Climate Change - Impacts, Part I

[finley]

I understand that several “environmental” processes like the new long-lasting light bulbs, various components in electric batteries and even solar panels are highly toxic

Yes and no. We should certainly pay far more attention to reducing or reusing electronic scrap. I’m in that industry, and the (deliberately) short lifecycle of electronic equipment is a pet hate of mine. Electronics used to be designed for repair and longevity because the components were hard to manufacture. A functioning renewable-energy infrastructure will not work unless we revive that mindset. However, in the case of PV panels or batteries:

1. The scale of use is several orders of magnitude removed from (for the sake of example) MTBE. For example, the dopants (eg., arsenic) added to silicon solar cells are measured in micrograms, not tonnes.
2. They are manufactured once and then left alone, in sealed modules, until end-of-life. Many panel and battery manufacturers operate recycling programmes.
3. They are in the solid state, and therefore dubious materials like cadmium telluride and lead do not leak and are easy to recover/recycle.

Yes, there are several “green” technologies that have the potential to pollute: fluorescent lamps, for example. I dislike the lack of proper controls on lithium cells. Better alternatives (and better policies) exist. These technologies are not inherently polluting.

I have heard of lots of birds getting fried by these panels as well.

On right-wing blogs written by people who have never been within 100 yards of a solar panel, perhaps? How, even in principle, does a bird get fried on a solar panel? Thermal collectors and PV panels can get pretty warm (~50’C), but they would stop working if they reached frypan temperature. Or are you referring to solar concentrators?

I guess we should not use energy at all! NONE! WE DON’T NEED IT!!!

Well done, fred. There’s hope for you after all. The key to all this is to REDUCE WASTE by using energy more efficiently. You’re the one who’s always blithering on about wasting money. The joule not used is the cheapest of all.

[fred_smith]

I cannot make this kind of shit up… This is the best unintended satire of the climate change alarmism movement that I have ever seen. My commentary interspersed…

I’m sick of having to hide it, so here goes: I’m a climate change alarmist.

Sick of having to hide it? Wow! How brave of you to believe in climate change alarmism! I mean given that this is the template that everyone is following… how brave of you to conform to that conformity and follow all right-thinking people as well! what a victim!!!

There, I said it. After years of fighting off Internet trolls and being ridiculed on Fox News for caring about the Earth and its inhabitants enough to make big changes to my life, I’ve had enough. It’s time that we climate change alarmists reclaim this dismissive term and defend ourselves.

Yes, because clearly holding a climate change alarmist position is so much riskier/braver/controversial than agreeing that WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING!!!

Many of us have been lambasted for talking about the fundamental health of the planet. Climate scientist Kerry Emanuel has written “those interested in treating the issue as an objective problem in risk assessment and management are labeled ‘alarmists,’ a particularly infantile smear considering what is at stake.”

Yes, it was clearly the denialists who started smearing people. I mean clearly this is a problem. Why that is why people in the business routinely report their alarmist views as resulting in them being denied grant money or participation in important world scientific fora… Right?

Now, I’m also an optimist. I’m convinced that humanity has the ability to tackle the problem and come to international agreement on how to do so in a fair way. It simply must happen. But for something so serious, it seems like there’s a general lack of alarm, a lack of emotion, and—to be blunt—a lack of ambition to act with the scale and urgency the issue requires.

An optimist… a general lack of alarm… a lack of emotion!!! trillions in money spent and economic development lost and we are still not at the scale? REALLY? or acting with the urgency required???

Tragically, there’s a vast mismatch between our actions to date and what’s needed. This isn’t just another big environmental issue. When the ozone hole was discovered decades ago, the world got together and agreed to change the chemical used in making refrigerators cold. In hindsight, that seems incredibly easy compared to this. Climate change cuts to the core of who we are as a civilization and what kind of world we want to create for our kids. Perhaps understandably, that’s meant that a lot of smart people are really pessimistic about our future.

What kind of action is required? So many words and we are not talking about what he proposes to do about this problem…

I may be optimistic, but I’m not naive. I know that the vast majority of humans don’t make daily decisions based on analyzing scientific charts and graphs. The climate change alarmism community has made some strategic mistakes by incessantly focusing on the science and expecting grand changes. In my view, to make any sort of real progress, we’ve instead got to embrace our humanity—and yes, that means shedding the occasional tear when the reality of our situation really hits home.

Again with the optimism? but not NAIVE. NO! Shedding a tear… holding a polar bear… making snow angels… I feel touched… emotionally… but what is the course of action that he recommends? Still not there!

Last year, days after watching his home country, the Philippines, utterly destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan—the strongest tropical cyclone landfall ever recorded worldwide—climate commissioner Yeb Saño broke down in the middle of the United Nations’ international climate change negotiations, saying “we cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate. It is now time to take action.” His tears motivated an impromptu global movement. At this point, we need fewer lightbulb-changing PSAs and more of this.

Was the typhoon caused by global warming? Have no typhoons hit the Philippines before? It is time to take action! yes, but what action?

As a scientist and journalist, I’m not supposed to have emotions. I’m supposed to calmly report researchers’ findings as if my family and I weren’t also being affected. But looking at the data in as much detail as I have, it’s impossible not to be alarmed. On an average day, I’m also disgusted, terrified, and angry.

SOOO many emotions… and how exactly is his family being affected NOW? Surely, this is all stuff that will happen if we don’t ACT? and have we not been

So why aren’t more people outraged?

hahahahahaahahahahaahahahaahha

Few things are more important to human life than the environment, but hundreds of generations of experience have baked in a reasonable assurance that the future will be approximately like the past.

Yes…

For the first time in human history, it won’t.

No? Proof? evidence? again? any action specified?

Save the specter of nuclear war or an Armageddon-style asteroid strike, there’s really not much that could wipe us out as quickly as climate change. Those two things haven’t happened (yet), but global warming is happening, right now.

Nuclear war? asteroids? Armageddon? GLOBAL WARMING IS HAPPENING NOW!!! but, er, Armageddon… asteroids… nuclear war… have apparently… er… NOT!

The biggest problem with responding to climate change is that at the human scale, it’s impossible to fathom what’s happening. The problem isn’t how hot it’s getting (it’s been hotter before for different reasons) but the sheer rate of change. In a sentence, here’s what’s happening: Carbon-storing rocks, gas, and oil that took millions of years to accumulate are being returned to the atmosphere over a period of a few decades—almost instantaneously. That’s producing geologic-timescale changes in the span of a single human lifetime.

Anybody see a recommended course of action yet? No? I am sure that it is coming!

If you’re a piece of basalt, maybe you can think on geologic timescales. I can’t.

Thinking does appear to be the problem… oh most assuredly so…

Within our lifetimes, we’ll almost assuredly enter a climate phase that hasn’t been seen since before humans even existed.

almost assuredly… well, it appears that we have been assured that in 1982 we would see this by 1995 and then in 1991 by 2005 and in 2005 by 2015 and now in 2020 or maybe 2030 and even 2050 and maybe not until 2100… by which times, naturally, and assuredly, it will be “too late” hence the reason why we must ACT NOW!!! but what is the action recommended?

And the scarier thing, for me, is what’s needed to get back on track. The scale of the problem demands a revolution in thought and action. Pioneering climate scientist James Hansen, who recently quit his job at NASA so he could protest more effectively, is calling for a “human tipping point.”

Revolution? in thought… if only there were some, but another request for action… and “pioneering” climate scientist James Hansen… quit his job at NASA to protest more effectively… or maybe he was found out to be the scientific fraud that he was/is? again, human tipping point? What is that point? any specifics? What action if any is being called for? Does anyone know yet?

A lot of us get a mental short circuit when we think about climate change. It’s so crazy, it can’t possibly be happening, right?

short circuit? check! crazy? check!

Climate change is so crazy, it can’t possibly be happening, right?

Smirk smirk smirk…

The most visible manifestation of this is the debate between hard-core climate activists and vocal skeptics who deride the scientific consensus. I think this is distracting, so I’ve tried to largely remove myself from it. (Don’t feed the trolls, right?) There’s been a fascinating line of research lately that examines something called “stealth denial.” It’s become clear that vast sections of society—including people who can really make a difference—have largely tuned out climate change. This seems to be happening for three reasons: They believe they don’t contribute to the problem that much, they believe that the problem is so scary that they hope it goes away, or they believe their individual actions to help out won’t matter that much anyway. Here’s what our message should be: You can make a difference. In fact, you’re our best hope.

Gosh… taking quite a bit of time to get to the point… lots of emotionally charged Holier than Thou… being attacked… victimhood but still NO course of action? NOTHING?

In last week’s Slate Culture Gabfest podcast, there was a fabulous discussion of talking about the weather. In conversations with friends, it’s clear that there’s a growing realization that something is somehow different. In the Gabfest, Dana Stevens said she thought that weather and climate has recently re-entered public discourse in a way that’s new: “The two things are woven together in ways we can’t extricate.” John Swansburg lamented the loss of the traditionally easy conversation starter: “Talking about the weather brings up all these fears and anxieties that maybe it didn’t in the past.” The hard part is turning that fear and anxiety into real change.

gabfest? sounds about right. fear? anxiety? stirred by alarmists and then measured by alarmists to prove that there is alarmism? WTF?

It’s clear to me the status quo isn’t working anymore.

What’s wrong with the status quo? Have we entered a period of climate crisis? I thought that this was going to happen IF we don’t act NOW and that these disasters will take place in 2050? NOT NOW!

It’s time to shake things up. Our actions for the next few years and decades will determine if basic things like agriculture and coastal living can continue on for the next hundreds of years in vast stretches of the planet.

Really? is this what the scientific consensus on the issue is? and so AGAIN just like the last 30 years we are being asked to “act now” to stop disaster in decades…

More importantly, it’s time for us to embrace the range of emotions we feel when confronted with the realization that the planet we’ve known for generations is fundamentally changing. Right now, with calm, clear rationality, big corporations and their friends in Congress continue to claim that they’ve got everything under control.

So we need to embrace the emotions? this is a SCIENTIST speaking? How have we “known” the planet for generations? I have known it for my generation but generations? And how is it changing fundamentally now? I have been alive for five decades and the droughts, storms, rain, wind, earthquakes, housing prices, taste of peanut butter have not changed appreciably during that time and is anyone really predicting that they will?

And if that isn’t something to be alarmed about, I don’t know what is.

We are now at the end of this article in Slate… and did you or anyone else get anything out of this regarding a course of action? Lots of emotions? lots of hyperbole? but what should we do? I love the “calm clear rationality” and then “big corporations and their friends in Congress” so… er, what do you want me or any of the other readers to do about this?

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.

And what a FINE example of journalism it is too. The only thing that I see changing appreciably in the future is the futurability of this particular effort to continue along these vacuous lines! FFS!

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist who writes about weather and climate for Slate’s Future Tense. Follow him on Twitter.

Oh dear… a meteorologist… as we all know is NOT allowed to have an opinion on the climate… tsk tsk… someone did not get the memo!

[finley]

Thinking does appear to be the problem… oh most assuredly so…

:roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

The article falls flat because - true enough - he doesn’t have any concrete suggestions. However I think he’s right that most people run on emotions and either cannot or will not understand charts and numbers.

On that basis, I suggest a concerted propaganda war, coupled with some actual product offerings, might produce results. Somewhat unrelated, but I was just checking out some stuff on VoIP and was completely unsurprised to discover that it’s illegal in several “poor” countries. The defining characteristic of any “developing” country, I’ve noticed, is that their leaders make laws to ensure no development can ever occur.

So, for example, you might try a propaganda campaign in which you advertise products that poor people can use to alleviate their own poverty, and then point out that their own government is preventing them from buying these things (or even knowing about them). You might thereby generate enough anger to shake things up a bit - although such a campaign would have to be undertaken by foreign governments, since individuals or corporations would risk being bombed or assassinated by the target governments.

[TheGingerMan]

~~~ Mod’s note:
Due to the length of this thread, it has now been locked, and a new (Part II) thread has been created here:

Climate Change - Impacts, Part II

~~~ Mod’s note: This thread is a continuation of Part I, which has been locked due to its length. There’s been plenty of noise pretending there’s nothing to be done or no one has anyone idea what to do about this problem… all the while, plenty of suggestions have been offered and the market is beginning to offer up its share as well… for example, this: Texas Plant to Capture, and Then Reuse, Carbon …or this… Ferrock: a carbon dioxide sponge that’s harder than concrete Course it’s a lot…