Ok, this global warming shit is getting out of hand...

[SumJongGuy]

I just hear so many people listing all the obstacles to action as if that is an excuse to not act. Yeah, the reality sucks. Climate change is already happening, and reality is we aren't going to keep it to 1.5C or even 2C. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't start immediately an make the issue a priority. 2C is way worse than 1.5, but 2.5 is worse than 2, and 3 is worse than 2.5 and so on. We've got to keep it as low as possible and then hope we can come up with carbon capture technology capable of lowering the temperature to 1.5 or even lower.

Giving up leads to a planet where half the land on earth is so hot that humans can't survive.

"Now if that happened, something like half the Earth’s currently inhabited land would become too hot to survive on; and when I say too hot to survive on I don’t mean it’s difficult to grow beans or air conditioning bills are inconveniently high, I mean if you go outside you die of hotness. I mean, places that were an average of 80ºF would be now an average of 170-180ºF, literally too hot for human beings to go outside and survive"
David Roberts http://visibleorder.com/climate-chan...mple/#comments

But giving up lift served skiing and air travel as the way to access vacation paradise locations isn't something anyone on this forum would consider. Hitch a ride on a jumbo jet a thousand miles or so across the planet a couple times a season is OK as long as I'm earning my turns? Pretty sure staying home and riding the 300 foot vert lift all season would be way more earth friendly.

[Sirshredalot]

But giving up lift served skiing and air travel as the way to access vacation paradise locations isn't something anyone on this forum would consider. Hitch a ride on a jumbo jet a thousand miles or so across the planet a couple times a season is OK as long as I'm earning my turns? Pretty sure staying home and riding the 300 foot vert lift all season would be way more earth friendly.

But it's trivially inexpensive to run a chair lift on wind/solar and most people here would happily pony up an extra C note per plane ticket if that meant we were running planes on biofuels and thus not rendering the planet uninhabitable.

Steve is right that it is a tragedy of the commons style problem, but we have solved these in the past. Look at SO2 mitigation or ITQ fisheries management for examples. These problems can be solved with decent leadership and political will.

[SumJongGuy]

But it's trivially inexpensive to run a chair lift on wind/solar and most people here would happily pony up an extra C note per plane ticket if that meant we were running planes on biofuels and thus not rendering the planet uninhabitable.

Steve is right that it is a tragedy of the commons style problem, but we have solved these in the past. Look at SO2 mitigation or ITQ fisheries management for examples. These problems can be solved with decent leadership and political will.

It's more than just running the lifts, add in all the land that gets cleared, all the other infrastructure and surrounding community carbon footprint, everyone's burning wood for that mountain ambiance.. Gotta admit I REALLY LOVE staring in to a warm fireplace after a cold day of skiing. Roads, Co2 pushing water out of snow guns, etc.. Our sport and passion is quite eco antagonistic at the base level.. pun intended. Is anyone willing to give that up to help save the planet?

[Sirshredalot]

It's more than just running the lifts, add in all the land that gets cleared, all the other infrastructure and surrounding community carbon footprint, everyone's burning wood for that mountain ambiance.. Gotta admit I REALLY LOVE staring in to a warm fireplace after a cold day of skiing. Roads, Co2 pushing water out of snow guns, etc.. Our sport and passion is quite eco antagonistic at the base level.. pun intended. Is anyone willing to give that up to help save the planet?

Sure, there are other environmental drawbacks to your typical ski resort town, but clearing land for ski runs and roads doesn't contribute to climate change (unless you want to count the loss of the cleared vegetation as a carbon sink, but that's not much). And heating your house with wood is theoretically completelu renewable with no net carbon impact (though the local particulate emissions can be nasty). Vail Resorts and several ski towns have pledged to be 100 percent powered by renewables within the next few years, and nobody thinks that's unreasonable.

I'm totally with you on air travel , and on the spirit of me-first, fuck-you consumerism in general. The tourist towns are something of an orgy of gross consumerism, for sure. But if we all fly a little less and spend a little more to do so, there is no technical reason why we can't be riding sustainably-powered chairlifts, buying sustainable over-priced hats, and eating sustainable over-priced dinners out in Telluride or wherever in 50 years.

[SumJongGuy]

^^^And traveling to get there in anything non EV. Not sure about this, but the production of the gear probably also costs some carbon credits. Lots of plastics and resins, steel, etc..

[wyeaster]

The Pope has already declared climate change is man made and it is our responsibility to do something about it

trying to distract from institutional pedophilia

[Slopetime]

trying to distract from institutional pedophilia

If what's been reported abut him is true then I really could care less what he says about anything ever again. I really had high hopes for this man, he seems to be turning into just another pope who hides institutionalized pedophilia.

[Hood26]

We heard everybody bitching about the fucking cold because highs were below 0. We bundled up and skied it because the snow was good and we remember MT being that cold all the time. Obviously, there's been some population turnover, but it is amazing how many people (even self-described outdoorsy people!) seem to forget what things were like just a decade

Today on the news the team was talking about how lovely our week of dry 70s degree weather will be “so nice.”

I am becoming convinced that most people in the temperate regions don’t care. They need to be shown the plight of those in the tropics. They need to see the destruction and plight, but that isn’t on the news very often, and people don’t watch the news very much anyway.

I am optimistic for the group of kids suing the US. Their care is coming up in the District Court at the end of this month.

[Hood26]

Regarding the suggestion of training bears to eat evangelicals:

That’s too evil. Let’s just reintroduce bears to all of their former habitats. If there were bears roaming every city and town, people would pick up their shit. When they were tired of picking up their shit, they would start buying less shit.

[shafty85]

I'm uncertain if this is satire or reality.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...climate-report

My favorite sentence:

"Even unchecked climate change is not on the scale of a nuclear holocaust; its costs are more akin to a couple world wars and global pandemics."

[Hood26]

Not satire. That’s their typical slant.

Agreed on best line. What kind of arguement is that?

[SumJongGuy]

Here's the satire version..

Climate Change Deniers Present Graphic Description Of What Earth Must Look Like For Them To Believe

[Sirshredalot]

If what's been reported abut him is true then I really could care less what he says about anything ever again. I really had high hopes for this man, he seems to be turning into just another pope who hides institutionalized pedophilia.

The former Cardinal trying to slag Francis is a right-wingers with an ax to grind who thinks the Pope is too aggressive in punishing bishops and isn't blaming the gays hard enough. So maybe take it with a grain of salt. Not that Francis is cleaning house nearly as aggressively as I'd prefer, but he's in a nasty fight with those kinds of folks right now in order to try to get any kind of reform done.

In any case, the leadership stance on climate change should just be taken as a welcome positive and shouldn't be mixed up with the bureaucratic infighting in the Vatican or past instances of circling the wagons to protect perverts.

I don't know how to convince local news to cover high 70s or low 80s in late October in the Northeast as alarming. Local news is vapid.

[splitter]

Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[SKIP IN7RO]

Let's train bears to hunt evangelicals.

I'm your hucklebeary.

[WMD]

But giving up lift served skiing and air travel as the way to access vacation paradise locations isn't something anyone on this forum would consider. Hitch a ride on a jumbo jet a thousand miles or so across the planet a couple times a season is OK as long as I'm earning my turns? Pretty sure staying home and riding the 300 foot vert lift all season would be way more earth friendly.

Personal change, while important, is not going to make a dent in climate change anytime soon. You want to go fly to go skiing at a great ski resort? Stopping doing that will have minimal impact, but stopping burning coal and eliminating all fossil fuels will have a major impact. As the IPCC report says, "There is no historical precedent for the scale of the necessary transitions, in particular in a socially and economically sustainable way."

To prevent 2.7 degrees of warming, the report said, greenhouse pollution must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050. It also found that, by 2050, use of coal as an electricity source would have to drop from nearly 40 percent today to between 1 and 7 percent. Renewable energy such as wind and solar, which make up about 20 percent of the electricity mix today, would have to increase to as much as 67 percent.

“This report makes it clear: There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University and an author of the report.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/c...port-2040.html

Best thing you (we) can do? Have uncomfortable conversations about climate change. Help people care about taking action. Vote. Support climate heroes who are running for office. We need to get off of fossil fuels completely, and soon. Push for a carbon tax.

Pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breathe. But we could hardly be worse-served.

While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71%. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet.

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-indivi...story.html#jCp

The change we need is systemic. Your wife cares about the issue but drinks a case of La Croix every day? Keep donating, and talking about it. Her drinking La Croix or not isn't the issue. We have all been told that unless we do everything possible ourselves we have no right to say anything. I say bullshit. If I buy an electric car it doesn't matter, but when the entire fuel system has changed so that is all anyone can buy, now we are getting somewhere. We are better served by spending our energy on systemic change.

Of course we need people to consume less and innovate low-carbon alternatives – build sustainable farms, invent battery storages, spread zero-waste methods. But individual choices will most count when the economic system can provide viable, environmental options for everyone—not just an affluent or intrepid few.

If affordable mass transit isn’t available, people will commute with cars. If local organic food is too expensive, they won’t opt out of fossil fuel-intensive super-market chains. If cheap mass produced goods flow endlessly, they will buy and buy and buy. This is the con-job of neoliberalism: to persuade us to address climate change through our pocket-books, rather than through power and politics.

Eco-consumerism may expiate your guilt. But it’s only mass movements that have the power to alter the trajectory of the climate crisis. This requires of us first a resolute mental break from the spell cast by neoliberalism: to stop thinking like individuals.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...as-individuals

[SumJongGuy]

Personal change, while important, is not going to make a dent in climate change anytime soon. You want to go fly to go skiing at a great ski resort? Stopping doing that will have minimal impact, but stopping burning coal and eliminating all fossil fuels will have a major impact. As the IPCC report says, "There is no historical precedent for the scale of the necessary transitions, in particular in a socially and economically sustainable way."

How many jets are in the air at any given time? As many as they can push down every runway of every airport per hour worldwide. How many people on those jets are flying because of a life and death necessity to be on that jet.. especially with the modern internet conferencing capabilities? How many are just pissing away money and time because they can instead of taking a more frugal and earth friendly solution to their need or desire to physically be someplace else in a hurry? Yes, power grids are a bigger fish, but if we're talking about getting everyone over to EVs, we should also be talking about getting those gas hog beasts out of the air or also running on electricity. Maybe we need to either triple the cost of air travel or start limiting it some other way to offset that decadence.

[WMD]

How many jets are in the air at any given time? As many as they can push down every runway of every airport per hour worldwide. How many people on those jets are flying because of a life and death necessity to be on that jet.. especially with the modern internet conferencing capabilities? How many are just pissing away money and time because they can instead of taking a more frugal and earth friendly solution to their need or desire to physically be someplace else in a hurry? Yes, power grids are a bigger fish, but if we're talking about getting everyone over to EVs, we should also be talking about getting those gas hog beasts out of the air or also running on electricity. Maybe we need to either triple the cost of air travel or start limiting it some other way to offset that decadence.

I don't disagree. I found a stat that in the UK 15% of people take 70% of the flights. We need to cut down on that for sure.

We need to electrify everything. All fossil fuels need to be phased out by 2040 or 2050. That means jet fuel too.

We do need to change our lifestyles dramatically, but most important for now is to change our energy systems.

Policy changes are more effective for now than individual lifestyle changes.

No airport expansion and no new fossil fuel development are good places to start while we work to get a price on carbon.

[Slopetime]

The former Cardinal trying to slag Francis is a right-wingers with an ax to grind who thinks the Pope is too aggressive in punishing bishops and isn't blaming the gays hard enough. So maybe take it with a grain of salt. Not that Francis is cleaning house nearly as aggressively as I'd prefer, but he's in a nasty fight with those kinds of folks right now in order to try to get any kind of reform done.

In any case, the leadership stance on climate change should just be taken as a welcome positive and shouldn't be mixed up with the bureaucratic infighting in the Vatican or past instances of circling the wagons to protect perverts.

I don't know how to convince local news to cover high 70s or low 80s in late October in the Northeast as alarming. Local news is vapid.

I sincerely hope that's the case. I stopped being a believer long ago, but the things Francis said truly impressed me. He really seemed to grasp what religion should be doing.

I'm going to have to hold back on my endorsement for right now on your comments. I doubt it'll affect much any way. I appreciate the comments.

[SumJongGuy]

All fossil fuels need to be phased out by 2040 or 2050.

This won't happen until the most powerful people in the world have transferred their investments away from fossil fuels in to some other commodity that further ensures their enormous wealth and global control. It appears a lot of them are now trying to corner the market on drinkable water... and that would probably include water used in snow making. Seems like something that couldn't possibly happen, but nothing surprises me anymore.

[liv2ski]

Sounds like the getting out of hand par is still coming for us. Time to move bitchez.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/here-s-w...-fo-1829793126

A United Nations report published last week said we have about a decade to get climate change under control, which—let’s be honest—isn’t likely to happen. So break out your goalie masks and harpoon guns, a Mad Max future awaits! Now, as new research points out, we even know where on Earth the inevitable water wars are most likely to take place.

Sarcasm aside, this report is actually quite serious.

Published today in Global Environmental Change, the paper identifies several hotspots around the globe where “hydro-political issues,” in the parlance of the researchers, are likely to give rise to geopolitical tensions, and possibly even conflict. The authors of the new report, a team from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), say the escalating effects of climate change, in conjunction with ongoing trends in population growth, could trigger regional instability and social unrest in regions where freshwater is scarce, and where bordering nations have to manage and share this increasingly scarce commodity.

Obviously, the causes of geopolitical tension and conflict are complex, but as the new report makes clear, we shouldn’t underestimate the role that water is going to play in the future. Competition for dwindling water resources, the authors say, will exacerbate tensions on a global scale in the coming decades, with certain regions more vulnerable than others. But how are the various factors that influence water demand and availability likely to affect populations around the world?

[Jong Lafitte]

Interesting podcast with Nobel winning Yale Economist Nordhaus on a potential solution to global warming:

(scroll down, don't hit the play now thing, that's an ad, the player is lower)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/p...ype=collection

I would have liked more discussion about the "overshoot" scenario, because that's obviously where we're headed. We have the USSC and the Citizens United decision to thank in part for this.

Fucking depressing. Like, actually leading to symptoms of actual fucking depression. I feel hopeless. I seriously calculate these predicted changes in terms of "will I be dead before such and such place or animal is destroyed?" Also a big reason I have no kids.
Shit feels fucking pointless, with all the money the deniers have and a willing audience, holy fuck. All I have to hope for now is that the price I pay will be less than others. Time to Bull UP!!! we have to go down fighting.

[neufox47]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/energ...lobal-warming/

The oceans may be warming far faster than previous measurements indicated...

[SumJongGuy]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/energ...lobal-warming/

The oceans may be warming far faster than previous measurements indicated...

Nuclear winter of something similar. I'm starting to believe that we're headed for a legit revolution if the current administration doesn't pull us all in to a major global conflict before we can remove them, vote them out, or prove they're rigging elections even more than just the massive voter suppression on the surface.

[wyeaster]

we are not heading for a legit revolution because revolution requires organization and sacrifice. we are headed for chaos.