I think the truly scary part is that our emissions today continue to have an effect on the climate for decades - centuries, so to affect today’s climate we needed to change our emissions decades ago or find feasible, economically and ecologically viable massive carbon sequestration techniques yesterday.

That’s why I believe we are locked into massive unsurvivable changes as a best case scenario, and a mass extinction of anything bigger than a large cat. Much worse if we continue the current course.

Crop failure by 2030!?….oops, try 2022.
Unprecedented drought and unheard of global temperatures right now. Massive crop failures worldwide, and more just not being planted for lack of water.
We aren’t on the road to global catastrophe, we are knee deep in one. Thousands if not tens of thousands will die This week in Europe as a direct result of human caused climate change. Over 1500 died in Spain and 1000 in Portugal from heat just in this one event, over 4200 across Europe….so far. Crop losses will multiply that exponentially.
We are on the downhill ride into mass extinction and we already ripped our brakes out and pulled the steering wheel off and are arguing over how hard to stomp on the accelerator.
If the ecological cost of burning gasoline was included in the price, it would be well over $10.

They’re banning materials because they can’t be made without the toxic, easily spread, impossible to remove chemicals, and aren’t ever made without illegal dumping of the byproducts of their creation, according to the reporting….not simply because they share some chemistry.
Everything in the universe shares some chemistry with everything else, chemistry is the mechanism through which matter functions….it gives matter it’s properties.

Lead paint shares chemistry with other lead products….and a chemical. It’s that chemical’s toxicity that makes it appropriate to ban substances that contain it. Same thing here. These materials share a toxic substance (or toxic variant of the same substance). Less toxic substance than lead, sure, but still toxic, and much more widely spread. Contaminating the entire planet. As if we weren’t already in a mass extinction, we feel the need to create more toxic pollution for a tiny bit of convenience.

Perhaps you aren’t bothered by having every waterway near any manufacturer that uses these chemicals becoming toxic for animals and humans forever…most people are bothered by that kind of permanent environmental destruction or degradation.

That’s why humans don’t deserve to survive. As a species, we’re so irresponsibly self centered it’s going to kill the planet and us with it, all for nothing worth having.

*doublepromote someone else finally telling the truth, even if it is just a fictional tv character. I’ve been saying the same thing since around 2000. If we went all in, halted all co2 emissions and all methane emissions 20 years ago, and invested in methods to catch and sequester what we already emitted, we might have avoided the tipping point where we are no longer in control….but instead we increased emissions every year, flooring it towards that cliff and hitting the nitrous button.
*quality if inconvenient truths

That tipping point was reached well over a decade ago when methane started to melt out of permafrost and the deep ocean where it has been frozen for eons. It’s capable of causing warming >80 times as much as co2 short term, >25 times as much long term, and is boiling out at rapidly increasing rates. Pre 2006 it’s estimated around .5 million tons per year…2006 it was measured at 3.8 million tons…by 2013 that was up to 17 million tons with the trend increasing. More recent estimates are hard to find, but it’s agreed that as temperatures climb not only are hydrates melting much more rapidly, bacteria are also accelerating decomposition in the thawed permafrost, and they emit methane. The Arctic is warming up to 5 times faster than the average global temperature. It’s likely over 50 million tons per year by now if not much higher.

Shakhova et al. (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 gigatonnes (Gt=1 billion tons) of carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost, and 5–10% of that area is subject to puncturing by open taliks. They conclude that "release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time". That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve in one shot….game over.

Bear in mind, 1 cubic meter of hydrate contains >160 cubic meters of methane gas at atmospheric pressure.

The amount of increase from bacterial emissions in rotting permafrost is debatable, but even the lowest estimates are insurmountable.

This is only one of dozens of KNOWN feedback loops already in action, and there are definitely unknown feedback systems we can’t predict.

This does not mean there’s nothing to be done, we can still mitigate the damage somewhat, maybe slow the rate of change enough that some animals and plants more advanced than bacteria survive long term. It does mean a massive >99% culling of humanity, a total shift in civilization from a money based civilization to one focused on survival, and likely an unavoidable mass extinction rivaling any previous extinctions.

Diatoms, and other phytoplankton, are incredibly sensitive to ocean PH and CO2 levels. This can be another feedback loop already in action.
As fewer diatoms photosynthesize, more CO2 goes unused, raising the concentration, lowering the numbers and health of phytoplankton, allowing more CO2 to go unused, raising the concentration, .....
Every molecule of CO2 added to ocean systems removes one molecule of carbonate, which is necessary for the uptake of iron among other processes. By 2100, surface carbonate is expected to decrease by up to 50%. That may well be below the levels diatoms can tolerate.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/key-biological-mechanism-disrupted-ocean-acidification

If phytoplankton goes, so does the food web. They are the base. If the ocean food web collapses, eventually the bacteria that eat dead sea life will create huge clouds of hydrogen sulfide that cover the land, poisoning any still living organisms there. This has happened before, but on a much longer timescale, with near life ending results for earth.

Hydrogen Sulfide, Not Carbon Dioxide, May Have Caused Largest Mass Extinction. ... "During the end-Permian extinction 95 percent of all species (and >98% of all biomass) on Earth became extinct, compared to only 75 percent during the KT when the dinosaurs disappeared,"

A better title might be "diatoms, the tiny glass shards that support all life on earth, are struggling".

Also google/youtube for "6th Mass Extinction"

We will be the arbiters of our own demise, within our lifetimes - unless we change our shopping lists.

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. ;-)

The simplest counter arguments to your dismissal are, 1) it's not a single degree, it's a number of degrees in a short time, releasing massive amounts of methane at once instead of over a few millennia. 2) it's exactly what happened 250 million years ago when climate change happened rapidly enough to release massive methane deposits in a short time frame, causing massively more climate change and a mass extinction event. Since then, there has not been the same kind of rapid mass increase in ocean temperature since the methane deposits were replaced.

It's about the speed of the temperature change, not just the amount of temperature change. Methane is short lived in the atmosphere, so if a change happened over 1000 years, the same total amount of methane might be released as a 100 year change, but only 10% of it will be in the atmosphere at a time. Consider, we've raised the temperature fast enough that the permafrost is melting at the same time as ice at the bottom of the ocean. That's a fairly unique situation that releases two enormous deposits of methane at the same time.

Our understanding does not need to be "complete" to be scientifically valid, or right. We may not know everything we need to know about the climate, but what we do KNOW is how methane reacts in the atmosphere, and how methane hydrates melt at certain temperatures/pressures, and we are near those levels in the deep oceans and permafrost areas today....so close that there are massive methane pockets bubbling out of the northern oceans and recently frozen ground worldwide.

I have an agenda, I have several actually, and they are all solved with not consuming animal products for food or materials.
1. I don't want the environment to be destroyed, through mass extinction, waste, and global warming.
2. I don't want animals to be exploited, tortured and killed for profit and pleasure.
3. I don't want to die young as a result of eating myself into chronic disease. (And I don't like that 90% of people in hospitals are there because of easily preventable disease. Where I live it is a massive cost to the government and it could be used for quality education instead).

If that is self righteous then show me to my high horse.


Gluten intolerance means you can eat literally everything but three types of grain plants.

In the books I mentioned, you'll be blown away at how much food there is to eat, and how little of it contains wheat, bulgur or rye. And even if some recipes do, you can substitute those with dozens of other ingredients.

The books also contain thousands of references to peer reviewed studies. I mentioned those because they contain a lot of recipes too, but if you want one that is purely scientific then there is always "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger. After reading that you'd be INSANE to keep eating any animal products.

All of the evidence is in these books, and I'm sure if you take the time to read them you'll see (like I did) how wrong the modern lifestyles are.

Also being lactose intolerant, I'm sure you know you can enjoy many different types of milk such as rice/soy/hemp/coconut/hazelnut/cashew/almond etc

I understand that you have to be more careful about what you eat being gluten intolerant, but you don't have to be a victim to it, read the books I have suggested and you'll be able to live your life to the fullest.

*quality *engineering to make this work. I'm guessing this is 3d printed.
*promote

On a less positive note, it's going to be a problem when my amphibious brethren aren't there to eat the bugs and provide a few links in the food chain. I hope they get a grasp on Chytrid soon, we have enough problems with habitat depletion as it is. I'm often surprised the mass extinction of an entire CLASS of life doesn't get more attention. It's a pretty big deal (but I am biased).

ExxonMobil had the Bush administration lobbying strongly to replace the chair of the IPCC with a more agreeable alternative, which we know about because of a leaked memo. So let us not pretend that the IPCC are above the skepticism of being politically influenced. The name "intergovernmental panel" says it all, in my opinion; i had assumed the I stood for Independent.

I don't apologise for not reading the entire thread because i noticed that in your first post you said the following, and it gave me cause to doubt your take on the science in the rest of the thread. I've been in too many discussions in which i spent hours researching only to find out people were completely wrong, and i spent 45 mins on your first paragraph already. Anyway here is the quote again:

"IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under."

Firstly, the planet's flora and fauna have most certainly NOT thrived during that time. Humans have flourished by exploiting nature, so yes we have 'thrived'. In the same way that if i were to steal money from a dozen old ladies, i might say i was thriving even though i was out of work during the economic downturn. Pretty much every source agrees that the one thing the ecosystem is not doing is thriving - we are in or on the verge of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. So this is an inspiring yet futile "hurrah for us!" bravado that ignores the truth; we stand on the deck of a galleon around a big bonfire, ripping up planks and chopping up the boat, throwing it on the fire and going "we're all lovely and warm!" as we sit lower and lower in the water.

Secondly and in my opinion most significantly, according to the IPCC conclusions on page 8 you have used the term "best estimates" to mean "best case scenario" rather than "most reliable estimate" - which is why i have downvoted that comment, as it is misleading and incorrect. I would say it's cynically misleading, but i suspect you've lifted that from a cynical source rather than being cynical yourself.

I don't know if you realise, but you referred to only one result out of four, the rest of which strongly indicate a greater than 2 degree rise. Your reference is to RCP 2.6 which assumes CO2 emissions peak between 2010 and 2020. A decade in which the most populous countries on the planet are developing and a decade in which we must start to reduce global emissions so that we have a good chance of your best case scenario happening. We are already half way through it, and according to Mauna Loa observatory and every other source i could find (including EPA, NOAA and IEA) we are still increasing our CO2 emissions year on year including this year, where we've broken the 400ppm milestone, 120ppm greater than pre industrial times, half of which occured since 1980 (Pieter Tans).

So in fairness, you might have underplayed the IPCC report (which you seem to get almost all of your information from) in as much as newtboy might have overestimated the dangers and rapidity of climate change. I think you're out on a limb by telling him that the scientific community disagrees with him and he's using dodgy sources, when you've cherry picked one quarter of a conclusion from one source (the IPCC) to argue for your best case scenario which you refer to (unscientifically and incorrectly) as the "best estimate".

However, i do at least appreciate that despite your doubts (and in my opinion, slight confusion over the results, i don't think you're being intentionally misleading) you are very much behind changing our behaviour and using resources that are more appropriate... and that's what really matters right now is that people recognise the need to change.

Interesting info, but also kind of false/lame advertising.

How to break the Internet:
1) allow older hardware to keep running; can't really do anything to cause that
2) cut the cords; as he said, you couldn't cut enough to cause a problem
3) allow (?) a solar flare to happen and destroy our power grid; oh, shut up

How about:
4) wait for a huge meteor to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction and all of mankind; boom, Internet is broken
5) wait for the next ice age

They aren't describing "how to break the Internet." It's just "things that could affect the Internet."

Newtboy said it well; ice ages come and go due to numerous factors, but one of the most important factors is how much of the atmosphere is composed of carbon dioxide and methane.

Indeed, there have been interglacial periods where the earth was largely void of ice and had the much higher sea levels to match. At one point global temperatures were about as high as is expected to occur in the next century or two.

The difference between then and now is that life and the ecological chemistry of earth had millions of years to adapt before those periods reached their height in most cases. I say in most cases because there have been periods where climate change occurred faster than before and severely disrupted ecological stability or simply caused mass extinctions. Climate change has always happened, but the reason why current climate change is so worrying is because it is happening faster than ever before and because there is a massive amount of data to back it up.