Scientific Report: rock solid evidence for human-caused G.W.

[K. A. Pital]

A civilization that deliberately killed millions or billions to maintain it's standard of luxury is not one I would want to live in.

You're already living in it, however. The more atrocious is the civilization that destroys millions of people outside itself but keeps cute and cuddly on it's own people. This is called "imperialism". It's ultimate triumph was Nazism - the realization that natural resources are limited, and if someone wants to be rich and powerful, he will have to brutally murder any other people who compete for the same resource.

"We have to develop the mechanism of human extermination. If you ask me what I mean by "human extermination", I mean the extermination of entire racial groups. And this is what I mean to do, speaking straight, my goal. Nature is cruel, so we have the right to be cruel. If I can send the best of German blood to die without remorse, clearly I have the right to murder millions of lower races, who multiply like filthy worms" (c) Hitler.

If the current Western civilization substituted "nations" with "races", it will not change much in the original Hitlerite statement.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Bah, British minds of an unusual caliber think alike then .

Calibre, you foreigner.

Quick clarification, are you talking about only using currently usable mass produced technology or future technology (Not just fuel efficient hybrid or electric cars but the upcoming hydrogen cars?).

Total zero or near zero emission. That requires magi-technology right now.

To be fair the US is not the only country with this problem, even Japan one of (If not THE) most energy efficient, "Green" western countries in the world has increased its carbon emissions by 14% rather than reducing them by 8% since the Kyoto treaty (Source: Last weeks Time magazine).

The only way to truly cut back (As I see it) is:

1)Massive population drop (Down to 1-2 billion or even less such as 800 million, I'm afraid that I haven't done the math).

2)Massive technological level & Living "standard" (Cars, factories, output, energy & fuel consumption) drop combined with a moderate population drop, Though open air fires are not clean, and untreated waste dumps and mass cattle breeding can do even more damage than a factory.

The developing world is a bigger threat. Even with the increases in Japan or the US, China will outstrip all within a decade and surpass it.

A large change 10 years ago would have made that much of a difference? Did the original treaty even address China?

It would've been a start. It's useless now.

Eh, the strongest will still survive after all the principle of private Fallout shelters loaded with supplies inside a mansion with its own orchards in a less affected area still applies. (Or even in more badly affected areas if its self sustaining due to certain crops, solar power, a water source and some access to trade).
Of course their condition will deteriorate even more rapidly than the rapidly dying "poor" due to the chances of social revolts ("Storm the mansion, take their bread!" etc all')

The problem is, they're only staving off the inevitable. If the shit hits the fan and the numbers are right, you're dead at the end of the day anyway, if not by exposure, then drowning, starvation, disease or superstorm. Nuclear war never was about extinction of the species.

Wall street would drown along with Manhattan, but isn't Silicon valley in the middle of a desert deep in the US {/Me Is terrible at geography}

If I remember my geography right, Silicon Valley is still San Fran Bay and within the flooding area. I don't know for certain, but it depends on how bad the flooding is and how far the main area is from the shore and its height above sea level.

And what do you propose? The current election system in capitalist countries will _never_ have environmentalists elected to such power that they can enact the required measures. The current education system will _never_ allow environmentalism to even being to appeal to the masses. And the current economic system will ensure that self-destruction of this world will continue.

If the masses aren't smart enough to see that the future brings their own demise, then so be it. We, and I mean the people who are concerned about humanity wiping out itself, will try to take action, but with the masses inert, there's no other way but to fail.

Humans have been lulled by the current system into believing that everything is OK and only a minority has realized the self-destructive course which humans have embarked on. Want to change that, try to. But donating to the WCF and giving one vote in the bullshit elections to a green party clearly are NOT working, so people need to wake the fuck up.

*Electronic monocle piece flips over eye*

We die.

[K. A. Pital]

We die.

Heh. "Defeatist." Hey, I actually used that silly word.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Heh. "Defeatist." Hey, I actually used that silly word.

But you missed the pop culture reference. A cookie to the man who gets it.

[Bounty]

You're already living in it, however.

As much as I believe some Western politicians are emotionally dead, I don't think they wake up thinking, "let's see how many Bangladeshi I can kill today. James, the strychnine!".

If the shit hits the fan and the numbers are right, you're dead at the end of the day anyway, if not by exposure, then drowning, starvation, disease or superstorm.

You want to know something really scary? Some day, before 2100, you're going to die. Seriously. You might as well jump in front of a train right now because you're as good as dead anyway.

Or you can get a grip. 'Sup to you, really.

[Admiral Valdemar]

As much as I believe some Western politicians are emotionally dead, I don't think they wake up thinking, "let's see how many Bangladeshi I can kill today. James, the strychnine!".

No. They do it by proxy instead. Malice is malice, whether it's intentionally wanting to gut someone like a fish, or displacing them from homes and causing strife in the quest for the almighty dollar.

You want to know something really scary? Some day, before 2100, you're going to die. Seriously. You might as well jump in front of a train right now because you're as good as dead anyway.

Or you can get a grip. 'Sup to you, really.

Holy shit! That's it! You've opened my eyes, but of course, we shouldn't care for any of this since, naturally, I'll be dead before the world ends, so that makes it okay.

In that case, I'm going out to pump a load of CO2 into the air in celebration of the fact that my not being here circa 2100 is a good thing. Fuck everybody else, especially those socialist liberals and their AGW conspiracy.

[Bounty]

You've opened my eyes, but of course, we shouldn't care for any of this since, naturally, I'll be dead before the world ends, so that makes it okay.

My hyperbole backfired.

Of course we should care, that's why I find your talk of "the end is nigh!" so repulsive. You're acting like humanity will be gone in a hundred years as if it's set in stone.

[Lagmonster]

Heh. "Defeatist." Hey, I actually used that silly word.

But you missed the pop culture reference. A cookie to the man who gets it.

Last Starfighter, motherfucker.

The world's been about to end for a while now; I don't doubt that humanity will live on - it just won't be a good life for a while. It'd be nice to have some sort of scale that indicates where global environmental damage is truly irreperable, even with enough time.

[K. A. Pital]

But you missed the pop culture reference.

This line has been used in so many pop culture items that I cannot deduce it's original source. Sorry. Enlighten me.

Bounty

As much as I believe some Western politicians are emotionally dead, I don't think they wake up thinking, "let's see how many Bangladeshi I can kill today. James, the strychnine!".

There are other ways to kill a person. During the initial accumulation of capital, Western countries actively employed human slavery and robbing of colonies with many millions of dead brown people - and without this initial accumulation of capital, capitalim itself would not arise in the now-known form.
And now millions of people are dying because of unequal distribution of resources in the world, shit, even the distribution of food, which we make for 9 billion but somehow we feed only 5 (somewhat) while 1 billion is starving.

Yes, they don't wake up thinking "how many Bangladeshi I can kill" - they just wake up without thinking about the Bangladeshi who will die today.

In the early XX century, the idea of Western imperialism was like this: a man walks to another, shoots and kills him, then takes his food. In the early XXI century, it's a man who has cookies but will not do anything even as he sees people starving around him.

Who is more evil, a person who shoots another man to "keep our luxury standard" or someone who denies him food "to keep our luxury standard"? Obviously the former, but the latter isn't exactly a paragon of good either.

[Admiral Valdemar]

My hyperbole backfired.

Of course we should care, that's why I find your talk of "the end is nigh!" so repulsive. You're acting like humanity will be gone in a hundred years as if it's set in stone.

Nothing's guaranteed, but as far as the IPCC is concerned (and will later confirm this year), we're past the point of no return and what inertia the climate change machinery has is enough to significantly ruin the global economy, kill hundreds of millions to billions and make most traditionally habitable areas uninhabitable. Such processes are already evident from growing deserts to the bizarre flooding and droughts at unseasonal times of year.

I'm merely enforcing the fact that our ignorance and apathy is, pretty likely, going to turn an Armageddon scenario into fact. Not a movie or book, but a real-world instance that makes all warfare in history totally moot in comparison. If one is not allowed to get somewhat up in arms over that, even if likely missing out on the final death throes by a few years, then I want to know what is worth worrying about.

I would start caring more about our actions to reduce the effect. However, given it's seemingly too late already and even the strictest controls proposed by any gov't are hopelessly inadequate to keep levels from rising, letalone reduce them, well, it seems to me we're about to reap what we sowed.

[K. A. Pital]

However, given it's seemingly too late already and even the strictest controls proposed by any gov't are hopelessly inadequate to keep levels from rising, letalone reduce them, well, it seems to me we're about to reap what we sowed.

Global revolution/war? Though it would have other aims, probably, but:
1) the initial ravage would stop the most notorious polluters from functioning at all
2) human population will contract, but in a struggle to _avoid_ demise, not walking to self-destruction like blind sheep
3) a real chance at installing a qualified technocracy in a short time (i.e. "now", instead of "after a 100 years")

And _perhaps_ this will preclude a future possibility of environmental global change harmful to humans, make them more concerned in general.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Why are you cynical and morbid? That's kind of a repulsive worldview/attitude. Eagerly awaiting laughing at people as the biosphere and much of recognizable civilization implodes?

Yes, far more fun to pretend the plane isn't on fire and crashing into the sea. Ignorance is, as they say, bliss. Not at all the same mentality that got us into this mess in the first place.

Or, you can forgive me for entertaining the fact that I may be one of the few people ever to live to see the end of humanity, at least as a major species, if not outright. How many historical figures can say that, eh?

And you assume humanity doesn't deserve it, which is also patently false.

It's equally amusing how the world's greatest military technology is totally redundant against this threat, but then, against terrorism it is too. So I guess that's nowt new.

If you really believe that, why bother trying to get a job and meeting women or doing anything? Why not kill yourself or use profilgate drugs. Why bother bitching on this board? There is literally no point if it is too late. There's no reason to do anything constructive.

Somehow if Mike can manage to carry his children forth and raise them to hopefully have pleasant lives, than its not like everyone who tries at all is just a hopelessly ignorant retard. You strike me as the theatrical melodramatic type, no offense. Its not atypical for you to comment to a thread solely to tell us the sky is falling and everyone's going to die.

What's the point? Telling us isn't going to change that if you believe it or increase our current enjoyment of life. What is the point?

[Admiral Valdemar]

If you really believe that, why bother trying to get a job and meeting women or doing anything? Why not kill yourself or use profilgate drugs. Why bother bitching on this board? There is literally no point if it is too late. There's no reason to do anything constructive.

Good point. Why waste the years of life I've already got under my belt and those yet to come when I can just top myself now? It's not like I can have any fun while the world burns and floods.

Somehow if Mike can manage to carry his children forth and raise them to hopefully have pleasant lives, than its not like everyone who tries at all is just a hopelessly ignorant retard. You strike me as the theatrical melodramatic type, no offense. Its not atypical for you to comment to a thread solely to tell us the sky is falling and everyone's going to die.

What's the point? Telling us isn't going to change that if you believe it or increase our current enjoyment of life. What is the point?

Actually, it is, if I have good reason to bring bad tidings. Unlike some people in this world, I actually don't think AGW is bullshit and am alarmed at how much more rapid the problem is progressing. It was once only a millennia away problem, now it's likely to cause massive damage before I'm middle aged. I don't know about you, but I go by worst case scenario, since I'm then prepared, rather than hope and pray it's all hyperbolic bullshit.

And the world ending is no excuse to stop raising a family. That's just nonsense. I'm also not about to kill myself over something I'm far more interested in observing if it happens.

Hell, we had this very same mentality as a way of life during the Cold War, yet only a few morons went and topped themselves when Cuba had something of a crisis. This is both bigger and more likely.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It seems unavoidable and vast swathes of people deserve it, if not all of us. What you call cynicism and morbidity, I would call making the best of an unpleasant situation. Plus it will look really cool.

Grow up, asshole. You're not talking about some fun nerd thing like playing RPGs all day or seeing some asshole on the road get pulled over. You're talking about the death of billions of people. Its not fun. Its not fascinating. Its the most awful and terrible thing possible that could and may ever happen. Don't you have any sense of social responsibility? Displaced empathy for fellow human beings?

[K. A. Pital]

I'm also not about to kill myself over something I'm far more interested in observing if it happens.

Observing? Are you not fighting against it? Or do you think it's futile?

The fact that it's progressing fast means one thing only.
1) by any means get power in a country with nuclear weapons
2) start conducting anti-global-warming nuclear tests to give a short-term edge and at least slow down the processes
3) make others alarmed by it and get them to fucking think how serious this is because of this

The most problems are with (1), yes? But why not try it, if you're going to witness it anyway? What's the point of meekly surrendering to what is called "fate"? Is it not better to at least attempt a change? Can't be worse.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Grow up, asshole. You're not talking about some fun nerd thing like playing RPGs all day or seeing some asshole on the road get pulled over. You're talking about the death of billions of people. Its not fun. Its not fascinating. Its the most awful and terrible thing possible that could and may ever happen. Don't you have any sense of social responsibility? Displaced empathy for fellow human beings?

As if empathy is going to change shit. And it is fascinating, people, afterall, build whole religions careers and media masterpieces over the possible ending of existence as we know it. So it's okay to watch a movie on billions dying and contemplate what it must be like, but when it's really happening, we can't be interested but must instead have sudden boosts in human compassion? Bullshit. Millions die every year from totally preventable things as it is and I don't see anyone batting an eyelid here. It's a fact of life, and while we may watch the news and baulk at the very fact that thousands of kids with nary a possession are starving to death in Rwanda, we don't lose sleep over it.

Humans are inherently sick, dumb and overly curious animals. The number of road accidents where I've seen people slow and observe with pure fascination the corpses being moved as the survivors weep springs to mind. That, combined with the simple fact that we still have people ignoring the 800 lb gorilla in the room makes me simply apathetic to the species. It's sad and all, though what can anyone do if that's fate? If we were a smarter species, we'd never have gotten into this mess, but we're not.

Observing? Are you not fighting against it? Or do you think it's futile?

The fact that it's progressing fast means one thing only.
1) by any means get power in a country with nuclear weapons
2) start conducting anti-global-warming nuclear tests to give a short-term edge and at least slow down the processes
3) make others alarmed by it and get them to fucking think how serious this is because of this

The most problems are with (1), yes? But why not try it, if you're going to witness it anyway? What's the point of meekly surrendering to what is called "fate"? Is it not better to at least attempt a change? Can't be worse.

All of our lightbulbs in the house are now fluorescent energy saving Grade A bulbs, as I myself enforced on my folks. I drive a car with an engine that is only 1.2 litres, my father's car is also a brand new 1.6 litre engined Golf with twice the fuel economy of his previous car. All our insulation is fully fitted, all our windows are double glazed. I never leave anything on standby and my PC is only ever on overnight if it's doing an important task which demands such a time period, and then it still switches off automatically.

I talk about this at length with people I know now since I started reading more on the phenomenon. I'm trying to get my parents and brother to watch Gore's movie rather than get pissed at the constant news reports and specials on the issue and blow it all off as bullshit. We recycle all products in the household.

Frankly, short of wasting my entire bank account on fairly limited use renewable energy sources like a turbine or solar cells, there's little else more I can do here short of living in a tipi.

Oh yeah, saw this rather amusing ad in my daily today, too.

[Rye]

If you really believe that, why bother trying to get a job and meeting women or doing anything? Why not kill yourself or use profilgate drugs. Why bother bitching on this board? There is literally no point if it is too late.There's no reason to do anything constructive.

This is just a bigassed nonsequitur. You're almost definately going to die in the next 100 years. Are you going to continue on and have fun in the meantime? Uh, yeah, you are.

Grow up, asshole. You're not talking about some fun nerd thing like playing RPGs all day or seeing some asshole on the road get pulled over. You're talking about the death of billions of people. Its not fun. Its not fascinating. Its the most awful and terrible thing possible that could and may ever happen. Don't you have any sense of social responsibility? Displaced empathy for fellow human beings?

I see you're using Mike's ethical rhetoric here, but I fail to see how acknowledging that mass destruction that I'm comfortably detached enough from is impressive is equivalent to being a sociopath. Almost everyone likes large-scale death and destruction, just look at the media frenzies around columbine, katrina and 11th of September, hell, look how many times the holocaust is brought up.

My sense of empathy extends genuinely to people close to me. I'm not going to stop using my computer, sell it and give all the proceeds to some charity any time soon though, and nor are you. For everyone else, I have a "well, that's a shame," but not a whole lot more. If you have much more than that, you tend to get crushed under the sheer futility of it all and the vast scale of suffering in the world. Think how many people will have died from the time I posted this to the time you read it, to the time you responded to it. Do you honestly care significantly about those people? If so, why are you arguing on here instead of helping them?

[K. A. Pital]

Millions die every year from totally preventable things as it is and I don't see anyone batting an eyelid here.

Was that called for? I mentioned this just few posts earlier. And I _do_ things to prevent it at least on a local scale around me, as well as joining the global political struggle.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Was that called for? I mentioned this just few posts earlier. And I _do_ things to prevent it at least on a local scale around me, as well as joining the global political struggle.

The point was, no one can comprehend, letalone begin to try and reverse the suffering we're already acclimated to. I help out at a charity shop and donate when I can, even though I'm currently looking for work. I'm not about to delude myself into thinking anything radical will happen from my charity that is lacking in others I know. Nor am I going to go overboard and start personally feeling each and every death out there (which you don't either). So again, the point of really only caring for those close to us crops up. It's hard to get teary eyed and throw down everything for one schmoe down on his luck in third world shit hole land. Why anyone feels some special need to be extra vigilant as an allegedly irreversible catastrophic event approaches boggles my mind. It's just as futile as trying to pretend you'll live forever anyway.

And besides, when one dies, it's a tragedy. A million? That's a statistic.

[Guardsman Bass]

Remember, the report suggest a 7-23 inch sea level rise over the next century, which, while it would absolutely fuck the Bangladeshis over the long term, isn't the fucking end of the world. I think you may be jumping on the worst-case scenario and riding it out for some morbid satisfaction.

In any case, we're hardly riding into this blind. While it is still difficult to get global warming efforts passed, they are being worked on, and do have potential to at least mitigate the effects over the time period. Which is more than you can say for other peoples in history who have suffered from ecological collapse of their living environment, like the Easter Islanders.

[K. A. Pital]

I'm not about to delude myself into thinking anything radical will happen from my charity that is lacking in others I know.

Neither do I. But as I said before, it's better to die trying. What you lose? Nothing. A small chance of making a change? Time? If would rather spend my time on a purpose that gives me self-fulfilment, than simply waste the remaining days of my life in simply observing the world. But again, that's me.

And sometimes one human can make a change if he can appeal to the masses. Many great revolutionaries and leaders became prominent and popular only in an old age.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Remember, the report suggest a 7-23 inch sea level rise over the next century, which, while it would absolutely fuck the Bangladeshis over the long term, isn't the fucking end of the world. I think you may be jumping on the worst-case scenario and riding it out for some morbid satisfaction.

In any case, we're hardly riding into this blind. While it is still difficult to get global warming efforts passed, they are being worked on, and do have potential to at least mitigate the effects over the time period. Which is more than you can say for other peoples in history who have suffered from ecological collapse of their living environment, like the Easter Islanders.

The original 2001 AC3 report predicted barely 3ºC rise in temperature. That has now been shown to be lower than the predicted average today. That's six years gap and now over a degree difference in expected temperatures. Carbon emissions are increasing globally and the likes of the Greenland ice shelf are starting to rapidly deteriorate. If I were a betting man, I'd say we're understating the effects given the sudden rapid industrialisation of the developing nations of the world. Japan can't even meet their strict emission rules and Germany, green capital of the EU, is still allowing auto-manufacturers to pump out exhausts and guzzle fuel like nobody's business.

That doesn't include the possible unseen sudden changes which have taken us by surprise before or the fact that the mechanisms involved are now seen as part of one massive positive feedback loop, endlessly increasing momentum in the changes. The carbon element is already over 300 ppm, which is bad enough, except it's going to keep going up even if we all reverted to the stone age right now. And that stuff doesn't dissipate easy either unlike other GHGs.

Neither do I. But as I said before, it's better to die trying. What you lose? Nothing. A small chance of making a change? Time? If would rather spend my time on a purpose that gives me self-fulfilment, than simply waste the remaining days of my life in simply observing the world. But again, that's me.

And sometimes one human can make a change if he can appeal to the masses. Many great revolutionaries and leaders became prominent and popular only in an old age.

Oh I'll still be doing my part if only as a moral duty. The gov't here, for all the targets being set so they can miss them by miles off, is at least making the impression of looking green. They are making damn sure the people pay to make this nation the first truly green First World state. Even so, I'll still be watching the news. Some days it'll be this ridiculous War of Terror. Other days it'll be the latest freak weather problem. The analogy of the frog in boiling water used in AIT is quite relevant. It's not like I can say "it'll feel pretty fucking real to you too!" and then confidently state the exact date the world goes to shit. No, no, this will take time and my lifetime alone has seen radical changes and I can see the weather being far different now even, than when I was at school (I know the big changes are over longer scales; this is merely an example).

[MKSheppard]

Had Kyoto been ratified by all, or something even harsher, it'd have achieved something. Now it is, ironically, a load of hot air that won't change anything.

No it wouldn't. Kyoto exempted all the major major polluters like China, India, etc from controls; and seriously, do you think that a few years of minor Kyoto reductions would have reversed the freight train that this report says is inevitable?

I'm combining the next two replies into one, since they sort of interlock:

And your industry and money mean shit without a planet to live on.

and

If the shit hits the fan and the numbers are right, you're dead at the end of the day anyway, if not by exposure, then drowning, starvation, disease or superstorm. Nuclear war never was about extinction of the species.

I have to ask here honestly what you're smoking.

You are seriously saying that a process that will at worst take 100 years to occur and in the best case 1,000 to 10,000 years to occur, is going to be WORSE than a full scale nuclear exchange seeing 16,100 warheads for a total of 8,300 MT hitting the US, Europe, China, and Russia in a few hours?

Virtually every source of industry will have been destroyed, being near nuclear targets, meaning that the entire infrastructure of industrial life will collapse rather quickly; while agriculture bombs due to massive crop failures, and even in areas where there are still crops, there's no fuel or infrastructure left to transport them to areas that need them; meaning massive famine; plus we have tens of millions of people who are in need of medical attention right now but wont get it, since most of the hospitals are destroyed; leading to even bigger problems of sanitation, how do we dispose of millions of bodies before they cause disease?

I could go on, but compared to nuclear war, even the worst effects of global warming are mundane in comparison. Some areas will become hot and unusable while other areas like Northern Canada and Siberia actually become useable. Some coastal or low lying areas get flooded over time; which does suck, since a lot of the world's population does live near the coasts, but we still have lots of other land and industrial base that's unaffected by any possible rise in water levels, and since the effects happen over a very long period of time, we have plenty of time to adjust to climatic changes, like adding air conditioning to European housing, which means that a lot of old people won't die of heatstroke, due to heat waves; or developing the new farmland now open to us in more northern climes to make up for the shortfall due to a hotter growing season in southern climes.

The people that will get fucked are those already living on a near substistence level, like in Sub-Saharan Africa, which will probably become hotter, and see less crop growth, and have no real means of actually dealing with it due to it being a turd world shithole par excellence. Oh well.

[Guardsman Bass]

Like I said, the real people who will be screwed by the predicted rise in sea level are the Bangladeshis, and the like; people who live in low-lying sea areas who have nowhere to go, and are incapable of doing so.

In places like the US, we 'merely' soak up enormous costs in lost beach front and city areas while slowly moving inland (or spend an equally enormous amount of money trying to preserve certain coastal areas by using dikes and the like. Perhaps the 21st century will become that of the Dutch ).

[MKSheppard]

Like I said, the real people who will be screwed by the predicted rise in sea level are the Bangladeshis, and the like; people who live in low-lying sea areas who have nowhere to go, and are incapable of doing so.

It's worse than that.

Industries make a lot of things that improve our quality of life and offer us ways to beat the increase in heat; stuff like oh, drills to drill for wells, air conditioners to bring indoor heat levels down to tolerable limits, fuel and agricultural machinery to allow one farmer to squeeze craploads of food from a small plot etc.

If we impose drastic regulations to reduce our carbon footprint and/or bring us in compliance with Kyoto; prices for that kind of stuff will rise quite a bit.

Not a problem in the First world, where we have lots of money and can afford the price increases. But not so in the third world, or even Second World. In effect, the enviroweenies want to toss a significant portion of the world's population under the bus so they can feel good about themselves having achieved some minor goal, sort of like the entire DDT ban preventing many third world countries from completing their anti-malarial programs before the mosquitoes, etc got resistance to DDT; and causing a shitload of malaria deaths to this day.