How can we prevent global warming from getting worse?

[ray245]

After all the hype about the green day concert, as well as the debate on SB.com...I was wondering what actions governments can ACTUALLY do to prevent the current situation from getting worse.

Organization and green peace can spread the message about greenhouse gases causing more harm and telling people to help in conversation efforts. But seriously I doubt it can actually make an impact on saving the environment.

What policies can actually work and really influence the public to do something as well?

Tell me if you don't understand what I am trying to say...

[Zwinmar]

were can I find information (not bullshit) on global warming? You know, the actual scientists not the media or politicians. Because, I dont know hardly anything on this subject.

[D.Turtle]

The best site for information about global warming from scientists is RealClimate.Org

[CJvR]

Tax production and transportation that generate greenhouse gasses, and tax imports from places that dont.

[Broomstick]

At this point I don't think there's anything anyone can do to stop it - the climate doesn't work like that. No matter what, the planet will get warmer for awhile.

Short of going back to pre-industrial technology on a global scale I think there's jackshit that will even slow it down much. And that ain't gonna happen - we have too many people on the planet to return to that level of tech and keep everyone alive and healthy. No one is going to volunteer to be part of the great die off that would be required to really improve the situation in a human lifetime or two.

[brianeyci]

What if the great die off happens on its own?

If Africa, China and India go completely down the shitter, as some people are predicting when oil goes down the drain, that's hundreds of millions of deaths and billions of starving people. China's coal powerplants are not to be underestimated -- last I heard they were building a new one every day. All the cheap consumer goods and US lifestyle will suddenly mean shit, and won't be possible without cheap overseas labor. Call me an optimist, but if journalism gets teeth and pictures of hundreds of millions of dying hit the front pages of the New York Times weeks in a row, maybe it'll cut down on consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Especially if the deaths are represented in the first world on a lesser scale, for example a few thousand dying in the USA. Al Gore's movie did well, but that will be nothing compared to the publicity of millions dying from global warming, if it's represented by disasters like the tsunami.

[Zac Naloen]

What if the great die off happens on its own?

If Africa, China and India go completely down the shitter, as some people are predicting when oil goes down the drain, that's hundreds of millions of deaths and billions of starving people. China's coal powerplants are not to be underestimated -- last I heard they were building a new one every day. All the cheap consumer goods and US lifestyle will suddenly mean shit, and won't be possible without cheap overseas labor. Call me an optimist, but if journalism gets teeth and pictures of hundreds of millions of dying hit the front pages of the New York Times weeks in a row, maybe it'll cut down on consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Especially if the deaths are represented in the first world on a lesser scale, for example a few thousand dying in the USA. Al Gore's movie did well, but that will be nothing compared to the publicity of millions dying from global warming, if it's represented by disasters like the tsunami.

Once that starts happening though surely it will far too late for anyone to do anything worthwhile?

[Darth Wong]

were can I find information (not bullshit) on global warming? You know, the actual scientists not the media or politicians. Because, I dont know hardly anything on this subject.

The best article I ever saw on the subject was here:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

Unlike other articles on the subject, this is not a polemic. It is a history lesson, from the American Institute of Physics.

The general site is at http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html but the history lesson on greenhouse gas physics is the most important and illuminating part.

[Broomstick]

What if the great die off happens on its own?

It's not so much "if" but "when". I think it will only be after substantial and significant climate change that there will be a big die-off of humanity, when we can no longer keep the house of cards standing.

All the cheap consumer goods and US lifestyle will suddenly mean shit, and won't be possible without cheap overseas labor.

So we'll revert to a less consumerist lifestyle by necessity rather than choice and we'll go back to making things locally. Which is not to say there won't be hardship and deaths in North America - there certainly will be - but there's still a lot of space in the US, and actually Canada might be a beneficiary in some respects as likely more of their territory will be more suitable for agriculture.

Call me an optimist

You're an optimist.

but if journalism gets teeth and pictures of hundreds of millions of dying hit the front pages of the New York Times weeks in a row, maybe it'll cut down on consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Especially if the deaths are represented in the first world on a lesser scale, for example a few thousand dying in the USA. Al Gore's movie did well, but that will be nothing compared to the publicity of millions dying from global warming, if it's represented by disasters like the tsunami.

You know what? Most people don't give a shit. Look at the millions who have died in Africa already over the past half century.

By the time the big die-off starts the first world/west will be too busy trying to maintain its society to worry about the rest of the world.

Keep in mind, too - a tsunami is something you can SEE. It's visible, tangible. It's also immediate. Green house gasses are rather abstract and the damage occurs over time. The average person doesn't do risk assesment well, finds it hard to really get a grip on an invisible danger, and puts his/her own welfare first. Yes there are exceptions, but because they're exceptions we have separate words for them like "saint" and "hero".

Gah, I'm cynical as all hell today!

[Justforfun000]

Jesus, is it really going to be this serious? It's going to happen and million will die and nothing we can do will stop it? That's a horribly sobering thought.

Funny too, as someone mentioned in this thread I hear over twenty years ago a 'prediction' that Canada will soon "feed the world" as their capacity for agriculture will be immense. Looks like they were right.

[Sea Skimmer]

We can’t. Even if everyone met the original Kyoto Treaty CO2 reduction goals, tomorrow, that would only take us back to 1990 when the experts say global warming, was already occurring. The process has quite possibly already become self sustaining, so that no possible CO2 reduction can now prevent climate change. That all means adaptation is the only option.

[aerius]

Vote MkSheppard for President so he can genocide a few billion people and build nuclear power plants for everyone who's still alive.


Ok, seriously now, I don't think governments can do all that much without reverting to some form of dictatorship; industry, corporations, and the citizens themselves aren't going to stand for the drastic cutbacks & restructuring needed to halt global warming. Let's say we want to cut back our coal consumption, ok, great, now you have the entire coal industry, the miners, coal plant operators, and the citizens of every state which depends on the coal industry out to kill you. That's a hell of a lot of people with a hell of a lot of money & power, ramming through the legislation to make the cutbacks ain't gonna happen.

Ok, so coal's kind of a touchy subject, what if we go after oil? Somehow, I doubt Chevron-Texaco & Exxon-Mobil will be too happy, and neither will the automakers, their unions, and the cities with car factories. Since everything we buy has to be transported somehow, prices on milk, bread, food, and everything you can think of is going to go up a lot, the citizens will be screaming for your head. Well, at least in North America they will be.

About the best we can realistically manage over here is say, mandatory flourescent light bulbs and LCD screens for computers & TVs. Try to go much further than that and chances are someone's going to try and lynch you and topple your government. These small changes just ain't enough.

[Broomstick]

Jesus, is it really going to be this serious? It's going to happen and million will die and nothing we can do will stop it? That's a horribly sobering thought.

Yes, but it's worse than you think - it won't be "millions", it will be tens of millions or hundreds of millions or maybe even billions.

Civilizations have experienced collapses in the past. Percentages of people dead as a result aren't little 1% and 2% numbers (which is what your "millions" represent), it's more like 10, 20, 30, 40 or higher per cent. Sometimes as high as 90%. Depends on what's happening, why, and what people do in reaction.

Will it happen in our lifetime? Maybe not. Fact is, we don't know what will really happen, how fast it will happen or how bad it will be. There's a whole lot 'o speculatin' goin' on, but actual facts as to "what will happen" are few at this point.

If something else kills off a sizable chunk of the population - and, again, it would need to be in the hundreds of millions range - that might cut consumption enough to slow the juggarnaut of global warming/climate change. That would need to be a plague on the level of the European Black Death (30-40% of the population dying) or what happened with smallpox in the Americas (up to 90% death rate in some areas), or perhaps a large meteor impact, or maybe the Yellowstone supervolcano going off, or that one island off Africa letting go of its western half to create a super-tsunami in the Atlantic. But, as I said, no sane person would volunteer to be part of that, if they had a choice, and in some of those scenarios the manner of death will be starvation as a result of massive crop failures. Not a pleasent way to go. In all of those cases there is a strong possibility of a total collapse of the global economy, in which case we're back to deaths from shortages of things like food and medicine.

In other words, death from climate change is NOT the worst of all possible scenarios. It may, in fact, be a relatively mild form of disaster.

Funny too, as someone mentioned in this thread I hear over twenty years ago a 'prediction' that Canada will soon "feed the world" as their capacity for agriculture will be immense. Looks like they were right.

Sure, their agricultural production will increase - AFTER the massive disruption as the artic eco-system either retreats or disappears, the area is recolonized by flora and fauna from further south, and that new eco-system adjusts to much greater seasonal fluctuations in light. They'll be hurting, too, just not as bad and not as long as some other places. Just because they'll likely end up winners doesn't mean they won't suffer a bit while getting there.

[Zixinus]

On a TED talk, Bjon Lomborg talks about global prioroties. He goes with the assumption that you have x amount of money, and what is the most worthy cause to pour it in? Well, he puts global warming on the last of the list. Not because it is not an important issue, but we can do so little againts it.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/62

I find the talk altogether interesting.

Of course one can figure out whip up some mad-science, and I do mean mad science, ideas that might do it. Or not.

[Broomstick]

So anyhow... I guess the bottom line is that we CAN'T stop global warming, the question is really "what's the best way to adapt". Because it's the adapters who are going to "win", however you want to define that.

My strategy is to get out of debt (done) and stay there (on-going process). Reduce your own energy costs (we've converted to compact flourescents, for example, don't use a mechanical dishwasher, buy energy efficient vehicles, use mass transit, etc.) not so much to "save the planet" but to conserve your own resources. Eat healthy and exercise - because whatever happens, those who are healthiest will fare best. Get used to a frugal, non-materialistic lifestyle.

This doesn't mean live like a monk. Enjoy good food. Have your hobbies. Might as well enjoy the fruits of civilization while they last. As an example, I do fly airplanes but even taking into account my energy expenditure there, over the course of a month I still use less gasoline than the average suburbanite. I am not a fanatic about recycling my garbage, but I avoid excessive packaging (which prevent garbage from being made in the first place), reuse bags whenever possible, and when I'm throwing out, say, old clothes, they go to Goodwill instead of the landfill (when still wearable). Instead of using central air on our entire dwelling we use a relatively energy-efficient window unit to cool the bedroom and kitchen and let the rest of the place heat up in the summer. Thing is, I don't like the attitude "ban this" or "ban that" - because different people really do have different needs. For example, I don't want to see people with health issues dying because they don't have air conditioning, not if we can avoid that scenario, but most people can tolerate heat during the day as long as they have a cool place to sleep. And if we only cooled bedrooms that would result in a significant savings overall, wouldn't it? But we don't do it that way.

It won't save the planet, but because I'm setting my base at a lower level than many others a rapid change in maximum standard of living will not be so shocking, when and if it occurs. And if everyone did that it certainly could have an affect not so much on climate change but rather on how well our society copes with the inevitable changes.

[Mr. T]

So anyhow... I guess the bottom line is that we CAN'T stop global warming, the question is really "what's the best way to adapt". Because it's the adapters who are going to "win", however you want to define that.

Even if climate change can't be stopped by us simply conserving, others have posted about scientists proposing radical solutions like putting tons of particles in to our atmosphere to try and cool the Earth down among other things. Maybe we can come to some sort of man-made solution.

The problem of course is that the solution would need to work in the way we intend and cause no unforseen problems at all. We get exactly one chance to do our "experiment" since we only have one Earth, but theirs the possibility that the cure could do more harm then the disease. No one has ever attempted anything like changing Earth's climate on our own. Maybe one day we'll be faced with the situation of do nothing and hundreds of millions will die or do something and take the risk, no matter how small, of possibly fucking the planet up to the point we render it uninhabitable.

[Hillary]

You know what? Most people don't give a shit. Look at the millions who have died in Africa already over the past half century.

By the time the big die-off starts the first world/west will be too busy trying to maintain its society to worry about the rest of the world.

Keep in mind, too - a tsunami is something you can SEE. It's visible, tangible. It's also immediate. Green house gasses are rather abstract and the damage occurs over time.

Indeed. The amount of money raised for the Tsunami appeal was as a direct result of the visuals. A big wave hitting nice middle-class holiday makers will always impact on the West's public consiousness far more than a million poor black people slowly starving to death in Africa. Probably more directly comparable is the relative lack of money collected for the Iran and Pakistan earthquakes, where the death and destruction was on a similar scale but the pictures were less impactful.

A friend of mine works for a charity that raised money for the Tsunami appeal. As they had collected more than was necessary for the work there, they contacted donors and asked whether this money could be used for projects in Africa instead. 75% of people refused and requested their money back

[CJvR]

An enviromental report want to raise the price of gasoline to 22 Skr, about 3 US$, / liter to meet the CO2 reduction goal by 2020. In a typical show of political self-preservation the minister responsible have denied that any plan to raise the taxes that high exists.

Auf Schwedish naturally...
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=669027

[matus1976]

After all the hype about the green day concert, as well as the debate on SB.com...I was wondering what actions governments can ACTUALLY do to prevent the current situation from getting worse.
.

Build more Nuclear Reactors, in fact make our entire energy infrastructure based on nuclear fission power until solar and fusion become feasible. Electricity will be cheap enough to actually make synthetic fossil fuels from the carbon dioxide in the air and water and hydrogen (read about the sabatier cell for more info on that)

The environmental hysteria around nuclear power is what has caused this global warming issue in the first place.

[Guardsman Bass]

In the realm of the "politically practicable" (meaning you wouldn't have to piss off huge constituencies and/or money-throwers in Washington and other places of power), you could probably set aside major food and oil stockpiles (although the latter wouldn't help global warming, at least it would enable your government to have some fuel to build the infrastructure in a time of crisis, and possibly to have something to trade with more desperate countries for needed resources).

The former would almost certainly help if you get a situation where steadily rising sea levels have driven all but the inhabitants of the major first-world developed cities in-land from the sinking coasts, combined with unpleasant effects of your crop yields in places like the Midwest and Great American Desert.

[Winston Blake]

were can I find information (not bullshit) on global warming? You know, the actual scientists not the media or politicians. Because, I dont know hardly anything on this subject.

The IPCC site has a number of Summaries for Policymakers which are relatively brief and to the point.