Obama on Climate Change: Act Now or Condemn World to a Nightmare

[DeNiro]

I thought they changed it to "climate change" as "Global Warming" was too limited and didn't give a correct assumption to what is going on - which is a natural occurrence.

I'm not a denier for I also believe man has played a part.

The people who deny it are saying that it's a natural shift in the climate and that the earth is just going through a cycle.

They completely ignore the scientists who have proven through study that carbon is causing the caps to melt at a faster pace. That the draining of the Colorado rivers is causing warmer temperatures in the gulf of Mexico which means more extreme hurricanes. That amount of livestock being bread now is actually having a significant impact on the atmosphere.

People can deny it all they want but the studies are there to see. Every time I see politicians deny it while they have big oil with one hand in their pocket, I just shake my head.

[DeNiro]

They don't.

Science is based on educated guesses.

Their opinions are educated though, unlike people who simply say they don't believe in climate change like it's the boogey man.

[MadMonk]

Well...maybe Richmond....

"A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, "

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/

Now my question is, when the air temperature rises, what, in general, happens to water? It evaporates. Not saying they didn't take that into consideration...but how do they know how much will?

I think we can do a ballpark estimation:

If all water vapour in the atmosphere rain out, it will to cover the earth's surface up to a depth of 2.5cm (USGS)

Warmer air holds more water, and that's well understood physics (dates back to 19th century, due to Celcius and Clapeyron). There are tables and equations, but for earth's surface, it increases at about 7-8% per degree of water (eyeballed a table from a textbook), so for a warming of 5 degrees that's 40% more water in the atmosphere, which translates to 1cm of water disappearing from the surface.

That's small compared with the expected increase in sea level.

The above is just a ball park estimation, but I think the estimate works quite well even when you take into account of the earth's vertical structure, surface temperature variation etc.

Any Climate model/weather model has to model evaporation, and climate models agree surprisingly well: each degree of warming increases water vapour in the atmosphere by 7.5%. For example here's a comparison for 17 models (Held and Soden 2006)

[The Bookie]

Climates balance themselves.

Well, they try, to the best of their ability.

Item 1 on the Agenda : Eliminate Dangerous Parasites

Personally I think we're past the point of no return; not that there's zero hope and we should give up any efforts, quite the contrary, but we're headed inevitably towards major events wiping out at least half the current population in the next 70-100 years. And what's left for the survivors to live in won't be very attractive. But it'll be funfunfun til daddy takes the freebird away.

[inane]

Who cares if climate change is man made or not. It's happening so let's deal with it. The whole debate is ridiculous.

[DeNiro]

Who cares if climate change is man made or not. It's happening so let's deal with it. The whole debate is ridiculous.

It's a good point.

People get so caught up in what the cause is that they lose sight of the fact that we do have the ability to curb it. But the more we sit on this technology and do nothing about it, the longer it will take to counter it.

Every year new technology is developed to clean carbon out of the air and chemicals out of the ocean but if we don't use them, nothing is gonna change.

[LaBamba]

As soon as our global economy collapses, the lights will be turned off and things will sort themselves out. A 25% reduction in world population should do the trick.

It's honestly more realistic then the world collectively reducing emissions enough to reverse or sustain our current climate.

[DeNiro]

As soon as our global economy collapses, the lights will be turned off and things will sort themselves out. A 25% reduction in world population should do the trick.

It's honestly more realistic then the world collectively reducing emissions enough to reverse or sustain our current climate.

Unfortunately that 25% reduction in population would be caused by poorer nations in places like Africa and the Middle East that suffer from drought and lack of fresh drinking water.

This would not correct emissions levels nearly enough to have any impact.

At this point we can't reverse what's done, all we can do is try and limit further damage that we do in the future. The technologies are there, countries like the US and Canada are just too slow to react. We need to follow countries in South America and Europe on how to integrate new cleaner energy and technologies.

[MikeyBoy44]

The technologies are there, countries like the US and Canada are just too slow to react. We need to follow countries in South America and Europe on how to integrate new cleaner energy and technologies.

But how is that profitable?

[aGENT]

But the message is that governments must quit talking and take action. If we are to heed his message, we must demand action from our governments (and be willing to make changes in our own lives). Obama is not taking action, he's merely talking about it. So I don't see how the "hypocrisy" argument isn't highly relevant.

Because he's only one man? He may be the head of their government but he can not enact change by himself. He's demanding action from his own government as much as anyone else's.

Because governments (are supposed) to be of the people and by the people you are correct in that we the people have to be the real push behind any meaningful change. We can not wait for governments to save us, we need to save ourselves.

We need to demand better by our votes and demand better with our dollars. As we can see from some of the responses in this thread, that's an uphill battle with some folks.

[Mr. Ambien]

Because he's only one man? He may be the head of their government but he can not enact change by himself. He's demanding action from his own government as much as anyone else's.

Because governments (are supposed) to be of the people and by the people you are correct in that we the people have to be the real push behind any meaningful change. We can not wait for governments to save us, we need to save ourselves.

We need to demand better by our votes and demand better with our dollars. As we can see from some of the responses in this thread, that's an uphill battle with some folks.

It might actually welcome others to adopt the changes you desire if you and those with these doomsday and human-blaming views of Earth's natural climate shifts would lead by example, rather than demand we pay for nutty environmentalist policies.

If you refuse to respect the fact that people have their own way of thinking, and don't cater to your views, trying to force them to via taking their money is surely not going to get them on board with your agenda.

As I said, lead by example. There are plenty of rich liberals, why aren't they leading the way with their wallets? Why are they too vouching for everyone else's money to pay for these radical changes? Good luck trying to convince people with that premise.

I've already invested in a hybrid SUV, and would replace my diesel truck with an electric truck if the kind I wanted were out there. I'm far less likely to blow my money or pay more in taxes on environmentalist bull$&!# windfarms and such if it isn't profitable, and especially won't if none of the people who suggest this is a wonderful idea are contributing a decent amount.

[Hugor Hill]

If you refuse to respect the fact that people have their own way of thinking, and don't cater to your views, trying to force them to via taking their money is surely not going to get them on board with your agenda.

If they are wrong, then they need to be corrected and straightened out. Simple as that.

Science needs to overcome the ill-informed, biased subjective opinions of a few marginalized common people. Simple as that. Or you can vote conservatives to silence scientists and continue to live in your bubble.

[aGENT]

As Hugor said, there's always going to be those wanting to stay living in a cave. Sometimes the rest of us need to drag you out and show you there's a better way. I'm sure horse owners mocked automobile buyers as well

Also, who say's people who believe in this stuff aren't leading by example? Who do you think buys more environmentally friendly products? There's huge, growing markets for 'green' products of everything from light bulbs to groceries to cosmetics.

Who do you think is attending rallies, organizing and informing people, challenging governments?

[etsen3]

Because he's only one man? He may be the head of their government but he can not enact change by himself. He's demanding action from his own government as much as anyone else's.

Because governments (are supposed) to be of the people and by the people you are correct in that we the people have to be the real push behind any meaningful change. We can not wait for governments to save us, we need to save ourselves.

We need to demand better by our votes and demand better with our dollars. As we can see from some of the responses in this thread, that's an uphill battle with some folks.

But in this instance we're talking specifically about the Shell deal, which he did have the power to approve/deny and he did approve it, and defended the move afterwards. So clearly his stance isn't as hard-line as he says he is. It's not like the Republicans and Congress are doing this in spite of his wishes, he's on board too.

[aGENT]

But in this instance we're talking specifically about the Shell deal, which he did have the power to approve/deny and he did approve it, and defended the move afterwards. So clearly his stance isn't as hard-line as he says he is. It's not like the Republicans and Congress are doing this in spite of his wishes, he's on board too.

And while I'm pro environment, I'm not against extracting oil or pipelines (when actually intelligently planned). Especially if governance is smart enough to appropriately tax/charge royalties on those resources and invest them on modern, cleaner technology and infrastructure.

This is not a black and white, all or nothing issue. We still need oil, we still have oil and we can still profit from/benefit from oil (particularly if we had refined more of it here). Doing so with as little environmental impact as possible and wisely managing it and it's profits so that we can eventually leave it largely behind in favour of cleaner, renewable resources is the path we should be heading down. But we've fallen behind doing so.

Same goes for the US.

[Hugor Hill]

Elon Musk says humanity is currently running 'the dumbest experiment in history'

http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musk-talks-fossil-fuels-with-wait-but-why-2015-8

At some point humans are going to run out of the fossil fuels that power their lives.

There is no other end point to the current era — either because we've used them all up or because the Earth's climate cannot bear any further destruction.

If you use data from oil and gas giant BP, as the data cataloguers at Knoema did, at present rates of extraction we'll be out of oil by 2067, natural gas by 2069, and coal by 2121.

It's possible that we'll discover more oil trapped in tar sands or deep under the ocean, but it just gets more expensive and riskier to extract.

And we'll still run out.

Plus — we don't even want to use all the fossil fuels we have. Burning nonrenewable fuels makes the atmosphere warmer, and burning coal — which will be what's left if we run out of oil and gas — is worse than using other energy sources.

If we get to that point, the limiting factor won't be how many years of fossil fuels we have left, it will be how much more atmospheric change the planet can take. Some researchers already think we've reached the point where there's enough carbon in the atmosphere to cause catastrophic impacts to humanity.

That's why video game designer/Iron Man-protagonist Elon Musk (And yes, CEO of SpaceX, SolarCity, Tesla and historically involved with all kinds of other ventures*) tells Wait But Why's Tim Urban that the "indefinite extension of the Fossil Fuels Era" is "the dumbest experiment in history."

As Musk further explains it:

The greater the change to the chemical composition of the physical, chemical makeup of the oceans and atmosphere [due to increased carbon emissions], the greater the long-term effect will be. Given that at some point they'll run out anyway, why run this crazy experiment to see how bad it'll be? We know it's at least some bad, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it'll be really bad.

This feeling is what led Musk to get involved with the electric car company that became Tesla, as he tells Urban in one part of a wide-ranging conversation.

Tesla's official mission is "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible."

If Tesla can convince the world that cars can run without oil, that would make a huge difference — burning oil is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions, and getting electricity from a power plant through an electrical grid is more efficient than burning gas.

Even in places in the US where coal provides a good proportion of electrical power, electric vehicles are still cleaner than gas-powered cars. But for true sustainability, electricity production needs to change too. In particular, countries need to stop using coal as soon as possible.

Sustainable alternatives include renewables like hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal power. Nuclear power is also far cleaner than any sort of fossil fuel energy source.

Musk's idea is to convince the world that moving away from fossil fuels is possible because this will have to happen no matter what — and the sooner it happens, the better shape the world will be in.

Here's a Wait But Why chart that explains where we are:

Wait But Why

Right now, we're just going along using fossil fuels, despite the fact that we know this is a bad idea and it has an endpoint. The sooner we get past that point and move to the next era in energy, the better.

*Added 9/2 to aid those confused by a reference to Elon's brief career as a 12-year-old video game designer.

[Hobble]

Hey, I'm all for driving an electric car. Maybe if they weren't so expensive.

The oil companies get a lot of subsidies, right? How much do renewables get in comparison?

I'm under the impression that if the government decided to support renewables and innovation rather then keeping Uncle Oil on life support, we would see a lot more progress.

[aGENT]

Hey, I'm all for driving an electric car. Maybe if they weren't so expensive.

The oil companies get a lot of subsidies, right? How much do renewables get in comparison?

I'm under the impression that if the government decided to support renewables and innovation rather then keeping Uncle Oil on life support, we would see a lot more progress.

Prius is like $25k...

But otherwise yes, we merely lack the public and hence political will to move this along faster.

[Mr. Ambien]

Prius is like $25k...

But otherwise yes, we merely lack the public and hence political will to move this along faster.

Prius (unmodded) is only a hybrid... what about the Volt?

It's cheap and you get a massive rebate.

Of course, I'm not a fan of small cars since I have a family. The last time I drove a car it was to visit family in the US. Wife somehow packed that thing to the brim. It was a huge PITA to unload.

When we wear out the Escape hybrid of ours (already have 172k on it), wife is talking about a RAV4 type EV, RX400h (not very roomy), or a 7 seater Highlander hybrid (her top pick thus far).

It would be enticing to make more BEV's and hybrids if people bought them like they did 2-7 years ago. Can't control people.

[aGENT]

Prius (unmodded) is only a hybrid... what about the Volt?

Yup, that was a brain fart (Been a long day.)

But yeah, there's the Volt and evidently Tesla's going to have an electric ~$35k car in a couple years.

Prius (or other hybrid's) are a step in the right direction though as well.