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Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 06:13:48

We have seen climate change deniers galore over the last several years. Though they continue to exist we have moved far beyond, to the point they are irrelevant.

But we now have a new form of denier. Those that refuse to entertain the possibility that humanity, actually all warm blooded creatures, will not be able to survive under future conditions, where the ability to lose metabolic heat becomes impossible.

But that is where we are headed.

We need adequate technology to create self-sustaining environments within which some (and you know who it will be) might continue to survive under the conditions of a hostile planet.

We need the ability to work outside, there will be a cornucopia of salvageable resources once most have died.

A new biosphere, one in which WE cannot survive, but life that can, will continue. We can harvest it.

We need a technology that allows us to survive beyond the death of our technological civilization. One that future generations can understand and utilize. So that man does not end due to the failure of the technology that allows continued survival.

I know it is possible, and we have to do it. We may number in the thousands, but man could potentially survive.
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry

The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 06:39:30

Ambient ground temperature in the tropics hovers currently around 32c at sea level, at 45 degrees latitude AGT is around 10c at sea level. To reach "unsurvivable" 35c AGT has to rise by about 3c at tropical sea level, but by 25c at 45 degrees lat. I haven't seen any modelling suggesting the latter is even possible.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 06:49:37

An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress
Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature TW, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. TW never exceeds 31 °C. Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. Heat stress also may help explain trends in the mammalian fossil record.

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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 08:37:59

9 degrees latitude north of the equator at 2000m the average early morning temperature year round is 14c, 58f and the hottest time of day rarely peaks above 26c, 80f

Ecological havoc may come but mammalian extinction...highly doubtful... My grand daughter might be planting mangoes and bananas instead of coffee at 2000m in the future.

More to the point, there is nothing significant we will do as a species but bare the consequences of overshoot. THose consequences are the solution, all the other heroic attempts are futile.

That is actually what most humans are in denial about, the absolute futility of correcting overshoot... and the acceptance that 6 billion plus dying, either drawn out in a few generations or punctuated by short term events is the solution. I have long resigned myself to that truth. It is resignation from recognizing the check mate nature of overshoot at the scale we are at today.

A few billion humans ago we lost the opportunity to correct. Accept it.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby dissident » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 11:58:42

SeaGypsy wrote:Ambient ground temperature in the tropics hovers currently around 32c at sea level, at 45 degrees latitude AGT is around 10c at sea level. To reach "unsurvivable" 35c AGT has to rise by about 3c at tropical sea level, but by 25c at 45 degrees lat. I haven't seen any modelling suggesting the latter is even possible.


Actually you are taking the extreme limits and this makes the argument very weak. All that has to happen is that 35C and 100% RH happen for a few weeks during summer to make life in the middle latitudes unbearable. Also, you are forgetting about the rapid attenuation of the surface area as one moves from the equator to the poles. So the energy to increase the temperature by 3C over the 30S to 30N band is enough to warm the extratropics in both hemispheres by 4.5 C. That is annual mean temperature which can easily give 15 C summer anomalies for several weeks. Global warming of 5 C will easily produce 25 C summer anomalies in the middle latitudes.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby dissident » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 12:03:32

Ibon wrote:9 degrees latitude north of the equator at 2000m the average early morning temperature year round is 14c, 58f and the hottest time of day rarely peaks above 26c, 80f

Ecological havoc may come but mammalian extinction...highly doubtful... My grand daughter might be planting mangoes and bananas instead of coffee at 2000m in the future.

More to the point, there is nothing significant we will do as a species but bare the consequences of overshoot. THose consequences are the solution, all the other heroic attempts are futile.

That is actually what most humans are in denial about, the absolute futility of correcting overshoot... and the acceptance that 6 billion plus dying, either drawn out in a few generations or punctuated by short term events is the solution. I have long resigned myself to that truth. It is resignation from recognizing the check mate nature of overshoot at the scale we are at today.

A few billion humans ago we lost the opportunity to correct. Accept it.


Unless you propose that all mammalian life is kept safe in air conditioned domes during summer (sort of a Noah's arc concept, and just as absurd) then we will see mass die off of mammalian life (cows, pigs, deer, squirrels, foxes, wolves, and likely even non-mammal species like birds which are warm blooded) when we approach 5C global warming.

5C global warming has a very high probability of occurring by 2100. We are pretty much guaranteed 3C by 2050.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby asg70 » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 12:05:23

I think Cid is still bargaining when he starts sentence after sentence with "We need..."

The lesson of the last 10 or so years of inaction leading up to our duly elected president trump and his assault on the environment is no "we". That's the problem. 99% of us don't buy into the idea of malthusian catastrophes, at least not enough to actively do something about it.

Even supposedly woke climate change believers like Plantagenet are busy joyriding around the world in jets, simultanously playing the blame game while failing to take any personal responsibility. Tragedy of the commons personified.

We're all on our own and will be left to scramble while the world continues to pursue a primarily brown-tech scenario of pesisting BAU and slapping on various band-aids.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby Pops » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 12:49:58

planning for the future is impossible

do you want $150 next year or $50 right now?

there you have it
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby diemos » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 14:18:51

asg70 wrote: is no "we".


There's the problem. Evolutionary success for the individual organism involves breeding as much as possible and hoping that their spawn will outcompete their competitors. We've lived through an anomaly where the harnessing of new resources in the form of fossil fuel allowed that competition for resources to abate for a while. When they run out we'll go back to killing each other until the population drops down to a level that can be sustained which is likely to be quite a bit lower than pre-industrial times due to environmental degradation.

Only a few Polynesian island based societies where the population was small enough that there was essentially only one tribe on the island ever faced resource limitations and sucessfully instituted population control measures to live within their means. We won't. The world will reach a sustainable population through the traditional methods known as the four horsemen; famine, plague, war and death.

Solving the problem of limited resources is trivial. Institute a lottery to limit live births to 4 million a year to create a stable population of about 280 million world wide. Human nature insures that that will never happen.

The fault lies not in our stars nor in our fossil fuels but in ourselves. So many philosophers down through the ages have noted that the world could be a paradise if you could just find a way to get human beings to stop acting like human beings. And yet, human beings stubbornly remain human beings, we cannot escape out biology.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 16:21:40

asg70 wrote:
Even supposedly woke climate change believers like Plantagenet are busy joyriding around the world in jets, simultanously playing the blame game while failing to take any personal responsibility. Tragedy of the commons personified.



It's even worse . We have bird watchers, herpetologists, botanists, entomologists, general eco-tourists, researchers, all coming to our site from all over the world, this year as far as Russia, flying across continents to enjoy the pristine wildlife and nature that they so much feel connected to.

The very segment of the population conscious about environmental issues and conservation. The very folks studying biodiversity are getting on planes coming down here to enjoy pristine habitat.

When this segment of the global population, already rarified and a small conscious minority is "consuming" nature at this rate flying on airplanes, how the hell are you going to get the rest of the population to mitigate?

Wake up folks, we aint doing anything about this until IT is done to us.

Period.

I have zero concern regarding climate change. Because I can do nothing about it.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby diemos » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 17:50:09

Ibon wrote:It's even worse . We have bird watchers, herpetologists, botanists, entomologists, general eco-tourists, researchers, all coming to our site from all over the world, this year as far as Russia, flying across continents to enjoy the pristine wildlife and nature that they so much feel connected to.


In the end every gram of fossil fuels will have been consumed by someone. Self-denial doesn't affect anything except who will be the one to consume them. Since I don't have kids and never will I consume without guilt.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby mmasters » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 18:46:22

IMO the best solution, if you think you're smart enough that is, is to get into the top 1%, you might be able to make a difference in that position, everything else is just jerking off in the wind.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby Yonnipun » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 19:09:12

So many philosophers down through the ages have noted that the world could be a paradise if you could just find a way to get human beings to stop acting like human beings


I think automatization and basic income is the closest to paradise we can realistically ever achive. We are not too far from it. Of course eventually it fails miserably due to the depletion of the fossil fuels.

We do have the means to build a sustainable population base (legal birth control and abortion) and a steady state solar infrastructure


I can not see a possible way to maintain such infrastructure without fossil fuels. That is simply not possible.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 19:26:28

mmasters wrote:IMO the best solution, if you think you're smart enough that is, is to get into the top 1%, you might be able to make a difference in that position, everything else is just jerking off in the wind.


Except for a few issues- 1/ the 1% aren't actually in control, nobody is, it's not like that. 2/ the 1% are mostly there by luck of birth, exceedingly few on 'intelligence' (there's no evidence the 1% are any more intelligent than any other quintile). 3/ as mentioned previously, there's no way to undo human nature, most people still want to breed & will do so as long as doing so is possible.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby mmasters » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 21:30:09

SeaGypsy wrote:
mmasters wrote:IMO the best solution, if you think you're smart enough that is, is to get into the top 1%, you might be able to make a difference in that position, everything else is just jerking off in the wind.


Except for a few issues- 1/ the 1% aren't actually in control, nobody is, it's not like that. 2/ the 1% are mostly there by luck of birth, exceedingly few on 'intelligence' (there's no evidence the 1% are any more intelligent than any other quintile). 3/ as mentioned previously, there's no way to undo human nature, most people still want to breed & will do so as long as doing so is possible.

Well, if you make it big your word is taken more seriously then some random guy on the internet. I agree on the human nature part though, the species is like a virus. But it is how it is. I don't accept that mother nature is all we have. I think that mother nature was engineered to support intelligent life. I see it as we're here to be tested. If you pass the test you move on to something greater than hellhole earth (although it's not too bad right now but I agree it will get worse). I don't particularly want to come back here so I've decided to make something of myself and do my best.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby diemos » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 21:34:45

Cid_Yama wrote:We need adequate technology to create self-sustaining environments within which some (and you know who it will be) might continue to survive under the conditions of a hostile planet.


Ok. How about nuclear reactors stationed around the arctic sea to provide heat and light during the winter months. Should be quite survivable for a small population.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 23:21:58

mmasters wrote:
SeaGypsy wrote:
mmasters wrote:IMO the best solution, if you think you're smart enough that is, is to get into the top 1%, you might be able to make a difference in that position, everything else is just jerking off in the wind.


Except for a few issues- 1/ the 1% aren't actually in control, nobody is, it's not like that. 2/ the 1% are mostly there by luck of birth, exceedingly few on 'intelligence' (there's no evidence the 1% are any more intelligent than any other quintile). 3/ as mentioned previously, there's no way to undo human nature, most people still want to breed & will do so as long as doing so is possible.

Well, if you make it big your word is taken more seriously then some random guy on the internet. I agree on the human nature part though, the species is like a virus. But it is how it is. I don't accept that mother nature is all we have. I think that mother nature was engineered to support intelligent life. I see it as we're here to be tested. If you pass the test you move on to something greater than hellhole earth (although it's not too bad right now but I agree it will get worse). I don't particularly want to come back here so I've decided to make something of myself and do my best.


Magical thinking, both points.
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby mmasters » Mon 20 Aug 2018, 01:14:06

SeaGypsy wrote:
mmasters wrote:
SeaGypsy wrote:
mmasters wrote:IMO the best solution, if you think you're smart enough that is, is to get into the top 1%, you might be able to make a difference in that position, everything else is just jerking off in the wind.


Except for a few issues- 1/ the 1% aren't actually in control, nobody is, it's not like that. 2/ the 1% are mostly there by luck of birth, exceedingly few on 'intelligence' (there's no evidence the 1% are any more intelligent than any other quintile). 3/ as mentioned previously, there's no way to undo human nature, most people still want to breed & will do so as long as doing so is possible.

Well, if you make it big your word is taken more seriously then some random guy on the internet. I agree on the human nature part though, the species is like a virus. But it is how it is. I don't accept that mother nature is all we have. I think that mother nature was engineered to support intelligent life. I see it as we're here to be tested. If you pass the test you move on to something greater than hellhole earth (although it's not too bad right now but I agree it will get worse). I don't particularly want to come back here so I've decided to make something of myself and do my best.


Magical thinking, both points.

Beats SeaGypsy's thinking where nothing great ever gets accomplished because it's deemed "impossible."
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Re: Denial of the Possibility of Unsurvivable Biosphere

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Mon 20 Aug 2018, 01:15:36

Rubbish. I don't have to believe in nonsense to achieve my version.
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