Disaster World temperature heading towards 3C - The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

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BBC Coverage|Archive of BBC Coverage

Please read the full article at either of the above links.

It's the final call, say scientists, the most extensive warning yet on the risks of rising global temperatures.
Their dramatic report on keeping that rise under 1.5 degrees C says the world is now completely off track, heading instead towards 3C.
Keeping to the preferred target of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will mean "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".
It will be hugely expensive - but the window of opportunity remains open.
After three years of research and a week of haggling between scientists and government officials at a meeting in South Korea, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a special report on the impact of global warming of 1.5C.
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The big problem with many conservation movements is their focus on trying to make the figurative horse drink. Most of my interest is based on conservation work in Africa, a place where people are under tons of pressure to provide for themselves and their families. My solution is to narrow down the main polluters and create incentives to become more ecologically sustainable. Most "eco" products are a combination of impractical and expensive when compared to conventional items. So solve that problem and you're pretty good to go
 
thejackal said:
As for beef, it will be made in a lab, and it will be powered by electricity. You're not going to have ranches in 2050. It won't be cost competitive. Not even close.
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Do you have any idea how expensive cell culture is? The steak you're describing would cost hundreds of dollars a plate, have the consistency of jelly, and taste like complete shit because most of the tissues in an actual steak won't be growing with the skeletal muscle fibers.
 
Your Weird Fetish said:
Do you have any idea how expensive cell culture is? The steak you're describing would cost hundreds of dollars a plate, have the consistency of jelly, and taste like complete shit because most of the tissues in an actual steak won't be growing with the skeletal muscle fibers.
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How about raising animals with a more efficent feed conversion ratio like camels (good for arid environments), deer, bison, antelope, etc. I'd also propose a system of stock farming similar to a game ranch in South Africa or the Knepp Wildland project in England. Australia already has tons of camels, donkeys, and horses so we could kill a bunch and eat those.
 
thejackal said:
Batteries aren't there yet, but they should be (or with a fuel cell hybrid) in about 10-15 years.
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If you think battery storage is going to ever become as simple, light, and compact as the chemical energy storage of liquid fuels I have a bridge to sell you. It ain't happening.
Gorillagorillagorilla said:
How about raising animals with a more efficent feed conversion ratio like camels (good for arid environments), deer, bison, antelope, etc. I'd also propose a system of stock farming similar to a game ranch in South Africa or the Knepp Wildland project in England. Australia already has tons of camels, donkeys, and horses so we could kill a bunch and eat those.
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Land use. You could run cattle or sheep on that land and get greater yields. That's why we raise 'em for food and not ibex and giraffes and whatever other bullshit.

How about we just keep doing what we are doing feeding livestock food production byproducts, tertiary crops, and inedible range crops (grazing and hay). If meat becomes more expensive to produce in the future because of scarcity of feed the price goes up and people eat less. The problem then self-corrects.

I don't know why we need to reinvent the wheel here because a couple hipsters cried about it. They don't know shit. You know this.
 
ColtWalker1847 said:
That said, they aren't fertilizing often with phosphorus in most places. The soil has adequate quantities and the crops do not remove much. Which is why they farm there. Adding phosphorus and potassium and other minerals every year are more of a Scott's turfbuilder home and garden kinda deal. Farmers only do it when there is a soil deficiency and quantities used are low.
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Just because corn takes shit tons of nitrogen to grow corn doesn't mean crops don't remove phosphorus and potassium. A train with 110 railcars of soybeans represents 200 tons of phosphorus being exported to china. As for your turfbuilder jab, that would be like adding manganese, boron, and zinc. Agronomists didn't know crops needed these minerals until all of it had been removed from the soil. On a hilarious sidenote, soils are becoming sulfur deficient because there isn't any acid rain replacing the sulfur removed.
 
1Tonka_Truck said:
Just because corn takes shit tons of nitrogen to grow corn doesn't mean crops don't remove phosphorus and potassium. A train with 110 railcars of soybeans represents 200 tons of phosphorus being exported to china. As for your turfbuilder jab, that would be like adding manganese, boron, and zinc. Agronomists didn't know crops needed these minerals until all of it had been removed from the soil. On a hilarious sidenote, soils are becoming sulfur deficient because there isn't any acid rain replacing the sulfur removed.
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It isn't that it is being removed. It is if it is being removed in a meaningful way. An unsustainable way. Which, considering how common phosphorus is and how little is consumed per acre compared to other fertilizers used, is pretty meaningless in the "once the phosphate mines close we are dooooooooomed" scenario.

I see it as this. When the time comes to switch to phosphorus from low-grade sources the farmers will just fork over another couple bucks for their phosphorus bill and it still ain't going to have shit on their nitrogen bill.

Ya dig?
 
Your Weird Fetish said:
Do you have any idea how expensive cell culture is? The steak you're describing would cost hundreds of dollars a plate, have the consistency of jelly, and taste like complete shit because most of the tissues in an actual steak won't be growing with the skeletal muscle fibers.
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Right, and the most memory a home user will ever need is 256KB...exponential growth dude.
 
I just hope I can still eat cheeseburgers before it gets replaced by Soylent Green.
 
Let me know when people are actually doing something about this instead of preaching the apocalypse.
 
trigon said:
The particular conference the article is about also cals for "unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society" which one reporter interpreted as "The world's top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet."
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But there's no way that these people have any kind of agenda besides saving the planet. Now give your taxes to this eco committee staffed by leftists and fund more leftist academia you bigots. HURRY: It's almost too late!

And support friendly globalist companies like Google and Microsoft: they have eco initiatives and are therefore trustworthy. Please ignore the massive amounts of waste material they dump in third-world countries and the fact that a lot of their charity is tax evasion.
White bubblegum said:
Yeah.. I see the superpowers doing not nearly enough to solve this issue because the survival of the human race is nothing compared to wasting shekels on weapons of mass destruction. They're all selfish exceptional individuals.
And regular people don't seem to care either. You don't care about global warming, or you think it's all a hoax? Fuck you, you're a selfish exceptional individual. Who cares if we have to spend trillions of dollars, if it's all to save the human race?
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I'm surprised you could even get enough of a decent connection to post that; sustainable bamboo computers that run on turnip juice and transmit over carrier pigeons never seemed too reliable to me. But at least you aren't causing climate change like the rest of us and so have the moral authority to lecture us.
 
The whole global warming thing always seems like such a red herring to me when compared with real tangible problems with realistic solutions and mitigating actions like plastic pollution, mining runoff...

The world getting a bit hotter (as if the projections have ever even been close to right and the money hasn't always gone to far left causes) doesn't bother me as much as having arable land, lots of nice national parks, and cleanish waters
 
Nothing you can do to stop it anyways, whatever greenhouse gases you manage to reduce are going to mean nothing after China and India complete their modernization. Oh and maybe Africa. Enjoy your obsessive consumerism culture with 3-4 times the population.
 
Tranhuviya said:
You're better off with a Kearney air pump.


The point of all this is that simply killing off human beings is not a solution to the problem. Their numbers will be replenished soon enough elsewhere and the base problem won't be solved. One can only find a permanent solution in changing mankind's behavior when it comes to use of the resources allotted to him and how he uses technology. If this requires a complete "fall-out" of the industrial system, so be it.

TL;DR read the subtitle.
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The problem with that statement is that most of the world isn't the issue. It's almost singlehandedly either China and their "slavedriver" behavior or India and its shit-laden streets that's the big issue here. And we can't do jack about either country unless we bomb them. Something we can't do because China's got an army.
 
ColtWalker1847 said:
If you think battery storage is going to ever become as simple, light, and compact as the chemical energy storage of liquid fuels I have a bridge to sell you. It ain't happening.

Land use. You could run cattle or sheep on that land and get greater yields. That's why we raise 'em for food and not ibex and giraffes and whatever other bullshit.

How about we just keep doing what we are doing feeding livestock food production byproducts, tertiary crops, and inedible range crops (grazing and hay). If meat becomes more expensive to produce in the future because of scarcity of feed the price goes up and people eat less. The problem then self-corrects.

I don't know why we need to reinvent the wheel here because a couple hipsters cried about it. They don't know shit. You know this.
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I just thought I'd let you know that there have been some pretty big recent discoveries recently which will significantly reduce the cost of solar panels and reusable batteries once the respective technologies are done being developed.

Perovskite thin film solar panels are currently in a good position to replace silicon-based panels in the near future. At this time, perovskites are achieving a ~20% energy conversion rate which is comparable to the existing technologies. These panels are a godsend because they're much cheaper to produce and weigh a fraction of the amount. Currently, the main problems holding them back from market adoption is their inclusion of lead and a limited life span (~1000 hours at >90% effectiveness). Fortunately, this technology is quite new and it's very likely that we'll see improvements on their weaknesses.

Similarly, sodium-ion batteries are being developed as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries. Despite being incredibly cheaper than existing materials, there are still some challenges which must be overcome. Most important of these is making them last a long time. Some advances have been achieved in this regard (>83% effectiveness over 900 cycles) but more work is still needed. It's hoped that the introduction of group V elements will assuage this concern. Don't worry about people leaving this project to die, there are tons of groups out there working hard on this and no one wants to deal with lithium mining if they can avoid it (it involves pumping massive amounts of water into the atacama desert and extracting salt).
 
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