Sink Holes in Russia are a Dragon's breath, a term for large volumes of methane gas escaping into the atmosphere. If these are happening more and more, this would mean climate models are way off and the runaway climate might be a lot closer than we think.
I hate to say this, but I'm nearing a point where I truly believe we will not stop or even slow this enough before billions die and we have mass extinction events. I wish I could be more optimistic, but we as a planet are so slow to react to slow changing events and this one is unforgiving to us not taking action.
We are at a tipping point for sure. The next 50 years will be critical. Not cause a lot of warming will happen in these times, but because the engines which will drive the warming can be increased at these times, and looks like their going to be.
Even ignoring increases from man made sources, there are already feedback loops that are warming the climate on their own. Decreased solar reflection from decreased ice. Increased ocean warmth from more dark water being exposed. Carbon and methane like your story being expelled from thawing permafrost.
It was recently released, and probably in the thread somewhere, that a shelf on the antarctic continent is doomed to slide off. Even if we halted all CO2 production right now, the damage is done. That bit of ice is going into the ocean and going to raise water levels around the world.
Here's the thing though. If we do get our act together, we will be able to reverse the damage eventually. It's not a lost cost. New technologies in capture and terraforming may even make it easier.
But we need to put serious pressure on the companies immediately. Coal needs to be shut down now. Oil needs stricter regulations. Consumers need to reduce and governments need to put in (more) taxes on fossil fuels to coerce them to change. Green technologies need funding.
The shift needs to happen now. And the stupid thing is, we can get our ducks in a row. It won't be too hard, and the economy will rebound quickly. It's just evolution of markets and product. Whole markets have disappeared when new and better things come out. Why are we trying to hang on to this one so bad, especially when we know it's hurting us?
As an extra added bonus, all these oil rich conflicts? The terrorists making money of oil? The US billionaires dictating bad policy to stay on top. The countries behaving badly cause they have the oil to back them up. Russia for example. We do this right, and we take the legs out from them. We change the landscape.
The noise from all these concerned people, all these posters needs to be louder. Especially here in Alberta where there is lots of blame to go around.
I get a little tired when people say, well the best way is to educate, debate. Well, agreed, to a certain extent, for a certain amount of time. But eventually, you gotta get to the action point. Noise needs to be made, hearts and minds need to be won. Pressure must be put on government. Big pressure.
If we don't get this moving in the next 10-20 years, then yeah, we're boned.
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I'm not educated on climate change like the people in this thread and, like many Albertans, make my living in the energy sector, but the link above is the single reason I will not be voting Conservative any longer. The deliberate attack on science by a government is scary beyond belief.
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I just finished watching season one of Cosmos and was blown away. I don't have the words to describe how my mind is racing as a result.
One thing that continues to trouble me...
We exist by random chance, an accident. A single human life is a fraction of a millisecond on cosmological scale. The universe is oblivious to our existence making humans insignificant by any standard.
Doesn't this necessarily lead to nihilism? I've been down this road before when I first started university some many years ago and found it terribly depressing. We can delude ourselves into thinking there is a purpose or meaning to anything but is there really, knowing what we know about the universe? We can focus on family and children or pursue our passions, but in the end, so what? The only way to remain sane, I think, is to not ponder these types of issues.
I just finished watching season one of Cosmos and was blown away. I don't have the words to describe how my mind is racing as a result.
One thing that continues to trouble me...
We exist by random chance, an accident. A single human life is a fraction of a millisecond on cosmological scale. The universe is oblivious to our existence making humans insignificant by any standard.
Doesn't this necessarily lead to nihilism? I've been down this road before when I first started university some many years ago and found it terribly depressing. We can delude ourselves into thinking there is a purpose or meaning to anything but is there really, knowing what we know about the universe? We can focus on family and children or pursue our passions, but in the end, so what? The only way to remain sane, I think, is to not ponder these types of issues.
As an athiest I never bought the "nihilism" movement, just because humans have evolved with big brains shouldn't excuse us from the real meaning of our existance which is to survive and multiply but since we do have evolved brain power we may as well add some fun stuff to our short lifes in this universe.
And not to make you feel any smaller but the history of modern human life is a fraction of a millisecond on cosmological scale.
If I understand correctly, nihilism is illegitimate because we have an evolutionary biological urge to reproduce? So people who do not want children is just a form of artificial selection? Our evolved brain enables us to pursue "fun" which may distract us from the absurdity of it all but does nothing to suggest there is any purpose other than biological success?
For such an "evolved" species, it all seems pretty crude.
but does nothing to suggest there is any purpose other than biological success?
Just because a purpose isn't defined by an external entity (the whole "God has a purpose for you" line is just a way to feel special and avoid reality) or defined via a biological process doesn't mean purpose doesn't exist.
It just means the purpose is found elsewhere, be it yourself or society or a combination.
Some purposes probably only impact a few other individuals. Other purposes help perpetuate society (and thus our species) as a whole.
Just because those purposes don't impact the universe or transcend all of time and space doesn't make those purposes a delusion or absurd. It just means they're smaller than you maybe wish they were.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Just because those purposes don't impact the universe or transcend all of time and space doesn't make those purposes a delusion or absurd. It just means they're smaller than you maybe wish they were.
Fair enough, but that implies meaning or purpose is arbitrary which is what nihilism asserts from my understanding, at least, existential nihilism. There is no objective standard by which to judge. Meaning, purpose and morality become relative to a person, a community, a society, a civilization, at a particular point in time.
I'll have to find another thread more appropriate to this discussion as I don't want to detract from the science of climate change. I just find it fascinating that a series like Cosmos can engender such questions.
Fair enough, but that implies meaning or purpose is arbitrary which is what nihilism asserts from my understanding, at least, existential nihilism. There is no objective standard by which to judge. Meaning, purpose and morality become relative to a person, a community, a society, a civilization, at a particular point in time.
Yeah I'd be ok with that, that meaning and purpose are arbitrary and are what we make them. I think they're informed by society at large and the world around us, so that might qualify as "intrinsic" in some ways.
Uggh been debating a friend who's a full out climate change denier, sadly he's been posting watts and nonsense like that, but he linked me this which I haven't seen before in the world of denialism, anyone want to help me debunk this one.
Uggh been debating a friend who's a full out climate change denier, sadly he's been posting watts and nonsense like that, but he linked me this which I haven't seen before in the world of denialism, anyone want to help me debunk this one.
You want to destroy this argument? It's simple. Unified theory. The UPCC presents one and the counter does not. The only thing the counter side can agree upon is their disagreement that climate change is anthropomorphic in nature. That is not a unified theory. A unified theory would present a common cause of the problem, not just a disagreement with the conclusion of the UPCC's findings.
Your friend is trying to get you to chase shadows. The fact that the 1350+ papers are peer reviewed is irrelevant. Peer review only weights the value of the narrow scope of the paper and re-evaluates the findings based on the method. Peer review does not look for data beyond the scope of the paper or the method used to come to its conclusions. Unless these papers are focused on disproving the findings of the UPCC, using the same methods, then they have very little value.
Uggh been debating a friend who's a full out climate change denier, sadly he's been posting watts and nonsense like that, but he linked me this which I haven't seen before in the world of denialism, anyone want to help me debunk this one.
I would bet too that a lot of those papers are even used in the IPCC reports, the title of the web page is:
1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarmism
So it's not 1350+ papers that deny AGW, or 1350+ papers that support an alternative theory to AGW, it's 1350+ that support skeptic arguments against alarmism.
Alarmism can of course be defined however one wishes, and if the bar is only that a paper in isolation can support a skeptical argument then yeah of course you're going to find a lot of papers. I looked at the first paper, it's from 1980 (which is a long time in Climate research, I doubt whoever wrote the page actually dug into the paper to see if its findings were adopted or if they were refuted, or even if they are relevant), and it doesn't deny AGW, it isn't even directly about AGW, it's about how a given radiative forcing translates into a change in surface temperature.
So it doesn't disagree with AGW, it just says that according to their calculations and data the amount of temperature change due to a given change in CO2 is lower than what others have said.
Coming up with huge lists like this is relatively easy to do, and orders of magnitude more difficult to refute, and really amounts to nothing much more than a gish gallop. Because finding papers that "support" a skeptical view of "alarmism" is a wide enough target as to be mostly meaningless, but whoever makes and quotes the list is trying to use it to undermine the much narrower and specific conclusions of AGW.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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