I'm an actualist — 180 Proof

That just means you're a determinist.

But i am (we are) not arguing that the PoE is a "problem" (i.e. proof of the nonexistence of g/G), so your "challenge", Fool, is moot. Pay attention:
 

Pay attention:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/347550 (2 years ago)

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/506435 (9 months ago)

Compatibilist.

Actualism is going to be determinism.

:roll:

:100:

This isn't my stroke of genius, man. Actualism is a form of hard determinism.

You may be making up your own private actualism, in which case you should probably call it something else.

Is it already too late?

If so, will we reach tipping points no matter what policies we enact?

Will we actually turn ourselves into Venus?

If it's not too late, what exactly can we do to contribute to mitigating it?

Is there ANYONE out there who still doesn't consider this the issue of our times? — Xtrix

I think it's too late. Tipping points will (or have been reached) regardless. I don't know about Venus. Maybe not that hot. It is too late, but what we can do is accelerate it to mitigate it. I think that if you bring on the pain, and the end, sooner, there might be something left to work with after the lesson is learned. But the longer the foot-dragging, and the slower the boil, the more we destroy what's left, and the less there will be to work with after the lesson is learned.

The problem is, the pain needs to be felt by those with the power to do something about it. Some people actually need to get Covid, be put on a vent and suffer before they come around. Sometimes they need to see a loved one suffer and die. People are stupid that way. But so long as it affects someone else, Meh. Open up those Arctic shipping lanes so's I can make me some muny!

I consider it the issue of our times for the last 50 years.

Search my post history. I've linked to articles on actualism many times in order to clarify my references in modal-ontology. If as you claim, frank, that actualism entails "hard determinism", then by all means make the case. Assertion alone doesn't says much.

Ok fine my bad.

I haven't kept up, so I'm not sure how actualism and determinism relate to climate change.

I read that parts of Europe have an energy problem now, and that all those windmills - predicted to have no more than seven days a year of less than 10% output - have gone 65 days so far.

Where is geothermal? Where is tidal energy? When the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow there's trouble a'brewin.

Where is geothermal? Where is tidal energy? When the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow there's trouble a'brewin. — jgill

Geothermal isn't a resource for every place,and so is tidal. They can assist, but basically one has to remember that energy production is and will be determined by demand and supply of today. The fact is that we can have those long term plans, but the economic situation of today has a huge impact of just what actually will happen.

Where are the fossil fuels, you should start with:

The price of coal:

Coal usage has rebounded in the past year, wiping out declines in 2020 and interrupting a decades-long downward trend of use in advanced economies.

The price of oil:



Although for renewables and alternatives it's basically good that fossil fuel prices are high in the long run, what we seem to have is going to be a possible energy crisis. Rolling blackouts in China isn't a great indicator where the energy market is going.

Trying to bounce back from Covid, the world has run headlong into an energy crisis. The last spike of this magnitude popped the 2008 bubble.

Crude oil is up 65% this year to $83 per barrel. Gasoline, above $3 per gallon in most of the country, is more costly than any time since 2014, with inventories at the lowest level in five years.

Meanwhile natural gas, which provides more than 30% of all U.S. electricity and a lot of wintertime heating, has more than doubled this year to $5 per million Btu.

Even coal is exploding, with China and India mining as fast as possible. The price of U.S. coal is up 400% this year to $270 per ton.

The situation is considerably worse in Europe, where electricity prices have quintupled and natgas prices have surged to $30/mm Btu—the energy equivalent of paying $180 for a barrel of oil.

All this is feeding into the inflation loop, pushing up the prices for energy-intensive metals like nickel, steel, silicon. Fertilizer, mostly made from natural gas, has ramped past 2008 record highs to nearly $1,000 a ton, obliterating the $300 to $450/ton range of the past few years. China announced this week it would halt fertilizer exports. Copper, perhaps the most vital raw material in building out a wind and solar industry, is near a record at $4.50 per pound. We’ll have to deal with inflation after surviving the challenge of not freezing to death this winter. “Only some form of government intervention that mandates large-scale power cuts and rationing to certain sectors can curb gas demand and temper gas prices materially this winter,” wrote Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects last week.

Do note that what has happened now has a lot to do with the central banks printing trillions. And that the World has, at least officially, turned away from coal and fossil fuels without thinking where the additional energy needed to replace them will come.

Whom can we blame for this mess? A combination of factors. It starts with central banks persisting with artificially low interest rates and a flood of cheap money despite record levels of consumer spending and a 30% surge in Chinese exports—all of which is straining against pandemic-constricted supply chains. Add to that Russia not flowing nearly as much gas into Europe as expected (perhaps as a passive-aggressive tactic to force approval of Nord Stream 2).

But the roots go deeper. The ESG and carbon divestment craze has so demonized fossil fuels (and nuclear power) that institutional investors and governments have cut them out of portfolios entirely, and have instead been flowing capital to more socially acceptable low-carbon alternatives.

If oil prices go over 100 dollars per barrel, that will put on an handbrake on the global economy and we might be looking at a global economic recession/depression.

Coal usage has rebounded in the past year, wiping out declines in 2020 and interrupting a decades-long downward trend of use in advanced economies.

Wow!

Excellent post!

Dear ol' Mother Earth aka Gaia is telling us in the sweetest way possible, "help yourself."

[...]Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves. — Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park)

Are we, by ignoring, glossing over, deprioritizing climate change, committing mass suicide?

$CO_2$ is a poison, you know.

I know I'm feeding the trolls, but still, you need a certain amount of CO2 because your body uses it to maintain the pH of your blood.

To make sure you maintain a baseline level, your body will shut off blood flow to your brain to make you stop hyperventilating.

So if your body is willing to knock your ass out to get CO2, it's definitely not a poison.

troll. :starstruck:

:ok: If you say so.

Are we, by ignoring, glossing over, deprioritizing climate change, committing mass suicide? — Agent Smith

Yes.

We found that the mass melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was a major cause of high sea levels during a period known as the Last Interglacial (129,000-116,000 years ago). The extreme ice loss caused more than three metres of average global sea level rise – and worryingly, it took less than 2˚C of ocean warming for it to occur..

https://theconversation.com/ancient-antarctic-ice-melt-caused-extreme-sea-level-rise-129-000-years-ago-and-it-could-happen-again-131495

The Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf is the floating terminus of the Thwaites Glacier, one of the fastest changing glaciers in Antarctica and contributing as much as 4\% of global sea level rise today. This floating ice shelf is stabilized offshore by a marine shoal and acts as a dam to slow the flow of ice off the continent into the ocean. If this floating ice shelf breaks apart, the Thwaites Glacier will accelerate and its contribution to sea level rise will increase by as much as 25\%. Over the last several years, satellite radar imagery shows many new fractures opening up. Similar to a growing crack in the windshield of a car, a slowly growing crack means the windshield is weak and a small bump to the car might cause the windshield to suddenly break apart into hundreds of panes of glass. We have mapped out weaker and stronger areas of the ice shelf and suggest a “zig-zag” pathway the fractures might take through the ice, ultimately leading to break up of the shelf in as little as 5 years, which result in more ice flowing off the continent.

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/978762

Two near-record melt events occurred in the 2021 melt season for the Greenland Ice Sheet, in late July and in mid-August. During the second event, an unprecedented occurrence of rain at the National Science Foundation’s Summit Station took place, the first to be observed in the satellite era. Overall the melt season was unexceptional, owing to a modest start; however, the mid-August heat wave was both strikingly intense and late in the season by several weeks compared to similar events in the record.

http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/

Most of the sea level rise in recent years is attributed to expansion of seawater due to warming, and small glacier melt. But most of the potential sea level rise (up to 70meters) lie in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The news is not great.

Back when we were nomadic hunter gatherers, it was easy enough to up sticks and migrate to higher ground. But the logistics of London or NewYork or ... count the number of coastal low-lying Metropoli,... is a lot of sticks to up. Andthen there is all the arable land loss.

There are going to be some climate refugees - and we all hate refugees. There are going to be some food shortages.

This is one factor - sea level. Then there is the heat itself that will make some equatorial regions uninhabitable, the increase in energy in weather systems leading to more extreme events, the inability of vegetation to migrate fast enough to their new preferred climate zone. degradation of ecologies by failure to adapt soil loss to erosion, and there may be some social unrest.

and there may be some social unrest. — unenlightened

I'm guessing global systemic breakdown at some point.

The only truly clean energy of which I'm aware is the passive solar type that is built into my house. Outside ten degrees, inside seventy. Virtually no pollution involved.

Cold when the sun goes down.

Is it already too late? — Xtrix

The narrative we are being given is that we have a global warming problem and we have to fix that and move on to 2050 and beyond. This narrative is false. We have a constellation of problems and all of them are hitting at the same time and we have to solve them at the same time (as in right now). So yes, it is not likely we will solve all this stuff in time.

1. Fish stocks have collapsed. 1 bn. people in South Asia depend of fish for their livelihood.
2. Agricultural soil is now so depleted there are only 60 harvests left
3. Natural resources are getting scarce
4. Urbanization
5. Pollution
6. etc.

Can we solve all this stuff now before it gets to 1.5 degrees excess warming?

If not there's Catabolic Capitalism.

We'll be able to print meat eventually. We just need free energy.

Non-human CO₂ emissions per year $\approx$ $34 \times 10^9$ tons (34 billion metric tons)

1 human produces around 2 tons of CO₂ per year.

In terms of CO₂ emissions there are an additional $\frac{34 \times 10^9}{2} = 17 \times 10^9$ humans (17 billion humans)

World population (in terms of individual humans): 7,000,000,0000 or thereabouts. (7 billion).

Actual world population (in terms of CO₂ emissions): 17,000,000,000 + 7,000,000,000 = 24,000,000,000 (24 billion).

This Person does not Exist!

1 human produces around 2 tons of CO2 per year. — Agent Smith

That's 14 billion per year.

I read this though:

"Tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.
In 2019, about 43.1 billion tons of CO2 from human activities were emitted into the atmosphere. This was an all time high, breaking the previous record from 2018. The emissions could form a giant “CO2 cube” measuring 30 km on each side."

Quite a difference.

Look here for the amount thrown in from the start of this year.

It's a fucking fact that the western way has got the globe in a firm grip. And even if all energy that's involved in the mad western way came from the Sun directly and if it was made portable by hydrogen from the sea, and even if all waste would be recycled, the Western Imperative dictates Growth, Progress, and Mastery of Nature. A guaranteed recipe for globally total ellimitative and exterminate annihilation. If we are lucky, a global thermonuclear conflict will come to the rescue. Seems Putin and Biden wanna start the dance. It only takes two to tango!
At least they can use their toys! And as usual, the people and creatures who don't give a damn about the policies of the power get fucked.

From the article:

As the economy’s energy-starved productive sector atrophied, this corrosive catabolic sector metastasized rapidly. It profits from conflict, crime, and disaster; scarcity, hoarding, and speculation; isolation, desperation, and prejudice; fear, anger, and chaos. We can see catabolism at work in today’s fractured media landscape. Cable and Internet giants manipulate and monetize users. Their algorithms customize and sensationalize content, enticing us to keep clicking and scrolling. Curiosity draws us down rabbit holes that feed our anxieties and prejudices by marketing wild conspiracies, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, crackpot patriotism, and racial hostility. Weapons manufacturers are also well positioned to reap catabolic profits by selling expensive firepower to governments and small arms to terrorists, über patriots, white supremacists, drug gangs, criminals, and a fearful public. The catabolic contractions ahead will drive the demand for their lethal merchandise to record heights.

And on it goes. Now what kind of language is this? Exactly the language George Orwell warned for, in 1946 already, in the context of politics but applicable more than ever: Politics and the English language

I agree entirely. The loss of good language will be our undoing.

I agree entirely. The loss of good language will be our undoing. — EnPassant

Maybe the language of subjective undoing, instead of objective doing, can save the planet. Imagine that language is taught to the children.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/climate/climate-change-ipcc-un-report.html

(Time is running out to avert disaster, according to IPCC.)

Adjacent story:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/us/politics/supreme-court-climate-change.html?smid=url-share

Supreme Court considers limiting EPA’s ability to address climate change.