Climate change is much worse than you think

If you aren't depressed yet...

Climate change is much worse than you think

NPR ran a series earlier this week, called "It's 2050 And This Is How We Stopped Climate Change" which imagined what had to be done to cut greenhouse emissions to zero, and what the world would look like if we did.

• No more personal cars
  
  
• Transportation is all shared, and electric
  
  
• No more single family homes
  
  
• Housing is all shared by 3-4 families
  
  
• No more beef
  
  
• All animal protein is sustainably raised
  

There were more, but you get the idea.  MAJOR changes to the American Spirit.

I left the series hoping somebody, somewhere develops the technology to sequester carbon 'cos I don't see changes this big happening in 30 years.

And even if by some miracle they did, it would only prevent climate change from getting worse -- it wouldn't reverse the damage already done. And one country alone couldn't make a difference; it'd have to be global (& good luck with that).

I belong to a mailing list, acoustic-ecology.sfu.org, which is a bunch of academics who discuss field recordings and man's relationship to nature.  Most of their discussions are fussy and narrowly-focused, and the recordings they release are supported by various corporations looking for tax-writeoffs.

Yesterday one of the members, a Canadian professor named Claude Schryer, posted a link to his new series of podcasts about his work.  He talks and talks and talks about nothing at all while pointing his microphone at some tubs of water and people walking in the park.  Needless to say, I was underimpressed.

In response, one of the other members, Udo Noll, the guy behind the great (though under developed) Radio Aporee, posted the following:

Udo Noll wrote:

dear Claude,

I've listened to your podcast this morning, and I enjoyed it, thanks for it.
At the same time it made me almost angry.
First we consume our world to death and then we run to the psychotherapist to lament about
the state of cognitive dissonance caused by this conduct? I don't want to deny these
feelings and their impact on well beeing, I feel it myself since long. But there are things and work to do:

stop (over-)consuming
stop eating meat, if you can't, at least buy it from the eco farmer nearby.
still own a car? or two? global justice would also mean that billion others have the same right to own one, or two...
stop flying around the world. if you have to, somethings wrong with your conceptions. at least compensate CO2.
if possible, spent xx % of your income for organisations and projects engaging in ecological and social change.
if you can't, go join such organisations and help, they're around and doing real work since decades.
go to elections and make a careful choice.
engage. stop (over-)consuming.

Btw, an idea of what it means to live "in nature" can be vividly observed during this pandemic and its lockdowns:
10000s are going with their huge cars "into nature", because cafes, bars, restaurants, gyms and shops are closed,
devastating parks, sanctuaries, disturbing wild life, etc.
For years I could observe Red-backed shrike and Northern wheatear on former Tempelhof airport (now public park)
here in Berlin, both highly endangered birds in many areas. Gone because of people "in nature" ...

Please forgive my complaint, it's of course not against you and your work!
It just emerged while listening, esp. to some of the quotes. There is a lot of hypocrisy in current discourses.


-Udo

That got me to thinking.  Climate change is here, the damage is done, we're not going to reverse it.  Giving  up our cars and becoming vegetarians isn't the answer.  We have 100,000 years of human history, during which we have diverged from sustainability into actively using up resources to live above the standard of hunter/gatherer cultures.  Other self-conscious beings exist on this planet -- whales and birds and elephants, in various degrees -- and they live sustainably and have been around longer than humankind and will probably continue long after we're gone.


I don't think any movement to live sustainably, to go back to a pre-civilization state, is going to happen.  It's too late anyway.  The damage is done.



Mankind is resourceful.  We might develop a way to sequester carbon, or some other as-yet-unthought-of way to reverse global warming.  We might learn to survive in the warmer clime.  We might all die.


In a way, it's out of our hands.  Mankind is not like any other animal (as the genocide book I'm reading illustrates).  Our existence will be just a blip of a couple hundred thousand years in the geologic record, but during that brief time we did things no other species contemplated: visited other worlds.  Terraformed the Earth.  Created systems that allowed the vast majority of our species to never confront hunger or cold.


It's a glorious legacy, even if nobody will be around to appreciate it.

After reading Bill Gates' book I was pretty much convinced we're all fucked. It's too late to reverse the onrushing disaster.

Today Italy experienced unprecedented floods ("as much rain as Seattle gets in a year") and a cyclone flooded parts of the Oman desert.

Hold onto your hats, folks. It's happening.

I woke up this morning following a dream about the climate-disaster future.  The dream involved a "mega-tornado."

You know how hurricanes (and cyclones and typhoons) are getting stronger and bigger as the ocean warms?  Well in my dream, the Midwest was appreciably hotter than normal for an extended period, causing a tornado of monster proportions.

• Five miles wide.
  
  
• 160 mph winds.
  
  
• 12 hour duration.

Several entire cities were ripped out of existence.

It's not all bad.  Antarctica was once a tropical paradise, and could be again.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/17/antarctica-tropical-climate-co2-research
https://www.zmescience.com/science/rainforest-antarctica-032532/

NoCoPilot wrote:

I woke up this morning following a dream about the climate-disaster future.  The dream involved a "mega-tornado."

You know how hurricanes (and cyclones and typhoons) are getting stronger and bigger as the ocean warms?  Well in my dream, the Midwest was appreciably hotter than normal for an extended period, causing a tornado of monster proportions.

• Five miles wide.
  
  
• 160 mph winds.
  
  
• 12 hour duration.
  

Several entire cities were ripped out of existence.

I hate it when I'm right. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/dec/11/tornadoes-kentucky-deaths-governor-latest-updates

Quote :

More than 30 tornadoes have been reported in at least six states. A stretch of more than 200 miles from Arkansas to Kentucky might have been hit by one violent, long-track twister, CNN meteorologists say.

Gov. Andy Beshear wrote:

we’re praying for each and every one of those families.

Good plan, Andy, you fucking moron.

Steve Scalise wrote:

Thank God for air conditioning.

This one quote encompasses everything wrong with climate deniers.

Anna Lee wrote:

I know I am far from the first person, both in Gen Z and in history, to reckon with events of an existential scale when grappling with questions about the future, especially those related to having a family. The past century, alone, is riddled with near-doomsday crises, including WWI and WWII, nuclear threats during the Cold War and frightening economic downturns. In those instances, generations who came before me made different choices — ones that I respect, and which led to the lives my peers and I now enjoy."

But to me, where climate change and other events diverge is human cooperation and responsibility — while war and financial disasters are always caused by humans, they are also rectified by them. However, unlike wartime conflict and periods of financial uncertainty, I can see no hopeful reference point in history to show how humanity might come together to recover from climate change. People are fighting, but their efforts are falling on too many deaf ears.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/11/opinions/not-having-children-lee/index.html

Apparently Gen Zers are deciding in large numbers not to have children. The climate future is just too grim.

I can't blame them, I'd be right there with them if I was of childbearing age.

But... it's a little like the film "Idiocracy."  If all the smart people limit their reproduction, that means only the low-IQ morons will still breed like rabbits, raising either low-IQ babies or children with inadequate educations.  That's not going to solve any problems either.

Some days depression seems like a valid worldview.

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai will be affecting the weather for decades.
https://www.sciencealert.com/giant-tonga-volcanic-eruption-could-disrupt-weather-for-years-to-come

Saw a blurb on the weather news last night, the Gulf of Mexico is 1-3° warmer than normal this year, and the Atlantic is 3-5°.

That's HUGE.  This year's hurricane season will be much much worse, impacting mostly the Confederate States, who deny climate change and don't want to pay taxes.

I think the logical answer is to withhold FEMA. Make the Southern States "pay their way," as they're trying to do with the defense budget, where any expenditures have to come out of existing budgets.

Why should the Northern States, who already pay the lion's share of federal taxes, pay to repair the South's miserable tar paper shacks and double-wides?

Let them pray to their fucking god.

Not only sea ice, but post-glacial uplift.
https://www.sciencealert.com/one-of-earths-continents-is-rising-up-and-the-effects-could-be-huge

Quote :

"The land uplift from reduced ice on the surface is happening in decades, rather than over thousands of years."

At least we'll have more oceanfront property.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-sea-level-rise_n_66c4ed93e4b00667298b7ded

Once the jetstream shifts, all bets are off.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2446877-the-jet-stream-may-be-starting-to-shift-in-response-to-climate-change/

Let's turn the Sinai Peninsula into a lush green meadow.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/08/climate/regreen-desert-sinai-egypt/index.html

Quote :

He believes it is the answer to a slew of huge global problems. “We are destroying our planet in a way which is scary,” he told CNN. “The only holistic way out of this situation is with large-scale ecological regeneration.”

What could possibly go wrong?

Quote :

But the concept is also controversial; critics say transforming deserts is unproven, enormously complex and could negatively affect water and weather in ways we cannot predict.

Oh yeah, there's that.