Climate Change Denial

[eevee-fan]

PolitiFact - Trump is correct that Florida has highest home insurance rate in the United States

Gov. Ron DeSantis is striving to make the U.S. like Florida, but there’s one costly way Americans may not want to mimic

www.politifact.com

So the solution is to pretend Global Warming is a hoax?

 

[kpanda17]

Short sighted to say, switching to EVs, slowly eliminating ICE won’t help

It’s understood eliminating ICE is only part of rhe help to reduce carbon and lower rhe earths temp climb
In NY metro these things are happening to help reduce carbon emissions:

NJ and NYS govt has decent POS EV purchase rebates to help motivate EV buyers
EV sales are rapid
ConEd is installing a very large megapack that permitted taking a diesel generator offline
NY/RI/MA are all leading two to three of the largest off shore wind farm deployments ever

A Giant Wind Farm Is Taking Root Off Massachusetts

The offshore energy project will have turbines taller than any building in Boston, but they will be barely visible from Martha’s Vineyard.

www.nytimes.com

It’s not about any one effort to reduce carbon, not many efforts
Please don’t spread saving the earth negative messages unless it’s backed up by facts

 

[JRP3]

been smelling any Canadian air lately?
a natural part of forests is FIRE

That was my point, even with fires forests can sustain themselves, thus the idea that you can't plant trees without active forest management is false.

 

[JRP3]

Just changing the way we produce the energy we use to destroy the earth is not going to fix anything.

The idea is to not continue to make things as bad as possible. We've seen how a change in behavior can change climate impacts with the repairing of the ozone hole and reduction of smog in cities because of government mandates. You can't say humans negatively impact the climate and then pretend we can't alter that impact.

 

[kpanda17]

But fires this far north, see below, is the result of last 20-30 year massive human impact
We need to move faster
All of us T owners are in it moving fast


This am AQI map:

 

[DrGriz]

But fires this far north, see below, is the result of last 20-30 year massive human impact
We need to move faster
All of us T owners are in it moving fast


This am AQI map:
View attachment 957670

Fires are burning bigger, hotter and further north than they have historically. They are not infrequently so hot that they sterilize the soil. These are not your grandfather's fires. I believe it's a new paradigm.

 

[kpanda17]

Wow, sterilize the soil

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/forests-wildfires-1.4444998

I did not know
Thanks

 

[Nrkl]

The idea is to not continue to make things as bad as possible. We've seen how a change in behavior can change climate impacts with the repairing of the ozone hole and reduction of smog in cities because of government mandates. You can't say humans negatively impact the climate and then pretend we can't alter that impact.

Its about reaching a singularity with regards to intervention speed and scale. Certain feedbacks have delays that we cannot speed up regardless of the speed of our information systems or advancements of technology. Changing complex systems also ALWAYS have unintended consequences. So if we change a complex system very quickly, and do it at a global scale (an example would be usage of fossil fuels, or agriculture) there will be unintended consequences that overpower the positive consequences, because by nature the negative ones are more consequential than the positive ones.

Now things are changing at MUCH faster rate and at much bigger scale than they used to 200 years ago, and so we will inevitably arrive at a situation where any well meaning intervention will put us in a situation where we destroy our environment before we even get feedback of it happening.

The problem is much more meta than climate change or any specific issue.

 

[kpanda17]

Also problems are accelerating positive change
Texas summer power use spikes are being remedied by mega and power packs, batteries everywhere
Also a major paradigm shift is with VPPs
Little guys making money

 

[DrGriz]

Its about reaching a singularity with regards to intervention speed and scale. Certain feedbacks have delays that we cannot speed up regardless of the speed of our information systems or advancements of technology. Changing complex systems also ALWAYS have unintended consequences. So if we change a complex system very quickly, and do it at a global scale (an example would be usage of fossil fuels, or agriculture) there will be unintended consequences that overpower the positive consequences, because by nature the negative ones are more consequential than the positive ones.

Now things are changing at MUCH faster rate and at much bigger scale than they used to 200 years ago, and so we will inevitably arrive at a situation where any well meaning intervention will put us in a situation where we destroy our environment before we even get feedback of it happening.

The problem is much more meta than climate change or any specific issue.

That's a paralyzing and ultimately hopeless perspective. And while you are correct that humans don't have a great record as far as unintended consequences, you haven't shown that all human activity is destructive. You seem to be advocating for "do nothing, you'll only make it worse." I think the good person will try, at risk of failure sometimes. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

 

[JRP3]

Now things are changing at MUCH faster rate and at much bigger scale than they used to 200 years ago, and so we will inevitably arrive at a situation where any well meaning intervention will put us in a situation where we destroy our environment before we even get feedback of it happening.

We are already doing that with fossil fuels. Stopping their use is not going to create a worse feedback.

 

[kpanda17]

Air is noticeably cleaner in California due to the state’s 1.5 million owned and operating EVs
Seeing the positive impact in real-time

 

[kpanda17]

Surprise! Electric cars are already making California healthier

From the “duh” department, California is already becoming more healthy because of electric car penetration, which has resulted in cleaner...

electrek.co

 

[Nrkl]

We are already doing that with fossil fuels. Stopping their use is not going to create a worse feedback.

Agreed, its about what we do instead. If we do more of the same with different "fuels", it won't fix anything.

 

[mspohr]

Agreed, its about what we do instead. If we do more of the same with different "fuels", it won't fix anything.

Renewables (wind and solar) replacing fossil fuels fixes a lot.

 

[mspohr]

Humans have been altering the climate at ever increasing rates. It started with agriculture 10,000 years ago. As humans burned and cleared vegetation to plant seasonal crops they released CO2 and other pollutants and damaged the ecosystems ability to maintain a healthy environment. As humans increased in number, these insults continued until large swaths of forest and grassland were cleared for seasonal agriculture (which essentially replaces a healthy ecosystem with a desert). The discovery of fossil fuels put everything into overdrive. Humans were able to exponentially increase damage to the environment by digging up and burning large quantities of coal, oil and gas.
This brings us to today where the environment has suffered extreme insults and is far out of balance. One indicator is the atmospheric CO2 which has risen from 280 to over 400 today. It would be higher if the ecosystem had not been able to absorb some of the excess CO2.
We have trashed the environment mostly by burning stuff.
We need to stop burning stuff.
There is no magic bullet to fix the problem. The environment is profoundly out of balance and it will take a lot of different activities to try to restore it (if it can even be fixed).
- Stop burning stuff (vegetation, coal, oil, gas, etc.)
- Restore forests
- Stop dumping in the oceans (trash, chemical, waste, etc.)

It is probably not possible to restore the environment in our lifetime but we need to do everything we can to keep it from getting worse (and it can get much worse).

 

[mspohr]

Here are a couple of good articles on just how screwed we are and some glimmer of hope:

‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come

James Hansen, who testified to Congress on global heating in 1988, says world is approaching a ‘new climate frontier’

www.theguardian.com

This heatwave is a climate omen. But it’s not too late to change course | Michael E Mann and Susan Joy Hassol

The warming of the planet – including the most up-to-date data for 2023 – is entirely consistent with what climate modelers warned decades ago

www.theguardian.com

 

[JRP3]

If we do more of the same with different "fuels", it won't fix anything.

That's simply false. For example driving with electricity from renewables fixes quite a bit compared to petroleum ICE. Even a grid mix with NG charging EV's is better than ICE. Changing "fuels" IS the answer.

 

[mspohr]

From Hansen
“We are pushing temperatures up to Pliocene levels, which is outside the realm of human experience; it’s such a massive change that most things on Earth haven’t had to deal with it,” Huber said. “It’s basically an experiment on humans and ecosystems to see how they respond. Nothing is adapted to this.”

Previous shifts in the climate, spurred by greenhouse gases or changes in the Earth’s orbit, have caused changes to unfold over thousands of years. But as heatwaves strafe populations unused to extreme temperatures, forests burn and marine life struggles to cope with soaring ocean heat, the current upward spike is occurring at a pace not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65m years ago.

From Mann:

The only way to avoid crossing these tipping points is to stop heating up the planet. And comprehensive Earth system models show that if we stop adding carbon pollution, the warming of Earth’s surface stops soon thereafter.

The incessant parade of heat domes, floods and tornado outbreaks this summer seems to suggest a precarious if not downright apocalyptic “new abnormal” that we now find ourselves in. And it understandably feeds the fearful impression that we’ve exceeded some sort of breaking point in our climate.

We cannot afford to give in to despair. Better to channel our energy into action, as there’s so much work to be done to prevent this crisis from escalating into a catastrophe. If the extremes of this summer fill you with fears of imminent and inevitable climate collapse, remember, it’s not game over. It’s game on.

 

[Nrkl]

That's simply false. For example driving with electricity from renewables fixes quite a bit compared to petroleum ICE. Even a grid mix with NG charging EV's is better than ICE. Changing "fuels" IS the answer.

So if you could in an instant change the energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables, all the problems would be gone? I respect your optimism, but your take is not consistent with complex system dynamics. Letting yourself see the real situation is not easy, because it requires for you to accept that there is no future for the current way of life. The good news is that a different way of life can be much more rich and fulfilling for everyone involved. It just doesn't look good in contemporary metrics like GDP growth.