#solving climate
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If we want to fight for a greener world all we have to do is separate Dan and Phil and Mr. Lester will take care of it immediately
#He wouldn't solve climate change but... the world would be a lot greener dammit#green dye shortages everywhere#climate change#dan and phil#dnp#phil lester#dan howell#dip and pip#dapg#phan#danandphil#dan and phil games#heydanandphil
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i love doing soul draining repetitive tasks for my assignments for hours and hours instead of having free time to enjoy being 20 years old <333
#bro we dont need to count and map out every fucking root of these massive plants#you're not going to solve climate change with your paper bcs people out there don't believe in it and they have like 10000 times more power#anyways being a biology student is just a highway to depression because you will learn#that you're most likely die from cancer in a 8am lecture and then immediately after that you'll go#and learn that you'll actually starve to death because of climate change instead#just positive vibes all around:)
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Before I go to sleep I leave you all with this piece of advice: sometimes you don't actually have to answer big political questions, sometimes you can just say "I am not smart enough to know that, I just know the small things I do to help." Like you can often times completely avoid making a fool of yourself if you just say you don't know.
#simon says#to explain here and not in a reblog:#sometimes when you try to explain big picture solutions you're gonna sound dumb#you might not have done enough research#you might not have a rebuttal to a counter argument#you might not be articulate enough to explain why you think this#sometimes you gotta take a step back and give the simple solution. the one man solution#you do what you can to fight against the problem#you talk to people to help spread awareness and how to fight the bad problem#and you vote and invite others to vote for bigger steps towards solving the problem#like you can talk about theory and how you believe we need to do a huge drastic thing to solve and issue#but people will disagree and argue til you're blue in the face#they'll poke and prod until you mess up or lose your temper and use it against you#and you'll feel dumb and they'll learn nothing#sometimes the best thing to do is step away from the big picture and just say 'idk what the solution is I just know the things I can do“#sometimes you gotta admit you're not a scientist/expert and you can't answer that#i used this while talking with my Dad tonight#he brought up our climate crisis and space travel as a possible solution#and I said I think that's just addressing the symptom and not the cause and we need to care for our Earth now#and he asked me what solutions I think would fix it#and knowing my incredibly smart Dad who is articulate and ready to throw rebuttles at a moments notice to play devils advocate#and my past experience in struggling in this topic with him before#i just told him I didn't know. all i knew is the little things I can and do do to help#and that hopefully by spreading the word and habits and encouraging others to vote for those bigger solutions I could help make a change#but all I really could do is the little things I have control over#and the topic became much less stressful about the little things we have control over#like planting native plants and recycling and adopting habits that are healthier to our planet#which was 100% more preferable to if I tried to give a big solution. because I would reveal i didn't have all the knowledge needed to argue#and my articulation would make me sound like a stupid kid who only thinks they know what's best#so yeah I basically suggest that if you dont wanna feel like shit after debating someone just step away from the big picture for a moment
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*clearly becoming more and more insane about this piece of media*
Sat for ten minutes trying to explain the correlations I want to see between organic and inorganic horror and realized that all I'm describing is a disaster movie, but actually good because the writers know geology/science, which is just Don't Look Up and maybe Dante's Peak if we want to stoop to B-tier.
#ptxt#LISTEN okay. What if the earth's magnetic field stopped what if an asteroid was coming to kill everyone what of climate change was-#yes but these things aren't written gooddd because it's not a fact to be solved it should be a mystery
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Yes yes… We’ve all been told ‘this is the most important election blah blah’. Yet, it’s definitely up there 😬 Scientists created a grouping of planetary thresholds in order to sustain life on Earth. It is 6 out of the 9 thresholds have been breached. The ocean soaks up so much of our waste & is reaching a tipping point. The article is real informative but shocking. This year it shouldn’t be about taxes and “kitchen table” politics. This election is about the future. This election is about SCOTUS allowing the poisoning of our planet, and frankly our society. It’s about moving forward with remedying decades of neglect & polluting. KamalaHarris will address these issues. Do you think DonaldTrump, a man who thins climate change is fake, will do the same?
https://apple.news/A5xFzsV5MSsuHnvc8tAC9CA
#election 2024#news#climate change#climate crisis#climate action#climate justice#kamala for president#kamala harris#the future#earth#pollution#ocean#planetary science#vote blue#the left#politics#gop#republicans#democrats#independents#our children#beauty#hope#harris waltz#vote vote vote#vote democrat#love#problem solving#solution#presidential election
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Yes, we can stop climate change - and solve ecological problems in general
In the last few years, I have seen again and again a particular social response to climate change that can leave human civilization just as devastated as denying or ignoring climate change: and that is doomism, and fellow-traveler ideas of eco-fascism and eco-austerity. Make no mistake: climate change is a very serious issue that can cause noticeable damage to Earth and a hell of a lot of damage to humanity, but people absolutely love to take it to lurid extremes, like "Mad Max hellworld" and "Earth becoming the second Venus by 2100". In this post, I'm just going to lay out numerous reasons why the situation is far from hopeless, why sensationalized narratives of climate change are just a petty excuse for inaction, why "we'd better start taking mud baths to get used to being in the ground" rhetoric is incredibly dangerous (not to mention a betrayal of the weak and vulnerable by the strong and well-off), and why, ultimately, things aren't as dire as "the common wisdom" proclaims - so that people can stop feeling crushed by hopelessness, and start solving all of the very, very real environmental problems the way they're already being solved. All my examples will be sourced from the IPCC reports and real-world accomplishments in eco-restoration, via an extremely helpful blog called Doomsday Debunked, which just reprints all the IPCC and IPBES findings that doomist media and activism deliberately omits.
Most of this post is adapted from one I already made before elsewhere - but perhaps on Tumblr it's going to become more popular and widespread. I'm going to split it into three different sections: climate change mitigation, biodiversity recovery, and why "green austerity" is not a brilliant idea, will not save anything, and is ultimately an outdated falsehood that emerged from a place of insufficient knowledge and understanding. Almost all paragraphs contain links to sources/more info, but they may be hard to see in some custom Tumblr themes - be sure to mouse over if you want to find the links.
CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND YOU: how renewable energy really can save the world!
Here's the biggest thing first: Climate Action Tracker, which is a pretty damn respectable source, has slashed off 1.1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius off its average warming projections since 2010, according to their own records. Hell, in 2018, three degrees of warming was a pledge, and four degrees was the expected upper limit; now three degrees is expected if the current level of fossil fuel consumption continues without any reduction - and two degrees is the policy target, while optimistic projections are inching closer to 1.5 degrees. And to "achieve" 5 degrees Celsius of warming, which is misleadingly described by journalists as "business as usual" when by our current day it's anything but, we would need an economic mobilization from now to 2100 to burn all the coal that we can possibly burn. With coal plants shutting down in reality simply due to being unprofitable, I don't have to tell you how "realistic" and "plausible" that is. The takeaway from this is simple: the Paris Agreement and environmental activism work, and I really don't see them winding down unless we let doomism reign supreme.
A specific example of policy and technology that can seriously reduce climate change is the amazing growth of solar power over the last 10 years. I am old enough to remember the early 2000s, when solar photovoltaics (the panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity) were an unproven, esoteric, and expensive technology, and people meant solar water heaters when they said "solar power"… but nowadays? There is literally predictions that if solar energy keeps growing at current rates, and considering it already beats fossil fuels on price, it might simply price out gas, coal, and oil before 2050, rendering them entirely obsolete. Even now, investment into coal or gas power plants is seen as an incredibly stupid thing to do, because they might become "stranded assets" - too expensive to run, and unable to even recoup their initial cost.
The clathrate gun/Arctic methane bomb hypothesis has been effectively disproven at the current time. The release of methane from clathrates is endothermic, meaning it takes in more heating than it releases; a direct opposite of a gunshot/explosion, which is an exothermic reaction. More modern research also turned up the fact that methane has been seeping upwards at a constant rate for millennia now - we just didn't monitor it. Seabed disturbance could possibly upturn some of the clathrates, but ocean warming alone simply can't do it - it would take thousands of years of warming for the temperature change to propagate to the kind of depth that methane clathrates are found at.
The hypothesis of runaway greenhouse effect has effectively been disproven too: with a more powerful greenhouse effect, Earth's albedo grows just as fast as the heat-trapping capacity, meaning runaway warming is highly unlikely and the only cause are human industry CO2 emissions, which can be obsoleted by renewables and thus stopped.
The biggest threat from climate change as it is now appear to be extreme weather events; for example physically straining heatwaves, or severe floods from large amounts of rainfall. And those are serious problems. But heatwaves can be deal with by adapting our environments - the most obvious example being to plant some trees instead of layering our cities in concrete. Similarly, flood management isn't some arcane art; we know how to do it. It's just been ignored due to complacency and budgetary stinginess.
The expectations of social collapse from climate change are… overstated, let's say. The IPCC's own worst-case scenario is NOT "Earth as a lifeless desert" or "collapse of human society"; the situation IPCC associated with three-degree warming is that hundreds of millions risk being displaced by sea level rise and temperatures in the tropics getting too hot for comfortable life with no weather difficulties (NOT THE SAME as "you go out at any point during the summer, you die in ten minutes"), and the UN Sustainable Development Goals will be left in ruins. In other words, the poor people of the world will go back to starving and suffering, and the rich, especially in the West, will for the most part retain their quality of life. And so to me, as a non-Western, not-ultra-rich person, doomism is a personal affront, and doomism from solarpunks and environmentalists is a grave betrayal.
Speaking of the IPCC reports: the last one states with decent confidence that as soon as we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, temperatures will begin to drop. Just think on this for a minute.
The "1970s MIT supercomputer that predicted the collapse of civilization by 2040"? That computer was not just less powerful than a smartphone from five years ago - it modeled the world as a single pixel, primitive even by the standards of the day. (Link to article that features actual model comparisons, via browser-based Javascript emulation. 'Nuff said.)
The so-called "deep adaptation" paper that managed to put people into therapy by its sheer grimness? Junk science that was rebuffed by Michael Mann - the author of the "hockey stick graph" of global temperatures, so not a climate denier by any means - in a four-letter tweet.
Earth turning into a second Venus by 2100? Yeah. That's… not gonna happen. We literally don't have enough fossil fuels to induce a greenhouse effect this bad, at any timescale, and I don't know if we could do it even if we started importing dry ice from space and cracking carbonate minerals for their carbon content to deliberately destroy the planet for some stupid reason.
And just because I feel like mentioning it: no, Earth can't run out of oxygen for us to breathe, barring an invasion of Galactus or some other planet-devouring alien.
BIODIVERSITY + CONSERVATION: lies, damned lies, and statistics
The infamous notion that we are heading for a world without insects was based on a study where half the map was blank, and some countries only counted the domestic honeybee (which relies on humans to thrive). Not all plants need insects to pollinate them, either. But at the same time, overuse of insecticides in agriculture is a serious issue with many adverse effects, and it has to be fought against. There is currently a campaign in Europe with this aim. Native grass lawns in cities help a lot too, more than you would think at first.
Similarly, there is a general notion that we are "in the middle of a sixth mass extinction", except we're not "in the middle". We're in the beginning of one. Now, if we all start/keep behaving like the Glukkons from the Oddworld series of games, or the Blargs from the first Ratchet & Clank game, for a few hundred more years - then we're totally going to face an impoverished biosphere with half or more known species dead. But if we do that, I'd say extinction of species would be far from our only problem.
The number one agricultural land use that drives deforestation is grazing cattle and growing crops to feed them; cropland and cities simply don't compare. Ergo, just by shifting to plant-based diets supplemented by lab-grown meat cultures and sustainable fish, we can rewild nearly 30% of Earth. And climate impacts there can be reduced too, if you simply buy local.
For a reforestation success story on a massive scale, look no further than the Loess Plateau.
Conservation success stories are actually plentiful; however, they do not get aired on the news because good news does not draw in views, clicks, and outrage. You can just go through this article on Doomsday Debunked to see how successful nature conservation can actually be.
The only two biomes that are most endangered by climate change are coral reefs (which would be replaced by the more resilient sponge reefs at 3 degrees of warming or around that), and the mountain glaciers, which will take thousands of years to recover, unlike the polar ice caps that'll be back in a couple of decades. But even corals have shown more resilience than expected before, so the scale of devastation is not nearly as huge as people might imagine.
GREEN AUSTERITY: "Friendly fire! Stop shooting, you pointy-eared leaf lover!"
A common, in fact extremely common, idea is that the only way to save the planet is accepting massive reductions to our quality of life - and by "massive" I mean "living in dugouts and doing subsistence agriculture while literally billions of people die for lack of warmth and medicine". Not only is this unacceptable, it's also a complete lie. The best way for someone living in the car-dependent, fossil-fuel-hungry sprawl of North America to reduce their carbon footprint is actually moving to a country with walkable, bikeable cities and good public transportation, like the Netherlands… or preferably, reforming and rebuilding their own local environment to this standard that used to exist in NA before its suburbanization that included zero public transport due to auto industry lobbying. NotJustBikes is an entire YouTube channel that explains this better than I ever could.
Another common idea is that building enough renewable generation capacity is just not possible with existing resources here on Earth. But consider this for a moment: when we mine metals and make them into electric engines or batteries, they don't go anywhere, with the only possible exception being metal flaking off due to corrosion. The metals composing wind turbine generators, electric vehicle motors, and batteries, or silicon composing the solar panels, remain in place and can be recycled several times, if not infinitely. Oil and coal that our current civilization burns for fuel EMPHATICALLY CANNOT be recycled - the entire problem we have is that they turn into carbon dioxide and clog our atmosphere, while soot and other exhaust fumes damage the health of people living in cities. Getting rid of 99% or more of fossil fuel infrastructure doesn't seem like that hard of a choice when you remember that feeding a renewables-based infrastructure requires a far more modest production capacity.
The issue of soil depletion from intensive agriculture is not only exaggerated by the negative/doomist framing (no, we are NOT going to run out of topsoil in 60 years!) - it's also a problem of mismanagement rather than an inherent agricultural problem. Stop oversaturating fields with fertilizer, introduce polyculture and crop rotation, and you'll see how much better things can get.
Similar to the above: the production of fertilizer does not require fossil fuels, no matter what some people might be saying. The three types of fertilizer are nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. All of those are abundant chemical elements on Earth, and circulate through the biosphere freely; nitrogen is the 70% of our atmosphere and cannot possibly run out, and phosphate with potassium are abundant in the Earth's crust. The only direct use of fossil fuels in fertilizer production is the Haber-Bosch process that condenses nitrogen from the air into ammonia, and guess what molecule it needs for that? Hydrogen, which is the stronger half of the elements composing hydrocarbon fuels and which we could have in abundance by simple electrolysis of water!
Related to the above: it is beyond ridiculous how cow manure is dumped into rivers or similar by most modern farmers, when with right subsidies it could be transformed into cheap-as-free fertilizer to be used in agriculture. Someone should go create subsidies for large-scale composting...
Surprisingly enough, even consistent economic growth - which I am not a fan of by any means - can be achieved on a finite planet, because economic growth is all in what you count and how you count it. If we calculate economic growth not by production, but by improvements in human condition and condition of ecosystems (i.e. an economy that grows with the growth of trees), then we'll see that right now some world regions (like, again, North America) are failing as much as countries poor in money, but also that there is an enormous space for growth measured in sustainable prosperity.
The much-touted problem of water wars is an actual problem only for regions way, way inland. Any coastal countries have access to efficient desalination; it's not 1850 anymore. Water doesn't disappear from the world after people use it in cities and industries, it goes right back into the soil/atmosphere/rivers and oceans, so we can't "run out of water".
Interesting fact: we don't actually require any particularly specialized carbon capture technology to remove all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere, and will not require us to divert society's resources to expensive machinery. The old adage about the best carbon capture technology that's called "planting trees" still holds - and what's even more interesting is that there actually are even better methods that are not much more complex… and produce other things for the environment and for civilization in the process.
CONCLUSION
To sum things up: yes, the situation is serious, and "already bad enough" as Michael Mann put it (admittedly, he's been leaning into negative framing himself… but it can't be all positive, the problems of climate change really are dangerous, especially to the world's poor), and there's been a lot of environmental damage due to industries and rich consumers deliberately ignoring the externalities/knock-on effects of their resource use - but it's not nearly as horrifically bleak as some people presume. Right now there is great momentum behind climate action - which, yes, is partially propelled by increasingly hostile weather, but also by an understanding that social progress, democracy, and collective action are vital to build any form of a decent society, as well as by seeing new opportunities rise from cheaper renewable energy, better cities, and other innovations that will both stop climate change and make life actually worth living no matter where you might be. And in these conditions, throwing in the towel or surrendering to eco-austerity or even eco-fascist thinking is the worst possible action any one person can take. The green, sustainable, egalitarian future is not merely a dream or flight of fancy - it's eminently attainable if only we keep pushing for it and help eachother achieve it. But of course, there are people who stay up nights thinking how to take that future away from us, and now that climate change denial is no longer tenable, with more and more people believing their own eyes, the doomism and inactivism have become their primary, perhaps only, means of holding onto their power…
I hope this post will be helpful to people here who find themselves in the grip of doomism and hopelessness. I expect some people to disagree, but I prefer to believe the sources like the IPCC, IPBES, Climate Action Tracker, and all the climatologists behind these organizations' reporting - who've been closely watching both the worsening extreme weather from climate change, and the emergence of all the simple, usable, life-improving technologies and social practices to combat it. If we don't believe these people, then really, who can we believe? And if you do trust their reports on all the positive things being done and planned for environmental needs, it is not simply an idea that we can deal with climate change and restore, then protect our environment - it's objective reality, it's respectable science, and thus, it's good hard common sense.
More information: Doomsday Debunked (layman explanations and positive framing, also covering a ton of other "not actually the end of the world" topics for scared people), Carbon Brief (more technical and a bit less brazenly optimistic, but showing things like the absolutely crazy speed of renewable energy development), Not Just Bikes (an urbanist YouTube channel showing how cities can be improved, not made poorer, in the process of reducing fossil fuel use and car dependency).
#climate change#global warming#solarpunk#bright green environmentalism#hope#reasons for hope#psa#problem solving#debunking doomsday#long post
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i know we’re shifting into springtime but climate anxiety has me genuinely unsettled and nervous abt the temperature not being freezing anymore 😭 like i let out a big sigh of relief when i saw the forecast predicting snow this weekend as if i was seeing a negative pregnancy test. this is all almost exclusively ronald reagan’s fault i will not expand upon that
#diary#my ocd loooooves obsessing over temperatures and weather forecasts 🤩 i spent the entire summer of 2020 and 2021 unable to turn a fan on#like i was so fucking terrified of my dinky walmart fan making heatwaves even worse bc of its electricity consumption that i basically made#myself sick for 4 months 2 years in a row and could barely sleep bc the nights were so sweaty#thank god for medication and the strength of spirit he has given me since then lmao#typing this out actually was therapeutic lmao it made me realize how ridiculous and unnecessary that was when i made it up in my head#to be such a huge life changing moral obligation. when in reality i probably took years off my life span w how miserable and exhausted i was#and theres no universe in which me turning a fan on during a heatwave solves climate change#whew. i need a real diary girl
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People should start calling each other “PENIS” as insult
-would solve climate crisis
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"Oh it would have been more satisfying if the humans had invented a technology which defeated the Martians rather than have them killed off by accident just when humanity's impotence in the face of disaster seems to be confirmed". I
To me that's just a fancy way of saying "Yeah but humans could totally handle the Martians and the writer has a duty to reassure the audience of that!"
Sir we cannot even handle climate change and I'm sorry to tell you that it's not entirely due to a lack of technological expertise
#In all fairness maybe we can handle climate change we don't know yet but it's going to take a lot more than a fancy new invention#As for war and genocide and all the other human ills that we can't seem to solve how do you think the atomic bomb worked out#And when I say technology or science I don't just mean in the normal STEM sense#As a history student you end up asking a lot whether your subject is actually beneficial to society or capable of solving anything#Or the political sciences- was the League f Nations or even today's UN a success?#Maybe if we just keep learning and studying we can solve it! Well maybe. But what will humanity look like when we're done?#Anyway I'm getting a bit far from the point of the War of the Worlds but maybe I'm just not enough of a science fiction nut for this convo#Maybe the image of societal collapse impressed itself on me more strongly than any delight over long-winded explanations of alien machines#Maybe it would be different if I'd read the book hoping for a good story about aliens#rather than to read one man's uncomfortable rather pessimistic views on what an alien invasion might tell us about human ity#I am simply asking certain fans to sometimes Dig a Little Deeper#Alright rant really over this time#...maybe#It's just that there are so many potential issues with that book but honestly I can't accept that the ending is one of them#Even the hint at the end that since the Martians proved it possible maybe some day humans might colonise other planets I just !!!!!
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if i had infinite money id travel to the other hemisphere in december/june so i could experience 2 summer solstices
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im pretty sure i get what the intent of this was supposed to be, but it really just reads to me as "nothing we do to make this tea could possibly be worse than you actually preparing it"
#pics#perhaps it is just my depression addled mind. idk#the most climate friendly action of all is to simply not have tea! ive solved the problem
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Had HSM trilogy marathon recently and now I'm in desperate need of the Part 4 where everyone have a middle life crisis. It would fix me and my quarter life crisis.
#everyone are back in school for reunion party#sharpay just failed to win her second tony for the role that she considered the peak of her career#troy and gabi broke up years ago around the last year of college and met for the first time since than in person#spoilers alert: they aren't over each other#taylor has an absolutely brilliant political career but at this point she's losing life-work balance#chad obv has a sexuality crisis at gentle age of 35#zeke is a world famous chef but he deals with super complicated dishes on a daily basis and forgot why he loved simple comfort of baking#kelsi is a broadway composer who've been recently told by some mean producers that her romantic tunes aren't good firt#for a current musical theatre climate with hamilton and beetlejuice and six#(which we all know is unfair)#ryan is fine though#nothing bad should happen to ryan on my watch#even for the sake of the plot#he gossip with miss darbus the whole night and kiss the boy at the end#and obv everyone's crisis can be solved by the power of performing with friends#and some choreographed basketball#hsm#high school musical#sharpay evans#ryan evans#troy bolton#gabriella montez#chad danforth#taylor mckessie#kelsi nielsen#zeke baylor#i didn't forget about jason and martha i just think they're both so chill they would be fine or simply go to therapy
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sometimes people are so stupid it genuinely astounds me
#this is about the girl sitting next to me in class who kept whispering abt how letting the carbon captured underground explode#would solve climate change#and she was genuine about it i think#“yeah but if you let them explode youll have more space to store the carbon! if you do it deep enough then the explosion wont affect! :D 🤓"#while i was Trying to write#i was desperately staring at the teacher mentally begging her to change the seating plan the entire time#misc m
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Listen, I just feel like having one (1) incoming ice age would have been conflict enough for Game of Thrones. You can have all the mounting time pressure, the survival challenges, the snow imagery, the incredulous masses, yadda yadda yadda, and you don't have to address the EXTREMELY WILD biological and societal implications of having unpredictably sized seasons.
I mean. Not that he did address the wild implications. As far as I know. Which again, begs the question of why put it in the text, if it's never gonna influence anything?
#it's absolutely insane to me#Getting Enough Food has been the desperate driving force of humanity until like. VERY RECENTLY.#It is insane to think that a society that has faced unpredictably long winters wouldn't be laser targeted on the food issue.#and if he REALLY wanted to use the unpredictable seasons#he could absolutely have written about how the people of old prepped for winters#and how current people have grown lax and indulgent about it#BUT IT SHOULD GET ADDRESSED!!!#OUR world has had sudden ice ages before#why not just have a fucking ice age#one (1) incoming ice age would be just as bad or worse than a long incoming winter#and then you can have a society that's basically us. no need to invent anything. they work just like us.#they just didn't know the horrors were coming!#drives the climate metaphor even better!#there problem solved!!#instead we are really just gonna ignore the INSANE amount of effort it took to survive even regular winters. in like. ALL of history.
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