Rhaedas

I was told in posts from the last disaster that Spain has floods all the time and this isn’t a big deal. I’m beginning to think they might have been not telling the truth.

Something about pigs and lipstick…

They aren’t going to abolish NOAA. Just…cut out stuff that goes against what they want to hear. I guess it’s the same thing in the end.

When I first saw one pass by me in reality, my first reaction was “jesus”. And the colors I’ve seen on display (a Tesla store is nearby), wtf? Not that a good color would help a lot, it still looks very wrong.

You’re correct on the marketability. You either sell it to be released later defeating the purpose, or by hopefully sequestering it to help with extraction of fossil fuel, which again…maybe not worth it. To actually remove massive amounts of CO2 and permanently take it out of the cycle is akin to burying money.

I see the main problem not as the cost, but the scalability. Our best efforts so far don’t even amount to a fraction of a percent. There have been recent developments that could help some, so that would be a percentage of our annual emissions. A long way to go when the preferable solution is to remove emission amounts not only being emitted, but past years’ amounts too.

I assume you mean net zero, which isn’t zero emissions but countering existing and hopefully lower emissions with some tech to remove its output. Actual zero emissions is…well, that’s cessation of human activity. And there would still be emissions from the feedbacks already started with either.

Let’s be clear, human emissions even at our current rate are just a percentage of total emissions, and act as a pushing force to drive things further. Taking that away is better, but it doesn’t stop the direction we’ve set things in motion. If we could somehow pull carbon back down to under 300ppm or even less…that would start to brake things, at least reduce the heat input finally, but so much other damage has been done that I think even that kind of miracle wouldn’t be enough.

I get your stance, we have to do what we can now to minimize the future results, and I agree. I just disagree on where even the best actions from humans (which are very idealistic) would get us.

Think about how everything changed during Covid.

A good example. Some things did change. In good and bad directions. A lot was handwaved around to get back to status quo as much as possible. It’s exactly how resistant we are to change, and climate is no different. It’s actually worse, since it’s so much more subtle and long term than a disease that is hurting people around you, and yet people even denied that as much as possible.

There’s simply too much baked into the climate’s inertial change and the expected/already started feedbacks. We haven’t change enough to show progress, and are already touching the limits in some methods of measurement. The IPCC gave up years ago and admitted we will shoot past 1.5 but would just use future tech that doesn’t exist to pull it back down.

I know there’s a drive to try and look at the positive, especially since anything but is called doomerism and even blamed for the inaction. I wonder how long we’re going to keep fooling ourselves that we can fix this and even go backwards. We need to accept where we’re going and plan for adaptation for a harsher world. Can’t wait until we shift into “if we can just keep limits below 2.0” while not changing anything.

Georgia too, probably others. And the ironic thing is the same people who call for them to be deported will acknowledge they are hard working people who get little pay for the job. They just didn’t think what their actions would result in. Kind of like this election.

The Sun God provides for us then and now without judgement or asking of prayer. And it’s real.

Or perhaps look at it differently, phrased “what could we have done then”, and see if anything is still relevant. Not to fix it, I think we’re far too along now, but we can still take measures to reduce the total impact in the far future and adapt to what’s coming. My first suggestion sounds simplistic but it’s the hardest thing to do for some people - reduce consumption of everything possible. Had we slammed the brakes back then on consumption and growth, it would be a different world and would have bought us more time (I think we still were in trouble even with an optimistic reaction).

Companies have no purpose beyond producing a profit though whatever means. That’s where regulations come in. I removed a long diatribe about regulations and control and etc., the short is that it really is all about the shareholders in the end, and left unthrottled you’ll get what you get.

We’re going to develop or find some efficient life form to break down plastics quickly. Solve our waste problem. And it’s going to get loose into the wild and start breaking down plastics everywhere, uncontrollably. Straight out of Larry Niven’s Ringworld series (theirs was a superconductor-eating bug).

Probably not though, that’s just science fiction that never happens in reality. The nylon-eating bacteria that naturally evolved found long ago in waste areas never broke out to destroy all nylon. So at least there’s an example of it not happening.

I thought we had a good idea what was where in orbit. How is this a sudden surprise? I had first read it thinking that it had drifted recently for some reason, but it’s been in that place for 50 years. I get that as more satellites go up things become more risky, but this should have been a known problem a long time ago.

There’s a huge pool of non-voters to pull from since voter turnout never a high percentage, so perhaps a lot more turned out after Trump’s term to make sure he didn’t have a second. Then the question is, where’d they go this time around?

There’s also population growth, but I doubt that’s a huge factor.

Also, “don’t look up.”

I voted to stop the meteor. Now I’m reading comics.

On the other hand we have had some that we called comedians who spoke about the ridiculousness of people and society they observed, and we found that funny. Then we saw those comedians got bitter over their lifetime.

Clippy in Paint.

“I see that you’re trying to draw a…a thing or something. What is that?”

A couple of minutes of eternity.