This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1462932
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1462932
It seems increasingly likely it will not stop there.
Barring a change in human habits, a jump to a new technology seems in order. Hope it comes.
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Sadly hope is not a strategy. In this case hope is little more than a suicide pact.
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The steady accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, due primarily to the combustion of hydrocarbons, is creating something like a greenhouse effect, where the earth is retaining more heat than it releases. If left unchecked, this could lead to a significant warming of the global climate, causing disruptions to natural systems that sustain life around the planet.
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You are aptly named sir, keep up the obvious work.
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This article caught my eye this morning. 90 degree surface ocean temp at Key West. Bad news for coral reefs, but not mentioned in the article is what this could mean for hurricane season. That’s a big energy boost for any hurricanes that come swirling up from the Caribbean towards Florida.
(free gifted link)
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I’m sure DeSantis will just blame “woke” some bullshit or other.
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In mid January of 2022, Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai submarine volcano in Tonga blew, a massive eruption, VEI 5-6, that produced a shock wave felt around the world and heard 5000 miles away. The resulting tsunami killed two people in Peru. It propelled trillions of gallons of water into the stratosphere. That was an equivalent of 10-20% of the water vapor already extant in the global atmosphere. Water is a potent greenhouse gas. And what goes up must come down. Last rainy season for California was off the charts. The rainfall in Vermont is off the charts. The coming El Nino is off the charts.
Alas, there was not enough sulfur dioxide in the volcanic emissions to counterbalance the effect of the water vapor. It has been calculated that we would surpass 1.5 degrees C for about 5 years.
If this propels us to take climate change more seriously globally, then that is a good thing. Horrible for sea life, however. It will be a weird El Nino.
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I have been wondering that too. There are already storms out there much earlier than normal. What happened in New Orleans in 2005 (?) might seem relatively tame compared to what could happen now, IMO.
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Not to be arch, but no one ever said it was. It’s no reason to abandon hope. That can lead to a literal suicide pact between the hopeless. Hope is a motivator to follow a strategy.
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Hope is an illusion, an empty promise if there’s no action behind it. As in, We hope the enemy doesn’t overrun our position - stupid when you have no defenses, unnecessary when you do.
Wrong. An illusion is when something appears real and isn’t. Hoping that something is real or will happen is not the same as believing it IS real or WILL happen. I’m sticking with the standard definition, not the nihilistic slant you are putting on it.
It is cold and heartless to call someone stupid for having hope. For most normal people, hope is intertwined with the will to live. It’s what makes people get out of bed each day. Also, you may have defenses against the enemy, but what makes you so sure they will work that hope is unnecessary, as you claim ? Hope keeps you on the likely path. If you don’t have a reasonable hope that something will work, you wouldn’t do it as a rational actor.
ETA: Yes we need a plan for dealing with a climate emergency, but that does not connect to people at the individual level. It is individual people who have hope, not the governments that are supposed to be planning and protecting us.
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I didn’t say it was stupid. I said it was pointless. Hope without a plan to fix the problem is pointless. It’s crossing your fingers that someone else gets the job done so you don’t have to bother, but you’re more than happy to enjoy the rewards of their efforts once they succeed.
Hope is lazy and selfish.
Nice! Deny it, then double down on it. Show those republicans how it’s done!
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…A Dutch Oven?
Please. I can hope another (preferably non-lethal) volcano throws millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere while personally cutting out driving, reducing natural gas usage, being vegetarian, reducing waste, planning for solar panels and planting trees. I can’t do a thing about volcanoes, although there is evidence that climate change may trigger more eruptions by altering water/ice pressure on the crust and causing water from ice-melt to seep into volcanoes producing steam pressure causing eruptions. So, are my small climate efforts possibly minutely suppressing the probability of my hoped-for volcanic eruption? Who knows. The interactions are incredibly complex.
Hope is many things to many people. To some it is motivation, giving reason to believe the difficult is possible and thus worth pursuing; to some it can be an excuse to do little. It can vary even within a person and with circumstances. To me, though, it is always better than hopelessness, which is always ennervating.
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If you kill the oceans, you kill the planet. And with no ice left at the poles to moderate pockets of heat it is only going to keep getting worse.
Wake up. People need to be able to work from home so they don’t have to commute. We need to get our food from local sources, not half way across the planet. We need to stop flying everywhere. Stay home for vacations - there are plenty of sites to see without a 3 hour jet ride.
The way things are going, we are going to see a lot more famines. You simply cannot grow food when the surface temp is over 105 degrees F.
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This is true. There are hypotheses that at least one of the great extinction events was due to noxious gases emanating from dying oceans. Already Florida is having this issue with bodies of water.
And when we had a fierce heat wave a year or two ago, young trees perished, and whole sections of mature trees scorched.
Radical action is required.
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…to keep us from turning rapidly into Venus.
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