-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
How climate change is rapidly taking the planet apart and towards human extinction
- Thread starter Lime
- Start date
- Status
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
Mad Max apocalypse is from lack of oil, not anything else.
So we are headed towards downfall of civilization either way.
If its a relatively steady rate about 5 times over the amount we can """safely""" use
I believe it's is left purposely obscure about the reason but there does seem to be a lot of desertification that implies Climate Change had a hand in it
TheSecondSpitter
Member
Riding it out until oil reserves are depleted is not the solution.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
This is one of those things that I kinda want to plug my fingers in my ears and be ignorant to because humanity is super-fucked at this point and nothing is going to change. May as well remain as blissfully ignorant as possible rather than hearing about our inevitable doom on a regular basis.
Already know that, but I think this is what the governments want...
There is still a lot yet, holy shit.
Epsilon-delta
Banned
True.
There is some hope in the carbon capture and storage technology. We need a little bit of everything if we're going to reverse or slow the course on climate change.
Basically, if enough countries are net negative when it comes to carbon emissions, while a few are still using fossil fuels, it may be possible to slow it down. But I feel we have a slim chance to none before we pass the point of no return due to climate change being too politicized to enact any meaningful change.
evilromero
Member
It's utterly depressing. I have that dreadful sinking feeling just reading the intro. Meanwhile the world economy toils away uninhibited.
ghostofsparta
Member
Bring it, we deserve to be extinct for what we've done. The human race is too money oriented. Wipe it all out and start over.
TheRealTalker
Banned
and some parts of the Middle East might become unbearable for human inhabitance
then there is the issue of the Gulf streams dying or losing strength which could lead to a barren cold Europe
then there is the issue of the Gulf streams dying or losing strength which could lead to a barren cold Europe
Depends on when we'd act. The nasty thing about all of this is that big companies are ruining the environments for short term gain in the millions or at most billions, which will lead into a situation where "fixing" the effects of all of the damage done will cost somewhere in the level of dozens or hundreds of trillions of dollars.
Muppet of a Man
Member
All the nuclear waste created so far is small enough to be contained within a football field. It doesn't take up much space. It can also be spent (consumed) by newer fission reactors (Gen IV+).
Also, newer fission reactors (LFTRs specifically) will create waste with a much shorter half life (200 to 300 years rather than 10000+ years). So, managing it will be within the realm of possibility.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Humanity is like a meme now.
"Every individual person needs a car to get around. I'm not walking or riding a bike."
*everyone is dead, nothing is getting around*
"Every individual person needs a car to get around. I'm not walking or riding a bike."
*everyone is dead, nothing is getting around*
I've been voting green for ten years, so not my fault!
To be more serious, I believe - going by history - we can make a big shift to reducing and capturing CO2 (the tech is there), but history also has shown that mankind is often too late, which means the damage would already be done after the generations after us clean up the mess.
To be more serious, I believe - going by history - we can make a big shift to reducing and capturing CO2 (the tech is there), but history also has shown that mankind is often too late, which means the damage would already be done after the generations after us clean up the mess.
GameAddict411
Member
You are joking right? Because if you are not, you are an idiot. A lot people believe that Climate Change is a meth. Donald Trump the guy who is supported by millions of people in the United States(one of the biggest polluters) said that it's invented by the Chinese...A lot of conservatives and even liberals downplay the effects of Climate Change and only Europe so far that's been trying to curb CO2 emissions and encouraging green energy. The US and China have to adopt similar policies if we are going to survive this, and so far It's not happening anytime soon.
I fear that it will happen when it's already too late.
AstroNut325
Member
2012-2013 Nissan Leafs and Ford Focus Electrics can be purchased for $9-12K with warranty. And you can get solar with only a few K upfront.
Extreme respect to them for dietary requirements. Unlike other things that's such a simple thing that can help improve our situation and better for our health anyway though I admit I'm no expert on the matter.
Explain. MSRP for the Nissan Leaf is ~$30,000. I may actually need to purchase a new car this summer, so if you know a secret, please share.
humansarehorses
Member
These people are idiots and confusion over basic policy effects is why there's deadlock over environmental policy. Emissions trading markets have been proven to work (see the Clean Air Act and sulfur dioxide emissions) and are incredibly similar to carbon taxes. Both come from economists with the basic ideas originally from Pigou (hence Pigouvian taxes) and Coase (property rights).
There are important differences between the two. Like with carbon taxes, you are taxing them based on external costs. But what if it costs less than the tax to fix the problem? Then you have unnecessary costs which will raise prices more than they have to be, lowering consumer welfare. And then there's the obvious issue of nailing down the price which heavily depends on the discount rate (an unknown).
Cap and trading schemes work to reduce emissions by well, capping them and then reducing the cap. If a government can know who emits what then they can assign rights to those people to emit X amount. A right which can be traded and go to those who value the right the most. Those who go beyond their rights can be charged large amounts to deter them from doing so.
That's harder to do with some emissions than with others because the government won't always know who emits what and how much they emit.
But to pretend that cap-and-trade is a terrible idea for some undisclosed reason is moronic.
Necromanti
Member
If countries are having issues handling immigration right now, it will be a different story when we start seeing mass exoduses from places that will no longer be habitable. It will be a multidimensional chaos.
AstroNut325
Member
Just in my area alone:
https://www.truecar.com/used-cars-for-sale/listings/nissan/leaf/location-91740/
They'll get 60-70 mile range.
Thanks for this. I was looking at purchasing used anyway, to keep costs down. I was mostly looking at certified used cars through the dealerships, but I'll look into this website. If you can purchase with warranty, then this might be the route I take! Thanks again, seriously.
Me too, Mr. Frodo.
What about food?
PdotMichael
Banned
USA has the largest footprint
AstroNut325
Member
Certified pre-owned Leafs and Focus Electrics in Los Angeles:
http://m.autotrader.com/cars-for-sa...ORD[FOCUS[FOCUS|Electric]][]NISSAN[LEAF[]][]]
I get the moral hazard argument WRT to solar radiation management, but it is inevitable if carbon capture doesn't scale up rapidly, so we might as well be doing the research needed to do it safely.
There are other niche technologies that maybe a part of a geo-engineering solution, like upwelling, iron fertilization and biochar, but the thing that makes solar radiation management almost inevitable is the cost effectiveness. It is cheap enough that basically any developed nation could do it unilaterally if things get bad.
Of course no one solution is going to fix this problem, but what is certainly not going to fix anything is trying to get everyone to willingly go back a century or two in living standards. Politics isn't going to fix this.
We have to engineer our way out of this, with new energy sources and geo-engineering to ameliorate the damage we have already done.
Muppet of a Man
Member
I've actually uttered these words (paraphrased of course) out loud before while discussing generational politics. Depressing as shit, the world being destroyed by the most narcissistic, entitled, greedy, blood-loving spoiled brats of all time: the baby boomers.
I work for an environmental advocacy organization in PA. The ways in which our federal energy regulatory mechanisms are rigged to railroad communities for the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructures gives me little hope that America will see the long-term devastation of dirty energy policies before it is too late.
Brawndo Addict
Banned
Agreed, geo-engineering helps buy us the time necessary to actually implement and transition to non-carbon energy economies. Someone is going to try to do it eventually so we might as well have as much information as possible before they do.
Wonder how gen x and millenials are going to be described.
ZoltanXerxes
Member
I'm sorry, but I find it very hard to believe that by 2035, we're gonna cause a mass extinction event due to climate change.
Is it time to start thinking about controlling the world population growth? I know it's very controversial but it is not sustainable to keep growing like it is.
Maybe start with removing tax breaks for dependants, children. Start taxing those with more than 2 or 3 children? Limit the number of children the family can have like China did.
Maybe start with removing tax breaks for dependants, children. Start taxing those with more than 2 or 3 children? Limit the number of children the family can have like China did.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
This is what the world is up against. Willful ignorance. "Scientists? What have they ever gotten right?"
DragonSworne
Banned
Modern civilization will end but we won't go extinct.
MegaManTrigger
Banned
When has a one-birth policy ever worked? It's complete bogus, and as long as people have sex, they're always going to run the risk of having a kid.
I'm glad you know better than the researchers devoting their lives to the topic.
Fish vertebrae population has gone down 50% from 1970 to 2012. A lot of people live off of fishing.
DragonSworne
Banned
Muppet of a Man
Member
No one be fooled. Speaking as an American citizen, it is the USA and our political and business wranglings that have led the world to the brink of extinction.
It is our fault in nearly every way, from the dirty energy technologies being utilized to the consumer cultures accelerating their use.
Ironically, we also hold the technological keys to saving the planet through some combination of nuclear, renewables, batteries, fuel cells, and bio fuels.
My mitigation plan is 2 step:
Short/Medium Term:
A Nuclear-Methanol economy, where gen iv+ nuclear like LFTRs produce most of the consumable electricity and gasoline and diesel liquid fossil fuels are replaced by methanol produced large scale via industrial anaeobic digesters, as it would take a minimal retrofitting of current engine and fuel distributing infrastructure to make this work.
Medium/Long Term:
Renewable-Battery economy, where high efficiency renewables (photovoltaics, fluid turbines of all types, hydro of all types, geo thermal, etc.) are leveraged in combination with both smart-grid-level and node-level (local) high efficiency battery / fuel cell storage.
Of course, renewables will be utilized and evolving during the first phase (just to a smaller extent while the technology is maturing).
The fuck? We reached peak children years ago.
https://m.gapminder.org/news/world-peak-number-of-children-is-now/
Honestly, we're not even close to that being the issue yet. Population control only allows those left to live like kings.
I'm not sure what the maximum sustainable human population is, but with proper global resource management and an equitable social structure, it'd certainly be a lot higher than the grossly inefficient shitshow we're running today.
EDIT:
By way of illustration:
- Status