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Forums - General Discussion - Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation

Marth said:

In case you are wondering 2020 is already on the path to be another temerature record around the world

You can look at the hottest ever recorded temperatures for each country and realize that most of them have been set in the the past 5-10 years.

The direction in which we are heading is very clear and it is only getting faster.

If you think the economy is going bad now just wait until this development progresses further.

It's not getting any warmer in Minnesota so far.  Every Summer our meteorologist say we average something like 18 summer days above 90 degrees, and every Summer the past 10 years we have had only a few 90 degree days.  We had one hot winter maybe 7 years ago with above average temperatures, we got into the 70's in March and everyone was saying global warming was here, and the following winter we had something like 40 days straight of below 0 temperature form January-February which had never happened in my life.



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rapsuperstar31 said:
Marth said:

In case you are wondering 2020 is already on the path to be another temerature record around the world

You can look at the hottest ever recorded temperatures for each country and realize that most of them have been set in the the past 5-10 years.

The direction in which we are heading is very clear and it is only getting faster.

If you think the economy is going bad now just wait until this development progresses further.

It's not getting any warmer in Minnesota so far.  Every Summer our meteorologist say we average something like 18 summer days above 90 degrees, and every Summer the past 10 years we have had only a few 90 degree days.  We had one hot winter maybe 7 years ago with above average temperatures, we got into the 70's in March and everyone was saying global warming was here, and the following winter we had something like 40 days straight of below 0 temperature form January-February which had never happened in my life.

You're seriously taking anecdotal data from one city? Well thing is what's the overall trend, not isolated incidents. Some areas will actually get crazy cold for no reason but overall things will be hotter. Hell erratic temperature changes of both sides is an issue that's part of the problem. Shorter colder winters will happen in some unexpected places in the world due to how weird everything is. And looking at trends, the world should be colder right now, not hotter. But that's what humans are doing and there doesn't seem to be a will to actually invest in green energy and solve the problem.

I believe the world currently has the technology it needs to save humanity from climate catastrophe but there isn't a will. You can invest in getting solar and wind power for electricity and stuff like graphene batteries and electric cars and stop mining more and more oil but the wealthy people who control the game and make the profits are only interested in short term profits instead of sustainability. That's why they create propaganda that makes it think like science is just an opinion and the perception that scientists have been warning collapse in a few short years when the actual thing is they used to say by 2050 or something and now they say by 2030 or 2040 and that is not when catastrophe will occur but that's the point of no return in that if nothing is done and current trends continue, we can't stop the damage altogether anymore. We can only mitigate the harmful effects of everything. The catastrophe itself has a much longer time span of occurring but stopping the catastrophe has a short timespan.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Ka-pi96 said:
Honestly at this point wouldn't it be easier to try and correct the problem, rather than prevent the problem from occurring? I mean, convincing the whole world to just stop proudcing certain gases seems a near impossibility. Surely coming up with a way to remove those excess gasses from the atmosphere would be easier, no?

Not at all actually. Trees are much better than humans at doing it and there seems to be no will to plant a whole hell of a lot of trees. In fact I think we cut down more trees than plant so we are sabotaging that effort as well. For short term profits of a few oligarchs, the world is being screwed over.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Ka-pi96 said:
Honestly at this point wouldn't it be easier to try and correct the problem, rather than prevent the problem from occurring? I mean, convincing the whole world to just stop proudcing certain gases seems a near impossibility. Surely coming up with a way to remove those excess gasses from the atmosphere would be easier, no?

Tree's are a good way to bind CO2+others, and get it down into the ground, instead of floating around in the atmosphere.

Theres people that advocate, mass planting of trees as a way to try and save ourselves (atleast from the worst of it).
I believe such a methode is needed along with us, reduceing green house gasses production.


Ka-Pi96, the thing is I dont believe theres any easy cheap scientific solution, to removeing greenhouse gasses.
(it would be insanely expensive, likely to the point where it would not be done, unless it was this or death to the world)

The cheapest, easiest proven methode, is planting trees.



Farsala said:
JRPGfan said:

Yes lets all pray for a something like a super volcano errupting, say Yellow Stone?
It ll throw ash up into the atmosphere and cover unsually large amounts of it, cooling down the planet.

The downside is something like 40-60% of americans will die, and world will face mass starvation for a few years after.

Encase that doesnt happend.... maybe we should try stopping the global warming?

A super volcano would be too devastating, and they are quite rare. But many strong volcanoes like Krakatoa are supposably past due their eruption time according to the science.

Of course I would love to stop the human side of the things, but people keep voting in idiots that support mega corporations that couldn't care less about the climate. I prefer to be optimistic and hope that the Earth cools itself :).

They happend every 10,000-15,000 years or so right (on avg)? I think I remember hearing that before.
Also we've gone more than 11,000? years without such a eruption so we are due for one soon probably.

Yellowstone last 3 supervolcano eruptions were  2.1m, 1.2m, 640k years ago.
So between 600-900k years between its eruptions. 
Its been 640k+ years since its last eruption.  It could happend tomorrow or like 250,000 years from now.

However we've been lucky to avoid such a event in modern history.
Like think back like 10,000 years ago.
Barely any humans on the planet, america was basically empty, if yellowstone blew, it wouldnt do that much damage.
However if today a massive eruption happends in yellowstone, the cost of human life in the US would be massive.

Last edited by JRPGfan - on 21 June 2020

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RolStoppable said:
VAMatt said:

I'm 40 years old. I recall pretty well the last 35 years of my life, and there has been a never-ending stream of impending climate emergency proclamations for those 35 years. It's always just a few years off. But those few years keep coming and going, any nothing serious ever happens.  Older people tell me that the same kind of thing was happening previous to the beginning of my memories in the early 80s. I know there was a big scare about global cooling before I was born. So, I put absolutely zero stock in the proclamations of so-called environmental experts.

That doesn't mean that I think environmental issues are unimportant. On the contrary, I think such issues are far too important to entrust to people or organizations that have been wrong about them over and over and over again.

Yup, it's a constant in our lives that we see climate models that predict our imminent doom. In the 1980s it was about the growing ozone hole approximately above Australia that would make our lives miserable. But technologies got adjusted and improved, so in 2020 we got the news that the ozone hole has been mending itself. This demonstrates that our planet can heal itself if given the opportunity and time.

The current climate change is very much the same thing. Virtually all of the predictive models show us that it's going to get worse if humanity keeps doing the same thing, but that's just it: Humanity can change their ways. And there is change, albeit slow change. It's not possible to change in a big way from one year to the next because otherwise our wealth and peace can't be secured, but change is happening nonetheless. It's going to keep getting warmer for a while, but eventually temperatures should stabilize and afterwards even go down a bit again. That's a process of several decades though.

I don't disagree with your underlying point.  Clearly, the earth can heal itself.   The impact that humans have on the long term health of the earth is less clear, but certainly it is something.  Those facts aren't at issue here.

The issue is that we have been told repeatedly that we'll be fucked by year X if Y doesn't happen.  Y never happens, and year X always comes and goes, and we're never fucked.  So, "climate scientists" (a commonly used term that we could spend a whole thread discussing) as a group lack credibility. 

They're wrong every time.  They cry wolf, but no wolves ever show up.  So, fewer and fewer people pay attention to each successive cry.  Frankly, to the extent that "climate science" is an important field (and I believe it is pretty important), they owe it to humanity to stop constantly making wildly inaccurate claims. Only then will we be able to actually hear them if there truly is something that needs prompt attention.



Earth will be fine. It always will be fine. It's the people who are fucked. No matter what we do to the planet. It will heal itself. We might all die but the planet will not. This planet has a few billion more years. We don't.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Half the world was on fire for the last couple years and y'all out here like "Climate scientist have been predicting problems for years now and we've seen nothing!".



Ka-pi96 said:
Eagle367 said:

Not at all actually. Trees are much better than humans at doing it and there seems to be no will to plant a whole hell of a lot of trees. In fact I think we cut down more trees than plant so we are sabotaging that effort as well. For short term profits of a few oligarchs, the world is being screwed over.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Convincing people to stop cutting down trees and start planting them instead just isn't going to happen on a wide enough scale to be successful.

So why not come up with another solution that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere instead. Another issue is the depletion of the ozone layer, with certain gases/chemicals interacting with the O3 and altering it (I believe to O2 + H2O?). So is there not something similar that could be used to break up CO2? I know CO2 is a more stable compound than O3 and thus less likely to interact with other gasses/chemicals, but it's not outside the realms of possibility, right?

That just doesn't exist and is more unlikely than trees to happen. If a simple solution like planting more trees doesn't happen, finding a new way and spending all that money on research and development and implementation will not happen at all either.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

sundin13 said:

Half the world was on fire for the last couple years and y'all out here like "Climate scientist have been predicting problems for years now and we've seen nothing!".

Well said

Scientists study this stuff for a lifetime but the laymen think they know better, we make people highly educated experts but we will not listen to them  

The scientific community has never had a consensus of an uncontrollable climate taking off in a "few years" (decades maybe) unlit recently saying our time is soon approaching before we lose control of it  

But they have warned of us for decades not of impending doom in a few years but a gradual deterioration over decades, and we are seeing it happen, you have to have your head in the sand to miss it

Keep in mind science never stays still, it improves with better data, better instruments, and better collaboration, it's now that we have more data and better models than we had 10, 20, 30 years ago https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ Now Scientists see this is accelerating and it will get worse in a shorter time than previously thought if we don't effectively act  

Once the climate passes a certain tipping point even stopping all pollution/carbon in a single day will have no affect, we lose control of the situation and are at the climates mercy (we haven't got long, particularly knowing how slow we are to react positively in fixing this with every excuse under the sun being dreamed up)