The Climate thread

[SmokeyTheBear 5,562]

[hayden_horn 11,360]

2 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

I liked it better the first time I heard it on Fox News.

but seriously, this is how the modern day republican party operates. it's uncanny. they hear talking point, they echo talking point. the truth of things isn't a thing any longer.

 

[Dirk X West 772]

15 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

but seriously, this is how the modern day republican party operates. it's uncanny. they hear talking point, they echo talking point. the truth of things isn't a thing any longer.

 

For a group of people whose favorite epithet for their perceived enemies is "sheep", it's remarkable how they all say exactly the same things and post exactly the same memes and Breitbart articles in the same contexts.  They "think for themselves" but *coincidentally* have the exact same thoughts - expressed in the exact same words - as millions of other Trumpers. 

Edited September 24, 2019 by Dirk X West

[BNB 100]

I think its funny when I hear one side calling out another side for the same thing their side does.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,965]

1 hour ago, hayden_horn said:

i mean, whatever:

I'd like to see this map juxtaposed with population density. I'd imagine that that has a huge effect as well.  A country with a low population density is going to have more emissions per capital than one that is similarly developed with a high population density. And at the same time we can't say that everyone should move to the city (although more should) because we still need people to grow food and tend forests and such. If a country with a high population density gets its food from one with a low density, then it isn't entirely fair to blame the one with a low density for emissions largely due to growing food for the first country.

[Foosters 17,691]

You dumb millenial kids. Thinking you know so much. How about you just listen to adults for a bit?

We were listening. Here's the entire scientific community's consensus on this issue.

No not those adults. Here, listen to this guy. He draws cartoons for a living.  

[SquishMitten 10,395]

18 hours ago, Bookman said:

In a few years there'll be a category 6.

 

 

[4th&Five 41,457]

 

[BNB 100]

I don't know why we aren't just building Nuclear Plants everywhere.  It seems like the cheapest, fastest, best solution.

Seems like Tesla has caused all the auto makers to start making electric cars.  We should probably extend the discounts.

I don't like wind, I hear about the problem killing birds.  Someone posted on Daily Texan about our bird population problem.

If for some reason Nuclear does become a problem down the road, it would seem like we can fix those with AI computers solving the problems.  I saw something the other day about a new tech where they can reuse nuke waste back in the plants.

I think both sides are warming up to nuke power, I think I read Corey, Yang, and Warren(?) are good with it.

 

[SimonBolivar 10,898]

3 minutes ago, BNB said:

I don't know why we aren't just building Nuclear Plants everywhere.  It seems like the cheapest, fastest, best solution.

Seems like Tesla has caused all the auto makers to start making electric cars.  We should probably extend the discounts.

I don't like wind, I hear about the problem killing birds.  Someone posted on Daily Texan about our bird population problem.

If for some reason Nuclear does become a problem down the road, it would seem like we can fix those with AI computers solving the problems.  I saw something the other day about a new tech where they can reuse nuke waste back in the plants.

I think both sides are warming up to nuke power, I think I read Corey, Yang, and Warren(?) are good with it.

 

1.) People are scared of the word...Nuclear

2.) I was just in SE Colorado and I didn't see any trees or birds. Not sure if because climate sucks for birds or they got Don Quixote'd

[SimonBolivar 10,898]

 

[Longhornfan1024 1,707]

I would like for all of our resident climate change deniers to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.  

[zork 629]

Quote

...

Yet China's overseas ventures include hundreds of electric power plants that burn coal, which is a significant emitter of the carbon scientifically linked to climate change. Edward Cunningham, a specialist on China and its energy markets at Harvard University, tells NPR that China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines.

 

Days before the forum with its "clean and green" theme, the latest Chinese-built coal plant opened in Pakistan.

The plants are significant investments at a time when most nations of the world, including China, have committed to fighting climate change. "When you put money down and put steel into the ground for a coal-fired power plant," says Cunningham, "it's a 40- or 50-year commitment."

...

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placing-a-global-bet-on-coal

 

bold added.

[MissingInAction 24,765]

It is just mind bottling that people can't wrap their heads around the fact that burning shit is bad. 

Light a god damn fire in your living room if you are having a difficult time understanding the crisis we are in. 

Fucking fucktarded choad monkey slap dick motherfuckers. 

Edited September 24, 2019 by MissingInAction

[BNB 100]

I would also be all for a bigger government discount for installing solar panels  (I think there is one now.)

I don't know why politicians can't just get together on common sense bills. (No one add shit to it that helps your constituents.)

Edited September 24, 2019 by BNB

[bolverk 29,360]

1 hour ago, BNB said:

I would also be all for a bigger government discount for installing solar panels  (I think there is one now.)

I don't know why politicians can't just get together on common sense bills. (No one add shit to it that helps your constituents.)

Paris Climate Accords, Gas Mileage Standards, Green New Deal...

[GRHorn 105]

5 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

1.) People are scared of the word...Nuclear

2.) I was just in SE Colorado and I didn't see any trees or birds. Not sure if because climate sucks for birds or they got Don Quixote'd

But seriously

 

[GRHorn 105]

4 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

It is just mind bottling that people can't wrap their heads around the fact that burning shit is bad. 

Light a god damn fire in your living room if you are having a difficult time understanding the crisis we are in. 

Fucking fucktarded choad monkey slap dick motherfuckers. 

This is some good, high level thinking. Are you 16? They could use you. 

[mdmost 42,775]

7 hours ago, Lat22 said:

I can’t believe that the left is exploiting a mentally challenged child to advance their political agenda.

Wait. Yes, I can believe it.

No one on the left is exploiting you, Lat22. 

[Bookman 4,610]

I wonder what Houston flooding will be like in 20 years.

[workswithseed 2,033]

58 minutes ago, Bookman said:

I wonder what Houston flooding will be like in 20 years.

The same as the city, shitty.

[hpslugga 4,039]

10 hours ago, GRHorn said:

This is some good, high level thinking. Are you 16? They could use you. 

There’s more collective wisdom in that post you quoted than anything you’ve ever said about the topic. 

[4th&Five 41,457]

 

[MissingInAction 24,765]

12 hours ago, GRHorn said:

This is some good, high level thinking. Are you 16? They could use you. 

Who are "they", cunt?

Edited September 25, 2019 by MissingInAction

[gmr548 16,463]

 
China and india doing their part...

Of course, this also shows per capita emissions are higher here, but don't mind reality.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[MissingInAction 24,765]

But china, but india, but, but, but...

 

JFC, these willfully ignorant fools sound like a child in a playground playing with matches when they get caught by the teacher. 

"but , but , Johnny was playing with matches and burned stuff, why can't I?"

[GRHorn 105]

1 hour ago, hpslugga said:

There’s more collective wisdom in that post you quoted than anything you’ve ever said about the topic. 

Agree to disagree. I think juvenile, retard level posts like that one actually are detrimental to addressing any issues, including environmental ones.

Here's something useful with some good links.

https://reason.com/2019/09/24/think-globally-shame-constantly-the-rise-of-greta-thunberg-environmentalism/

Spoiler

Appearing like some child messiah in a science fiction novel, the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has just delivered what is arguably the fiercest jeremiad in America since Jonathan Edwards uncorked "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in 1741. Speaking at the United Nations, Thunberg, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and started protesting climate change in 2017 by staying out of school on Fridays, told the audience that it was responsible for destroying her life and that of the planet.

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

Thunberg—and other doomsayers—are wrong about the environment and how best to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. You can watch her speech below:

 

 

To say that reactions to Thunberg are as extreme as her rhetoric is an understatement. When I tweeted about her remarks earlier today, my timeline quickly filled with replies such as "Hitler also liked using pigtailed propaganda girls" and "She is a prop and a tool for eco-communism. A propaganda icon that needs to be destroyed." Of course, President Trump weighed in, posting a clip of her speech and commenting sarcastically, "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!"

But despite the volume and vitriol of the attacks directed her way, it's vitally important that the worldview she represents and the policies she espouses are refuted. Like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), and a host of other American politicians, Thunberg believes that we've only got a few years left to settle the fate of the planet, a basic tenet pushed by supporters of the Green New Deal and by most of the Democrats running for president. In fact, Thunberg thinks that "cutting our emissions in half in 10 years," the target invoked by many environmentalists, is too little, too late. She avers that such a drastic reduction only

gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us—we who have to live with the consequences.

Such catastrophic thinking is similar to AOC's equally apocalyptic statement that "The world is gonna end in 12 years" and Warren's contention that "we've got, what, 11 years, maybe" to cut our emissions in half to save the planet. As Reason's Ronald Bailey has documented, such predictions stem from a fundamental misreading of a 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report offered up predictions in the growth of global economic activity, how it might be affected by climate change, and how reducing greenhouse gases might increase planetary GDP. It did not specify anything like a 10- to 12-year window after which extinction or amelioration is inevitable. Writes Bailey:

If humanity does nothing whatsoever to abate greenhouse gas emissions, the worst-case scenario is that global GDP in 2100 would be 8.2 percent lower than it would otherwise be.

Let's make those GDP percentages concrete. Assuming no climate change and an global real growth rate of 3 percent per year for the next 81 years, today's $80 trillion economy would grow to just under $880 trillion by 2100. World population is likely to peak at around 9 billion, so divvying up that GDP suggests that global average income would come to about $98,000 per person. Under the worst-case scenario, global GDP would only be $810 trillion and average income would only be $90,000 per person.

 

"There is no looming climate change 'expiration date,'" writes Bailey, a point underscored by Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which promotes cost-effective policies to remediate climate change, hunger, disease, and other global issues. Lomborg notes that the IPCC itself

has found the evidence does not support claims that floods, droughts and cyclones are increasing.

The scientists have said, "there is low confidence in a global-scale observed trend" in drought, a "lack of evidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale" and "no significant observed trends in global (cyclone) frequency over the past century."

What's more, the scientists have found that current human-caused global warming cannot reasonably be linked to any of these extreme weather phenomenon-"globally, there is low confidence in attribution of changes in (cyclone) activity to human influence", "low confidence in detection and attribution of changes in drought" and low confidence "that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and magnitude of floods". This doesn't mean there is no problem－just that the facts matter.

There are only better and worse ways to deal with coming changes. Contra Thunberg, the better ways don't demonize economic growth as a problem but as a solution. "The most inexorable feature of climate-change modeling isn't the advance of the sea but the steady economic growth that will make life better despite global warming," writes science journalist Will Boisvert. The environmental Kuznets curve, by which countries get wealthier and their citizens demand a cleaner environment, is the rule, not the exception. Such a dynamic is predicated upon economic and technological innovation that would be almost impossible under the sort of regulations promulgated by Green New Dealers and activists such as Thunberg and Naomi Klein, who wants to "decimate the entire neoliberal project" in the name of environmentalism. Environmental commons tend to deteriorate as countries begin to develop economically—but once per-capita income reaches a certain level, the public starts to demand a cleanup. It's a U-shaped pattern: Economic growth initially hurts the environment, Bailey reminds us,

but after a point it makes things cleaner. By then, slowing or stopping economic growth will delay environmental improvement, including efforts to mitigate the problem of man-made global warming.

Greta Thunberg's histrionics are likely heartfelt but neither they nor the deplorable responses they conjure are a guide forward to good environmental policy in a world that is getting richer every day. For the first time in human history, half the earth's population is middle class or wealthier and the rate of deaths from natural disasters is well below what it was even a few decades ago. Protecting all that is just as important as protecting the environment and, more importantly, those two goals are hardly mutually exclusive.

 

35 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

Who are "they", cunt?

The people interested in pushing climate hysteria.

[MissingInAction 24,765]

And who are these people?

I am speaking retard in hopes of communicating with retards such as yourself.

The evidence is literally  slapping everyone in the fucking face right now, and still you tools keep your heads in the sand.

Edited September 25, 2019 by MissingInAction

[High Plains Drifter 10,970]

16 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

Agree to disagree. I think juvenile, retard level posts like that one actually are detrimental to addressing any issues, including environmental ones.

Here's something useful with some good links.

https://reason.com/2019/09/24/think-globally-shame-constantly-the-rise-of-greta-thunberg-environmentalism/

  Hide contents

Appearing like some child messiah in a science fiction novel, the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has just delivered what is arguably the fiercest jeremiad in America since Jonathan Edwards uncorked "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in 1741. Speaking at the United Nations, Thunberg, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and started protesting climate change in 2017 by staying out of school on Fridays, told the audience that it was responsible for destroying her life and that of the planet.

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

Thunberg—and other doomsayers—are wrong about the environment and how best to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. You can watch her speech below:

 

 

To say that reactions to Thunberg are as extreme as her rhetoric is an understatement. When I tweeted about her remarks earlier today, my timeline quickly filled with replies such as "Hitler also liked using pigtailed propaganda girls" and "She is a prop and a tool for eco-communism. A propaganda icon that needs to be destroyed." Of course, President Trump weighed in, posting a clip of her speech and commenting sarcastically, "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!"

But despite the volume and vitriol of the attacks directed her way, it's vitally important that the worldview she represents and the policies she espouses are refuted. Like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), and a host of other American politicians, Thunberg believes that we've only got a few years left to settle the fate of the planet, a basic tenet pushed by supporters of the Green New Deal and by most of the Democrats running for president. In fact, Thunberg thinks that "cutting our emissions in half in 10 years," the target invoked by many environmentalists, is too little, too late. She avers that such a drastic reduction only

gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us—we who have to live with the consequences.

Such catastrophic thinking is similar to AOC's equally apocalyptic statement that "The world is gonna end in 12 years" and Warren's contention that "we've got, what, 11 years, maybe" to cut our emissions in half to save the planet. As Reason's Ronald Bailey has documented, such predictions stem from a fundamental misreading of a 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report offered up predictions in the growth of global economic activity, how it might be affected by climate change, and how reducing greenhouse gases might increase planetary GDP. It did not specify anything like a 10- to 12-year window after which extinction or amelioration is inevitable. Writes Bailey:

If humanity does nothing whatsoever to abate greenhouse gas emissions, the worst-case scenario is that global GDP in 2100 would be 8.2 percent lower than it would otherwise be.

Let's make those GDP percentages concrete. Assuming no climate change and an global real growth rate of 3 percent per year for the next 81 years, today's $80 trillion economy would grow to just under $880 trillion by 2100. World population is likely to peak at around 9 billion, so divvying up that GDP suggests that global average income would come to about $98,000 per person. Under the worst-case scenario, global GDP would only be $810 trillion and average income would only be $90,000 per person.

 

"There is no looming climate change 'expiration date,'" writes Bailey, a point underscored by Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which promotes cost-effective policies to remediate climate change, hunger, disease, and other global issues. Lomborg notes that the IPCC itself

has found the evidence does not support claims that floods, droughts and cyclones are increasing.

The scientists have said, "there is low confidence in a global-scale observed trend" in drought, a "lack of evidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale" and "no significant observed trends in global (cyclone) frequency over the past century."

What's more, the scientists have found that current human-caused global warming cannot reasonably be linked to any of these extreme weather phenomenon-"globally, there is low confidence in attribution of changes in (cyclone) activity to human influence", "low confidence in detection and attribution of changes in drought" and low confidence "that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and magnitude of floods". This doesn't mean there is no problem－just that the facts matter.

There are only better and worse ways to deal with coming changes. Contra Thunberg, the better ways don't demonize economic growth as a problem but as a solution. "The most inexorable feature of climate-change modeling isn't the advance of the sea but the steady economic growth that will make life better despite global warming," writes science journalist Will Boisvert. The environmental Kuznets curve, by which countries get wealthier and their citizens demand a cleaner environment, is the rule, not the exception. Such a dynamic is predicated upon economic and technological innovation that would be almost impossible under the sort of regulations promulgated by Green New Dealers and activists such as Thunberg and Naomi Klein, who wants to "decimate the entire neoliberal project" in the name of environmentalism. Environmental commons tend to deteriorate as countries begin to develop economically—but once per-capita income reaches a certain level, the public starts to demand a cleanup. It's a U-shaped pattern: Economic growth initially hurts the environment, Bailey reminds us,

but after a point it makes things cleaner. By then, slowing or stopping economic growth will delay environmental improvement, including efforts to mitigate the problem of man-made global warming.

Greta Thunberg's histrionics are likely heartfelt but neither they nor the deplorable responses they conjure are a guide forward to good environmental policy in a world that is getting richer every day. For the first time in human history, half the earth's population is middle class or wealthier and the rate of deaths from natural disasters is well below what it was even a few decades ago. Protecting all that is just as important as protecting the environment and, more importantly, those two goals are hardly mutually exclusive.

 

The people interested in pushing climate hysteria.

"The environmental Kuznets curve, by which countries get wealthier and their citizens demand a cleaner environment, is the rule,"

That is exactly what is happening right now.  Citizens of wealth countries (at those citizens who aren't deplorable) are demanding a cleaner environment. Yet your ilk call those demands "histronics".

[GRHorn 105]

51 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

And who are these people?

I am speaking retard in hopes of communicating with retards such as yourself.

The evidence is literally  slapping everyone in the fucking face right now, and still you tools keep your heads in the sand.

Anyone pushing an ill informed 16 year old as some kind of leader on policymaking. 

So mass media, politicians like Warren, AOC etc. 

48 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

"The environmental Kuznets curve, by which countries get wealthier and their citizens demand a cleaner environment, is the rule,"

That is exactly what is happening right now.  Citizens of wealth countries (at those citizens who aren't deplorable) are demanding a cleaner environment. Yet your ilk call those demands "histronics".

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.”

Like I said, histrionics. 

[hpslugga 4,039]

12 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

Anyone pushing an ill informed 16 year old as some kind of leader on policymaking. 

I could count the number of people who do that worldwide on one hand and I would have 5 superfluous fingers

[bolverk 29,360]

4 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

Anyone pushing an ill informed 16 year old as some kind of leader on policymaking. 

So mass media, politicians like Warren, AOC etc. 

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.”

Like I said, histrionics. 

No one considers her a policy maker. She is, however, a messenger and she's right about the ongoing mass extinction event. Just look up the term "Holocene extinction."

The IPBES [Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services] Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is the most comprehensive ever completed. It is the first intergovernmental Report of its kind and builds on the landmark Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005, introducing innovative ways of evaluating evidence.

Compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years, with inputs from another 310 contributing authors, the Report assesses changes over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of the relationship between economic development pathways and their impacts on nature. It also offers a range of possible scenarios for the coming decades.

Based on the systematic review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources, the Report also draws (for the first time ever at this scale) on indigenous and local knowledge, particularly addressing issues relevant to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

“Biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people are our common heritage and humanity’s most important life-supporting ‘safety net’. But our safety net is stretched almost to breaking point,” said Prof. Sandra Díaz (Argentina), who co-chaired the Assessment with Prof. Josef Settele (Germany) and Prof. Eduardo S. Brondízio (Brazil and USA). “The diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems, as well as many fundamental contributions we derive from nature, are declining fast, although we still have the means to ensure a sustainable future for people and the planet.”

The Report finds that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.

The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900. More than 40% of amphibian species, almost 33% of reef forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10% being threatened. At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9% of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“Ecosystems, species, wild populations, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing. The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed,” said Prof. Settele. “This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.”

To increase the policy-relevance of the Report, the assessment’s authors have ranked, for the first time at this scale and based on a thorough analysis of the available evidence, the five direct drivers of change in nature with the largest relative global impacts so far. These culprits are, in descending order: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species.

The Report notes that, since 1980, greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, raising average global temperatures by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius – with climate change already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics – impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, in some cases surpassing the impact of land and sea use change and other drivers.

https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment

You're the hysterical fool with fingers in your ears shouting "La la la la la, I'm not listening!"

[Dirk X West 772]

7 minutes ago, bolverk said:

No one considers her a policy maker. She is, however, a messenger and she's right about the ongoing mass extinction event. Just look up the term "Holocene extinction."

The IPBES [Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services] Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is the most comprehensive ever completed. It is the first intergovernmental Report of its kind and builds on the landmark Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005, introducing innovative ways of evaluating evidence.

Compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years, with inputs from another 310 contributing authors, the Report assesses changes over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of the relationship between economic development pathways and their impacts on nature. It also offers a range of possible scenarios for the coming decades.

Based on the systematic review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources, the Report also draws (for the first time ever at this scale) on indigenous and local knowledge, particularly addressing issues relevant to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

“Biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people are our common heritage and humanity’s most important life-supporting ‘safety net’. But our safety net is stretched almost to breaking point,” said Prof. Sandra Díaz (Argentina), who co-chaired the Assessment with Prof. Josef Settele (Germany) and Prof. Eduardo S. Brondízio (Brazil and USA). “The diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems, as well as many fundamental contributions we derive from nature, are declining fast, although we still have the means to ensure a sustainable future for people and the planet.”

The Report finds that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.

The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900. More than 40% of amphibian species, almost 33% of reef forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10% being threatened. At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9% of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“Ecosystems, species, wild populations, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing. The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed,” said Prof. Settele. “This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.”

To increase the policy-relevance of the Report, the assessment’s authors have ranked, for the first time at this scale and based on a thorough analysis of the available evidence, the five direct drivers of change in nature with the largest relative global impacts so far. These culprits are, in descending order: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species.

The Report notes that, since 1980, greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, raising average global temperatures by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius – with climate change already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics – impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, in some cases surpassing the impact of land and sea use change and other drivers.

https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment

You're the hysterical fool with fingers in your ears shouting "La la la la la, I'm not listening!"

GR isn't going to read a word of this.  He might make it as far as "The IPBES..."

[High Plains Drifter 10,970]

17 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years, with inputs from another 310 contributing authors,

 

 

That is one hell of a conspiracy.

[High Plains Drifter 10,970]

32 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.”

Like I said, histrionics. 

 

Every word is true. I would quibble and say we aren't in the middle, we are hundreds of years into the mass extinction.

[High Plains Drifter 10,970]

Hey stop shitting where I eat.

No.

OK then, I'm going to keep on shitting where I eat as well.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,965]

26 minutes ago, bolverk said:

These culprits are, in descending order: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species.

 

I'm not sure how you can rank invasive alien species last on that list. Today's world has been drastically and irreversibly altered by exotic invasive species. Combined with changes in land use our ecology has changed so much that people would not even recognize most places as the same three hundred years ago.

[High Plains Drifter 10,970]

1 minute ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I'm not sure how you can rank invasive alien species last on that list. Today's world has been drastically and irreversibly altered by exotic invasive species. Combined with changes in land use our ecology has changed so much that people would not even recognize most places as the same three hundred years ago.

 

Seems like the list is backward?

[Brisketexan 104,465]

Buried in GR’s post is a criticism that the environmental movement would “decimate the entire neoliberal project.” That is fucking RICH. Being that the neoliberal order is under brutal attack from....the exact people on GR’s side of things. Seriously, a relentless attack on neoliberalism/globalism is the foundational tenet of the modern conservative populist movement, which is also the movement that most strongly attacks any action on climate change.
Truly fucking rich. Bravo.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,965]

7 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

Seems like the list is backward?

I would have put exotic invasive species as number two and left the rest of the order the same. Most people, even lots of folks who study biological organisms, don't really understand just how much we have changed the world by importing and exporting organisms to places they don't belong.

[High Plains Drifter 10,970]

11 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I would have put exotic invasive species as number two and left the rest of the order the same. Most people, even lots of folks who study biological organisms, don't really understand just how much we have changed the world by importing and exporting organisms to places they don't belong.

 

I agree. I might even list it first. I studied a particular invasive species as part of my master's thesis. The other part was the bio-control agent used to combat it.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,965]

Honestly, it's hard to seperate invasive species from changes in land use because they are so interrelated in many cases.

[MissingInAction 24,765]

I invaded GR's mom's species last night.

[gmr548 16,463]

Arguing with deniers is useless. Their minds aren't going to change. Be it because they benefit from or are comfortable in the status quo, can't admit they're wrong, just want to own the libs, or some combo thereof; they're entrenched in their position and there isn't anything anyone can do about.

Think about someone watching SETX go through Harvey and Imelda and trying to rationalize it. You can't work with someone like that. They will not entertain a discussion of potential solutions in good faith. Move on.

Fortunately, they are a minority by a significant margin. The energy spent arguing with them and being incredulous at their response is better spent working to win in 2020 and 2022. Then we can drag them kicking and screaming into whatever future we can salvage as a society.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[American Swindle 102]

An alternative opinion on the matter:

 

https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/MurphyNordhaus.html

 

Quote

illiam Nordhaus was a co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics for his pioneering work on the economics of climate change. On the day of the Nobel announcement, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) released a special report1 advising the governments of the world on various steps necessary to limit cumulative global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The major media coverage treated the two events as complementary.2 In fact, they are incompatible. Although Nordhaus favors a carbon tax to slow climate change, his own model shows that the UN’s target would make humanity poorer than doing nothing at all about climate change.

Indeed, we can use Nordhaus’s and other standard models to show that the now-championed 1.5°C target is ludicrously expensive, far more costly than the public has been led to believe. This is presumably why the new IPCC special report does not even attempt to justify its policy goals in a cost/benefit framework. Rather, it takes the 1.5°C target as a politically “given” constraint and then discusses the pros and cons of various mechanisms to achieve it.

It is ironic that in the context of accusations that opponents of government intervention are “science deniers,” the latest UN report largely ignores the peer-reviewed publications in climate-change economics, including those of the man who just won the Nobel Prize in the field.3

Bring on the attacks of the source and Nordhaus.....

[Lurch 5,919]

I expect addressing climate change to cost a lot of money. I’m not supportive of addressing because I want to make a buck.

[bolverk 29,360]

14 minutes ago, American Swindle said:

An alternative opinion on the matter:

 

https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/MurphyNordhaus.html

 

Bring on the attacks of the source and Nordhaus.....

The "alternative opinion" that it's too expensive for us to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5C? Yeah, that's possible. The dude is on record saying that the price on constraining temperature rises continues to increase as we continue to collectively delay action.

Quote

 

In an interview after Nordhaus accepted his prize, he diplomatically handled the situation by saying that the 1.5°C target is impossible to achieve at this point.

 

Kind of a no-brainer but at least he's figured out a formula for trying to assess this, and the man still agrees that steps should be taken to limit the rise (he just suggests a higher allowable limit based on costs).

The awful truth is that the warning bells have been ringing for 30 years now and the delay tactics for action have been effective. Congrats on making Texas a hell on Earth in 80 years after refusing to ratify Kyoto from 1992 and now pulling out of Paris. THAT is, in fact, the real "American Swindle."

[bolverk 29,360]

Full Members
 1,943
3,095 posts
Report post   #701
Posted just now
It's official, this year was the second hottest summer on record for Austin:

1. 2011
2. 2019
3. 2009
4. 2013
5. 2018

Our five hottest have all occurred in the last 10 years. Nothing to see here.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2019/09/24/summer-2019---second-hottest-in-austin-history 

Quote

 

July 2019 was the 19th warmest on record, with temperatures running 1.5 degrees above normal in the Capital City.

August 2019 ended up being the second hottest month ever behind August 2011, with temperatures running a full 4.1 degrees above average. The hottest temperatures of the year: 105 on 8/9, 8/12 and 8/13.

The heat streak continued into the month of September with an average of 87.5 degrees by the Autumnal Equinox, the end of astronomical (or calendar) summer.

As of September 24:.

• Nine record hot September days so far
• Warmest September ever in Austin (average high 100.3)
• 18 triple digit days this month, the most in any September
• in fifth pace for most 100 degree days in any year (56 in metro)

So, when will the heat finally back off? We've blown right past the 10 year average final 100+ day, which is September 3. 

Last year, the last 100+ day was September 1.

The latest hundred degree day ever? October 2, 1938.

Local weather records go back to 1897.

 

 

[Lurch 5,919]

[American Swindle 102]

21 hours ago, Lurch said:

I expect addressing climate change to cost a lot of money. I’m not supportive of addressing because I want to make a buck.

I didn't know you cared not for the poor?  Are you a libertarian or something?