Australian Atheists Forum

stylofone wrote: ↑Sun Mar 31, 2024 3:24 pmBut I am nowhere near the pure doomist definition here, that it's too late, we might as well do nothing because we're fucked. I think we need to fight like hell to make it less terrible.

Yeah I can agree with that. A lot of people are going to die or never get to live due to global warming, it's to late to stop it, we should be trying to limit it in every way we can.

I'm very much into mitigation and adaptation policies at the moment and for me, in an inner city area, that largely means expanding and diversifying green spaces. My local council is pretty good, there's a lot of work going on to that end. Tree and shrub planting, free mulch, good recycling depots etc. The council has greens and socialists represented and are attempting to implement increased parking fees for SUVs. It seems small but mitigation has to start locally, because...well...that's where people actually live! I imagine next summer will produce a 50C day, how does one prepare for that if not greening every spare meter of unused space, thinking about local water and soil resources, protecting native wildlife and so on.

I guess my point is, i'm a doomist from a macro perspective but i'm all in on mitigation locally.

Yeah that's not a good look politically or in regards to climate change!

A photo of two air force jets at a regional airport has sparked controversy, after it was revealed the Prime Minister and his Energy minister chartered one jet each to attend the same event promoting renewables.

Promoting renewables.......right!

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/le ... 11383acbcf

stevebrooks wrote: ↑Mon Apr 01, 2024 9:38 pm Yeah that's not a good look politically or in regards to climate change!

A photo of two air force jets at a regional airport has sparked controversy, after it was revealed the Prime Minister and his Energy minister chartered one jet each to attend the same event promoting renewables.

Promoting renewables.......right!

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/le ... 11383acbcf

The excuse offered was that Albo's big plane couldn't land at the local airport, and there were so many ministers and minions, just one smaller jet was out of the question.

Better planning and buses would have been better.

We examined computer simulations of Earth’s climate over the past 1,150 years. Worryingly, we found that given enough time, natural variability in Australian rainfall can produce “mega-droughts” lasting 20 years or more. If we add in human-caused climate change, it suggests future droughts will be far worse than we imagined.

Not a happifying prospect.

https://theconversation.com/a-20-year-m ... ain-223356

We.

Are.

Fucked.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... atastrophe

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2024 11:27 am We.

Are.

Fucked.

I find this bit interesting:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that sea levels are likely to rise between 0.3m to 1.1m by the end of the century. Many experts now fear this is a dangerous underestimate. In the past, climate change deniers accused scientists of exaggerating the threat of global warming. However, the evidence that is now emerging from Antarctica and other parts of the world makes it very clear that scientists did not exaggerate. Indeed, they very probably underrated by a considerable degree the threat that now faces humanity.

I suspect there is a sort of systemic bias which skews the predictions and the perception in favour of optimism. If you predict a bad outcome you are called a doomist. There is also a worry that people will stop listening if the predictions are too scary. They will be disengaged then it's hard to find the political will to implement climate action. So the goal is not releasing solid climate science, the goal is to release palatable climate science. But this also prevents meaningful climate action because people don't know what's coming.

The Cambridge University "Absolute Zero" report is one of my favourites. It advocated the closure of all airports in the UK except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast by 2029... and then those three would close by 2049. It also called for shipping to end by 2049. I saw a comment saying "this report is clearly wrong because we couldn't possibly stop shipping and aviation." But that comment doesn't consider WHY these dramatic measures are being proposed, that the climate effects forced on us could be far worse than giving up flying and international trade.

The "gobsmacking" observations now seem to emerge every few months, and it makes me think we could soon be seeing the sort of disasters which will make hardcore climate action more popular. By "soon", I mean any time within the next 5 to 10 years. I'm thinking about individual events with as much psychological impact as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or September 11 2001.

There's a large cohort of powerful people (boomers, left adjacent types etc) who see climate change as just a political issue. Most of them are probably on board with some degree of action to help the environment, which i suppose is something of an advance, but it always comes with caveats as though climate change was a negotiable issue.

'Look here, laws of physics, we'll transition toward renewable energy over the next 50 years and in exchange you'll not render the planet an uninhabitable desert. That's our final offer.'

But the laws of physics don't actually give a shit about our negotiations and that we some how think they do says something about our hubris.

It's very likely a lot of people won't take climate change seriously until if affects them directly, either physically or through monetary problems, of course when both happen at the same time you've got to wonder what they were thinking!

Originally listed in September for a princely sum nearing $2.3 million — a steal by Nantucket standards, where the median sale price dances around $3.2 million — the 2,625-square-foot gem on Sheep Pond Road found itself in a real predicament.

A staggering 70 feet of shoreline vanished into the ocean in a matter of weeks, hurling the property into imminent jeopardy.

By year’s end, as a result, its price plummeted to a jaw-dropping $600,000.

I wouldn't even buy at that price if I had the money to spare, one good storm away from flotsom!

https://nypost.com/2024/04/01/real-esta ... l-erosion/

Gas!

The levels of the three most important heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere reached new record highs again last year, US scientists have confirmed, underlining the escalating challenge posed by the climate crisis.

The global concentration of carbon dioxide, the most important and prevalent of the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity, rose to an average of 419 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2023 while methane, a powerful if shorter-lasting greenhouse gas, rose to an average of 1922 parts per billion. Levels of nitrous oxide, the third most significant human-caused warming emission, climbed slightly to 336 parts per billion.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-crisis