BS: climate crisis - how do we go from here?

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 06:51 AM

https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/19/15/2019BCSC1580.htm

Terrible things facts! attackthe messenger all you want, the message cannot be refuted. You just make yourself seem silly.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 08:05 AM

This says it all about that link above. From Wikipedia:

Steyn has been published by magazines and newspapers around the world, and is a regular guest host of the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show. He also guest hosts Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, on which he regularly appears as a guest.

In other words, facts don't matter, the politics and the spin do. You're judged by the company you keep.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 08:19 AM

Rush Limbaugh
New one on me so I looked him up
"Limbaugh frequently criticizes what he regards as liberal policies and politicians, as well as what he perceives as a pervasive liberal bias in major U.S. media. Limbaugh is among the highest-paid people in U.S. media, signing a contract in 2008 for $400 million through 2016.[5] In 2017, Forbes listed his earnings at $84 million for the previous 12 months, and ranked him the 11th highest-earning celebrity in the world.[6] His most recent contract, signed on July 31, 2016, will take his radio program to 2020, its 32nd year."
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 08:39 AM

More Limbaugh-dancing here
Racism, Christian fundamentalism, trumpism, supporter of extending the criminalising of drug use, Capital punishment, removal of need for sexual consent, opposes homosexual equality, feminism......

His views on the Environment
"Environmental issues
Limbaugh is critical of environmentalism and climate science.[87] He has disputed claims of anthropogenic global warming, and the relationship between CFCs and depletion of the ozone layer, saying the scientific evidence does not support them.[81] Limbaugh has argued against the scientific consensus on climate change saying it is "just a bunch of scientists organized around a political proposition."[88] He has also argued that projections of climate change are the product of ideologically-motivated computer simulations without the proper support of empirical data, a claim which has been widely debunked.[89][90] Limbaugh has used the term "environmentalist wacko" when referring to left-leaning environmental advocates.[91] As a rhetorical device, he has also used the term to refer to more mainstream climate scientists and other environmental scientists and advocates with whom he disagrees.[92] Limbaugh opposed pollution credits, including a carbon cap-and-trade system, as a way to disproportionately benefit major American investment banks, particularly Goldman Sachs, and claimed that it would destroy the American national economy.[93]
Limbaugh has written that "there are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent [sic] in 1492," a claim that is disputed by the United States Forest Service and the American Forestry Association, which state that the precolonial forests have been reduced by about 24 percent or nearly 300 million acres.[94][95]
Limbaugh strongly opposed the proposed Green New Deal and its sponsor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.[96]"

Just the place to look for tolerance and humanity
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 08:56 AM

So I assume both Carrol and stilly river sage deny the findings if the New Brunswick court. How laughable!

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 11:05 AM

Where are we now and what are 'we' doing?
We are only in the global agitation phase.
For example since 6AM today DC has demonstrations to block major pinch points of traffic with thier bodies. Making inconveiniences for commuters having to sit in their gasoline cars at rush hour is a pithy response at this late date.

Population will be the last thing we ever address seriously.

On the bright side the bastards like the climate denying Kochs are dying in front of us. However the climatastrophe of the melting tundra and the great methane release of the Cheney fracking scheme makes the advance of climate change a hundred times faster.

Some countries like Germany are taking extraordinary but tiny steps compared to what the US, Russia and China could do.

Coinciding with this agitation phase, is the pioneering efforts of renewable energy, but that takes a great deal of time we do not have.

Every year these last 5 years has exceeded the prior years in high temperatures. If a future energy source technology arrives it better do so immediately.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 12:04 PM

Donuel you may well be correct but I do not believe the science is as settled as the media would have you believe.


https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/medieval-warm-period
I am more than a little sceptical. Politics is driving the science and funding the results.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 01:00 PM

The protesters are well meaning idiots.

IF climate change is controlled my our actions ( a very debatable point, but no-one listens to facts here - re analysis of climate models presently being used, solar variability and historical trends)) it would make a LOT more sense to try and SAVE the people threatened by said change than to try and stop it- IT HAS ALREADY passed beyond simple correction by ANY amount of CO2 reduction. ( see methane release from polar regions et al)

But it is MUCH easier for Politicians to just say "Do what I tell you and everything will be ok" than to actually move people away from regions impacted by sea level rise or climate shift, and redistribute food production instead of money ( that just flows into the said politician's pockets) All that land that WAS tundra could now be breadbasket- but that would take an effort that no-one wants to make. Far better to get rid of all private transportation, and let the government decide where ( we get to go ( and who can go there.)

The idea that ANY beef production ( or dairy) can be sustained ( given the methane produced ) while calling for the draconian CO2 reductions ( and THEIR impact on the environment AND human lives) is a fantasy.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 01:17 PM

The ONLY method that mankind presently has to CHANGE the present climate trend is a good, old fashioned nuclear winter- and that takes care of the excess population as well.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 01:24 PM

Why are you even discussing Dr. Mann? There's way more going on in that tempestuous teapot than you can use here to suggest climate change doesn't really exist. In his own field Mann has been largely discredited (though the AAAS seems to like his outreach attempts); he's right up there with the British doctor who suggested (with no evidence) that vaccines cause autism. He has a tight reign on his own publicity and clearly monitors the Wikipedia page about himself. He seems to be protecting his brand, he isn't contributing to science.

Now try looking at the 97% of scientists who acknowledge that climate change has sped up due to human activity.

Easterbrook:
Oxygen isotope studies in Greenland, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Tibet, China, New Zealand, and elsewhere, plus tree-ring data from many sites around the world all confirm the presence of a global Medieval Warm Period.

The Hockey Stick Trick
Over a period of many decades, several thousand papers were published establishing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from about 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age (LIA) from about 1300 A.D. to 1915 A.D. as global climate changes. Thus, it came as quite a surprise when Mann et al. (1998) (Fig. 28) concluded that neither the MWP nor the Little Ice Age actually happened on the basis of a tree-ring study and that became the official position of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Mann appears to have tried for a paradigm shift, but it backfired and scientists resumed doing real science and paid attention to studies that show actual facts.

The contrived elimination of the MWP and Little Ice Age by Mann et al. became known as “the hockey stick” of climate change where the handle of the hockey stick was supposed to represent constant climate until increasing CO2 levels caused global warming, the sharp bend in the lower hockey stick.

The Mann et al. “hockey stick” temperature curve was at so at odds with thousands of published papers, including the Greenland GRIP ice core isotope data, sea surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea sediments (Fig. 29) (Keigwin, 1996), paleo-temperature data other than tree rings (Fig. 30) (Loehle, 2007), and sea surface temperatures near Iceland (Fig. 31) (Sicre et al., 2008) one can only wonder how a single tree-ring study could purport to prevail over such a huge amount of data. At best, if the tree-ring study did not accord with so much other data, it should simply mean that the tree rings were not sensitive to climate change, not that all the other data were wrong. McIntyre and McKitrick (2003, 2005) evaluated the data in the Mann paper and concluded that the Mann curve was invalid “due to collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects”. Thus, the “hockey stick” concept of global climate change is now widely considered totally invalid and an embarrassment to the IPCC.

Why, then, did Mann's hockey stick persuade so many non-scientists and gain such widespread circulation? The answer is apparent in revelations from e-mails disclosed in the Climategate scandal (Mosher and Fuller, 2010; Montford, 2010). These e-mails describe how they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to perpetuate a dogmatic view of anthropogenic global warming.

With this kind of friend, Mann or Easterbrook, climate scientists don't need enemies. Scientists didn't need to deny previous cool spells in order for climate change to be accepted as real. We understand that there are lots of factors that have warmed and cooled the planet over billions of years, but we all understand that human pollution is as bad or worse than the explosion of a supervolcano for super-charging the atmosphere.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 01:30 PM

Stop the name calling. We assume, when that's all you have left to deploy, is that you have nothing.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 01:40 PM

https://heated.world/p/bird-man-cries-wolf

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 04:02 PM

"Over a period of many decades, several thousand papers were published establishing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from about 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age (LIA) from about 1300 A.D. to 1915 A.D. as global climate changes."

So obviously we are NOW entering a period of warming, REGARDLESS of Man.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 04:02 PM

but we all understand that human pollution is as bad or worse than the explosion of a supervolcano for super-charging the atmosphere.

The jury is still out on that statement. You also overlook the importance of timescale.
"If yellowstone erupted (or more accurately when)for volcanologists, the biggest worry is prevaiing wind and ash distribution. A circle about 500 miles (800 kilometers) across surrounding Yellowstone might see more than 4 inches (10 centimeters) of ash on the ground, scientists reported( Aug. 27, 2014, in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.)

The ash would be pretty devastating for the United States, scientists predict. The fallout would include short-term destruction of Midwest agriculture, and rivers and streams would be clogged .
People living in the Pacific Northwest might also be choking on Yellowstone's fallout.

"People who live upwind from eruptions need to be concerned about the big ones," said Larry Mastin, a USGS volcanologist and lead author of the 2014 ash study. Big eruptions often spawn giant umbrella clouds that push ash upwind across half the continent, Mastin said. These clouds get their name because the broad, flat cloud hovering over the volcano resembles an umbrella. "An umbrella cloud fundamentally changes how ash is distributed," Mastin said."
Yellowstone Volcano's next supereruption is likely to emit vast quantities of gases such as sulfur dioxide, which forms a sulfur aerosol that absorbs sunlight and reflects some of it back to space. The resulting climate cooling could last up to a decade. The temporary climate shift could alter rainfall patterns, and, along with severe frosts, cause widespread crop losses and famine.
These events outlined, although largely conjectural, would have an immediate undeniable impact. The only real question is the extent of the ash, the duration and extent of the impact on climate, That these events would occur is inevitable, the uncertainty is the severity.
Just as well the Snowdonia supervolcano in Wales is extinct.
Krakatoa was a smaller event yet killed up to 130000 people and Average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) in the year following the eruption. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 04:08 PM

No, the jury it isn't "still out." Only in your opinion. The ash eventually clears the air, the ozone and the CO2 remain, and the http://350.org site will offer you tons of science to prove this.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 04:09 PM

Over hundreds of thousands of years, there HAVE been warm periods and periods of glaciers. Those who cite such an obvious fact as denial of the effect that billions of humans with coal & oil digging & burning and lumbering and burning and mechanized fishing...etc... can have are just wearing blinders to avoid what they don't like to think about.
   "Senator Snowball" of Oklahoma personified that attitude by his stupid confusion of "current weather where he was" to international climate.

It is complicated to prove one way or another that 'it is too late to do anything'............. but I will tell you that ANY progress in cutting back on fossil fuels and stopping the destruction of the world's rain forests and banning many pesticides and altering fishing habits....yes... and slowing population growth WILL be better than what we are doing now. IF we don't make the effort, it WILL one day be too late. I am old enough I will 'probably' not see the inevitable panic, but when Florida is half submerged and Mexico is like Saudi Arabia and penguins can barely find nesting places in Antarctica, I don't want decide how... or whether... to defend my house. My son may need to...

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 04:12 PM

Iains,

You are not taking into account the megatons of gasses such as CO2 released. When I was EO1 Data Manager, we watched the plumes from two eruptions in less than one year that each exceeded the CO2 release by man for the century.

Couldn't POSSIBLY have had an effect on climate change, that is KNOWN to be entirely Man's fault (NOT).

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 04:14 PM

Where are your citations for this?

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 04:16 PM

You have not asked for ANY citations from those you agree with.

Why should I bother giving them to a person who has stated she will not accept ANY data that she does not apriori agree with?

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 06:05 PM

I saw a little girl shaming world leaders. Then I saw an arrogant, petulant big-baby Trump blanking her as he walked through the room, studiously keeping his back to her. Those images won't be going away any time soon.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 06:20 PM

Bruce. Don't PM me. Anything you want to say can be said in the open. You still haven't explained who you believe we should be listening to. Greta Thurnburg or Donald Trump? Climate scientists or religious fundementalists?

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 09:45 PM

there's a man
goin round
takin names

Johnny Cash

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 19 - 09:46 PM

My recreating existing arguments to explain to you is a waste of my time. When articles that make sense are posted I read them. If they're clearly hackneyed opinion, I presume you're not interested in discussion, merely in disruption, and I move on.

If you want to discuss this topic, fine. The back-and-forth nonsense goes, criticisms of moderation never stay in any threads, and bickering is deleted. Keep track if you want, it's your computer space to waste.

If you don't believe this is a climate crisis, and don't want to discuss where scientists and rational people want to go from here, then why are you on this thread? Mossback had it right, before he was deleted.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 05:52 AM

Don't know if anybody saw Greta the Great speak at the UN yesterday
Her obvious passionate concern was really something, but the look of contempt she gave Trump as he entered the chamber was worth a million words
"When I was aye but sweet sixteen"
"WHEN I WAS AYE BUT SWEET SIXTEEN" - if only !!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 06:44 AM

I've just noticed the sickening thread opened by obvios Trump supporters attacking this young campaigner
More child abuse
Jim Carroll

That was the old mudcat troll putting on many hats and naming them for deceased or fake mudcat accounts.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 08:00 AM

A supervolcano by definition implies a volcanic center that has had an eruption of magnitude 8 on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI), meaning that at one point in time it erupted more than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of material. Eruptions of that size generally create a circular collapse feature called a caldera.

The largest eruption at Yellowstone (2.1 million years ago) had a volume of 2,450 cubic kilometers. The impact of such an eruption is not my opinion. It is that of the USGS. Eruptions this large can create their own continental- scale wind field, pushing ash more than 1,000 km against the prevailing, ambient wind field. By contrast Krakatoa only produced 4.3 cubic miles of ejecta. The USGS has the opinion that such eruptions occur over days or weeks. This would require evacuation of people statewide from those areas most heavily impacted. Depending on whether a warning period allowed a response or not, the casualty rate could be horrendous, along with significant
climate change for years or decades. Humanity has not experienced anything close to compare it with.
The climate change postulated by manmade C02 emissions has been in train since England precipitated the Industrial revolution. The dire warnings of anthropogenic climate change are still a reality for the future. As you state the ash eventually falls and wipes out agriculture for years where the ashfall is thickest, andwhile in the upper atmosphere the ash modifies climate dramatically. It is no consolation it eventually falls if famine has devastated the landscape in the interim. As I said earlier, you overlook the importance of timescale. Anthopogenic climate change started several hundred years ago, it's major impacts are in the future. If yellowstone goes bang the impacts is immediate.

https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/forecasting-ashfall-impacts-a-yellowstone-supereruption

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 09:59 AM

"there's a man
goin round
takin names

Johnny Cash"

I first heard that as a Negro spiritual on a Jessie Norman LP in the 80s. It's on YouTube.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 12:00 PM

Scientific Consensus: Earth's Climate is Warming

Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree*: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.

The most recent date in here is 2015, so the science has been muzzled by the current Flat Earth presidency, but is plenty current enough for this conversation.

NASA always trumps the protests posed by skeptics.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 12:52 PM

NASA always trumps the protests posed by skeptics. REALLY????? on what basis would that be?

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Mossback
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 01:13 PM

Mossback had it right, before he was deleted.

Why thank you, Milady

There is no upside to attempting to engage reality deniers.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 01:40 PM

Toujours la politesse, Bill! :-)

Your graph, SRS, is an absolutely lovely match for the increase in atmospheric CO2 graph. I'm doing a curry right now but I'll try to find a reference to it when I have a minute. It isn't proof but it's evidence.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 06:30 PM

I don't read French, but Google suggests that's not a criticism...

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 07:26 PM

It was a compliment. Feel free to accept it for yourself, Bill, thoroughly appropriate as applied to you, but I actually meant Mossback! It's a mantra remembered from my French lessons of over half a century ago, referring to the need to use the polite "vous," not the informal "tu," when addressing anyone with whom you shouldn't really be over-familiar. Maybe the Pope or the headmaster.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Sep 19 - 10:20 PM

Well then... onward..

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Mr Red
Date: 25 Sep 19 - 05:41 AM

That hockey stick that deniers laugh at.

Let me see where else could we find it?
Migratory birds over-wintering - used to happen, now even non-twitcher can see it happening.
Spring arriving earlier. Autumn later.
Storm getting more frequent (forget thresholds for words, storms are stronger and more frequent at every arbitrary threshold).
Power generation.
number of cars/trucks built.
number of plane journeys.
population.
need for the Thames barrage.
etc etc.

Somewhwere in there is cause & effect.

You know when I wus a practicing enjuneer, I never, not, nohow solved a problem by denying its existence. Now I program PCs & Websites and - well you can imagine - denial ain't gonna cut it. Unless you are Apple (first class deniers) - give them a denial year to come clean about their software bugs. Be kind to them, they believe their own hype!

It doesn't fucking matter who caused the problem, JUST GET ON AND FIX IT, Stupid.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Sep 19 - 05:53 AM

It does matter though, Mr Red. Using your computer analogy. I was an infrastructure engineer and Unix admin. People would complain that their application was running slowly so we tuned the OS kernel, increased the memory and processing power, upgraded the network and SAN and guess what? It was a piece of shit programming or, more often, a badly administered database. It was usually the software providers in denial. The moral? Make sure you are fixing the right problem!

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Mr Red
Date: 26 Sep 19 - 04:53 AM

If fixing it ain't fixing it, you ain't fixing it!

Problem solving is an iterative methodology. Or should be.

1) Analyse,
2) try,
3) analyse
4) IF stillbuggered THEN GO TO 1)
5) Coffee (or in day gone by - cigarette)

There are two prongs to solving Global Weirding

1) Change people (best of luck, but ya gotta try)
2) Mitigation. But as I said "We ain't gonna like the............."

Soilent Green? Long Pig anyone?

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 26 Sep 19 - 05:27 AM

The first graph below is the real problem. But no one has the courage to talk about it.


https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-world-population-comparison-of-different-sources?time=-10000..2000&country=HYDE%203.1+K

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Sep 19 - 05:02 PM

You must have completely missed the sixties and seventies.

Population Bomb. 1971, Paul Erlich.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 03:47 AM

There are those that reckon the world population will top out @ (OK lets be scientific, asymptotic to) 9 billion because..............

As the third world gets richer they will not need such big families.

Which, of course, ignores the old consumption v global weirding dimension.

termite flambé anyone?

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 05:40 AM

Original
From: Stilly River Sage - PM
Date: 28 Sep 19 - 05:02 PM

You must have completely missed the sixties and seventies.

EDITED POST
From: Stilly River Sage - PM
Date: 28 Sep 19 - 05:02 PM

You must have completely missed the sixties and seventies.

Population Bomb. 1971, Paul Erlich.
Why could you not simply say you had overlooked pasting the link?

I queried the original post. It has been deleted and you retroactively edited your original post.
Why not simply admit to making a mistake?

I am very familiar with Erlich's work and also that of the club of Rome and Limits to growth. I have also read works by John Seymour and Patrick Rivers(I bought an AngloNubian goat off him 40 years ago)I also have to claim having watched the good life, although I left my flat In Surbiton some years before the series started.
Their time frame may have been totally wrong but when exponential growth collides with finite resources the inevitable result is a massive contraction. It is a circle that cannot be squared.
This does not even begin to consider the feed back mechanisms set in train.
Deforestation
The projected weakening of AMOC due to increased ice melt and subsequent dilution of oceanic salt in the arctic regions
projected sea level rises due to a warming ocean and accentuated by ice melt.
Climate change
pollution
This of course assumes a contributory anthropogenic component, although in a crowded world natural climatic oscillations, such as caused the little ice age and medieval warm period, would create havoc
The underlying problem always comes back to too many people.
If everyone in the world had the same profligate lifestyle as the average American I think the limits to growth would become blindingly obvious within a very short space of time.
From the Worldwatch Institute:
    The United States, with less than 5% of the global population, uses about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources—burning up nearly 25% of the coal, 26% of the oil, and 27% of the world’s natural gas.
    As of 2003, the U.S. had more private cars than licensed drivers,
    New houses in the U.S. were 38% bigger in 2002 than in 1975, despite having fewer people per household on average.
“If the levels of consumption that...the most affluent people enjoy today were replicated across even half of the roughly 9 billion people projected to be on the planet in 2050, the impact on our water supply, air quality, forests, climate, biological diversity, and human health would be severe.”

Today’s human economies are designed with little attention to the residuals of production and consumption. Among the most visible unintended byproducts of the current economic system are environmental problems like air and water pollution and landscape degradation. Nearly all the world’s ecosystems are shrinking to make way for humans and their homes, farms, malls, and factories. WWF’s Living Planet Index, which measures the health of forests, oceans, freshwater, and other natural systems, shows a 35 percent decline in Earth’s ecological health since 1970.
Essentially we are in an ongoing race between man's ingenuity and stupidity. Stupidity is one day going to be the winner unless we are very lucky.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 06:36 AM

Good time to remind people that nothing is more important than the future of the planet. Yes, massive changes need to happen and yes an increasing population is an issue but it everyone slows down the use of resources and emission of co2 we can all help to get some breathing space for those big changes. As individuals we may not be able to solve the problem but we can -

Reduce.   Stop wasting energy.
Reuse.    Don't throw it away if someone else can use or repurpose it.
Recycle. For what can't be reused.

Ignore the nay-sayers and petty point pinchers. Do your bit!

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Iains
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 05:12 PM

It tends to be overlooked that climate change has impacted civilisations in the past. In no particular order:

Around 900 CE, things started to go wrong for the Mayans. Overpopulation put too great a strain on resources. Increased competition for resources was bringing the Maya into violent conflict with other nations. An extensive period of drought sounded the death-knell, ruining crops and cutting off drinking water supplies.
More than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia – the area currently made up of Iraq, north-east Syria and south-east Turkey – the Akkadian empire ruled supreme. Until a 300-year-long drought quite literally turned all their plans to dust.
the Khmer empire of south-east Asia, which flourished between 802 and 1431 CE. It too was brought down by drought, interspersed with violent monsoon rains, against the backdrop of a changing climate.
Even the Viking settlers of Greenland, in the far north Atlantic, are believed to have been affected by climate change. Some 5,000 settlers made the island their home for around 500 years. But they may have had their way of life disrupted by climate change. Temperatures dropped, reducing substantially the productivity of their farms and making it harder to raise livestock. They adapted their eating habits, turning their attention to the sea as a source of food. But life on Greenland became unbearably difficult, leading to the eventual abandonment of the island colony.
The rapid decline of the Anasazi empire in the SW of the US is most widely regarded as being due a great drought, which brought on famine, a theory which would be consistent with archaeological findings of skeletons showing signs of malnutrition, and the abundance of infant and children’s bones.

The link below is quite interesting on the evolution of both the data and interpretation.
https://leilan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/publications/article-specific/weiss_2017_megadrought_collapse_and_causality.pdf

and an interesting wiki article but a bit sparse on sources(unfortunately)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_oscillation
If you follow these arguments in depth you realize there are uncertainties in the science but one idea to take away is that if human numbers overwhelm resources the outcome has always been collapse. The frequency of famines in history shows that collapse is never that far away, and the link below should give pause for thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Risk_of_future_famine

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 05:29 PM

True, Iains, but humans did little to bring about those climate changes. We can blame those on nature, but it's quite clear that human industry is the cause of this current, very rapid climate change.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 06:55 PM

And round and round and round we go...

The correlation between the warming of land and sea in both hemispheres and the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last century and a half is near perfect. A correlation, even a strong one, is not proof, but it is exceptionally powerful evidence, particularly in light of the fact that we know precisely how carbon dioxide operates as a greenhouse gas. To deny that human activity hasn't been a major driver, or even the main driver, of warming is akin to denying that China exists or claiming that there's no salt in the oceans. If you choose to deny it, you are either in the pocket of powerful carbon corporations or you are a fool who thinks that standing out from the crowd by being different just for the sake of it makes you look clever. When we say the science is settled we are not saying that anthropogenic warming is true, because science doesn't work that way. We are saying the probability of its being false is so small as to make it negligible. And to deny it for either of those reasons makes you wicked, because your deliberate ignorance or crass dishonesty is contributing recklessly to increasing a mortal threat to the planet.

But there's always one, as we shall no doubt shortly see...

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 06:58 PM

To be clear, I was referring to air temperatures measured (at thousands of locations) over land and sea in both hemispheres.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 10:44 PM

Contrary to scientific evidence we will not be killed by climate change by human hands alone. We will suffocate from the unknown sources of methane and CO2 we do not and can not anticipate.

When these factors occur we will be hundreds if not thousands of years beyond the tipping point.

We were caught flat footed by the melting tundra for example.
Another unanticipated possibility would be a nickel rich eruption in which bacteria that converts nickel to methane would then deliver the final blow to a run away climate catastrophe.

Possibilities known or not will always be possible. Heroic Human efforts will be to little too late but don't let me stop your Pollyana Party.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Sep 19 - 11:03 PM

We have always struggled to control our destiny but though we think we may have succeded, fate has the final word.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Oct 19 - 02:51 AM

Donuel. The unknown is always a possibility but it is no reason to stop any attempts to correct what we do know to be an issue. There is no Pollyanna in trying to reduce co2 emissions or address any other climate change issues.

Subject: RE: climate crisis - how do we go from here?
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Oct 19 - 09:24 AM

good times
end times
as events grow worse
we all know we're
breathing the curse
We passed the critical point long ago
doing something instead of nothing
feels more hopeful I know
We won't see the death in the deep blue sea
or all the children that will die.
Perhaps we should
We will be able to say
we did what we could

stiff upper lip chap