http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719 Who's read it? Who's terrified and depressed by it?
I never liked the magazine when I was young, and haven't cared at all about it in my adult life until the last couple of years; they've been publishing some good stuff- Matt Taibbi has consistently done good work in their pages. And Bill McKibben is Bill McKibben.
I hate to broach any serious topics here since politics absolutely ruin a lot of great boards but I'll make an exception as this article scratched an old scab in the back of my mind. So basically there's a growing consensus that we're beyond the point of carbon reduction alone being able to fix the problem. Enter geoengineering aka Plan B. Be prepared to while away an afternoon if the wiki article hooks you. I think I remember seeing a cool TED talk about this too...
Hmmm. Yeah I love how most corporations with their right wing backed candidates still refer to it as a hoax. Yeah it just keeps getting hotter with milder winters, virtually no spring or fall, more violent storms. Yeah pollution and carbon emissions have absolutely nothing to do with it, it's just the natural order of things. Well I for one begin attending college for Environmental Science this fall. Haven't decided what I'm specializing in yet but I have a friend who works in the field. He openly admits to me that often when he gives reports to these companies and they'd rather pay the fines (and it's cheaper) than clean the mess. Someone needs to change that. Until cleaning up becomes the only option for these companies or face bankruptcy they won't do it.
I literally read it in the middle of the night as I couldn't sleep. I woke up in the morning and debated whether it was a nightmare or not, hoping it had been a dream. Basically, we're fucked. I'm staying the Bay Area.
The Bay Area seems to be the only place in the country that hasn’t been frying- y’all are lucky this summer. I have lived long enough now to have seen a clear pattern of change in the weather in just my lifetime. Where I grew up in NJ, they barely get winter any more; when I was a boy we would have waist-high snowdrifts for a couple months. I’ve been in Vermont for 16 years now, and have observed big, rapid changes here in that time, and corroborated those changes with people decades older than me who have been here their whole lives. It’s truly startling. I feel like this article is one of the last possible wake-up calls we can get, but sadly I have almost no faith that the kind of radical changes needed (in just about every aspect of human society) to bring last-minute remediation will happen. I have friends who are seriously talking about 20, 30-year plans of buying land together, burying shipping containers of canned goods, learning all survivalist techniques applicable to our landscape up here… I can’t see it. I mean, what for? To live 10 years longer than everyone else on a dead planet, only to be done in by roving armed cannibals a la The Road? No thanks; I’ll go down with the ship, children and all, as horribly frustrated, angry and sad as that makes me feel. And let’s face it: if, as McKibben warns, we really are at the beginning of a period of rapid degradation, completely apparent to even the dumbest cretins among us, then no one is going to get a chance to build their fortified yurt or whatever. Tensions and conflict of every sort will intensify- especially, most dangerously, the religious sort. All those stockpiles of nuclear and chemical weapons, already just kinda lying around, loosely guarded (Russia), or in the hands of insane narcissistic zealots- they’re coming out. I don’t even know what’s kept them in check this long… then I remember, it hasn’t been long- we’ve only had them at our disposal for about 70 years- not even one second, in planetary time- totally non-reassuring given our fucking awful immaturity as a species. I find myself hoping for a Childhood’s End-type scenario* of our true alien overlords swooping in soon, like the cosmic grown-ups; “Okay, kids, you’ve had your chance… but you’ve made some really bad choices… we’re just gonna clean this dump up, now. We ask that you all just shut the fuck up and sit still for a while.” *Except maybe without the part about turning all the children into a giant organic transmitter.
I can concur with this. I also grew up in NJ from the 70's till the mid 90's and there was a lot more snow when I was a kid. Waist deep. We had distinct seasons. Towards the end of my time there it we'd get days in March that would hit 80 degrees. Spring seemed non existent. I've lived in Philly, Brooklyn, and Buffalo since and the same thing has happened. I mean even the last few years here in Buffalo, people love to joke with me about all the snow we supposedly get, I say: "What are you talking about?" Hardly get more than 4-5 storms so spread out and at most 6-8 inches tops per storm. There is no build of snow upon snow like it use to be here. I actually use to rave about summers here in Buffalo. We'd escape humidity (in NJ it was stifling) and hardly have many days over 85. The past few summers it's been really humid and I a lot of days over 90. Now we're having a drought. Some of this yes has to do with the jet stream but overall there has been climate change and it's only getting hotter.
Me too! Seriously. And honestly, I think it might be the only way forward without taking an eon-sized step backwards. And the survivalist pull is there for me too. Part of me wants to "check out" of society and learn what it means to live in harmony with the land. But the other part of me says "what's the point?". Would I find more satisfaction in working hard to eek out a living off the grid, than the "satisfaction" I get from getting paid to sit in front of a computer for hours each day and toiling away on the up-keep of a house that I hate? And all of this makes me think about the Mayan calendar and 2012. While I would love to believe that the aliens will return on December 21st, I just don't believe that that's what the calendar indicates (but I'm still crossing my fingers). But I do find it very interesting that the current state of the world is occurring at a time mapped out by the Mayans to be the end of one age and the beginning of a new one. But without those aliens I think the next age is going to be a downward spiral. It also makes me think of the Helliconia books (Helliconia Spring, Summer, and Winter). Although the climate changes that take place on Helliconia are the result of it being a planet in a binary star system. But the way that knowledge is gained and lost in a repeating pattern makes me wonder if life on Earth hasn't experienced the same gain/loss pattern and we're just heading into the next period of degradation. Certainly very interesting times we're living in - a lot of science fiction is coming to life right before our eyes. Mostly I feel fairly negative about everything, but occasionally there are things that give me hope - lately the Space TEDTalks are one source that makes me feel hopeful...but hopeful about leaving this planet, not saving it.
But hey - we're all probably "living" in a computer simulation anyway. Maybe someone will just hit the reset button. http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
