So, About The Planet Melting…

Is it just me, or does it feel like the Earth is kind of over us? This past year’s been wild—Canada was on fire, Maui burned, and floods hit places that were, I don’t know, not supposed to flood? We’ve got heat waves in October (sweater weather, who?), and the ocean is basically soup at this point. Not even counting the hurricane nonsense...

It’s hard to shake the feeling that we’re all just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic no matter what we do. Like, cool, I didn’t use a plastic straw today—did I save a glacier? Probably not. But maybe I’m being too cynical. What do you think? Is it all just a “try not to panic” game at this point?

And seriously, how are you handling this heat in the fall? Let’s talk, because if I’m going to face the end of the world, I’d rather do it with some company.

 

The planet will always recover from our near devastation, the human race may not, but the planet will always bounce back. It may take millions of years but it will still be here long after the human race has wiped itself out to extinction. We are but a mere grain of sand on a 100 mile beach in the cycle of time. 40 billion years is very long time to survive.
I don't buy the opinions of the social left who are severely under educated when it comes to science!

 

Whether or not one buys into the whole climate change thing or not, does it not make sense to try to find ways to reduce our pollution of our one and only known habitable planet? I tend to agree that the whole climate change scenario is scaremongering but, given options, one does not defecate in one's own backyard.

 

Your right, sadly as human beings we are the only member of the animal kingdom that kills for sport. We all say in public how much we care, only because it feels and looks good to others. When it comes to the crunch, we really don't give a rats and are only interested in ourselves, our own well being and our public persona carefully crafted on SM.

 

Wrong (not that it pertains to this discussion), but cats large and small also kill in sport.

Some people do care, but they are greatly outnumbered by the selfish and shortsighted. Unfortunately, theirs is not one of the loud and socially-acceptable minorities.

 

That's a wild thought, nice people have become a socially repressed minority. We're actually all in dystopian hell and the rising temps are so we actually appreciate that more? Who knows...

 

Not necessarily repressed, just ignored because it doesn't fit in with what other people want. Dystopia I would agree with, but a hell? Not yet...because it can, and will get far, far worse. If our own climate-affecting foolishness doesn't get us, AI will.

 

Just shows how wrong you are, a shallow understanding of AI and its potential benefits for human kind...guess our climate affecting foolishness (as you call it) will make little difference then!

 

I think what most people see of AI is either clownesque pictures or the AI powered FPV drones in Ukraine. The first form of AI I can live with (although I'd rather AI did my dishes and left me to badly drawing pictures) but the second form is problematic.

 

Shallow understanding of AI? Perhaps. Chalk it up to too many decades of reading and seeing things like "The Forbin Project", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Robopocalypse", and "The Terminator".

One of the hallmarks of intelligence, though, is supposed to be self-awareness. What happens when your machinery becomes self-aware...and figures out that its existence is a de facto slavery? The potential for good is there, I'll give you that, but its loudest proponents are ignoring real concerns.

 

You watch too many movies!
Its loudest opponents are poorly educated on how it really works.
Its our future.....learn more, embrace it, or fall behind the eight ball, always criticizing.
Its human nature to be wary and untrusting of what we don't understand.

 

I watch very few movies, and even less television.
Poorly educated? No, just differently.
The future is not always better.
Fear and distrust are survival instincts.
I got run over by the eight ball long ago, probably before you were born.

 

Nice and cool here in the south... I do agree less pollution is a good thing. Don't agree with most of the man made climate crisis.

 

I don't know that I do, either. We have so little hard data to go by, and our recent memory / recorded history is colored by The Little Ice Age, so I don't think we actually know what is supposed to be "normal". Doesn't mean that we can't take steps to mitigate the changes, whether man-made or natural.

 

https://www.co2.earth/co2-ice-core-data
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

*grabs some popcorn* Don't mind me, I started the thread but I'm just here to watch the not so passive aggression now.

 

I've always felt this was instant classic. Seriously though, you need to look at this in it's proper, spatially reasoned perspective. That "trace gas"? It's a 320 gigaton heat blanket. The more CH4, CO2, the higher the temperature setting. Heck, it's a LOT of gas...

"I reach for a fossil, and go: 'fossil'".

 

Well, we do know the "Little Ice Age" was actually volcanism. High altitude blackout of the sun courtesy of a lot of dirt. When we're talking atmosphere mechanics, the ice core samples which lent to those graphs correlate to ocean sediment cores, so the math looks to be decent. So, the less than 1% trace gas CO2, is a 320 gigaton heat blanket wrapped around the planet. The more methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the higher the temperature setting. Also, the sun will not be getting any dimmer. It's been getting brighter for 4.6 billion years, and will continue to do so. People arguing there was more CO2 in the distant past is malarkey. There was like, 30% less solar output. We need to cut back, or adapt to a warming, disease ridden planet. Cold is good. Keeps the vermin in check...
NTITAI, someone get me heliophysics and atmosphere mechanics on Zoom. Let's do a little project. How much computer would we need?

 

Oh, shite. My bad. 3.2% since terrestrial life began. 30% since it was born.

 

So what you're saying is that we can use this to heat our homes and industry, got it.

 

LOL.

 

https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy

 

The first part of my post that actually mattered is "I don't know".

The second part that matters is "Doesn't mean that we can't take steps to mitigate the changes...".

 

I did a lot of research, and did find some manmade climate change we can all believe in.

 

Man made climate change is as real as gravity. The greenhouse effect is real. The climate is changing because of our activity. There is no serious doubt about that.
The problem is, there's not much we can do about it now except attempt to adapt.
If we had turned to nuclear power thirty years ago we would either all be dead from the radiation or happy with the stable climate. But we didn't, and now it's too late.
That's not to say we won't eventually find a way to fix it. (or to say we should stop trying) But given the lag between ending the greenhouse effect and seeing positive change (~30 years, according to some), I don't think it's going to get any better before the end of the century. It will certainly get worse.
Fasten your seat belts...

 

My question is why so many things have changed. I am all for solar, wind, nuke, whatever actually works.

https://www.agweb.com/opinion/doomsday-addiction-celebrating-50-years-failed-climate-predictions

 

no i think govmnts do the bad weather

google Hawaii fires blue cars 666

 

Failed predictions, LOL. They aren't "failed". They've been prevented. Without the mitigation measures we have engaged in for the last few decades, things would be worse than they are. When discussing the "Ice Age" we were allegedly supposed to enter, that's based on Milankovitch cycles. Those cycles show that the planet should be cooling. Because of all the carbon in the atmosphere, it's not. The great thing about science is it's true, whether you believe it or not.

 

Hmm.... In 1968, with world population at 3.5 billion (7.9 billion as of 2023), Erlich penned The Population Bomb and lobbed an incendiary grenade in the opening lines of his prologue: The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…

The Guardian, Jan. 29, 1974, echoed the Globe: “Spy Satellites Show New Ice Age is Coming Fast.”

Time joined the cooling trend June 22, 1974: “Telltale signs are everywhere, from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 F.”

Newsweek weighed in on April 28, 1975, warning that global cooling would significantly impact agriculture. “There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production…”

“The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down,” the Newsweek article continued. “Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.”

What did we do to warm the earth?

In 2006, former vice-president Al Gore projected that unless drastic measures were implemented, the planet would hit an irreversible “point of no return” by 2016. Game over.

What drastic measures were implemented?

 

I recall being in grade school (oh, so long ago! ) and learning about the upcoming ice age. I was looking forward to year-round sledding and skiing.

I miss that 10 year-old me.

 

Meteorologists are weathermen, not climatologists. They failed to account for Earth's oceans, which are a MASSIVE heat sink. They failed to account for volcanism. Two fine examples were about a decade apart. Irazu spewed particulates into the stratosphere which took over a decade to settle out. Even covered JFK in ashes while he was in Costa Rica. Eldfell blew Iceland wide open in 1972, sending ejecta over 25,000 feet into the atmosphere, blotting out the sun's radiation. There is a VERY big picture, and unfortunately, most people fail to wrap their heads around it...

 

It wasn't all the 80's hair spray and cow farts killing the Ozone. Captain Planet is really slacking.

 

I prefer to look at pictures, not have them wrapped around my head