General / Off-Topic Recycle or Die! (the elite environmental thread)

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"Climate warming in regions of ice‐rich permafrost can result in widespread thermokarst development, which reconfigures the landscape and damages infrastructure. We present multi‐site time‐series observations which couple ground temperature measurements with thermokarst development in a region of very cold permafrost. In the Canadian High Arctic between 2003 and 2016, a series of anomalously warm summers caused mean thawing indices to be 150 – 240 % above the 1979‐2000 normal resulting in up to 90 cm of subsidence over the 12‐year observation period. Our data illustrate that despite low mean annual ground temperatures, very cold permafrost (<‐10°C) with massive ground ice close to the surface is highly vulnerable to rapid permafrost degradation and thermokarst development. We suggest that this is due to little thermal buffering from soil organic layers and near surface vegetation, and the presence of near surface ground ice. Observed maximum thaw depths at our sites are already exceeding those projected to occur by 2090 under RCP 4.5."


From a study reported in The Independent:

 
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Like i said, the problem of AGW is so big we have not yet worked out a global response in how to combat it. We in general have all understood the situation, but depending on personalities (those that only care for themselves) and businesses involved (those that make the most increasing out CO2 output and/or environmental destruction), they find excuses to not act as they should. That is just the way it is right now.

Still having said that, in about the next 20 years those people that are slowing the actions we need to be taking down, will have no influence in the world (or very little). Things (environmentally) will be changing so hard and fast that only clinical idiots will be able to deny the problem. At that point we will have an opportunity to push our governments to act and it will be expensive and not without turmoil, but pretty much everyone is then going to be in a panic and willing to do what is needed to stop our eventual collapse (of civilization).

The complexities of life on this planet are such that taking any one equation (or even a few) and predicting a future outcome based on that is not going to give you a correct answer. The 'model' is too simple to address the complexity. So that is why i think we will see humanity 'muddle through' what i guess will be accepted as the Anthropocene in future text books (or hololens!). Rather than focus on the negative outcome of a few mathematical models, i'd think our energy will be better spent on solutions to the problems, because those do exist also. But for certain we are talking about a big change in how we think and how we do things, especially in the modern western industrialized world that drives most of the current problems (western investments in China and India are the drivers even if it happens in those particular countries). We are talking about needing a total cultural and social revolution in terms of capitalism (in particular) and industry and business. Science can (and does) give us the answers but the shift in thinking has to happen in each one of us so we arrive at a time and place when our governments think the same and act in a way that will provide for a future for humanity.

But in the meantime this is where we are:

'Global heating to inflict more droughts on Africa as well as floods':


Global heating could bring many more bouts of severe drought as well as increased flooding to Africa than previously forecast, scientists have warned.

New research says the continent will experience many extreme outbreaks of intense rainfall over the next 80 years. These could trigger devastating floods, storms and disruption of farming. In addition, these events are likely to be interspersed with more crippling droughts during the growing season and these could also damage crop and food production.

“Essentially we have found that both ends of Africa’s weather extremes will get more severe,” said Elizabeth Kendon of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in Exeter. “The wet extreme will get worse, but also the appearance of dry spells during the growing season will also get more severe.”

We are still along way off from realizing the change needed in all of us to avoid things getting worse and worse, and we will have a few setbacks before we start to turn the corner and make real progress. If we want it we can make it happen, we just (mostly) don't yet realize how much we want it, but we will and soon (tm).
 
Greenland lost more than two billion tons of ice on Thursday, June 13, about 40% of its territory, reports the American news channel CNN.

Such rapid ice melting is very rare in Greenland. Normally, it spreads between the months of June and August.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/greenland-sudden-ice-melt-wxc/index.html?utm_source=twCNN&utm_medium=social&utm_term=link&utm_content=2019-06-14T19:30:07

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Like i've been saying for around a decade now, don't buy property near the shoreline, at some point all this ice-melt is going to make those properties worthless!

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We all know just how bad plastic pollution is, so this is a good read on part of the issue causing it:

'Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America's dirty secret':


Now i'm pretty certain all industrial western countries do the same to some extent, but am not surprised America is leading the way here.
 
Like i've been saying for around a decade now, don't buy property near the shoreline, at some point all this ice-melt is going to make those properties worthless!

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We all know just how bad plastic pollution is, so this is a good read on part of the issue causing it:

'Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America's dirty secret':


Now i'm pretty certain all industrial western countries do the same to some extent, but am not surprised America is leading the way here.
And I would not be surprised if the Western countries store a part of their nuclear waste in the poor countries.
 
I'm pretty sure it has become 'normal' to dump it (nuclear waste) in the sea's of the coast of that African country that became 'stateless' (i forget the name):


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I've talked quite a few times about our need to change how we think and 'do business as usual' if we are to get through the looming climit change crisis, and this article looks at one example of what that could mean:

'Eskilstuna: how a Swedish town became the world capital of recycling':


Eskilstuna has implemented a spate of green initiatives, vying to make it the most environmentally friendly city in Sweden – and perhaps the world. Public buses and cars are run on biogas and electricity, and the town uses low-carbon combined heat and power plants, which use the thermal energy from electricity production to heat water. Residents sort their waste into seven multicoloured categories at home – green for food, pink for textiles, grey for metal, yellow for paper, blue for newspaper, orange for plastic and black for mixed – and for the past four years people have been able to drop off their unwanted goods for recycling at Bergström’s secondhand mall.

It's quite a good example of how 'simple' some of the transitions we need to make really are :)
 
Oh, and we are all going to need to start saving for the sea-walls!

'Seawalls to protect US against rising oceans could cost $416bn by 2040':


Defending against rising seas could cost US communities $416bn in the next 20 years, according to a new report.

Spending on seawalls alone could total almost as much as the initial investment in the interstate highway system, the authors said. And the billions involved will represent just a fraction of adaptation efforts governments in coastal states will have to fund if they do not want to simply retreat.

“I don’t think anybody’s thought about the magnitude of this one small portion of overall adaptation costs and it’s a huge number,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report.

Estimates of how much sea-level rise will cost often focus on impacts by 2100, Wiles said, adding that people will be paying for the climate crisis much earlier.

“You’re looking at close to half a trillion spent over the next 20 years and no one has thought about that. So the question is, who’s going to pay for that? Is it really going to be taxpayers? The current position of climate polluters is that they should pay nothing, and that’s just not tenable.”

And that last part just won't work in the longrun, Big Oil is probably going to be forced to pay for the damage it has been aware it has been doing since the 1980's.
 
Oh, and we are all going to need to start saving for the sea-walls!

'Seawalls to protect US against rising oceans could cost $416bn by 2040':




And that last part just won't work in the longrun, Big Oil is probably going to be forced to pay for the damage it has been aware it has been doing since the 1980's.
The hour of the bill of human activities will soon arrive.
 
The hour of the bill of human activities will soon arrive.
That's a nice muffled version of "Soon we will be struck by Mother Nature's iron fist" :)

@Zak Gordon
Most people on this planet live close to the sea. 80% live less than 100 km (60 miles) from a coast.

Regarding simple models: I honestly thought that those were necessary to make people wake up and understand. Now I'm slowly realizing that people are already awake and scared, so doing/showing them simple models just make it harder for them to look away and (not) talk about the weather. You can do that to anyone to a certain degree before they snap. It's like constantly being reminded of your mortality. Even though it's an important part of anyone's life, most people hate thinking and talking about it. I guess a potential extinction of Homo Sapiens pushes the same buttons.
 
That's a nice muffled version of "Soon we will be struck by Mother Nature's iron fist" :)

@Zak Gordon
Most people on this planet live close to the sea. 80% live less than 100 km (60 miles) from a coast.

Regarding simple models: I honestly thought that those were necessary to make people wake up and understand. Now I'm slowly realizing that people are already awake and scared, so doing/showing them simple models just make it harder for them to look away and (not) talk about the weather. You can do that to anyone to a certain degree before they snap. It's like constantly being reminded of your mortality. Even though it's an important part of anyone's life, most people hate thinking and talking about it. I guess a potential extinction of Homo Sapiens pushes the same buttons.

I don't think people are waking up. At the very least, they believe they can leisurely consume their way out of climate change by buying solar panels and EVs.
 
The hour of the bill of human activities will soon arrive.
That's pretty melodramatic. Makes it sound like our doom will strike us at some pre-determined point in the very near future, similar to some high profile people here in US claiming we've only got 12 more years and then we'll all be eating each other.

The "bill" for human activities is a gradual process with no clearly marked end point.
 
That's pretty melodramatic. Makes it sound like our doom will strike us at some pre-determined point in the very near future, similar to some high profile people here in US claiming we've only got 12 more years and then we'll all be eating each other.

The "bill" for human activities is a gradual process with no clearly marked end point.
In recent times when I look at commentators, politicians, economists, etc ... many say that we have knowingly ignored these problems since 40 years and now we start paying our irresponsibility.

There is no better blind than the one who does not want to see, like there is no better deaf than the one who does not want to hear.

There is no pre-determined moment. We pay and we will pay the bill for a long time, so that our uncomfortable life is as long as possible.
 
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In recent times when I look at commentators, politicians, economists, etc ... many say that we have knowingly ignored these problems since 40 years and now we start paying our irresponsibility.

There is no better blind than the one who does not want to see, like there is no better deaf than the one who does not want to hear.

There is no pre-determined moment. We pay and we will pay the bill for a long time, so that our uncomfortable life is as long as possible.
Is your life uncomfortable? I'm sorry to hear that.
 
Well, I'm not uncomfortable, so I tend to forget that my more liberal friends assume a position of misery for whatever reason:)
Do you know that the air we breathe and the noise we are suffering in the city streets are a noxious things for the life ?

Of course you know it !

These are uncomfortable things for many people on this planet.

There are many other uncomfortable things and the future should not improve if the man does not change his behavior.

That's all I mean by "uncomfortable".

Maybe you live like me in a small town surrounded by nature but when you go to the "big city", if you are not disturbed by the pollution and the noise, I am sorry for you, but in this case you have understood nothing.

🧐 ( :) )
 
Well, I'm not uncomfortable, so I tend to forget that my more liberal friends assume a position of misery for whatever reason:)
Dear Jason

Use half an hour of your precious life to read this article and try to understand it. You're far from stupid, so I know you can. Then ask youself: When you have a curve (Fig. 5) that has been a "straight line" (log plot) for 2000 years, and extrapolating it spells 100% certain disaster in a few decades, what do you think will happen, and how do you think it will influence you and your loved ones?

 
@Patrick
Egoism as a philosophical term makes sense to some people, just as altruism does to others. There is no clear way of saying that one is right and the other is wrong. It mostly comes down to ethics, which is muddy territory. It's mostly traits that we have gotten through evolution. You need to survive to take care of your offspring. You need to take care of your offspring to pass on your genes successfully, and what happens on the other side of the planet has been pretty insignificant for billions of years. We care about our own tribe and tomorrow, more than we care about the distant future or the neighboring tribes. That's similar to chimpanses and other primates.

Today we have problems understanding, that when the population starves in Afghanistan because we pumped too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, then it will influence us all sooner or later. The planet has become "smaller" faster than evolution has been able to change our traits.

 
@Patrick
Egoism as a philosophical term makes sense to some people, just as altruism does to others. There is no clear way of saying that one is right and the other is wrong. It mostly comes down to ethics, which is muddy territory. It's mostly traits that we have gotten through evolution. You need to survive to take care of your offspring. You need to take care of your offspring to pass on your genes successfully, and what happens on the other side of the planet has been pretty insignificant for billions of years. We care about our own tribe and tomorrow, more than we care about the distant future or the neighboring tribes. That's similar to chimpanses and other primates.

Today we have problems understanding, that when the population starves in Afghanistan because we pumped too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, then it will influence us all sooner or later. The planet has become "smaller" faster than evolution has been able to change our traits.


A kind of Butterfly effect, here.
 
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