Why not both? I think equating climate optimism with deplorable ignorance and nihilism is a mistake.
Morally, we should obviously being doing everything we can with the best information that we have. But with so many corrections in this world involving flipping the script, doesn’t seem like poc benefiting from a warmer future should be unimaginable.
the problem is by the time we see ugly enough scenarios to prompt global drastic action it will likely be way way way too little too late. it almost nearly is already.
The problem is, we seem to be underestimating the acceleration of climate change. So it looks to me like by the time it gets bad enough that we realize we HAVE to act, it’s going to be accelerating too fast for us to stop it.
Right, there’s a website that models that.
Mr Optimism here.
Well, fuck.
One of the major major problems with this is the absolute devastation to Ocean ecosystems that will occur if major cities get swallowed into the ocean. The amount of shit that will spill into the oceans in that scenario could destroy that entire ecosystem, which will accelerate devastation to land life.
Its a vicious circle that will accelerate and accelerate and accelerate once it starts.
I’d imagine that if we planned for it and accepted reality, we could dump absurd amounts of cement and concrete over our cities before they got swallowed up and minimize some of that damage - especially if we focused in on like power plants, factories, etc, but zero chance people accept that the reality is we’re losing the cities until they’re already gone.
Yep, we haven’t been proactive on this for 50 years, absolutely no way we start any time soon.
I mean, can you fucking imagine if Republicans hold power for 8 years? Not only will we not be proactive, we will actively regress on climate issues.
there’s lots of things we COULD do but roughly 40-50% of the country does not think this is real and/or a serious problem, and will continue to think this even as they’re standing ankle deep in sewage/floodwater, as long as tucker carlson on the teevee tells them not to believe their lyin’ eyes.
if asked what the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is, I’d instantly respond “don’t look up.”
The combination of Don’t Look Up with the pandemic proving it was the exact same way we’ll react to this is terrifying.
What’s crazy is how strong the anti-climate change propaganda is. I haven’t ingested any in probably 20 years but still have little doubts creep in to my head about whether all this can really happen even though I am firmly in the WAAF and likely worse than we thought 5 years ago camp.
People who have been ingesting this stuff for decades are not going to suddenly come to their senses no matter what happens.
I’m still working on my thesis no one will ever read, because I’m still fleshing a lot of it out, but I think the anti-intellectual and anti-science road the united states has been charging down the last 40 or 50 years has reached its final form and we’re now reaping the consequences.
the “revenge of the nerds” was all the smart people taking over the world with tech and making truckloads of money with it, and quite ironically, put gasoline on the fire of society’s demise. we would have been better off if they devoted their efforts to saving the planet, but, capitalism and the market didn’t demand that.
you can’t get society at large to accept and understand science when we have as poor of a primary education system as the one we have.
Anybody want to give a percentage on how much of this shit is cope or actually has a chance to help?
100% this. We are fucked. WW1 and WW2 weren’t unforeseeable events and were allowed to happen because no one is voting for a fucker who says you need to be materially poorer to avoid something which is going to make you exponentially poorer in as yet I can’t tell exactly when future . This will be no different. Lots of people will die. Life will change and how it is on the other side no one knows.
I spent a couple mins googling this, but I couldn’t find a great answer.
In the last several hundred million years there have been periods when the earth was much hotter and there was little to no polar ice caps. At that point how much land surface area was there compared to the present day? 80% 50% Even less?
Here is the data and a map viewer you can play with.
Here are some maps wth all ice gone to show the extreme.
Go Team Global Warming!
This is definitely up there with ‘hang Mike Pence’.
Thanks for the links. They’re interesting, but none directly answers my question. I guess just eyeballing based on the last one, it looks like we’re maybe at 80%, which is honestly better than I thought.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/07/26/weather/st-louis-flash-floods/index.html
“ In St. Louis itself, more than 9 inches of rain fell from late Monday to Tuesday, surpassing the city’s highest 24-hour rainfall total on record, which was 7.02 inches on August 19-20, 1915, the National Weather Service said.”