We have to cease overconsumption. It is the only resolution. We must educate the masses.

Do not buy things you dont need. Tell everyone.

If the jobs disappear switch to farming

Yes, I agree with everything you say here. I think that not only is there inertia in many of the areas which do require rapid change. But there is also an insurmountable problem in large populations. In cities for example with many millions of inhabitants, the resources individuals require are transported en mass into that city continually. It is like a finely tuned watch, all it needs is a spanner thrown in the works for it to descend into chaos. Such populations are heavily exposed to disruption, or catastrophes of numerous kinds. Many of which are being considered likely should further impacts of climate change develop.

Large populations are also vulnerable to sea level rise, as many are at sea level. Problems will arise from large numbers of people having to move out of cities which are becoming uninhabitable due to sea level rise. Inhabitants of the areas they wish to move to will not want to let them in because their resources will already be stretched etc etc.

Some people say that these things won't be a problem because large numbers of people will die due to famine or disease. These will bring further problems of disease and unrest, destabilising adjascent populations causing famine and disease and conflict to spread in unknown ways.

True. Many years ago my Labour Party Branch was passing resolutions about setting up a free press if we ever want socialism here.

If we all take as little as possible and then start to give back then what have we accomplished? Incredible feats of which humanity is more than capable. We are prosperous in the wrong things. Plastic. We need to be prosperous in food and water and shelter and nature and community. Not plastic. Not oil.

So we have to try. Try for my children. Your friend's and family's children. Try because life is an amazing thing and it's worth continuing.

In cities for example with many millions of inhabitants, the resources individuals require are transported en mass into that city continually. It is like a finely tuned watch, all it needs is a spanner thrown in the works for it to descend into chaos. — Punshhh

Yes, we are very much in agreement. Whereas most of the environmental movement has embraced an even more urban vision of the future, I am working to de-urbanize and create technology that is simpler, more resilient, detached from dependence on large integrated infrastructure, and so allowing living close to food (and so, even if transport and trade increases efficiency, a breakdown of these systems don't result in short term starvation based on 2 weeks of stored foods).

Some people say that these things won't be a problem because large numbers of people will die due to famine or disease. These will bring further problems of disease and unrest, destabilising adjascent populations causing famine and disease and conflict to spread in unknown ways. — Punshhh

Yes, I also don't get this argument. The idea that "to solve the ecological crisis by letting the ecological crisis unfold so as to kill all the people that caused the ecological crisis" doesn't pass even a cursory critical scrutiny.

Also, of the Impact = People x Technology x Affluence, it is clearly the technology and affluence terms that have large potential variation through government policy, entrepreneur initiative and political and habit change movements of people. It is only people who want to hold on to their affluence without even being willing to consider how a lower impact life can be just as "affluent" (just different pros and cons if social chaos is avoided), that think simply lowering the People variable is the "obvious solution"; although obviously a solution to the equation to lower I; people tending not wanting to be killed, there is no policy mechanism to carry out this depopulation plan other than ecological collapse ... which obviously doesn't solve ecological collapse.

So yes, we are pretty much in agreement on the various aspects of this issue.

In the UK people are starting to plant trees, our biggest land owner National Trust has already started a programme of mass planting, with volunteer groups among their members. I am interested in ideas around permaculture and forest farming. It will however be a slow progress to alter the industrialised farming practices we have. Also there are a growing number of land owners embarking on re-wilding their land with remarkly quick increases in bio diversity.

This is as we know against the backdrop of the global crisis and I don't think we can in the UK anticipate just how our climate is going to change. This is due to the unpredictability of what will happen to the Gulf Stream, whether it will switch off, when and what would be the consequences. Will we have longer colder winters, will they be dry, or have significant snow fall. Will we have long dry summers, or changeable wet summers. We seem to be getting all these conditions in what feels like a rollercoaster at the moment, with them getting gradually more extreme. The record highest December temperature was recorded a few weeks ago at 18 degrees Celsius. I expect a cold spell with close to record low temperatures in a few weeks.

You may already know this butit seems humans aren't the only organisms to have affected our earth's climate: cyanobacteria caused the great oxygenation event and that radically altered the flora and fauna and the carboniferous period led to global cooling.

Yes, I was aware of the cyanobacteria. They began their oxygen producing career a very long time ago. If your point in asking was to underline the idea that "change is the only constant" then I agree. The planet has gone through extremely radical change ever since it started to coagulate out of the primordial disk of our solar system.

The moon was created by a very cataclysmic collision of a small planet with earth, but no one was here to be inconvenienced, since the earth was still too hot, hadn't formed oceans yet, and so on. The event was a good thing, however, since satellites like the moon help stabilize the movement of a planet, and later on produce tidal forces which are helpful to life.

The problem with the current constant of change, global warming, is that we seem to have a rather large role in it, and it is turning out to be highly inconvenient for ourselves and our co-evolved environment. Change will remain the only constant, no matter what, and big things are yet to come. For instance, the sun will eventually enlarge, envelop Mercury, Venus and earth (at least) in its much enlarged but cooler sphere, and we will be reduced to a cinder. Once that happens, a cinder we will stay for eternity, continuing to orbit the dwarfed sun. That assumes, of course, that another star, ejected from its region, doesn't come sailing through our solar system and send the lifeless planet off on a solo trip to nowhere.

In the long run, the universe will continue to expand, continue to cool, continue to thin out, and eventually die -- the energy of the atoms finally dissipated -- somewhere in the trillions of years in the future.

So, stay tuned. More to come.

So, stay tuned. More to come. — Bitter Crank

:rofl:

I was trying to show that global climate has been affected by organisms before although in a natural way and the present man-made global warming may lead to something interesting even if that may involve our extinction. It brings to the fore the debate on what is natural and what is unnatural - is man-made climate change just a natural process or is it not?

It brings to the fore the debate on what is natural and what is unnatural - is man-made climate change just a natural process or is it not? — TheMadFool

Yes, I agree. Are we a natural extension of the planet or not? Are our actions as natural as other organisms? Or are we “Space Odyssey” creatures?

Whats wrong with nuclear (fission) power. Fusion is just another type of nuclear power.

If the jobs disappear switch to farming — Lif3r

overly restrictive zoning laws lead to war and poverty in the short term. War releases more co2 than anything.

I’ve just been reading about the intellectual wars during the fifties over Communism and McCarthyism: the blacklisting of people, the breakup of friendships, the accusations resulting in ruined reputations, the social damage, and Its so much like the Climate Change debates. And what happened at the end of the Communist/McCarthy hysteria; nothing but ruin.

Whats wrong with nuclear (fission) power. Fusion is just another type of nuclear power. — christian2017

Fusion is "thermo-nuclear power". What's 'wrong' with fusion is that we haven't been able to sustain it. Fission reactors can be operated at a temperature low enough that the nuclear fuel (enriched uranium) doesn't melt the reactor as long as the reaction is moderated. When we lose control of a fission reactor, they melt (like they did at 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. It's a horrendous mess to deal with.

Fusion reactions are too hot to come into contact with a physical container. Fusion is what stars do, and a star, as you know, are very, very hot. Instead of being held in metal tubes and covered with water (fission reactors) the fusion reaction has to be contained within a non-physical container composed of powerful magnetic fields. While the theory is sound, the actual achievement of an ongoing sustainable thermonuclear fusion reaction in magnetic suspension has proved very very very difficult.

The good thing about fusion is that if the magnetic sphere fails, the reaction stops abruptly. I should add that there is a container in which the magnetic sphere is produced, because the heat has to be captured to do anything useful with it.

So FUSION power has been a dream for a long time -- 50 or 60 years. Several international projects have been working on the goal, but nobody has scored anything. Like I said, the technology is very, very hard to perfect.

A further difficult problem with fusion is that once the magnetic container is in place, the thermonuclear reaction has to be started by focussing many powerful lasers on a small piece of fusion fuel. The lasers provide the intense heat to trigger fusion. When the fuel is used up, another ball of fuel has to be put in place and triggered. And so on -- every step of the way has been one enormously difficult problem after another.

And what happened at the end of the Communist/McCarthy hysteria; nothing but ruin. — Brett

The Unamerican Activities Committee was itself kind of un-American. In 1954 McCarthy was censured in the US Senate by a vote of 67 for and 22 against censure. McCarthy died young, 57 years of age, just 3 years after being censured. He died of acute hepatitis, maybe aggravated by heavy drinking.

We have had two intense red scares -- the first in 1919 following WWI, and the second starting after WWII. The post WWII 'red scare' was combined with a 'lavender scare' since the people who were death on communism were also death on homosexuality. I suppose one could say that the Cold War was one long third red scare. Too bad we can't get a tax refund from all the money they spent on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

the goal, for me at least, is not to solve global warming though I do intend to do just that I think it is more realistic to aim to solve it with the intent to slow it down. To make my point more clear i do believe that global warming is impossible to solve within the time we have without causing an even bigger crisis, global economic collapse, but I do want to strive to solve it in the hopes that it can be slowed down, starting with making factories greener and incentivising making factories greener. the next step would be a slow conversion to renewable energy as well as research to make it more efficient. As i have said before, I know it is a lost cause to try to solve global warming but the problem is big enough that just trying may help to slow it down, and minimise damage.

is man-made climate change just a natural process or is it not? — TheMadFool

We are, imho, NOT space oddities. As a species engaging in hunting and gathering we did no damage to the planet. The HG regime lasted for most of our history. It was only when we stopped hunting and gathering, and started planting the wheat we found in the fertile crescent (around 12,000 years ago) that we started becoming a problem. Agriculture led to settled existence, and settled existence led to more children which led to more agriculture, more villages, and so on. A few thousand years later we started developing technics, writing, and all that. Philosophy! Finally, after hundreds of thousands of years, we were on our way to becoming a real problem.

It took another 2 thousand years for us to get really good at being the problem we naturally are -- smart apes driven by the emotions of stupid apes, with more power than we know what to do with. Then we discovered industrialism and became hell on wheels, and here we are.

We are engaging in natural, uninhibited, greedy, ugly, bad (and occasionally splendidly beautiful) behavior. We are naturally self-fucking, which is why we may have achieved conditions which will wipe us out. Perfectly natural. For us. Unfortunately.

i agree.

We are, imho, NOT space oddities. As a species engaging in hunting and gathering we did no damage to the planet. The HG regime lasted for most of our history. It was only when we stopped hunting and gathering, and started planting the wheat we found in the fertile crescent (around 12,000 years ago) that we started becoming a problem. Agriculture led to settled existence, and settled existence led to more children which led to more agriculture, more villages, and so on. A few thousand years later we started developing technics, writing, and all that. Philosophy! Finally, after hundreds of thousands of years, we were on our way to becoming a real problem.

It took another 2 thousand years for us to get really good at being the problem we naturally are -- smart apes driven by the emotions of stupid apes, with more power than we know what to do with. Then we discovered industrialism and became hell on wheels, and here we are.

We are engaging in natural, uninhibited, greedy, ugly, bad (and occasionally splendidly beautiful) behavior. We are naturally self-fucking, which is why we may have achieved conditions which will wipe us out. Perfectly natural. For us. Unfortunately. — Bitter Crank

I watched a video on ecology and population growth, the most important problem for the planet as far as humans are concerned. It seems living organisms are divided into two groups based on how their population behaves viz. r-selected or k-selected. r-selected organisms have very rapid reproductive rates and parental investment on offspring is low and you have a large number of offspring, each with a very low probability of surviving but overall the species succeeds because of sheer numbers. k-selected organisms reproduce at lower rates but invest heavily in their offspring and such organism too are successful and populations of k-selected individual remain at around the carrying capacity of the environment defined as the largest population an ecosystem can support indefinitely. Humans, for obvious reasons, are k-selected organisms and should actually be in an equilibrium with the environment. The problem, in my humble opinion, is that humans have removed what are limiting factors like food, disease, etc. that would've prevented the population boom we're experiencing; add to to that our need to construct settlements (villages, towns and cities) and our reliance on large-scale technologies. It's an effective recipe for environmental disaster.

The problem with humanity was when we developed intelligence. Up until that point we carried on within our evolutionary niche like other animals and plants. Thus playing a balanced role within the ecosystem. Once we became intelligent we began to exploit the ecosystem in new ways determined by what we thought was the right thing to do, or what we wanted to do. Unfortunately this determination was not thorough, or considerate enough of the implications of such action, to avert ever and ever greater exploitation of the ecosystem. Leading to the exploitation of geological deposits, which began to harm, poison, the ecosystem.

We have now caught up with what we have done intellectually and do now understand it and how to put it right. But we are in the predicament of having to great a population, which means we will be unable to make the necessary changes quickly, or efficiently enough to offset many of the consequences.

There's a news story going around that the Home Secretary of Britain, Priti Patel, has categorised the ideology of Extinction Rebellion as a terrorist ideology and cases of it can be referred to the Prevent Programme, which is the UK anti terrorism security force.