I'm gonna have to stop at 100 companies being responsible for 71% of green house gas emissions.

If the criticism is deceptive practices, don't start with deceptive statistics of your own. It's awful easy to blame Shell for all the greenhouse gas emissions of the gasoline they sell. It's wonderful to not have to take personal responsibility for your act of buying that gas for your own transportation, for the manufacture of your own food, for the transportation of that same food to your supermarket. Better still, the gas and electricity used to heat and cool your home can be blamed on the coal and power companies too.

Videos like this are part of the problem by abdicating our own responsibilities and pawning it off on someone else. Stop making this worse while pretending to care about the problem.

Trump, and all other people.
Even then, it's going to be a tough time for life if trends don't reverse quickly. Far more than an inconvenience. I heard (unconfirmed) data that suggests Iceland will lose all of it's ice even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped today. Enough feedback loops are kicking in sooner than expected that we may be in a runaway situation already no matter what we do.
This business will get out of control, it will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it.

Interesting suggestion.

I believe that with 1/10 the population, near today's per capita resource usage would be sustainable....although there would be a necessary time period with net zero or better emissions required to return the atmosphere to "normal" before runaway greenhouse effects and feedbacks turn earth into Venus 2.0. After that, there is an amount of emission the planet can absorb, so resource usage need not be curtailed excessively, but it wouldn't hurt.

I'm all for the lottery system if everyone draws straws, no exceptions except those willing to just move to the reservation voluntarily.
Even a lottery system simply for procreation would do wonders, but remembering the outrage at China for just allowing one child per couple, I doubt that would fly either. Also, it does leave the possibility that the lucky procreators might all be imbecilic morons incapable of following/continuing the plan...we don't want to become a species that is dumber than our pets....or do we?

I think the priorities should be reversed too, what's best for life on earth first, humanity second.

"In the next few decades"?! More like "a few decades ago".
Perhaps if we had started population control in the 80's with the goal of cutting global population in half by 2000 AND did the rest of what he suggests we might have a chance...we did not.

By the time we understood there was a problem there were less than a few decades left to solve it...that was around 40 years ago, and we've done everything possible to accelerate the damage we do on every front since then.

Ocean acidification is happening today, it's getting worse, it's slow to react to change so will continue to get worse even if humans disappeared tomorrow, it has built in feedback loops that have been triggered like melting methanehydrates and sequestered CO2 that are being released faster every single day, and we are increasing the man made causes every year. There is a point where it reaches critical acidification, the point where diatoms can't form their skeletons, and then the entire ocean system dies. That's far worse than the apocalypse it sounds like, not just because 50-60% of our oxygen comes from the ocean, but also because the rotting biomass creates huge amounts of not just more methane, compounding the greenhouse problem and further acidifying the oceans, but also immense amounts of hydrogen sulfide, which spread as huge poisonous clouds around the globe.
We are on our way to a man made Permian extinction, when >95% of all species went extinct and near 99% of all biomass was lost. We will not survive it as a species....and we don't deserve to.

For newts, even the .1% will go down before the rest of the world.
When I moved here, N California, I would see newts and frogs constantly, even a >1' long giant tiger salamander in my greenhouse. Now, 19 years later, I still see some frogs, but no newts or salamanders....hardly even any banana slugs.

I always figured I could just go full Morlock and live a nice cannibalistic lifestyle underground if I survive civilization's death throws.....but I'm probably old and soft enough that I won't.

I've thought for decades that when methane hydrates start to melt in large quantities our ability to do anything meaningful is gone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
That cycle seems to be in full effect and accelerating at the same time we are also accelerating our greenhouse gas emissions.
I think the short and long term situation is worse than even recent reports suggest.

Nutria don't die off every winter, so the weevils are likely to be less of a problem. There was actually a small scale trial before they built the weevil greenhouses, which didn't uncover any major issues with them.

See https://features.texasmonthly.com/editorial/creature-green-lagoon/ for many more details including the lack of frost tolerance:

Still, their campaign faced a significant obstacle: Caddo’s unfortunate latitude. The bug, like the plant it craves, is tropical. Problem is, weevils are felled by frost, while salvinia can stand slightly lower temperatures. This has proven to be Caddo’s curse, said Julie Nachtrieb, a biologist who raises and studies salvinia weevils at the Lewisville Aquatic Ecosystem Research Facility, part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In places with mild or even nonexistent winters, weevils can be released a few times and then “you can walk away and let nature take its course,” she said. But at Caddo, the weevil populations must be reconstituted every spring, giving salvinia a running start.

Not so much if you actually read (and comprehend) it, or listened to the authors.
They've said clearly that even using their revised estimates of CO2's effects that to meet a 1.5 degree rise (the tipping point where we loose all ability to mitigate the run away greenhouse effect and start the irreversible march towards mirroring Venus) we have to start decreasing CO2 emissions today and be at zero by 2040. They've also said clearly that anyone misusing their paper to imply climate change is a myth is a liar, a moron, or both, because it says and implies no such thing.

What we are doing is raising the amount we emit while people like you who clearly don't grasp the science argue, ignoring that the effects of warming are already being seen far earlier than predicted....effects like melting methane hydrates that make up the difference in CO2 effects and then some, effects like 3-500 year floods in under 2 years in places, effects like reefs bleaching worldwide.
So much for the climate science denier BS.

What do real scientists say?
...the one's he worked with all said Lindzen is totally wrong, and his views are not held by the vast, VAST majority of other scientists that actually work in climatology. He's a political shill now, working for 'conservative think tanks' to deny climate change.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06032017/climate-change-denial-scientists-richard-lindzen-mit-donald-trump

Note, his graph at the beginning that appears to show no significant rise because as usual they start in late 97-98, a super hot El Nino year (the hottest on record) typically used as a starting point to pretend that temperatures aren't rising as fast as they are. Start at any other time to see how different the results are. This graph contains the hottest 15 years in recorded history over a period of the last 19 years. That's pretty telling by itself.

1)the climate is always changing-but according to natural cycles, we should be in a cooling period, not a warming period.
2)so at least in his mind, everyone agrees CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes warming...that's better than most deniers.
3)"little ice age"-During the period 1645–1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period between 1460 and 1550 (it was not caused by low CO2 levels), and CO2 is produced more in warmer temperatures than cold, so starting shortly after then you can claim the CO2 levels have been rising since well before the industrial revolution...which cherry picked like that may be technically true but is again misleading by starting at an unusually low level following a low level solar period, but the level of that rise has consistently risen since the industrial revolution, and is incredibly higher than any natural mass releases besides rare massive super volcano eruptions that caused mass extinction events.
4) just plain not true, and not agreed on by scientists.
5)What they actually said-
Improve methods to quantify uncertainties of climate projections and scenarios, including development and exploration of long-term ensemble simulations using complex models. The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system�s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.

Confident prediction of future weather is not possible, weather predictions are based on statistical probabilities too. Because they aren't perfect doesn't mean they're wrong, useless, or should be ignored until they're 100% right every time. More funding for more study will improve the predictions consistently, but we are intentionally defunding them instead.

Religion channel? As in the religion of climate change denial? That's not what that channel is.
Philosophy channel? What?
Learn channel, only if the viewer looks into his BS elsewhere to learn the truth.
Lies, yep...controversy, yep....politics, yep....conspiracy,OK. His ilk are steeped in those, but you left out money, the driving force for all the deniers controversial, political lies and crazy conspiracy theories. ;-)

I'm torn by our pulling out of Paris. I think it's critical that we all cooperate to reduce our Co2 emissions. But I also understand that at least what China offered (not) to do is the single biggest factor in our future success (failure).

Their "reductions" are tied to points of GDP compared to 2005 levels, meaning that they can either reduce their emissions, or grow their economy faster than their emissions grow. The latter is what is happening.

Their contribution is to try to have their reliance on coal "peak" by or prior to 2030. At the moment, they are emitting over 30% of the world's Co2, with the US at about 17%. But even when and if China's Co2 emissions peak, they almost certainly won't fall...they will plateau. As we speak, China is building dozens of new coal-fired power plants...and these new plants, along with those already built, have life spans of at least 50 years. So when you hear talk of China's already reducing their emissions, they aren't speaking of real reductions, rather lowered percentages as a ratio of growing GDP. For example, China emitted over 5,800,000 kilotons of Co2 in 2005, and 10,600,000 kilotons in 2015. Yet China's nominal GDP was only US$2.3 trillion in 2005, and a whopping US$11.1 trillion in 2015. So as a ratio of GDP, China's emissions appear to have decreased. The opposite is true, and they'll continue this farce for as long as possible. Now, some will answer with things such as:

A. But America pollutes more per capita!
B. But China deserves to have a per capita GDP that rivals that of the US!
C. You should be comparing GDP per capita or PPP!

To which I answer...our planet's climate and environments don't give a damn about these abstractions. What matters is the TOTAL amount of greenhouse gases being emitted.

So, I guess we won't keep warming under two degrees Celsius. Because it's more important that China's per capita GDP of about US$8,000 grows to match the US$56,000 of the US. In effect, if populations stayed the same, and the US economy stagnated...we'd need to wait for China's nominal GDP to grow to US$77.7 trillion compared to the US's $17 trillion.

Let me just add that if China were allowed to grow that powerful, polluting all the while, then the free nations of our planet would have graver problems than climate change.

You may think that China is a poor country without the current means to effect a major transition. To which I'll answer that their government and state-run corporations could stop buying foreign businesses and real estate, as well as not building more missiles, planes, rockets, blue-water navies, and man-made islands...and perhaps put those funds toward an honest shift toward green energy.

Skip the beef, and save the reef :-)
Choose the bean pattie instead.

"Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.


Goodland, R Anhang, J. “Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change were pigs, chickens and cows?”

Goodland, Robert & Anhang, Jeff. "Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change are...cows, pigs and chickens?". WorldWatch. November/December 2009

Hickman, Martin. "Study claims meat creates half of all greenhouse gases". Independent. November 2009

Hyner, Christopher. "A Leading Cause of Everything: One Industry That Is Destroying Our Planet and Our Ability to Thrive on It". Georgetown Environmental Law Review. October 23, 2015. (New)"

It's like the doctors have given you second and third opinions and told you your liver is failing, you have to stop drinking or you'll die. You won't die the next time you have a beer, but every beer takes you farther over the edge. You can say the bartender who knows this is blameless for serving you, because others gave you the alcohol that destroyed your liver and it took longer than one night, or you can work from now and realize that he's intentionally killing you in hopes of a tip before you stumble outside and keel over.
Working from today, our planet's liver is failing, there no transplant, and Trump just reopened the bar and is serving everclear. Chances are he can't accelerate things so much that Florida submerges in the next 3 1/2 years, that doesn't mean he can't make things be far worse, beyond the point of possible mitigation.

You may hold that theory, but climatologists disagree. We are past, but still near the tipping point, and every ton of CO2 takes us farther from a survivable rise. It's ridiculous to think that we're already past holding at 3.5 degrees global rise (edit: the maximum assumed to be survivable by civilization), so we might as well make it 5 degrees.

Island nations, people who live South of New Orleans, and millions of others are already being displaced. It only takes one high tide (edit: or one extended drought) to wipe out low lying farmland permanently, and erosion has become an unstoppable force.

Trump is moving towards raising the level of multiple greenhouse gases we produce, Obama had us lowering those levels. Time can only tell what that actually means in tonnage, but 180 degree turnaround is awful enough. I agree, we also didn't do enough under Obama.

? Reversible means it can be reversed, not that it's easy. I don't know where you get that idea. Irreversible in this context means sending the temperature trend the other way before civilization becomes unsustainable. Eventually the planet should normalize unless we really follow Trump's lead wholeheartedly, then we might go full Venus. There WAS a magic bullet, being responsible with our atmosphere, but we argued over climate change until it was useless.

If, before it reverses (which it may not do at all, btw) the planet becomes inhospitable to humans, then for humans, it's irreversible. In 4 years we can do enough damage to 1) make the effects longer and harsher enough to make long term survivability impossible and or 2) go beyond the next tipping point where feedback loops reinforce each other, leading to a Venus like runaway greenhouse effect. We're damn close to massive methane releases (already happening) and if we don't avoid that, nothing will save civilization.
All that said, Clinton probably wouldn't do enough to avoid disaster either, but at least she accepted the science and agreed we should make efforts to mitigate the coming damages.

I'm definitely a pessimist, mostly because I understand the systems and human nature, and so I think we're totally hosed as a species.

TLDW version:

Of the CO2 pumped in to our atmosphere every year, human emissions only make up 3-4% of the total. Natural CO2 emissions globally DO greatly dwarf our burning of fossil fuels and other activities. This is an entirely undisputed fact, and is universally accepted and agreed upon.

As for global greenhouse effect, the CO2 remaining in the atmosphere contributes between 10-30% of the energy being trapped depending on how you count it. This is again an entirely undisputed fact, universally accepted and agreed upon.

Yes, CO2 is a small(ish) part of the global greenhouse effect, and yes, humans only add an extra 3% per year to existing natural emissions. That 3% can add up if it doesn't leave the atmosphere and builds up year over year. We have measured for it, and see that is in fact happening. We have measured the resulting warming and energy inputs and it is in fact warming.

If people want to observe those fractions of fractions stretch out error bars on analysis and projections, that's more fair. Your error bars get magnified a couple times along the way. Most of the time good scientists take that into account, although some have certainly been much less rigorous when speaking publicly than when publishing(Yes, I'm looking at you James Hansen).

I agree that the tech exists, but to implement enough of that tech (in the time left) to change how humanity abuses our resources would take more resources than exist, leaving the tech swap 2/3 finished and the planet barren.....if you could convince everyone to go along.
Had we started moving in that direction 35+ years ago, maybe, but at this point the greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere will cause climate change that's already decimated the forests and will continue to get worse, even if we go 100% green today. It's too late for tech, population control, or much else.....and the methane is just starting to be a factor.
If we just moved into the forests and abandoned tech, the forests wouldn't last one year.
If we eradicate 9/10 of the population, we don't have to change so much and the planet can absorb our damages without destroying the systems life relies on, then we just need to mitigate the damage already done instead of continuing to add to it. The best way imo was as you suggest, have people get fixed and quit having children the planet can't support...but it's too late for that even if we cut 3.2 billion nutsacks today. As I see it, we need to be fully invested in numerous plans to both stop making things worse (population, food issues, climate change, pollution, etc) and make some painful sacrifices to repair the damage done by the "greatest generation" and their spawn.

We usually get a few weeks right at or below freezing...but last year barely a few days (nights) reached freezing, and back up to mid 50's during the day.
I have a greenhouse, I'll try a few in pots I can put inside when it freezes.
Another problem we have is lack of sun. Our local airport (Arcata) was built to train pilots for fog landing, being the most consistently foggy place in the U.S.. there's little I can do if we have a foggy year.
The pineapple is in a 1/2 barrel that I brought inside for winter. The pineapple took 18 months to ripen, and was 8 bites in total, but that still counts imo. ;-)