Climate Strike September 20

[thollandpe]

Can we start by prioritizing? Look at our country’s greenhouse gas emissions, where does most of it come from?



5,290,000,000 metric tons a year, almost all of it from burning fossil fuels, and most of that going into electricity generation and transportation.

And what are the opportunities in the electricity generation and transportation sectors?



That’s where all our energy comes from and where it goes. Inputs on the left, all with varying amounts of cost and environmental impact. Now look at where it goes: the largest single vector on this chart is “Rejected Energy”. That’s where you should drill, baby, drill.

97,400,000,000,000 Btus input, 59,000,000,000,000 Btus wasted.

We are literally throwing all that precious energy away. Our electricity generation sector is 32% efficient, and our transportation sector is 21% efficient. Woefully low numbers.

Attack that two ways: first, reduce the amount you need (Q: How do you double the efficiency of a car with one person in it? A: Put two people in it!) and second, improve the efficiency of the process.

This all makes rolling back auto efficiency standards and methane emissions regs sound kinda crazy, right?

[mjbabcock]

So you can structure a manageable return to a near stone age existence or have future generations be forced into and even worse one. Sounds extreme doesn't it? This assumes we really could even have an impact at this point in the game.
...it's Sept 24th and still hitting 98f today in my back yard so I'm pretty well acclimated.

I gotta think that there are alternatives to these two futures. We have opportunities to capture solar energy to power an economy that was built around fossil fuels. I recognize that this is a huge undertaking, but so was building an infrastructure built around burning things. We have very functional cars that run on batteries, we have states that are shifting incredible amounts of their power generation to solar and wind. There are carbon capture technologies on the horizon that might "undo" some of the greenhouse warming we've initiated. The reason that young people, like Greta, are so frustrated, is that we are deliberately slow walking efforts to combat a known problem. We teach students how to identify problems, and how to start working to solve them...but they look at the complete inaction by our elected leaders and say WTF?

The science is clear and irrefutable. The paths forward are unlimited, but the refusal of bureaucracies to deal with root causes of environmental degradation is indefensible. Our parents dealt with CFC's, with pesticides like DDT, with deforestation, with cigarette smoke, with commercial whale hunting...our parents saw problems and were compelled to act. They did something. We can't even get something as simple as a carbon pricing instituted.

Children are pissed because we aren't doing shit. We are paralyzed in the face of gun violence. We are paralyzed by the prospects of climate change. I sincerely wish Greta would have told our leader to fuck off...

[theflashunc]

Greta at a currently Swedish life expectancy should make it to about 2080 or so. By then, climate scientists are estimates average temperatures will shift about 550 or so miles to the north of where they currently are. New York City will have weather like northern Arkansas for example.

In the case of Sweden, weather in Malmo will be more like that of Munich, about 600 or so miles due South. This assumes Malmo isn't underwater by then, being a coastal city.

The science is clear, the world of 2080 will be fundamentally altered by our actions today. And leadership doesn't want to do a damn thing about it. Of course Greta's pissed, an entire generation is pulling up the ladder behind them and leaving a worse world for the next generation all due to selfishness, greed and cheap political points. The only children I see in the room are the adults refusing to acknowledge the scope and urgency of the problem.

[crumpton]

I gotta think that there are alternatives to these two futures. We have opportunities to capture solar energy to power an economy that was built around fossil fuels. I recognize that this is a huge undertaking, but so was building an infrastructure built around burning things. We have very functional cars that run on batteries, we have states that are shifting incredible amounts of their power generation to solar and wind. There are carbon capture technologies on the horizon that might "undo" some of the greenhouse warming we've initiated. The reason that young people, like Greta, are so frustrated, is that we are deliberately slow walking efforts to combat a known problem. We teach students how to identify problems, and how to start working to solve them...but they look at the complete inaction by our elected leaders and say WTF?

The science is clear and irrefutable. The paths forward are unlimited, but the refusal of bureaucracies to deal with root causes of environmental degradation is indefensible. Our parents dealt with CFC's, with pesticides like DDT, with deforestation, with cigarette smoke, with commercial whale hunting...our parents saw problems and were compelled to act. They did something. We can't even get something as simple as a carbon pricing instituted.

Children are pissed because we aren't doing shit. We are paralyzed in the face of gun violence. We are paralyzed by the prospects of climate change. I sincerely wish Greta would have told our leader to fuck off...

I like it. These children won't be children much longer. Let's see what they do?? The children just prior to them had a good talk. Where are they now? Seems like every generation eventually falls into line. I hope this one does not.

[e-RICHIE]

<cut>The only children I see in the room are the adults refusing to acknowledge the scope and urgency of the problem.

amen to that

[mzilliox]

some guys are mad at women maybe? strong people? honest folks?? we hear you, the bullshit alarms are on full alert round here if you can't hear em.

as far as solutions, things we can do? pffft, there are so many, yet none will happen. we could take advantage of technology but not abuse it, same with electricity and transport and all the rest. we have absolutely over consumed and abused. we can start to admit that and take 3 steps back. we can stop cutting down forests for soy and cows. we can stop shitting in our beds. we can learn to grow food and care for the soil as a community, as a normal thing that people who eat food would do. we can stop making poor desc ions in favor of marginal profit gains and start accounting properly for the pollution and other negatives affects of the economy. we can admit that this is a social experiment that is starting to fail, and perhaps needs an adjustment.

none of this is easy. none of it will happen. we (the people alive today) will not live to see how this ends, but we may see how it begins, or perhaps we already are. these are my opinions.

they are open for discussion.

there is no room in this conversation for people making assumptions about what other people do or dont do. speak for yourselves. stop projecting and assuming.
there is no rom for nonsense.

this is the most serious thing we have ever faced as a society. what has already happened as far as environmental degradation already disgusts me, our current record is abysmal, lets do better, we all know how, but it starts with honesty.

[ides1056]

"a world in which we follow the facts requires a strong stomach"

[sk_tle]

The sad thing is the scientists have been warning about it for around 50 years yet nothing has been done against it.

Here is Haroun Tazief raising the flag in 1979 on french telly and being mocked by people from the industries.

https://m.ina.fr/video/I07151948

Greta and any other kid has plenty of reasons to be angry against us, and particularly to the pig you elected as your representative to make the world as crappy as possible for the future generations.

It is not like a giant wall will prevent the climate issues to reach your country.

[King Of Dirk]

As an admitted asshole, I'd like to request that I be considered an asshole for what I did say, and not what I didn't.

I acknowledge the scope and the urgency of the problem of climate change/sea level rise. I do not deny the existence of either, and I do not believe either is a hoax. They're happening. Full stop.

We are powerless to stop them. The seas are going to rise (again). The climate is going to keep changing. Same as it ever was, but admittedly more quickly. The more quickly part of the event is almost certainly on **** sapiens¹. The event itself is 100% definitely not. And it's inevitable.

Humans are an arrogant and fearful lot. We don't like being told we aren't in control, and we will go to any lengths to mitigate our fears of disaster, including inducing disasters in an attempt to stave off disaster. How the hell do you think we got religions?

If you care about future generations as much as you say you do, start now. Move away from coastlines. Move north or south as you deem prudent. Begin building the communities that future generations will be able to inhabit with some degree of success. Because the coastal megacities are doomed.

None of this is any reason to be wasteful. We should strive to develop and use cleaner energy sources, to pollute less, and to stop reproducing at an obviously unsustainable rate. We should stop telling others to use teleconferencing as we board an airplane, even if that flight is so we can address the den of corruption that is the United Nations (a couple hundred people - maybe - saw her in person, while millions have viewed her remarks on a screen...just like you did). To Tee Aitch's point above, we should curtail useless events that exist only due to massive wastes of transportation and electricity generation: Every single week hundreds of thousands if not millions of people at MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA and NCAA games that can be enjoyed as much or more on television...and that's just the United States! How about the ecological disaster that is Burning Man? Why does the US Postal Service burn all of those calories/watts/joules moving a million metric shit-tons of junk mail every single day? Never mind the paper itself, how much fuel is wasted delivering phone books? How much does the total of every phone book in the US weigh? Who uses a fucking phone book?!?

How many of you have more than one refrigerator? How many of you have more than one television? Fuck, how many of you have more than one home?

How many of you have more than a thousand dollars worth of cycling clothes that aren't made of wool or cotton? How many of you have ever boarded an aircraft to fly somewhere...to ride a bicycle?

Stop nodding and smiling while Greta's talking. She's talking to you.


¹ - How sad that our genus can't be written anymore.

[BBB]

Parquet Courts say it well. The last verse is particularly apt. Just bloody well do something. It should take a 16 year old to need to point this out.

Seldom have I ever questioned the end
Still I grow frost when I'm reminded
Euphemisms on a loop interchange
Which hands get to turn the final page?
In whose throat belongs the swan song
Crisis, warming, denial, change?

State TV helps the public explain
Broadcast beamed into the dry terrain
Images of drenched survival
Without hope but soaked with pain
Consequences of reality felt
All conditions of humanity built
On the bridges
Tent villages waiting for the state to help

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high

If the clock strikes midnight then
What becomes of our demonstrations?
To which fate have these gatherings fell?
Which halls echo all the chants we yelled
Into faces on the coins we tossed into the wishing well?

Drinking water on which we subsist
Mixing into rivers that did not exist yesterday
When all the warning signs were there but sorely missed
What's it worth all the money we made
Floating idly in a newborn lake?
Far above financial centers
Cities sink like market rates

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Before the water gets too high
Add up the bribes you take
And know time can't be bought
By the profits that you make
Before the water gets too high
To float the powers that be
Or is it someone else's job
Until the rich are refugees?
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high

[Corso]

Trump and the GOP Senate and the interests they represent are a significant impediment to any successful attempt to solve the climate crisis. It will be so much easier if we don't have to work around him and waste so much time and treasure in court to block those efforts. Since Trump causes so many other problems as well why not solve them same time?

Spin wash repeat. Guido my friend, you need new material.

Open your mind and consider this: Why would the country ELECT a non-politician who never ran for any other office to the Presidency?

Because, A: they didn't like the last guy and B: they didn't like the other option.

Can you offer any content here other than bashing the President? Greta is blaming 30 years of failure. Trump hasn't been the President that long.

[thollandpe]

Why would the country ELECT...

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Tainted. It’s all about the taint.

Tainting the 2016 US Presidential election was the absolute best way a certain former KGB agent ever spent his nation’s hard-earned money. Brexit is a close 2nd.

We’ve been had.

[Dallas Tex]

The sad thing is the scientists have been warning about it for around 50 years

50 years ago the consensus of experts were warning us about global cooling.

[zachateseverything]

50 years ago the consensus of experts were warning us about global cooling.

That wasn't true 50 years ago. It's not true now.

Global cooling - Wikipedia

[guido]

Spin wash repeat. Guido my friend, you need new material.

Open your mind and consider this: Why would the country ELECT a non-politician who never ran for any other office to the Presidency?

Because, A: they didn't like the last guy and B: they didn't like the other option.

Can you offer any content here other than bashing the President? Greta is blaming 30 years of failure. Trump hasn't been the President that long.

Trump has done more explicit damage to the environment and climate in 3 years than any other single President. To do it intentionally when the true cost is so deeply understood is a crime against humanity.

To continue to support him in the light of the evil he embodies is pretty inexcusable too.

But to you point, individual actions are impotent ways to console yourself without real change at the governmental level. Get an electric car, a heat pump, a windmill... All pointless drops in the bucket without real change, which you don't really want to do.

[thollandpe]

50 years ago the consensus of experts were warning us about global cooling.

Attachment 113271

The sarcasm of your post may be missed by some. But the stench of bullshit will not.

Shirley, you can’t be serious. Bring some better material if you expect another response from me.

How the "Global Cooling" Story Came to Be - Scientific American

[zachateseverything]

As an admitted asshole, I'd like to request that I be considered an asshole for what I did say, and not what I didn't.

I acknowledge the scope and the urgency of the problem of climate change/sea level rise. I do not deny the existence of either, and I do not believe either is a hoax. They're happening. Full stop.

We are powerless to stop them. The seas are going to rise (again). The climate is going to keep changing. Same as it ever was, but admittedly more quickly. The more quickly part of the event is almost certainly on **** sapiens¹. The event itself is 100% definitely not. And it's inevitable.

Humans are an arrogant and fearful lot. We don't like being told we aren't in control, and we will go to any lengths to mitigate our fears of disaster, including inducing disasters in an attempt to stave off disaster. How the hell do you think we got religions?

If you care about future generations as much as you say you do, start now. Move away from coastlines. Move north or south as you deem prudent. Begin building the communities that future generations will be able to inhabit with some degree of success. Because the coastal megacities are doomed.

None of this is any reason to be wasteful. We should strive to develop and use cleaner energy sources, to pollute less, and to stop reproducing at an obviously unsustainable rate. We should stop telling others to use teleconferencing as we board an airplane, even if that flight is so we can address the den of corruption that is the United Nations (a couple hundred people - maybe - saw her in person, while millions have viewed her remarks on a screen...just like you did). To Tee Aitch's point above, we should curtail useless events that exist only due to massive wastes of transportation and electricity generation: Every single week hundreds of thousands if not millions of people at MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA and NCAA games that can be enjoyed as much or more on television...and that's just the United States! How about the ecological disaster that is Burning Man? Why does the US Postal Service burn all of those calories/watts/joules moving a million metric shit-tons of junk mail every single day? Never mind the paper itself, how much fuel is wasted delivering phone books? How much does the total of every phone book in the US weigh? Who uses a fucking phone book?!?

How many of you have more than one refrigerator? How many of you have more than one television? Fuck, how many of you have more than one home?

How many of you have more than a thousand dollars worth of cycling clothes that aren't made of wool or cotton? How many of you have ever boarded an aircraft to fly somewhere...to ride a bicycle?

Stop nodding and smiling while Greta's talking. She's talking to you.


¹ - How sad that our genus can't be written anymore.

Stop with the fatalism. We can stop global warming but as a society we have to decide to make the sacrifices to do so. It's the role of government to put in place a regulatory structure that encourages the wanted behaviors and discourages the unwanted behaviors. I get that you're a free-market libertarian type so you're going to disagree with me on this point, but the free market is absolutely terrible at correcting for negative externalities like pollution. It didn't work in the 60's when prior to the EPA existing the river that runs by my house would catch on fire on a semi-regular basis. It doesn't work now that my backyard is uninhabitable for most of the summer.

Yes, individuals can do stuff to limit their carbon footprint on their own but there's a lower limit they can't really dip below without structural reforms at the state and federal level.

[Dallas Tex]

That wasn't true 50 years ago. It's not true now.

Global cooling - Wikipedia

Well, reality disagrees with you. Below are just three examples of the scientific community warning us about global cooling in the 1970s.

-The National Science Board's 1972 report Patterns and Perspectives in Environmental Science.

-The National Science Board's report of 1974, Science And The Challenges Ahead.

-National Academy of Sciences report 1975.

But, I doubt many posters on this thread review scientific reports on the current ‘climate change’. I’d bet the vast majority are getting their information from the media....... just like we did in the 1970s when the Boston Globe and Time magazine and many of the respected media outlets warned us of the coming ice age.

I’ve lived through Global Cooling, Global Warming. And now Climate Change.

Forgive me if I don’t participate in the latest end-of-word apocalyptic doomsday scenario.

Humans have predicted the end of the world thousands of times since the beginning of recorded history. And the one thing they all have in common is they’ve all been wrong.

[BBB]

Spin wash repeat. Guido my friend, you need new material.

Open your mind and consider this: Why would the country ELECT a non-politician who never ran for any other office to the Presidency?

Because, A: they didn't like the last guy and B: they didn't like the other option.

Can you offer any content here other than bashing the President? Greta is blaming 30 years of failure. Trump hasn't been the President that long.

The why is immaterial in this discussion.*

Every political leader in every country has this mess on their plate. Doing nothing about it is not an option.

We don't need dithering, lies and rubbish on social media by our leaders. Faced with an existential challenge and the best that can be done is a snarky comment on Twitter about a 16 year old. Really?

Australian leadership is equally hopeless. We've had a three Prime Ministers in 6 years. The first said climate change was crap. The second was actively prevented from doing anything about it and the current PM (a man of titanium according to Trump) is an opportunistic nufty who really has no idea and no real agenda other than staying in office. Australia has one of the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world, we are one of the driest countries in the world and are extremly vulnearable to the effects of climate change. Rainforest has been burning in Queensland and it is only the start of spring here. If that doesn't ring alarm bells, then nothing will.

In my view, it is entirely immaterial whether you have been in office for 5 minutes or 5 years. This issue should be top of your to do pile, particularly when the issue cuts across all policy areas (national security, foreign relations, the economy, immigration, energy, science and technology etc etc).

We are like a ship in a storm with a broken rudder. The ship in that scernario needs a working rudder, just like we need sensible and stable leadership. Trump and others are very far from sensible and stable leadership.

* FWIW - I don't think your A and B are entirely accurate. Obama was voted in twice and comfortably on both occasions. Your B is closer to the truth, but you need to add in her complacency and her baggage as well. What about the C, namely the lies, dirty tricks, and foreign influence? Or D the general drift towards populism globally (see also Brexit, which was also characterised by lies etc)?

[monadnocky]

50 years ago the consensus of experts were warning us about global cooling.

This is a pernicious myth, repeated ad nauseum that completely mischaracterizes science, scientific method, and a means by which difficult-to-understand, complex concepts are hijacked and simplified for popular consumption. While there may have been a some limited understanding that global ice maximums may, at some point in the future, approach historical latitudes, nobody was suggesting that this was likely to happen any time soon, and may be a "cycle" that will repeat hundreds of thousands of years in the future. Climate science was in its infancy in the 1950's through the 1970's without serious computing power, which now is much more available. It was never a "consensus" among climatologists to begin with, contrary to ill-informed journalism suggesting otherwise. Don't take my word for it. Ask any climatologist.

The "those ivory tower eggheads, what do they know" approach is a weak argument in the face of overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic contributions to climate change. It would be like saying that Newton's understanding of gravity was completely wrong, so why should we trust contemporary understandings of gravity (even though those contemporary understandings have allowed for precise measurements of various phenomena as well as interplanetary travel for which Newtonian physics could never allow). Contemporary understandings of climate change may be off to **some** degree, but to point to historical misunderstandings (even if these are wildly mischaracterized, which they are) as a rationale for willfull ignorance of current science is completely illogical.

The logic of this is, frankly, inane.