[Graeme]

Happiness doesn't cost the Earth

People can live long, happy lives without consuming large amounts of the Earth's resources, a survey suggests.
The 178-nation "Happy Planet Index" lists the south Pacific island of Vanuatu as the happiest nation on the planet, while the UK is ranked 108th.

The index is based on consumption levels, life expectancy and happiness, rather than national economic wealth measurements such as GDP.

Among the world's largest economies, Germany is ranked 81st, Japan 95th, while the US comes in at 150th.

BBC

[rogerhb]

Until global warming submerges a large number of the Pacific islands.

[Graeme]

Except Vanuatu. Its mostly mountainous. Aren't they lucky and happy too!

[mos6507]

I posted a while back that as I try to decide for myself how bad the environment is going to get and how fast, that I have to "lead the target" the way an archer does because like clockwork you constantly get reports where scientists scratch their heads and say "Gee, looks like things are going to be worse than we previously expected." This either means the environmental degradation is actively accelerating or the scientists themselves have just as hard a time coming to grips with how screwed we really are--or both.

I'm starting this topic as a repository for these news articles to demonstrate that this phenomenon is no illusion.

[mos6507]

Climate change odds much worse than thought

The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.

[Lore]

Climate change odds much worse than thought

The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.

So, the worst case temperature scenario now becomes the most likely.

[coyote]

environmental degradation is actively accelerating

It is.

Plus we as a culture are mostly in denial about the state of our life support, so when the reports become too explicit and urgent to ignore any longer, they're mostly much worse than we could have allowed ourselves to believe. But after we get over the initial shock we're quite good at distancing ourselves and sinking back into denial, until the next shock, worse than the last, comes along. And so on.

[Ludi]

Deny.

Deny.

Deny.

Oh well, it's so bad now we can't possibly do anything to fix it!

Business as usual.

[spotacus]

Faster then thought might be an instant in geological time, but over the 24 hour news cycle it's forever. This will be a slow insidious change. What convinced me that we are living in a JG Ballard novel were articles like this.

[dohboi]

Some of this is the slow pace that findings take to get from the lab or the observation through the publication process and into the media. By the time the last IPCC report came out, everyone in the field knew it was outdated, even before the enormous loss of Arctic ice a few months later.

The uncertainty that is necessarily involved in all modeling has proven not to be something we can take comfort in. The models have quite consistently erred on the side of optimism, even extreme optimism: Arctic ice predicted not to melt till the end of the century at the very earliest is not seen as likely to melt in a few years; warming of six degrees centigrade seen as a distant possibility is now seen as virtually assured...

By the way, I recomment the book "Six Degrees" for some idea of what this will mean for the living word.

[mos6507]

Six degrees is well into Lovelockian territory. If that's where we're headed, humanity is for all intents and purposes finished as a meaningful species as well as a great majority of other higher life forms. This is why I have a short fuse with climate change deniers. This is not a game, folks.

[cualcrees]

Six degrees is well into Lovelockian territory. If that's where we're headed, humanity is for all intents and purposes finished as a meaningful species as well as a great majority of other higher life forms. This is why I have a short fuse with climate change deniers. This is not a game, folks.

Well said, mos, and it is also -to me al least-, clear evidence of how screwed we are, and how we're not gonna make any of the needed changes in time (not regarding GW, or PO); not when we still have people denying (GW) it's even happening.

[Ludi]

humanity is for all intents and purposes finished as a meaningful species

I guess I'm not sure what is meant by "a meaningful species."

[mos6507]

I guess I'm not sure what is meant by "a meaningful species."

Screwing up the planet so severely that we box ourselves into a little remnant that barely survives at the arctic circle on a diet of bugs and newly defrosted mammoth meat is an ignominious end to mankind that even our hunter gatherer ancestors would recognize as a massive fail.

[Cid_Yama]

Decades of war and upheaval as 4C or higher forseen

Leading international scientists have issued a clarion call for urgent political action to curb climate change so the world does not plunge into decades of upheaval and war.

More than 2,500 experts have agreed a tough statement demanding that governments move fast as worst-case predictions of global warming start to come true.

The message to politicians, issued at an emergency climate conference in Copenhagen, warns that the world now faces 'dangerous climate change' which would be irreversible and there is 'no excuse for inaction'.

The results of failure were spelled out by former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern, whose Stern Review two years ago enumerated the cost of climate change.

'What would be the implication? Hundreds of millions of people would have to move, probably billions,' he told the conference.

'What would be the implication of that? Extended conflict, social disruption, war essentially, over much of the world for many decades.'

link

Speaking after giving a keynote speech, Stern said he feared that politicians had not grasped the seriousness of the crisis. "Do the politicians understand just how difficult it could be? Just how devastating four, five, six degrees centigrade would be? I think not yet. Looking back, the Stern review underestimated the risks and underestimated the damage from inaction."

In the conference centre that will also host the December UN negotiations, experts at this week's meeting presented a string of new studies that suggested global warming could strike harder and sooner than expected.

They said carbon emissions have risen more in recent years than anyone thought possible, and the world's natural carbon stores could be losing the ability to soak up human pollution.

The conference also heard that:

· A 4C rise could turn swaths of southern Europe to desert.

· Sea levels will rise twice as fast as official estimates predict.

· Modest warming could unleash a carbon "time bomb" from Arctic soils.

· A failure to cut emissions could render half of the world uninhabitable.

· Rising temperatures could kill off 85% of the Amazon rainforest.

Several experts at the conference warned that temperatures are likely to soar beyond the 2C target set by European politicians. "The 2C target is gone and 3C is difficult. I think we're heading for 4C at least," one said. Oxford University yesterday announced that it would hold a conference in September to discuss the implications of a rise of 4C or more.

link

[Ludi]

Screwing up the planet so severely that we box ourselves into a little remnant that barely survives at the arctic circle on a diet of bugs and newly defrosted mammoth meat is an ignominious end to mankind that even our hunter gatherer ancestors would recognize as a massive fail.

Thanks for clarifying.

"If we become extinct because of factors beyond our control, then we can at least die with pride in ourselves, but to create a mess in which we perish by our own inaction makes nonsense of our claims to consciousness and morality." - Bill Mollison


I guess it remains to be seen if we are conscious and moral creatures, or simply yeast with a bad case of hubris.

[efarmer]

And so efarmer finally realized that this was it. Doom, cold, hard, undeniable, impossible to escape, doom. And as it enveloped him, he realized that it was not the doom, but the theorizing about the doom, the thought of enemies and idiots meeting the doom before he did, the thought that he had recognized doom first and was ignored, and the folks who simply lived their life as if there was not a certain tomorrow, and who were taken by doom like a moth in a flame, no emotional wailing and remonstrance, just a flit and a puff of moth smoke, and then, well, doom...

This made him realize, it is not the doom itself, for it is unemotional and impersonal, but it was the idea of doom, the heated doom arguments, and the smugness he had felt to have found doom approaching at a distance, and affording him time to wave his arms, to bleat and groan, and to soil himself as it got to arms length. Yes, it was all of those special things, that had made life worth living, and not doom itself, doom is simply where the light goes when you turn it off. Efarmer had a final moment, when he wished Platagenet and some of his other favorites from the forum where also there with him, not out of meanness or revenge, but just because he thought it would be great for all of them to know how their debates would end.

[Cid_Yama]

and the smugness he had felt to have found doom approaching at a distance, and affording him time to wave his arms, to bleat and groan, and to soil himself as it got to arms length.

There is another way to approach this: 'Enjoy life while you can'

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics.
Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing."
What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: "Enjoy life while you can.

link

[VMarcHart]

...how bad the environment is going to get and how fast...

Really bad. I tell my friends to forget the financial crunch, PO, energy crisis, etc, but to simply focus on the environment. Mother nature is taking a beating beyond a black eye and a few bruises.

I look forward to reading the articles you find.

[Lore]

That’s really the only debate left, will the extinction come quickly or will it drag out over many years? It's not unprecedented for a catastrophic event to happen that would push most life to extinction in a very short period of time.

Rest assured though, that those who are born today will be living shorter and more brutal lives.