On the Insidiousness of "We have 12 Years to Save the Planet." - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15001058
In 12 years (or 11, now?) it will be 2030 or 2031. Some observations about what will be happening around then:

(1) Change of a decade which will likely be met with some fanfare.

(2) Either through Presidential elections, legislative blowbacks (such as bad midterms) or Supreme Court blockage (even Obama's appointed judges ruled against his administration a record number of times, so even most of the current liberal justices would rule against Green New Deal-type stuff) America's far leftists will be confronted with the reality that there is no way for them to enact their policy goals.

(3) Most of America's radical leftists are millennials in their 30's, so in 2030 they will in their late 40's and many of them will be beginning to have their mid-life crisis at around that time.

So what happens when you have a bunch of late 40 year olds having their mid-life crises, they believe that the deadline to save the planet has passed or is about to pass and they have failed politically? Probably, a total disaster. Mass unrest and possibly also terrorist attacks or mass suicides as were not unknown to happen when the leftism of the 1960's and 70's collapsed. It's going to be ugly and this 12-year thing, which is technically only the latest of doomsday clocks in a series of incorrect predictions, will be pouring fuel on the fire.
#15001091
I won't be around by 2031, so I have no mule in this train. At any rate, I see the two most probable scenarios that will present themselves:

1) A slightly worse climate situation than we have now. Under that scenario, the conservatives win, since the available time to act is greater than now thought.

2) The environment deteriorates in an obvious and dramatic way (collapse in ocean fish stocks, major water battles in US southwest, continuous flooding/wildfires, a marked increase in hurricanes/tornadoes, collapse in RE values coastal areas...or some combination of these factors). In this scenario, you end up with a government takeover or close supervision of all aspects of the economy.

Alternative facts won't help here, either way. Nature will dictate the available options.

NOTE: we really should stop talking about saving the planet. The planet will be okay. The human race will survive (probably), with some radical reduction in numbers. What is definitely ending is the widescale reliance on the deposits formed in the Carboniferous Era.
#15001097
quetzalcoatl wrote:major water battles in US southwest


I disagree with this one.

Desalinization technology is cheaper than ever. It sustains Israel and other mid-eastern nations. You don't have to be near the coast to get the water because we can pipe water around just as we pipe oil around.

Right here in Texas, they are kicking around the idea of building desalinization plants on the coast, and piping the water inland. San Antonio is a candidate to try this out first.
#15001114
I with Quetz. I will be 80 years old and if still alive probably pretty much financially immune to the consequences.

My guess is that it is worse than we think. We have a political party that has chosen, as a matter of policy, to ignore the science and lie. I think this will happen all around the world. I do not see China leading the way and with their growing industrial economy simply exacerbating the problem.

People who are 20-50 now should be very frightened. Even if you are willing to roll the dice on the science (which is stupid) it is unwise to roll them on the politicians (which is even more stupid.)

The coming fascist government in the US is inevitable. Young adults today are simply unable to prevent it. (That is if they were smart enough to try. They aren't.) If they were smart enough they would be in the streets now.

Climate change will kill tons of folks. Since most of them will be poor, nobody who could do something about it will try. There are people who will post in this thread, who will die from climate change. I wonder who?
#15001120
Drlee wrote:I with Quetz. I will be 80 years old and if still alive probably pretty much financially immune to the consequences.

My guess is that it is worse than we think. We have a political party that has chosen, as a matter of policy, to ignore the science and lie. I think this will happen all around the world. I do not see China leading the way and with their growing industrial economy simply exacerbating the problem.

People who are 20-50 now should be very frightened. Even if you are willing to roll the dice on the science (which is stupid) it is unwise to roll them on the politicians (which is even more stupid.)

The coming fascist government in the US is inevitable. Young adults today are simply unable to prevent it. (That is if they were smart enough to try. They aren't.) If they were smart enough they would be in the streets now.

Climate change will kill tons of folks. Since most of them will be poor, nobody who could do something about it will try. There are people who will post in this thread, who will die from climate change. I wonder who?


As a person living in Europe, i do not understand why we care that much compared to the rest of the world. Yes, we have problems with the rizing sea levels but it is not going to hit us as hard as it is going to hit the US or the rest of the world.

We live in pretty okay climates that will be still okay even from global warming. We will build bigger dams but we don't get hurricanes or earthquakes. We have enough water, especially in the north and central Europe.

So it is strange that the people who should worry the most(US/Central America, Asia, Africa) do not care about it and we do. We are fine one way or the other. More hurricanes, earthquakes and decreasing water supply will not hit us hard while US, Asia and Africa will probably suffer the most.
#15001172
quetzalcoatl wrote:1) A slightly worse climate situation than we have now. Under that scenario, the conservatives win, since the available time to act is greater than now thought.

There's a time delay between releasing greenhouse gases and warming effects occurring, just like how your house doesn't become 20 degrees warmer the second you turn the heating on.

JohnRawls wrote:We live in pretty okay climates that will be still okay even from global warming.

Not if the North Atlantic Drift shuts down. If it does western Europe will be as cold as Russia and Canada, which are on the same latitude as Britain and France.
#15001204
AFAIK wrote:Not if the North Atlantic Drift shuts down. If it does western Europe will be as cold as Russia and Canada, which are on the same latitude as Britain and France.

FEAR CO2 BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE THE WORLD TOO HOT BUT YOU TOO COLD!!

Anyone who talks or thinks in terms of saving the planet has disqualified themselves from serious discussion.
#15001267
Truth To Power wrote:FEAR CO2 BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE THE WORLD TOO HOT BUT YOU TOO COLD!!

Anyone who talks or thinks in terms of saving the planet has disqualified themselves from serious discussion.

Yeah, it is all crazy talk. I agree that that we don't need to worry about saving the planet.
Praise the Lord.
#15001296
Rancid wrote:I disagree with this one.

Desalinization technology is cheaper than ever. It sustains Israel and other mid-eastern nations. You don't have to be near the coast to get the water because we can pipe water around just as we pipe oil around.

Right here in Texas, they are kicking around the idea of building desalinization plants on the coast, and piping the water inland. San Antonio is a candidate to try this out first.

Recently, California opened an investigation into why gas prices are so high. Since it's mostly the same gas that is used in the rest of the country and the most obvious culprit is California taxes, it's hard to tell what they're doing here. Are they doing it for show, or maybe it will turn into some weird attempt to blame Trump?

The reason I bring this up is because I wouldn't assume that California's highly politicized government, which only grows more politicized each year as normal people move out at a steady rate, will have both the competence and the desire to pipe in water from a place like Texas. There's also tons of water to the north that hasn't been getting made use of.

Remember, these are people who failed to build a high speed rail line after decades of effort and billions of wasted dollars while other people in other parts of the world have built larger rail systems for less money.

The mentality generally seems to be "never let a good crisis go to waste." Why would they pipe water in from conservative places instead of blaming conservative people? That just isn't how they seem to do things.

Edit: If you meant California building its own desalination plants, that would also be an option in theory but I similarly doubt that California has the capacities for large projects. They could have done this during the last drought and did not.

Edit 2: As Drlee touched upon in his usual gloating and threatening way, having to pay more for water is like a game for rich people. I never heard the construction of desalination plants seriously discussed during the many years I lived in California.
#15001301
Hong Wu wrote:Recently, California opened an investigation into why gas prices are so high. Since it's mostly the same gas that is used in the rest of the country and the most obvious culprit is California taxes, it's hard to tell what they're doing here. Are they doing it for show, or maybe it will turn into some weird attempt to blame Trump?

The reason I bring this up is because I wouldn't assume that California's highly politicized government, which only grows more politicized each year as normal people move out at a steady rate, will have both the competence and the desire to pipe in water from a place like Texas. There's also tons of water to the north that hasn't been getting made use of.

Remember, these are people who failed to build a high speed rail line after decades of effort and billions of wasted dollars while other people in other parts of the world have built larger rail systems for less money.

The mentality generally seems to be "never let a good crisis go to waste." Why would they pipe water in from conservative places instead of blaming conservative people? That just isn't how they seem to do things.

Edit: If you meant California building its own desalination plants, that would also be an option in theory but I similarly doubt that California has the capacities for large projects. They could have done this during the last drought and did not.

Edit 2: As Drlee touched upon in his usual gloating and threatening way, having to pay more for water is like a game for rich people. I never heard the construction of desalination plants seriously discussed during the many years I lived in California.

Your stance is weird as if there is nothing wrong with us destroying our inhabitable spaces ourselves or with help from nature. We should take action but perhaps in ways that have not been used yet.
#15001307
JohnRawls wrote:Your stance is weird as if there is nothing wrong with us destroying our inhabitable spaces ourselves or with help from nature. We should take action but perhaps in ways that have not been used yet.

Are you saying that desalination harms the environment? Or that building water pipelines would? I don't know a lot about desalination but generally yes, I put human's wellbeing ahead of animal's wellbeing.
#15001366
@hong Wu Edit 2: As Drlee touched upon in his usual gloating and threatening way, having to pay more for water is like a game for rich people. I never heard the construction of desalination plants seriously discussed during the many years I lived in California.


Gloating over what? The outrageous notion that affluent people do not worry about some of the things that should scare the shit out of everyone else?

You are completely uninformed about desalinization so it comes as no surprise that you have not heard of efforts in California.

It comes as no surprise that you are unaware of the desalinization plants already operating in California. For example you are unaware of the one near San Diego that provides about 8% of that city's drinking water. You are unaware that just under 1% of California's drinking water comes from desalinization. You are unaware of the ballot initiative that passed in 2014 calling on the state to fund projects.

California water officials have approved $34.4 million in grants to eight desalination projects across the state, including one in the East Bay city of Antioch, as part of an effort to boost the water supply in the wake of the state’s historic, five-year drought.

The money comes from Proposition 1, a water bond passed by state voters in November 2014 during the depths of the drought, and it highlights a new trend in purifying salty water for human consumption: only one of the projects is dependent on the ocean.

Instead, six of the winning proposals are for brackish desalination and one is for research at the University of Southern California. In brackish desalination, salty water from a river, bay or underground aquifer is filtered for drinking, rather than taking ocean water, which is often up to three times saltier and more expensive to purify.


It seems you are unaware of a great deal when it comes to water management in California but we can be gratified to see that like most republicans these days it does not stop you from holding forth about how stupid everyone else is.

@JohnRawls Your stance is weird as if there is nothing wrong with us destroying our inhabitable spaces ourselves or with help from nature. We should take action but perhaps in ways that have not been used yet.


We should. And the remedies can be unpleasant for some businesses. I live in the Arizona desert. We simply do not have enough water to support our current population not to mention the growth we are seeing. For example. Before a builder may construct residential housing in Arizona it must present a certificate showing a 100 year supply of water available to sustain the development. As you can imagine the "science" behind these reports are a joke. They allow, for example, the notion that water from the Colorado river will be available even when we can see that it is diminishing and has been for a long time now. Our water tables are falling dramatically and we just approved a copper mine which will draw an enormous amount of water from the ground.

I do not believe though that we should consider these challenges in the light of "rights" or privileges. If Arizona has little water then it is not a good place to build homes. If water must be purchased from another state and moved here for us to use then those costs should be born by those who wish to move here and those of us who already are here. *With the caveat that we who live here are not expected to subsidize people moving here and exacerbating the problem. This is the libertarian solution, is it not John? People expected to pay their own way.

The other thing we suck at is conservation. In the midst of the desert and during a water crisis we have a new development not far from my home that has a water park. It was constructed at the same time as the city was asking people not to wash their cars. One also ought to note that our local car washes do not recycle water.

We grow all of our decorative plants in pots. We have cisterns on our scuppers from the roof of the house. All of our landscaping is natural desert and it looks great. I am not deprived of any joy because my landscaping is appropriate for our climate. I do not need a lawn and my lawn maintenance consists of scraping off a weed or two once a week. And that only because I do not want to put chemicals on our property.

My belief is that we could handle the water issue fairly easily with some effort starting now. We won't. The republican party will stop even the most puny of efforts. They will succeed because of people like Hong Wu who is woefully unaware of the problem and secure in his "knowledge" of it.
#15001395
Hong Wu wrote:On the Insidiousness of "We have 12 Years to Save the Planet."


If I owned an SUV franchise, I'd be so pissed off at these hyperbolic claims. I'd be like:

"It might not be fossil fuels that destroy us. It might be insecticides, wars, or other kinds of pollution we don't even understand yet.

And while you're here, our 12-cylinder to-of-the-line SUV is marked down to clear with over $10,000 in cashbacks, and no interest for 2 years!

You really can't afford to not drive a giant SUV this year."


And then I'd walk away and let the chrome and headlamp design close the sale.
#15001401
@Drlee it doesn't seem like their desalination has done anything. Why am I expected to know anything about desalination? This isn't your field either. When I was young we called this being a poser.

So I'll take your word for it that they're doing something or whatever. It hasn't had an effect yet judging from the complaining and yeah, I never even heard about it.

I mean, let's be honest, I doubt you heard about it either since to my knowledge you haven't been living in California and have never mentioned desalination before, you just googled it and are acting offended now. This is threatening, arrogant and fake; not scary at all but certainly a bluster. When will people stop acting like they are experts in everything because they have access to the Internet? I expect the next generation will not even understand that they're supposed to be impressed by this kind of thing. Good for them :)

On a lighter note I do like cactus gardens.

@QatzelOk I do think the SUV trend is dumb. I haven't owned a vehicle in awhile since I don't need one out here due to a lack of zoning laws and public transport being pretty thorough.
#15001408
I live in a rain forest. I worry about water in the well most autumns. Summers are drier now (in the last ten years ) than they've been over the preceeding years. There's a seasonal Creek that runs from November til late May. It has been bone dry for weeks now.

And the hay's ready earlier too.
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