors, species ending diseases, and other humanity ending events, not that it would increase the chance of them happening or make them worse. And I'm saying we generally have those systems already put into place (Granted, Meteors we can't actually *stop* but we've tracked basically all the ones that would do any damage and they're not projected to hit the Earth).
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 18:18
|
|
|
computer parts posted:There's no real reason that non-weather related events should be any worse than they were in the past (ie, Meteors aren't more likely to hit earth because we have tons of carbon in the air). Worrying about stray diseases also seems like an empty gesture because people are becoming more able to combat disease, not less. We are becoming LESS able to combat disease, as antibiotics could soon become all but useless due to multiply-resistant strains. With free and fast international travel, if the next SARS or Spanish Flu or Bubonic Plague is both virulent and lethal, then there could be deaths in the hundreds of millions, though extinction is not plausible. N.B. I am not suggesting a relationship between antibiotic resistance and viruses, though being ill from an untreatable bacterial disease will make you more liable to die from a virus. While meteor impacts are not now more probable, it's true that a large long-period comet or an asteroid thrown from the asteroid belt by Jupiter could make us extinct at any time in the future, and there would be nothing that we could do about it. Aside from having a fully independent colony on Mars or the Moon, no amount of technology will be able to deal with a 100km-wide comet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 18:35
|
|
|
computer parts posted:And I'm saying we generally have those systems already put into place (Granted, Meteors we can't actually *stop* but we've tracked basically all the ones that would do any damage and they're not projected to hit the Earth). We can prevent some things, but in the end there are a fair number that we simply can't prevent. For instance a single gamma ray burst could wipe out life on Earth. There's no predicting it and there's no preventing it. In the long term, unless we extend our physical presence beyond Earth, it'll be Universe 1 - Humanity 0. (Until the heat death of the universe anyway) The concern is that we're reaching an inflection point where our ability to get beyond the Earth may slip to zero due to impending planetary/national problems stemming from climate change. If not zero chance, it may push it back 1000 years, which may be too late.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 18:41
|
|
|
funkatron3000 posted:In the long term, unless we extend our physical presence beyond Earth, it'll be Universe 1 - Humanity 0. (Until the heat death of the universe anyway) I don't think the referees would award Humanity any points for the heat death of the universe though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 19:26
|
|
|
computer parts posted:And I'm saying we generally have those systems already put into place (Granted, Meteors we can't actually *stop* but we've tracked basically all the ones that would do any damage and they're not projected to hit the Earth). funkatron3000 posted:So, looking at the threats to the long term survival of humanity like climate change, disease, meteors, etc... it seems that a reasonable priority for humanity should be to establish self sustainable human outposts somewhere other than earth. There's really nothing else that gives us the same level of long term survival. ...oh yes, climate. Well, I should have posted this a couple of days ago to coincide with the discussion of the validity of climate modelling, but we're now at a point where things are changing quickly enough that predictions of extreme drought from nine years ago are being proven correct. quote:Comparing current changes (2011 summer ice and 2011/2012 winter precipitation season) to the 2004 paper: As usual, the only thing wrong with the predictions is that they're not doomy enough. Gosh, it's times like this I get real glad about that long-term cooling trend or whatever, shouldn't be long before the ice caps start to re-freeze I'm sure! 
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 21:31
|
|
|
TACD posted:Slightly off-topic but I would point out that we're tracking most of the objects that could end civilization, but very few of the ones that could merely destroy a city. Despite what Neil DeGrasse Tyson and other science popularisers like to say, I think that manned space exploration is not only without value at the moment, but damaging to our survival prospects. It's a cliché to say that we could solve the world's clean water, disease and food supply problems with just X billion dollars, but not only is it true that well-spent and administrated money could solve these problems, but also that the solving of these problems would lead to increased stability, and resilience to the effects of the changing climate. No space program is going to deliver an independent manned colony in the next century, but spending half the money that we do on manned space exploration on the problems that threaten us today, and that will threaten us in the near future, would unquestionably increase the chances of society surviving long enough to produce an independent colony at some point in the future. Why bother planning for an event that will sterilise the planet, hoping to preserve a few hundred people on Mars, when we could instead improve the world starting today, and still allow the possibility to have a colony later? N.B. The only value that manned space flight has, apart from the fanciful prospect of an independent colony, is the improvement of manned spaceflight.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 22:34
|
|
|
Placid Marmot posted:N.B. The only value that manned space flight has, apart from the fanciful prospect of an independent colony, is the improvement of manned spaceflight. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 22:47
|
|
|
Placid Marmot posted:No space program is going to deliver an independent manned colony in the next century, but spending half the money that we do on manned space exploration on the problems that threaten us today, and that will threaten us in the near future, would unquestionably increase the chances of society surviving long enough to produce an independent colony at some point in the future. Haha, what? How much do you think we spend on manned space exploration currently?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 22:53
|
|
|
pwnyXpress posted:Haha, what? How much do you think we spend on manned space exploration currently? Just looking at the ISS: Wikipedia, Fount of All Knowledge posted:As of 2010 NASA budgeted $58.7 billion for the station from 1985 to 2015, or $72.4 billion in 2010 dollars. The cost is $150 billion including 36 shuttle flights at $1.4 billion each, Russia's $12 billion ISS budget, Europe's $5 billion, Japan's $5 billion, and Canada's $2 billion. That's about $150 billion, just for the ISS. Tell me what the ISS has achieved, and one problem that could not have been solved with $150 billion.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 22:58
|
|
|
Placid Marmot posted:That's about $150 billion, just for the ISS. Tell me what the ISS has achieved, and one problem that could not have been solved with $150 billion. ISS research has made lots of achievements. Here's a 4 page summary: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/695701main_Current_ISS_Utilization_Statistics.pdf A longer pdf: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/739318main_ISS%20Utilization%20Brochure%202012%20Screenres%203-8-13.pdf $150 billion over 30 years and spread among a dozen countries isn't very much. It can't solve most climate change issues.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 23:23
|
|
|
fermun posted:ISS research has made lots of achievements. Here's a 4 page summary: Few of the research discoveries that have been made on the ISS could not have been made on an unmanned station, at considerably lower cost. As TACD said, this is not really the place to discuss space exploration and research, but the relevant things that could have been paid for by $150 billion include: *Researching and implementing new reactor designs such as LFTR, pebble bed, standing wave and advanced breeders. *Some geoengineering projects could be implemented at this cost though, of course, the money to research them would be needed first... *Everyone in the world could be provided with potable water, vaccinations, assistance to grow their own food (where relevant) and family planning education, all factors that would increase stability and decrease or mitigate the effects of climate change. *Research on deflecting or destroying incoming asteroids and comets, a system or satellites to detect them, and guided nuke-tipped rockets in interplanetary orbits to deflect incoming objects as early as possible (should the research show that this is an effective technique).
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 23:51
|
|
|
You're absolutely right. Why not divert money from something like the military instead, though? It's always space that gets singled out whenever someone wants to cannibalize one program to Solve World Hunger or something instead. It isn't as if the president flipped a coin at one point on heads decided to fund NASA instead of protecting the exploited masses.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2013 23:57
|
|
|
muike posted:You're absolutely right. Why not divert money from something like the military instead, though? It's always space that gets singled out whenever someone wants to cannibalize one program to Solve World Hunger or something instead. It isn't as if the president flipped a coin at one point on heads decided to fund NASA instead of protecting the exploited masses. I agree with you, but the military was not the topic of discussion, and the military neither aspires to be nor pretends to be for the advancement of mankind, unlike manned spaceflight.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 00:01
|
|
|
Fair enough. You did manage to note the salient bit about manned spaceflight earlier though, in that its continued use serves almost entirely to develop and refine the science behind it. That is inherently valuable if you put any worth in the concept of human settlements beyond Earth. That, and being able to drum up interest in the concept of human life beyond Earth, but NASA's PR is bad as heck. In any case talking about who is funded instead of what or whatever, it's a moot point. Unless we manage to find our way onto the boards that hear scientists requests for funding, there's not much we can do. That said, I actually think DARPA has had a good record, for something with Defense on the name. They've been working on various projects that stand to benefit a lot of people. One example is their impetus given to various research groups to improve or replace current hydrogen storage techniques. Unfortunately, it's still DARPA. Regardless of all of that, I think I should ignore the question of research entirely, and think more about the application of already known techniques. We already know how to make vaccines. We already know ho to purify water. A thousand more scientists locking themselves away and developing the perfect defense against global warming and rising water won't do any good if no one is going to pay for it to actually be put to use. muike fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jul 3, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 00:12
|
|
|
Coriolis posted:Yes, that's exactly what's going to happen. Yiggy posted:Yes. I'm sorry. But it's still not time to even examine whether violence might help, because people might go to jail? Sure, cities will be destroyed, productive land will wither into dust, and wars will erupt over shifting resources but let's not do anything because peaceful means of resistance have been exhausted and violence means people might go to jail? If this is your threshold for (in)action how do you justify doing anything about anything? Oh and lose the faith in the Chinese autocrats. They don't deserve it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 03:13
|
|
|
The problem with a traditional sort of "revolutionary violence" to combat climate change is that we're necessarily confronting not a local issue (a bad dictator, or so on), but a global issue that encompasses every nation and is inextricably linked to the current worldwide economic system. The level of organization and funding it would take to actually effectively defeat, say, the United States military and police force and install a new political and economic system in a protracted, violent engagement is almost unthinkable, and the resources expended through such a conflict would, in all certainty, be better spent on addressing the actual issues of climate change. A far more realistic scenario is the organization and unification of a "new left" that is dedicated to tackling these particular issues through a reframing of the ideological debates (make it not about "jobs and the economy" but about the long-term prospects of social stability, for example) and a clear proposal of alternative ideas in both the policy and economic field (e.g., providing minimum incomes to coastal fishermen, alongside stringent enforcement of fishing limits, to mitigate the destruction of fish populations; centralized control of agriculture in order to reduce the development of "cash crops" and focus on food self-sufficiency; and so on). The future, I claim, is more centralized, not less, but whether this will result in an authoritarian or socialist backdrop is ultimately up to the left of today to decide. Inaction will fundamentally lead to a worse result.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 03:29
|
|
|
I think the suggestion is that violence be deployed to disrupt FF infrastructure like refineries, pipelines, tankers, etc, presumably in order to reduce the rate at which FFs are consumed. That might be a somewhat more manageable problem than the military defeat of a state, although I don't know what kind of scale you'd need to do it on in order to have any kind of meaningful long-term effect. I doubt it would be sustainable without global popular support, which is probably going to be pretty hard to maintain if you're effectively strangling supplies of energy and petrochemicals.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 03:48
|
|
|
Can you think of any non-governmental entities that control a large portion of the world's fossil fuel reserve that have centralized organizational structures?
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 03:55
|
|
|
I basically see the issue more as one of ideology than of anything else. During World War II, for example, the majority of people were very easily convinced to accept more meager living conditions with the idea that the amounts saved through rationing, etc. were being put towards the noble cause of fighting the War. Is this not the new sort of ideology that the left needs to find and articulate today? The sacrifice of a certain amount of economic power will be used to ensure a future societal stability and to protect our fragile ecological systems.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 03:58
|
|
|
This thread is going to get closed pretty soon, I'd wager.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 03:58
|
|
|
funkatron3000 posted:We can prevent some things, but in the end there are a fair number that we simply can't prevent. For instance a single gamma ray burst could wipe out life on Earth. There's no predicting it and there's no preventing it. In the long term, unless we extend our physical presence beyond Earth, it'll be Universe 1 - Humanity 0. (Until the heat death of the universe anyway)
This isn't unique to space colonization. A lot of utopian dreams have been and will be dashed on the rocks of climate change. I try to avoid thinking about it most of the time, because climate change will supersede and nullify all of the powerful and promising movements of the last couple hundred years: medical breakthroughs, activisms of race, feminism, class, and sexuality, our increasing ability to feed, clothe, and water all people, and everything good we have now or hope to have. Even if these other goals may be for nothing, at least they address issues that face us and that we can improve here and now. In short, space colonization advocates are offensively oblivious to the human and non-human lives on this planet right now. Arglebargle III posted:But it's still not time to even examine whether violence might help, because people might go to jail? Sure, cities will be destroyed, productive land will wither into dust, and wars will erupt over shifting resources but let's not do anything because peaceful means of resistance have been exhausted and violence means people might go to jail? If this is your threshold for (in)action how do you justify doing anything about anything? Of course we won't do anything. The global capitalistic hegemony has ensured that the people who are most educated and aware (hence, the most likely to activate) are the best taken care of under the status quo. That includes, I'd add, just about every academic and climate scientist and non-profit employee. It includes me. Of course jail is the largest terror for us, because it's the only violent threat we would realistically be subjected to. Rest assured that America and Western Europe will be the last to suffer from global climate change, probably not until we're (thankfully) dead and buried. By the way, someone should do an "SA Climate Change Thread Cycle" because I have a strong feeling that space colonization has always dovetailed right into violent activism over the life of the thread.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 04:29
|
|
deptstoremook posted:Thread gets bad again, so I post my thing about how dumb space colonization is again. I don't know what post you were replying to but it's not the one you quoted. Read it again. Space colonisation isn't a "utopian dream", it's a necessity if humanity is going to survive in the long term, capitalism or no capitalism, climate change or no climate change.
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 04:49
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Can you think of any non-governmental entities that control a large portion of the world's fossil fuel reserve that have centralized organizational structures? You need to be able to actually reduce FF production on an ongoing YoY basis. Exxon's HQ could disappear tomorrow and that wouldn't do anything to meaningfully alter the course of climate change.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 04:57
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:But it's still not time to even examine whether violence might help, because people might go to jail? Sure, cities will be destroyed, productive land will wither into dust, and wars will erupt over shifting resources but let's not do anything because peaceful means of resistance have been exhausted and violence means people might go to jail? If this is your threshold for (in)action how do you justify doing anything about anything? At least you'll die with a clean consciousness. All of your actions were meaningless to begin with and will have zero impact on global climate policies, but at least you did the "right" thing. A completely pointless struggle that ends on the electric chair or 40 years from now in a supermax prison. Sounds great, sign me up!!
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 08:53
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:But it's still not time to even examine whether violence might help, because people might go to jail? Sure, cities will be destroyed, productive land will wither into dust, and wars will erupt over shifting resources but let's not do anything because peaceful means of resistance have been exhausted and violence means people might go to jail? If this is your threshold for (in)action how do you justify doing anything about anything? Is it time to examine? Sure, but you're implying that this examination automatically reaches a conclusion that we can be sanguine about, and I don't feel that's the case. There is no good way to organize something like that among a group of individuals that will be effective at achieving the stated goals, without being swiftly and brutally squelched by state actors. Splintered, individual actors will not be effective. And even if so, what are their targets? I get that this is pretty close to that famous philosopy thought experiment, with the train and the switches and the one person vs five people. It's even closer to the variant where you push one guy onto the tracks in order to save another five or ten. I, personally, am not interested in pushing people onto the tracks to stop the train. The biggest difficulty, in my opinion, is finally then the same difficulty in motivating people to choose even the less violent, cooperative options. If we can't even convince people to sacrifice their standard of living for the sake of generations who will be around long after we're dead and gone, how are we going to expect any appreciable mass of people to sacrifice their lives. I know many of us feel beholden and responsible to future generations, to our loyalty to a planet we love, but they're not going to flog me once I'm dead, and even if they do it doesn't much matter to me now. I don't see the virtue in being one of the pluckier ants trying to slow the boulder rolling downhill. As for how I feel justified in doing anything about anything, tbh I don't. I'm not really worried about how justified I am. This is borderline quietistic, and I'm alright with that. If I'm ever in any real position to try and effect positive change wrt to climate change, I'll be happy to try, but since I'm not I'm just going to bide my time. I've made the lifestyle changes, I've argued with people about it in my personal life until I find myself either tuned out or surrounded by the already convinced, and in the grand scheme of things none of it matters.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 10:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 22:26 |
|
|
Hey Arglebargle this is genuinely intended as a friendly warning, not an attempt to silence you: D&D is monitored by various authorities and posters here have had the police and/or secret service turn up at their door for saying less threatening things than you're saying here.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2013 10:25
|
|
