-
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.
Lakes in Antarctica have scientists worried
- Thread starter AstroNut325
- Start date
- Status
SwiftDeath
Member
We'll need a lot of buckets...
Seriously though it seems like a bad idea to just let all that surface fresh water go into the sea. So little of the world's water supply is surface fresh water.
Seriously though it seems like a bad idea to just let all that surface fresh water go into the sea. So little of the world's water supply is surface fresh water.
mcz117chief
Member
It's like 2% right?
Tal Shiar Agent
Member
If the Ross Ice Shelf collapses into the sea it's going to be bad .
SwiftDeath
Member
2.5% I guess? Most of that is in glaciers and the like but this still sounds like a bad thing for numerous reasons
mcz117chief
Member
That source looks pretty old, 1993. Have there been any major shifts since then?
PsychoSoldier
Banned
I look forward to people ignoring all this stuff when a single snowflake hits the ground in a few months.
But this seems bad.
But this seems bad.
finalflame
Banned
No, we really can't and won't start making lifestyle changes. One of the key tenets of sustainability is that the advances we make must be compatible with our current standards of living -- you're not going to get people to regress to earlier standards insofar as material goods and conveniences are concerned.
What we can do is make technological and industrial advances to combat the much larger causes of GHG emissions such as large freighters, automobiles, moving to clean energy sources, etc.
Pancake Mix
Copied someone else's pancake recipe
Born too late to fix it.
Born too early to deal with the worst of the consequences.
Sorry next generations.
fierrotlepou
Member
We need some huge scientific breakthroughs or a miracle at this point if we want the human race to survive for another 200 years.
AstroNut325
Member
Being compatible with current ways is only allowed if you're not compromising the future. We have to become carbon negative to make any meaningful dent towards reversing the effects. And being carbon negative isn't going to happen without reduction in lifestyles in the developed world.
hydragonwarrior
Member
"This has been happening for years! Why can't science explain that?!"
Pretty much my entire FB feed when someone posts a climate change article.
Pretty much my entire FB feed when someone posts a climate change article.
PowderedToast
Junior Member
there has been a paradigm shift in our adoption of renewables in the last few years, more than most people are aware of. but it will definitely be a race against time
I suppose in a positive light, we finally know why this is happening
I suppose in a positive light, we finally know why this is happening
maquiladora
Member
Meanwhile, Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent is lowest on record this year. Arctic sea ice extent is currently second lowest on record.
Probably too late, but especially too passive. My god, US politics are so frustrating:
Vox: Ten years after Al Gore's movie, the climate debate in the US has devolved into nonsense.
jeff_rigby
Banned
We have reversed our carbon footprint to 1998 levels because of Fracking and the move to Natural gas which has 1/5th the carbon and is less "dirty". The problem is the developing countries which have overtaken us like China and India. Bush released information on how to safely create Nuclear Power plants to China and India hoping to reduce their move to Coal as a cheap and fast to implement energy for their rapidly increasing need for Electricity.
With regulation we have moved Steel and other industry off shore to countries that are not as efficient in their use of energy and that INCREASES the world carbon footprint...this is stupid if we truly wish to decrease our carbon footprint. If it's about power and another revenue stream then it makes sense. Or is it just stupidity and knee jerk politics?
I mean, worst case scenario is that we're living on top of the water (some already do) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading
Unless your 90 years old you wont havento worry about not seeing some dramatic near world ending shit in your lifetime.
A major problem is that people still think this will hit the next generation in a distant future from now which more evidence keeps suggesting otherwise.
In most likelyhood we would be seeing catastrophic events unfold in less than 20 years. Most climate models don't really know how extremly weather can change in the space of a few years. For the seas to rise even a meter it could have unintended conquences which have other adverse effects on the climate which can in no way be predicted by the current climate simulations we are making. There have been cases of change in the Earth's average temperature by 10 degrees in the space of a decade - granted those last happened in the last Ice Age but personally I think that its foolish to believe we won't be impacted in the near future. At the very least people should start prepairing mentaly for the worst.
Nikodemos
Member
Hard to believe it would be 180-degree different. It's not like the fossil fuel industry lobby would've disappeared overnight.
https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_the_case_for_optimism_on_climate_change
Al has a fairly positive outlook though.
We would still be here, albeit probably with a tad less carbondioxyd and a bit more progress in green tech. After all, many breakthroughs in green tech only happen recently.
- Status