[Article] – Discover Magazine – 65ft Sea Level Rise Already Baked In

@floridaprog

Hi fp,

Obama knows that levees and dykes will be built around the compounds of the 1% to forestall the inevitable for as along as possible.  Because, you know … they are more important than the rest of us.  And this will all be done at taxpayer expense.  Welcome to reality in America.

TAT

@closeupready

Hi cur,

There are technical proposals and some demonstration systems collecting data.  However, as of now, there has not been an identified solution that will scale to the level necessary to remove the billions of tons of CO2 already emitted into the atmosphere by global  industrial society since 1750.

Think about the scale of the problem like this.  Any solution would have to be on the order of the system that has emitted the CO2 to begin with.  That would be a system with the relative size and scale of all the cars ever manufactured, all the trains ever made, all the buses ever made, all the heavy equipment ever made, all the ships ever made, all of the manufacturing plants ever made, etc., etc …  And even if such a technology did exist, it could never be manufactured and deployed with sufficient impact in the next 10 years to substantially change the trajectory we are now on.

People, in general, have no idea the magnitude of the problem created by Western Industrial Civilization.  CO2, once emitted in the atmosphere, lasts for up to 1,000 years.  Think about that for a second.  All of the CO2 you emit, I emit and all other human activity emits will remain in the atmosphere for essentially 10 centuries after we are long gone.  And each and every day that we forgo a reduction in emissions is another day we add to the hangover of our presence on planet earth.  Another example brings this home.  When you, or anyone else, drives a car the heat generated to create CO2 by engine combustion is amplified 60,000 times in the atmosphere as day in and day out each CO2 molecule continues to trap the sun’s energy for 1,000 years.

Since we have already waited too long, any meaningful response to Climate Change requires three things to occur globally.

Capitalism as we know it must die – (all growth-based political economic systems must end)
Per Capita emissions must be reduced – (consumption per person must decline, especially in Western democracies)
Global population must decline – (birth rate must be reduced below global death rate)

Anything less is whistling past the graveyard as we walk steadfastly toward a cliff.

Scientists have calculated how much more CO2 can be emitted into the atmosphere to remain below both 1.5C and 2.0C.  For 1.5C we have ten years to act; for 2.0C a little longer, but not much.  This is what Greta Thunberg was highlighting in her COP25 speech.

Greta Thunberg COP25 High Level Event on Climate Emergency

It is up to us to make the sacrifices necessary to forestall disaster.  The honest climate scientists place our chances of choosing wisely at no better than 5%.

TAT