10-04-2024, 12:12 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YBpKduVvqA
Since climate change may be starting to affect how often PRCAC members can fly at the field, I thought this video on the current status of climate may be relevant to the forum.
Eliot Jacobson is not a very likeable personality, and he is a climate doomer, and a mathematician, yet he is central to one of the best climate change vids around at the present time. Over 1 hour and 40 minutes his beliefs and statements on climate are challenged by non-doomer scientists. I tried to pick out the best bits of the vid you might watch without having to spend 1h40m, but I can't. Here are 7 points I thought were highlights:
1. the discussion of the difference between the collapse of human civilisation (which for a large number of people is already occurring) and human extinction;
2. whether people need to have hope
3. the discussion of "techno-optimism", where humanity solves the climate crisis by various means including this incomplete list:
- green technologies allowing the phasing out of energy from fossil fuels, replacing them with wind, solar and nuclear power
- political action and social mobilisation in capitalist societies
- carbon capture and storage
- injection of sulphur into the stratosphere, noting its inadvertent injection into the lower atmosphere by shipping has now been shown to have a cooling effect
- building giant mirrors to reflect sunlight
- the phasing out of animal farming and its cruelties, with the reclaimed cattle and sheep pastures used for re-wilding, and dietary meat replaced with precision fermentation meat
- the increasing urbanisation and changing status of women leading to a dramatic decline in human populations from 8 billion to say 3 billion
- the rise of AI providing better solutions to the crisis
4. Jacobson answering personal questions including what he says to children about climate change, and whether he can socialize, and trying to refute the accusation that people born in the 1940's and 50's are the worst generation ever.
5. Most agreed in the vid that climate change has accelerated, from 0.2 to 0.3 deg C per decade above pre-industrial norms. However some good scientists maintain it is too early to be sure eg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p0HdzZsdII). I argue this may not matter, unless we keep warming at 1.5 (where we now are) its big trouble looming, given that 0.2 deg per decade takes us to 1.7 deg above pre-industrial norms by 2035.
6. the discussion how it not just about temperature, it is the transgression (now happening) of many planetary boundaries that must be respected for a livable planet. A useful review of many boundaries is here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....15419/full
7. If human civilisation collapses or humans become extinct, what happens next.
Since climate change may be starting to affect how often PRCAC members can fly at the field, I thought this video on the current status of climate may be relevant to the forum.
Eliot Jacobson is not a very likeable personality, and he is a climate doomer, and a mathematician, yet he is central to one of the best climate change vids around at the present time. Over 1 hour and 40 minutes his beliefs and statements on climate are challenged by non-doomer scientists. I tried to pick out the best bits of the vid you might watch without having to spend 1h40m, but I can't. Here are 7 points I thought were highlights:
1. the discussion of the difference between the collapse of human civilisation (which for a large number of people is already occurring) and human extinction;
2. whether people need to have hope
3. the discussion of "techno-optimism", where humanity solves the climate crisis by various means including this incomplete list:
- green technologies allowing the phasing out of energy from fossil fuels, replacing them with wind, solar and nuclear power
- political action and social mobilisation in capitalist societies
- carbon capture and storage
- injection of sulphur into the stratosphere, noting its inadvertent injection into the lower atmosphere by shipping has now been shown to have a cooling effect
- building giant mirrors to reflect sunlight
- the phasing out of animal farming and its cruelties, with the reclaimed cattle and sheep pastures used for re-wilding, and dietary meat replaced with precision fermentation meat
- the increasing urbanisation and changing status of women leading to a dramatic decline in human populations from 8 billion to say 3 billion
- the rise of AI providing better solutions to the crisis
4. Jacobson answering personal questions including what he says to children about climate change, and whether he can socialize, and trying to refute the accusation that people born in the 1940's and 50's are the worst generation ever.
5. Most agreed in the vid that climate change has accelerated, from 0.2 to 0.3 deg C per decade above pre-industrial norms. However some good scientists maintain it is too early to be sure eg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p0HdzZsdII). I argue this may not matter, unless we keep warming at 1.5 (where we now are) its big trouble looming, given that 0.2 deg per decade takes us to 1.7 deg above pre-industrial norms by 2035.
6. the discussion how it not just about temperature, it is the transgression (now happening) of many planetary boundaries that must be respected for a livable planet. A useful review of many boundaries is here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....15419/full
7. If human civilisation collapses or humans become extinct, what happens next.