• Troy@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Scientist piping in with my two cents. Granted my speciality is geophysics and planetary science, and not specifically climate.

    In geoscience we tend to talk about things on very long timescales. Like: at what point with the sun’s output cause the earth to turn into Venus (250 million years as a lower bound, ish, then all life is doomed on Earth). The rate of change we’ve applied to our atmosphere is faster than any natural process other than a meteor strike or similar event. There are climate change scenarios where all life on the planet dies (why wait 250 million years!?), but they’re mostly improbable unless we have some sort of runaway feedback mechanism we’ve not accounted for. 2/3 of humans dying is also unlikely. Coastline and ecosystem disruption are almost certain though.

    The thing about humans are: we are frighteningly clever. We can build spacecraft that can survive the harsh environment in space and people survive there. As long as climate change doesn’t happen “too fast” (values of “too fast” may vary), we will engineer our way around it. On the small scale: air conditioning; and on the larger scale, geo-engineering (after accumulating sufficient political will). We’re so clever that, if we (or our descendants or similar) can probably even save the earth in 250 million years when the sun’s output passes the threshold where it wants to fry us – assuming we survive that long.

    That doesn’t detract from her statement. But it is the Mirror, and the headlight is trying to be incendiary.

    • AWittyUsername@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      Are you actually a scientist?

      Air Conditioning to mitigate climate change? That’s like dowsing a fire with lighter fluid.

      And you think we’ll be able to out engineer the sun? In 250million years we will not be here guaranteed, and if somehow we make it it won’t be in any form we know as human.

      • Troy@lemmy.ca
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        30 days ago

        Yes, I even once got a B+ in thermodynamics, decades ago. I was proud of that B+ – one of the hardest courses I’ve ever taken.

        Yes, AC. It uses energy, adds heat into the total system, and you cannot fight entropy. However, you can mitigate heat gain in other places. You trade local effects for net zero global effects.

        Simple example: AC running off of solar. It increases heat by decreasing albedo (solar panels are dark), but if you paint another area white, you can have a neutral effect in terms of total energy captured by the earth. But you can have a net zero heat gain and still have AC.

        Obviously you’ll have a harder time balancing this equation if you’re using non-renewable energy sources.

        • TaterTurnipTulip@lemmy.world
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          30 days ago

          But the fun thing is that all solar currently has a carbon cost associated with it. So as we’re trying to work our way out of this we’re also continuing to increase the carbon load. It’s a vicious cycle.

          • piecat@lemmy.world
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            30 days ago

            But the fun thing is that once we reach a critical point, it will go from having a positive carbon impact to a negative carbon impact. But we can never get there if we never start

            It’s all about scale and infrastructure.

            • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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              29 days ago

              Yes, but if it takes a thousand years and we’re all long gone from all the positive carbon impact? I agree with you but think the narrative is dangerous. We can’t think “well in the long run”, we need to actively counter the positive carbon right now (as in this year) and increase other negative carbon policies like mass transit and reducing subsidies. “It’ll work out in the end” is what got us here.

              • piecat@lemmy.world
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                29 days ago

                I don’t see your point.

                Building fossil fuel power infrastructure does nothing to move the needle, but building renewables does.

                What are you actually proposing? Because it reads as “we shouldn’t try because any benefits or impacts are long-term”

                • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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                  28 days ago

                  I was wondering what the controversy was with my comment lol. I was just saying that relying solely on renewable energy and current technology to be widely developed and implemented to reach net-zero carbon will be a slow-meticulous crawl while we continue to pollute the earth with our current infrastructure (fossil fuels). We need to also continue to push for policies like more use of public transportation and stop subsidizing the oil and gas industry so people actually feel the cost associated more. People see things like bike lanes and busses/rails as a more viable option when it actually effects them. You’ll see more people walking to nearby locations or doing “greener” activity when the actual price of 8$ or more a gallon becomes a reality.

                  If you start telling people, “oh, well just get more panels and use AC.” They’ll take it as nothing needs to change in their habits and all the other industries are fine as they are. Much like the “recycling” program in the 80’s and 90’s was used to manipulate the public that they are responsible for all the garbage and toxins being produced.

    • sugartits@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      The thing about humans are: we are frighteningly clever

      Let me introduce you to Facebook.

      • ms.lane@lemmy.world
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        30 days ago

        Allow me to introduce you to: an abstract concept of facebook-

        People, separated by thousands of miles, tap messages into their glass topped smart rocks that can then be seen by other people with smart rocks - it does this communicating with big metal trees that talk to magic caves, where millions of smart rocks think about those messages and pass them over to other magic caves by a glass wire, which in turn pass the messages to another metal tree and over to other glass topped smart rocks for people to read.

        • wondrous_strange@lemmy.world
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          29 days ago

          Well, how many of them actually has the vaugest idea on even small part of the mechanics of it? How many of them are just ignoring the wonders of the technology and just using it to spread hate and stupidity? Which is more dominate? The stupid part or the clever part?

      • Troy@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        My gf calls me a “radical optimist” for believing in people eventually doing the right thing :)

        • InfiniteGlitch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          How can you be so optimistic? With everything that’s going on in the world, I get more pessimistic everyday. At bad days, I’d just think “let just humanity perish because we just keep repeating the same horrible things over and over anyway”.

          • Kedly@lemm.ee
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            30 days ago

            For me its because if you zoom out, the world is a better place to live in now, than it was 1000 years ago. Progress moves in waves, and right now it definitely feels like a significant low tide, but over time the coastline keeps creeping forward.

            • Humanity is the only meat eating animal that has significant percentage of its population willingly avoiding eating meat and instead finding ways to obtain essential nutrients without it (need to add that I am NOT one of those animals, I’m personally waiting for lab grown meat before I obstain from death based meat, if I ever do)

            • Humanity by and large no longer needs to leave its sick and wounded to die because we invented technology and infrastructure to both heal, and take care of those we cant heal

            • We’ve progressed to the point as a species where in order to bring more prosperity to our community, we no longer have to take from other communities, and that wasnt always the case (unfortunately this is only a recent achievement, and as such, not all of our population has adapted to this, hence our current problems)

            • Troy@lemmy.ca
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              29 days ago

              not all of our population has adapted to this

              “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” – William Gibson

    • MTK@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I think people are missing the point, it’s not about who survives, it’s about who dies and suffers.

      If I told you (made up numbers) that in the next 50 years, 100 million people will die an average of 20 years early because of climate change. Sure, 100 million is just about 1.3% of humans, but it’s still 100 million people, who will die at 50 instaed of 70, or at 25 instead of 45, these are people who will probably die from heat, from natrual disasters, from famine, from poor health as economies collapse.

      We won’t be fine, someone will be, but WE, as a group, won’t be fine.

      In fact, we are already not fine but it’s mostly felt in poor contries.

      Not to kill the mood but the harsh truth is that the generations before us doomed a lot of us, and the current generations are just starting to get it, and future generations will truly feel the ignorance of our past and the indifference of our present.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        No, kill the mood. Stab it in it’s stupid fucking face and kick it’s corpse out of the way. All it’s done is be an obstacle because weak people are too uncomfortable doing little things and even more whiny now that the need is far greater.

        You’re exactly right and put it perfectly: “it’s not about who survives, it’s about who suffers and dies”. People will die over something we have endless solutions to but will never put in place because the weakest, most fragile little snot-nosed fucks are afraid of the slightest discomfort.

        It’s disgusting, end of.

      • BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.world
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        30 days ago

        We’re estimated to have lost about 15 million additional people in 2020/2021 due to covid and a disturbingly large amount of us were salty about being asked to cover their mouths in order to stave it off. Might favor certain groups, but it’s doom from every generation top to bottom.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
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      1 month ago

      As long as climate change doesn’t happen “too fast” (values of “too fast” may vary), we will engineer our way around it.

      While this is true, we must also take into account who exactly will benefit from that engineering and survive. Not everyone will be able to take advantage of non-global engineering solutions, and just like with every technological advancement, the differential will be used by those “with” to subjugate those “without.”

    • sandbox@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      Wealthy countries will generally be okay, comparatively. The rest of the world will be the 2/3rds that suffer. That’s always been the case.

      • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        The United States is a wealthy country. It’s on the precipice of political and social disaster WITHOUT the above described problems occurring. The idea that wealthy countries will be fine seems wildly optimistic. Perhaps you meant wealthy people.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      2/3 of humans dying is also unlikely.

      So much of our modern economy is rooted in assumptions about where and how to mass produce food stocks. Climate change threatens all of that.

      Obliterating breadbasket regions in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran would devastate the regional populations.

      Then you’ve got the wars in places like Ukraine, Lebanon and Sudan, further strangling access to fresh food stocks.

      People joke about the looming “water wars”, but consider how much Israel and the Saudis have invested in desalination and what dehydration is doing to the million plus Gaza residents who have lost access to reliable drinking water.

      What happens during a substantial crop failure in the South Pacific? It isn’t as though India and China haven’t experienced massive famines in living memory.

      You can argue the finer details, but it is easy to see a scenario in which a billion or more people are wiped out over the course of a generation, because of substantive shifts in access to basic living needs.

    • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      As long as climate change doesn’t happen “too fast” (values of “too fast” may vary), we will engineer our way around it.

      This and I keep repeating this: don’t fight the global warming, let’s think how to live with it.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    Anyone else notice the amusing edit fail?

    This is not enough according to Dr. Brosnan, who gave a laundry list of steps the world could take to save the ozone layer

    Hey doc, wrong environmental crisis. We already took steps to save the ozone layer

    • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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      29 days ago

      Tell that to someone living in rural India or China in the 90s

      • CazzoneArrapante@lemm.ee
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        29 days ago

        I’m not from there, so I don’t give a shit. All I care about is that 90s had no climate collapse, no AI, no fuckups every 3 years or so and live in general was better.

        Were it for me, 70s, 80s and 90s on a loop forever and whoever loses from it… well, shucks, I’m not one of them.

          • CazzoneArrapante@lemm.ee
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            25 days ago

            Coming late to the party, but early 20s, white, male. I care more about climate change not being as bad back then than whatever was happening to Bumfuckland at the time tbh.

    • Kedly@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      Hence why I said low tide and zoom out. Right now shit seems like its regressing, BUY WE ARE STILL AHEAD of where we used to be, so the TREND is still hopeful, even if the right now sucks.

      tldr; in the immediate present/future things are looking worse, but the overall timeline/trend things are looking and have been getting better

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      The nineties was the pinnacle of humanity, the music, the video games, films, …

        • Omniraptor@lemm.ee
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          28 days ago

          And living in the US/western Europe. Eastern Europe and Asia weren’t doing so hot

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          Fair.

          It’s not teally thah muchbetter for some of us so I guess I just didn’t take that into account, like it was bad then and bad now.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Feels like it’s been speeding up the past few years. Barely had a winter season this year.

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    Humanity is nothing but a cancer, a pox upon this world. Pathetic.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      I don’t think she’s saying 1/3 will be unaffected but 1/3 will adapt.

      For example, I’m set for more climate change than most

      • I live in the north
      • at least a bit away from the coast
      • we don’t historically get tornadoes
      • plentiful reliable power and water
      • air conditioning

      And most importantly, both the region and myself have above average income/wealth. We can afford to adapt somewhat.

      Thinking of global population, I can see being in the 1/3 least affected

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        30 days ago

        If there’s a death sentence to 2/3rd of the planet, it’s very doubtful it will stop there to leave the remaining 1/3rd livable for long.
        The 2/3rd may die sooner, but if it does, the rest will follow. Because there will be runaway global warming.
        If we can stop or even reverse it, there is no need for the 2/3rds to die either.