It's Good News Friday! (CLIMATE CHANGE)

But not human life.

Your analogy is flawed.

There is no positive side to cancer. A warmer climate and an atmosphere with more CO2 actually have benefits. The benefits must be considered in any analysis.

And one cannot adapt to cancer. Climate change unfolds over decades to centuries, and human beings can readily adapt in that timeframe.

And cancer does not allow you time. We can anticipate future technologies that will reduce the output of CO2 (or even recapture it).

No, but humans are much more adaptable to their environment.

Sexy bald head.
Prescription pot.
Telling your frustrating relatives what you really think of them.

See, you can play that game with fuckin' anything.

One can get those things without cancer.

A warmer climate kills fewer people than a colder climate. Currently, to the tune of around 100,000 net lives saved per year.

We've had more CO2, yes.

We haven't also had industry pumping out waste heat into that environment like your grandmother's thermostat was in control.

And yes, it can take decades. We've HAD decades - it's gotten worse, just like we said because you and those like you have ignored the fuck out of it and will continue to do so, because "meh, tomorrow's issue".

Actually, I just saw the bullshit "warm climate saves lives!" post and I am literally done with you.

If you honestly believe that, shoot yourself in the head.

If you don't and are just fucking around, shoot yourself in the head.

In all honesty thinking about the future repercussions of our actions is not something humans have really ever evolved the ability to do. Individually we might have some people who can do it, but as a species we are really fail at that sort of thing and there is no indication we are capable of turning that around.

This is Dayton-level "debate". Ignore it.

Paladin, old friend, you are wildly, laughably off-base here. We're not talking about climate change that occurs over centuries or millennia, but rather decades or even years. Much too quickly for the biosphere to adapt. We're already seeing massive die-offs in some areas. Human beings cannot survive in conditions of high temperature and high humidity over prolonged periods. We're not adapted for it. And lately there's data that suggests the atlantic ocean thermal conveyor may be weakening, which if that gets bad enough leads to much colder northern temps and much hotter equatorial temps.

If Earth winds up with high temperatures and high CO2, that probably works out well for plant life but not so much for animal life. In the meantime, current climate zones get hopelessly screwed up, with drought, torrential monsoons, and more & stronger hurricanes becoming ever more common. Just look at what's going on with Lake Meade for a preview of coming attractions.

Lanz, old friend, you are succumbing to fear-mongering alarmism.

Like that stupid Doctor Fouche!

Actually I've been f0llowing the science. Just like I did with COVID. Avoiding the fear-mongering alarmism.

Sometimes when people warn you about something it is for real.

Don't mind me, i lived my life and I am hoping to see some crazy shit before I die.

Are you... are you asking him out on a date?

Alarmism is justified here.

I'm alarmed by the number of people in covid denial. Same ones who voted trump and are in anthropogenic climate change denial.

There's a shitload of them.

Adaptable in what sense?

Biologically we have adapted over evolutionary time scales, but the danger is much, much more immediate and the more complex an organism the less scope there is for fundamental changes in the template already in place. We have no time for natural selection to occur here even if that were possible.

Behaviourally I don't think we are all that adaptable en masses.

Where we have thrived, developed cultures, science, medicine, architecture, laws it would be more accurate to say we have adapted the environment to suit us than adapted to suit it.

Where it is cold we create heat sources, where it is hot we industrialise the means to cool our surroundings. Where predators threaten we come to dominate and eradicate or control them, where there are shortages of food we rearrange ecosystems to more efficiently service us.

What is becoming increasingly difficult to deny is that our efforts to adapt our surroundings are the cause of the problems we now face.

We have ensured our prosperity but failed to comprehend the consequences. The more we "adapt" the more changes we inflict and exacerbate the self inflicted threats we are trying to survive.

I'm increasingly convinced the only viable long term future for humanity is one in which we are a reduced force, one less capable of poisoning the well.

I almost said "what, are we gonna grow fucking gills by 2050?!?!" but it would have gone ignored.

Then it's adapting to the contest over who gets to live out his days in peaceful solitude, on a throne of skulls.

Oh no!! Albert has taken the mask off!!

Albie, the mask was clear.

Our mental capabilities mean we can adapt pretty much on a minute by minute basis. If it's too cold, I put on a jacket. If it's too hot, I turn on the fan.

Adapting en masse is the story of civilization.

To be clear: by use of the word "adaptation," I mean using our abilities to make the situation amenable to us. Whether that be by forming ourselves to the environment, or forming the environment to us makes little difference. We can do and always have done both. And we've been astonishingly successful at it.

Yes, and--barring some truly cataclysmic event--starvation is all but impossible.

Imagine our ancestors, slaving away for enough food to keep them alive another day. By contrast, we only have to work a few minutes a day to cover our basic nutritional needs.

As with all endeavors, the debate is not about reality vs. some ideal. It's about reality vs. the alternate reality.

You want abundant crops? You need smart land usage, phosphate fertilizers, pesticides, and crops that are resistant to blights and pests. You need farm equipment that is sturdy, reliable, and efficient. You need efficient transport systems to get those crops to market, or to the next point in the production cycle. You need refrigeration to keep them from fresh. And so forth and so on. Each of those steps carries with it environmental costs, but the costs are worth it because starvation is, like, really bad.

I fear such a course would only lead to stagnation and poverty. And the political system required to maintain that order would likely make all humankind subservient.

You've just illustrated my point.

We only have to work a few minutes a day to meet our nutritional needs.

We turn on a fan if it's too hot.

We make "smart" use of crop growing land.

All these things and more are true, yet all of them are also part of the problem. These things make our lives easier but they each represent a small part of a bigger picture where our ingenuity is exactly what set this ball rolling.

People aren't prepared to sacrifice the lifestyles they've come to expect, they want solutions which have little or no impact on them personally, but that ship has sailed. Either we step back and accept we can't go on or (more likely) circumstances take the choice away from us.

It won't be you.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Yes. Because somewhere there's a factory cranking out fertilizer and another cranking out pesticides. And there's a laboratory where new strains of plants are developed. And a plant that makes plows and tractors (and assorted smaller factories that provide the tires, the engines, the computer chips, etc. inside those). And a vast expanse of farmland that is worked by farmers and their employees. And there's a highway department building roads and bridges, and a railroad maintaining and upgrading track, so the farm products can be transported. And another factory making locomotives. And so on and so on. A nearly infinite regression that means we only have to work a few minutes each day for our sustenance.

If you're not arguing for yet more ingenuity, then you're arguing against these things. Again, stagnation and poverty. Try convincing someone who lives in a place with hot, humid summers that they shouldn't have a fan. And that's a small thing.

I think that's a false dilemma, but if it isn't...people won't change that radically unless they're forced to. You won't get people to choose what you propose.

The death of bees would do it.
And we're getting there.
Plants don't get pollinated, the food chain collapses, we go bye bye.

Who's we in this context? For vast swathes of the world and even your own country that isn't correct.

I understand the infinite regression, it's the point being made.

The gains in personal quality of life are only made possible by a trade off where our long term survival is impacted. We are a species whose most powerful evolutionary gifts are almost inevitably self destructive where the short term gains are more than offset by the long term loss.

We can't bring ourselves to unite in the face of a global pandemic with people fighting tooth and nail against the tiniest impositions on their freedom and comfort even in the face of insurmountable evidence that those impositions are more than justified on a species level.

How are we to be expected to make the far greater sacrifices required to avoid a self inflicted extinction level event?

We have, in a few centuries, brought ourselves to a point where there should no longer be any doubt. Can you really see us making the necessary course correct at this stage?

I can't. I think we'll still be rioting and ranting at each other on Facebook as we choke, starve and burn to death.

We and our selfishness and vaunted intelligence are the problem, not the solution. We've brought ourselves to the brink of extinction where the stupid lumbering dinosaurs reigned for millions of years.

Which @We Are Borg is exactly the futility being llustrated with the derail.

Those of us willing to see the problem already did. Those of us unwilling to see it never will.

We'll just adapt and change and come up with technological solutions says the side that fights against adapting or changing or measures to encourage technological solutions.