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Thread: We're all gonna die (The climate change thread)

  1. #31
    Relaxing and enjoying life MR2 Fan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    It seems to me the only solution to this requires a unified global effort on the scale of how nations fought "total wars" in WWI and WWII - meaning it wasn't just the military fighting the wars, but most of the citizens back on "the home front" participating in the war effort and suffering and sacrificing as necessary.

    We need individual, business, and government agreement and action. Just as Detroit stopped making cars and started making guns and tanks and airplanes in WWII, we'll need a huge industrial shift to solar power and wind power and whatever else it takes to stop the pollution and start fixing the environmental damage.

    How about a draft or a job opportunity for eligible young men and women to work in programs similar to FDR's Alphabet Agencies? These people could spend a year or two each cleaning up the oceans and rivers, planting trees in the rainforests and everywhere else, and all the other stuff that I'm not knowledgeable enough to list, in exchange for college tuition and/or other benefits once they've served their time.

    Huge changes to modern life will be required, such as severely limiting the use of gas and diesel engines in automobiles, airplanes, and eliminating their use entirely for non-essential things like auto racing (sorry, guys), power-boating, lawn-mowing, and so forth. I don't know much about the specifics of industrial pollution, but obviously that must be highly reduced as well.

    It will also require some strong enforcement of these new and radical policies by more powerful nations or alliances thereof in places that choose to ignore them, such as in countries where rain forests are being destroyed and species are being wiped out.

    There are probably a hundred thousand other things like these that I don't know enough about to mention.

    What would humans do if threatened by alien invaders or an approaching asteroid? We need that kind of action, starting today.

    Otherwise, we might as well just start partying, à la On The Beach.


    Agreed. I think we should just call it World War III, but the war is against climate change and not each other

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sad, little man View Post
    Worse still, we're all grappling with massive social inequality, which is a more immediate threat that takes a lot of focus away from dealing with climate change.
    I don’t know about you but I think a lot of social issues would be helped naturally just by changing up the way we create, store, and distribute electricity.

    Take Southeast Asia for example. Some of the poorest people on earth live there, with the worst infrastructure. But imagine massive worldwide government action to fund the installation of localised solar and battery storage over the next 20 years.

    The number of jobs that would create, and the amount of money it would pump into their economies. It could set them up for the next thousand years.

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    Huge changes to modern life will be required, such as severely limiting the use of gas and diesel engines in automobiles, airplanes, and eliminating their use entirely for non-essential things like auto racing (sorry, guys), power-boating, lawn-mowing, and so forth. I don't know much about the specifics of industrial pollution, but obviously that must be highly reduced as well.
    Targeting industry is an obvious place to start, but you need to be careful otherwise it would skew the economy, which is where government subsidies come in - to cushion the impact.

    And I’ve actually put some thought into the use of petrol (mostly to justify my love of guzzling gas for sport and recreation ) and figured that if half of our passenger vehicles were swapped out for electric ones, then the fuel thing wouldn’t be an issue.

    For instance in Australia:
    We start by rapidly increasing taxes on petrol and diesel. Australia has a fuel excise of 41.2c per litre (about 1/3 of the overall fuel cost). That immediately goes up to 50c/L, then over the next 10 years it is stepped up to $1/L. That extra money goes towards subsidising the purchase of electric cars and installing fast chargers at petrol stations and car parks. To avoid impacting the cost of shipping goods, businesses who use diesel trucks are exempt, but are still given money to switch to electric trucks when they become available.

    Next, anyone who still uses a petrol vehicle may continue to do so, as the overall impact on the environment is massively reduced, but they will be paying more for registration and fuel.

    The reduction in fuel use leads to there being a surplus of it, and greatly delays the arrival of ‘peak oil’ meaning that historic road and race vehicles can be used into the future.

    We just have to work out the big ocean vessels and air travel part.

    It’s a no-brainer to convert cruise ships and big tankers to electric (cruise ships being one of the worst things you can do in terms of generating CO2 for recreation) but it costs a lot of money to cut a boat in half and swap the motor and fuel tanks out. Maybe just ban the construction of new dirty-fuel-powered ships. Could take 40 years to phase out the old ones. Dunno.

    And how do you propel a huge airplane without the use of kerosene? That will be the challenging one.

  4. #34
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    To give you all terms of reference on air travel, one Sydney to LA flight uses more fuel than an entire year of Formula 1 racing.

    There are hundreds of SYD-LAX flights per year and thousands of other flights. That’s a lot of kero!

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rare White Ape View Post
    And how do you propel a huge airplane without the use of kerosene? That will be the challenging one.
    BFR or hypersonic vehicles using liquid hydrogen as fuel for ICBT(intercontinental ballistic travel)

    Electric planes are probably out of the question... we might be able to have these electric drone type vehicles for local air travel...

  6. #36
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    Boats are easy, our submarines are have done it for years...

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rare White Ape View Post
    To give you all terms of reference on air travel, one Sydney to LA flight uses more fuel than an entire year of Formula 1 racing.
    Yup, this is the part of the argument that continues to frustrate me. I'm as leftie as it gets, as pro-save-the-earth as anyone, but I think cars have gotten about as clean as they can possibly get without going all-electric. The average car owner and consumer continues to suffer the costs of improving THAT technology to be cleaner, and yet boats and aircraft, which are LEAGUES worse, continue to get a free pass.

    Like, why not austerity measures for flights? Except for business. Like hey, the average American can only fly 3 times a year. Or something, y'know?

    And ocean-going cruise ships should just disappear. From the Earth. Forever. They're filthy fucking cesspools and a complete waste of time.

  8. #38
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Last edited by George; May 10th, 2019 at 08:09 AM.

  9. #39
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    There are *some* measures of planes getting better, newer planes like the 787 are significantly more fuel efficient than older models. I think airlines overall are more sensitive to fuel costs than your average driver as it's a huge part of the bottom line of the business, so there's a big incentive to invest in more fuel efficient aircraft. Conversely, everyone out here in CA freaked out when they raised taxes on gas about $0.18 a gallon, yet nobody's giving up their SUVs just yet.

    I wonder if anyone's ever done a comparison in the amount of fuel consumption/emissions between a fully packed aircraft traveling coast-to-coast vs. if all of those people drove single-occupancy vehicles coast-to-coast.

  10. #40
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    See, this is it.

    I can't believe it's all just the conservative climate change deniers who are driving SUVs, going on cruise ships and taking commercial flights.

    If all lefties do what they believe is good for the climate, we can cut SUV sales, Cruise ships and all flights by at least 50%!

    That would be a significant reduction in carbon emissions!

    But guess what?

    Unlikely to happen.

    So it's easier to just blame it on the stupid ass conservatives and Trump and China and Russia. We're all gonna die because of THEM!!!!

    Take a look in the mirror. And just do what YOU gotta do. You are the only person who YOU can control. Blaming others and voting people into government to force others to change just isn't the right solution. If we all change, those stupid politicians who wish to represent us should also change... Point is everything starts from within each of us. Not by changing others.
    Last edited by Crazed_Insanity; May 10th, 2019 at 08:59 AM.

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