How so? I think major problems due to climate change are on the way, and sooner than expected. My own city of Corpus Christi, as I noted above, is facing some dire problems with fresh water shortages that are going to come to a head by the end of the year this year.
None the less, I don’t see how we can attribute things like reducing support for Ukraine in the Ukraine / Russia war, attacking Iran, imposing tariffs against our allies, threatening to invade Greenland, etc., can be attributed to climate change Those are some of the things that have contributed to the (start of) the American empire collapsing and receding of democracy globally. Outside the US, the election of various leaders (Orban, Erdogan, Milei, Yoon Suk Yeol, etc.), in other countries that were previously more democratic can’t be attributed to climate change either. Even locally here in Corpus, I can’t claim that climate changed caused people to vote for the particular local officials who are contributing to rather than working on solving our local problem.
We shouldn’t fall into the trap of attributing to climate change things that have other underlying causes.
Especially since the sorts of people in the USA, and elsewhere, who vote for authoritarian populists also almost entirely do not believe that climate change exists.
IOW, climate change at the current degree of severity can motivate leftist / progressives / greens to vote Left, but not populists / fascists to vote Right.
and who do we have that we trust to design and implement such a thing? because at a US federal level currently nobody.
I think this will end up happening, but it’s so far from the ideal it makes my head hurt.
I also think Climate Change should have it’s own FORUM like Covid did awhile back. It’s that big and complex and important. IMGO only, obviously. (But the scope of this thread is already way too big.)
If everyone wanted to regularly talk about many discrete aspects of that topic in an organized & segregated fashion, it might warrant a category. But one “How doomed are we?” thread every few months? That doesn’t even remotely warrant a category. FYI, there are a total of 5 topics created in the last year with the word “climate” in the title. And zero with “AGW” or “sea level”. This is not (yet?) a subject of significant conversation around here.
OTOH:
Discourse has tags. Of which we now have roughly 80. It would be trivial for you to make a post in ATMB asking for a “Climate change” tag to be created and for this topic to be tagged with it.
When any future poster posts an OP related to climate change, they can apply the tag themselves at that time. Heck, Discourse can be configured to auto-tag any thread with “climate” in the title or OP body. Which will trigger a few false positives, but maybe not too many.
Best of all, tags cut across categories. So threads tagged as “climate change” can be placed in FQ, IMHO, P&E, etc. as best fits the specific aspect of AGW/CC being discussed.
I don’t know a ton about this topic, but I’ve see some suggestions to purposely add aerosols into the stratosphere to slow warming down while technology improves.
The trouble with any potential partial solution is that it will be seen as an excuse to treat the environment even worse. “Why should we support this if it doesn’t allow us to be even worse little shits somewhere else?”
No. As already stated several times upthread, this is a dangerously irresponsible suggestion and would be rife with unintended consequences. Mitigation by reducing emissions and adaptation where necessary are the only responsible paths forward.
Aerosols played a significant role in masking the effects of climate change until around 1980. These were primarily sulfur dioxide (SO2) and varioius nitrogen oxides, which resulted from fossil fuel combustion and resulted in the plague of acid rain. Cleaning up emissions to remove these aerosols was arguably the most successful program in the history of the EPA, and we certainly don’t want them back. But it caused temperatures to shoot up dramatically as the previously masked effect of CO2 accumulations became fully effective.
I couldn’t find the source I originally saw awhile back. I’ve linked a discussion where Daniele Visioni seems to be supporting it. I don’t know if he is a reputable source or not.
A link to an hour long video is pretty much useless.
The little bit I found online would indicate that this is a terrible idea. Especially as we knew 20 years ago what would actually address the problem and chose not to do much of it at all. Those steps from back then still pretty much apply now. I’ll look for my posts on this from the 2000s.
Here is a Wikipedia article on Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). The upshot of it is that there are a great many uncertainties and risks. Although different possible substances are discussed, ironically one of the most effective and frequently mentioned is SO2, which as I mentioned above is a contributor to acid rain because it reacts with water and oxygen in the atmosphere and turns into sulfuric acid.
I haven’t seen a serious discussion of this stuff in any of the IPCC reports, which just generally discuss the impacts of aerosols already present and those released by natural phenomena like volcanoes.
The key point and it cannot be overstated, is the solution is to do a lot of things. Cleaner Energy and Energy Efficiency are huge parts. There is no one silver bullet, though Fusion would come the closest.
The attitude of most corporations seems to be “Yeah, I understand that the lifeboat seems to be slightly taking on water, but if you want me to pick up that dixiecup and occasionally toss a little water out I am going to insist on a little compromise…like taking a dump in the middle of the lifeboat while y’all show film of me holding that dixecup.”
This is indeed a very key point. There are so many contributors to GHG that any one given solution will only produce a single digit reduction in emissions, and sometimes not even that. But the ones that do achieve this modest reduction, such as electrification of cars, have people say “so what? It’s only going to reduce GHG by 5%!” Well, anything will. And deforestation most likely has some people saying “sure, it’s a major contributor but it affects low income countries.”
As the saying about billions goes, if you electrify cars and reduce construction emissions and reduce land change emissions and reduce ag emissions, pretty soon you’re talking real reductions.
we all ready did that accidentally. cleaning up the pollution (aerosols) now means we warm faster, but they were BAD. so.
see, HERE is the issue as far as talking about it. the whole subject is huge and thoughtful people make giant videos - climate chat does 90 minute ones - that pretty much nobody but me and a few others watch.
legit: end stage capitalism might not be our best plan. and yet, revolution is so messy/expensive/painful.
(I mean this sincerely. I can never tell when that’s obvious)
The only sane response would be for people, governments, and institutions worldwide to agree that we have fucked up royally, and take drastic united action. This would require drastically changing everyone’s consumption in ways to minimize further exacerbation. Take our foot off the gas, as it were. AND, agreeing for the wealthier countries to help out the less fortunate, as we retrench to higher ground.
But that presumes a different species than humans. Or, at least, Americans.
Climate denialism and antisense is a cornerstone of the neofascist movement, Trump was elected because he won’t do anything to fight climate change, Americans have embraced coal. We have resoundingly rejected science and are dismantling our scientific institutions.
