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More Than 15,000 Scientists From 184 Countries Issue 'Warning To Humanity' (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: More than 15,000 scientists around the world have issued a global warning: there needs to be change in order to save Earth. It comes 25 years after the first notice in 1992 when a mere 1,500 scientists issued a similar warning. This new cautioning -- which gained popularity on Twitter with #ScientistsWarningToHumanity -- garnered more than 15,000 signatures. William Ripple of Oregon State University's College of Forestry, who started the campaign, said that he came across the 1992 warning last February, and noticed that this year happened to mark the 25th anniversary. Together with his graduate student, Christopher Wolf, he decided to revisit the concerns raised then, and collect global data for different variables to show trends over the past 25 years. Ripple found: A decline in freshwater availability; Unsustainable marine fisheries; Ocean dead zones; Forest losses; Dwindling biodiversity; Climate change; Population growth. There was one positive outcome, however: a rapid decline in ozone depletion. One of the potential solutions is to stabilize the population. If we reduce family size, consumption patterns don't rise as much. And that can be done by empowering girls and women, providing sexual education and education on family planning.
The average prole can do little. His eco footprint is already nearly insignificant because he can't even afford running the damn AC anymore.
Those that do have the eco footprint of an elephant also seem to think they can buy themselves another earth and to hell with the rest. Get rid of them and we're solving a lot of ecological (and probably economical) problems.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That would probably solve one of the problems neatly.
If your solution to the problem is the rely on young, hormone-driven women saying "no" after millions of years of evolution and 6 or 7 stiff drinks has programmed them to say "yes, yes, oh my god yes!" then you might as well start getting your affairs in order. They care about being popular and getting laid and Facebook, they don't give the slightest shit about your 'world problems.'
Nope. If the theory disagrees with experiment, then it is Wrong. It doesn't matter how many voices sign the petition for the theory; it must still be rejected.
Those 15,000 scientists probably have a bigger carbon footprint and have little interest in changing that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Among those included in this list of Climate Scientists:
Davis, Joanne - Australian
Daweti, Nokuthula - Student
de Clercq, Deon - Earthling
Hamilton, Ava - independent documentary producer/citizen scientist
Jara, Andrea - Colombian
Thapa, Lal - Asst. Professor of Alien Invasion
It is very hard to take this (or their agenda) seriously when they won't even do the basic science of vetting a list of "scientists".
http://scientistswarning.fores... I really wish reporters would link to the actual articles they talk about. Sort of like when they jump all over someone's statements but don't actually quote what the person said.
There is a very simple explanation for why the number of scientists was reported. One can only hear "the science isn't settled; there is still a lot of disagreement" so many times before you just assume you have to emphasize the degree of consensus every single time AGW comes up.
Which is too damn many people. Of course now someone will scream "racism" just because its mentioned.
Why do we not reject every climate model? All of them have been proven wrong in the last decade.
Solution for this means artificial price supports for crop waste, so that it is converted into appropriate fuel, and reducing all tax exemptions and exclusions for all fossil fuels.
And there you go, mixing your political position with the scientific conclusion. This is what causes science denial.
Does the science mandate your position? Are there better solutions available?
I strongly suspect that the best solution is to turn our attention to improvements in technology. This is already happening in the US with the onset of electric vehicles - this will reduce fossil fuel consumption considerably, and serve as a model and testing ground for other nations.
We then have to find energy sources to replace our current fossil fuel use.
I strongly suspect that the best solution will be rooftop solar. This is already happening in the US with the cost of rooftop solar dropping precipitously over the last 15 years.
Both of these solutions would dramatically reduce our carbon footprint, and both would benefit from improvements in technology.
Perhaps we should look to science to solve the problem, instead of identity politics?
Encourage abortion for those that continue to poduce with no way of paying for them.
Uh, just to point out the obvious, a simpler and cheaper solution would be just to make sure that birth control is available to those who want it.
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The people and organizations who should care, because they have the money, power, and influence to do something about it: Rich people, global corporations.
Why they don't care: Short-term profits, keeping shareholders happy, is more important than what'll happen a couple hundred years from now. That's 'someone else's problem to deal with', and these people will all be dead and gone by then; why, so far as they're concerned, should they even care?
Who else is standing in the way of doing something about this: Dominionists, and fundamentalist religious organizations. So far as they're concerned, The Earth is a 'temporary' home for humanity, and is therefore expendable, as is all other life on it. Dominionists in particular are more interested in accelerating the destruction of the Earth, because they fervently believe that the sooner they can bring about the Apocalypse, the sooner Zombie Jesus will 'return' to the Earth to 'take them all home'. So anything they can do to make Earth uninhabitable faster is all to the good so far as they're concerned.
Then there's the Average Person; they're too busy just trying to deal with their day-to-day lives (and in some cases, too literally trying to stay alive) to even think about anything that's going to happen even 10 years from now, let alone several hundred years from now. Again, that gets waved off as 'someone elses problem', because they'll all be dead and gone before that even happens. Sure, they think about what their theoretical grandchildren may have to deal with -- so maybe they turn off the lights when they leave a room for more than a few minutes, or put off that errand they need to do until later. But it's all a drop in the bucket that really has no effect, not even if everyone does the same.
Overall there needs to be top-down actions taken, world-wide, in every country that creates a large enough fraction of the total problems. Seeing as we can't seem to get enough nations to agree on how to handle problems a fraction of the size and scope, good bloody luck with that. Add to that resistance the fact that The Rich, the aforementioned religious types, rich, influential religious types, and disinterested greedy corporations aren't going to be cooperative, and the likelihood that anything more than just 'feel-good', overall ineffective things being done becomes rather small. What we really need to have happen first, is a change of hearts and minds across the board; we need everyone to actually give a damn, right down to the core of their being. If someone's got a recipe to make that happen, I'm all ears.
Every thing the coal industry had has been stripped and sold. From profitable mines, to equipment, to river front real estate, to scenic valleys, to pension funds to ... every last thing the coal industry had has been stripped and raided and stolen and sold away.
The last thing remaining is the vote of these desperate people, stuck in a dead end job, too old to retrain, in isolated communities. A country as rich as ours should be able to take care of them. After all the coal industry built America, they contributed significantly to the wealth we are enjoying today. We should be able to buy any mine that is losing money, keep all the miners on the payroll to properly shut the mine down, cap off, and close it. Absorb them all into fish and wildlife service and park service and do conservation work till they all retire. There are not that many left, and we need their expertise to close the mines safely.
But that is not going to happen. Their vote is valuable, and keeping them angry and desperate is the way to get it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I see, it's always get rid of someone else's children, isn't it ? We can just "empower girls and women" in THOSE cultures to abort their babies.
It's odd that when an article suggests reducing the rate of population growth, a certain subset of radical conservatives immediately starts shouting "We need to abort their babies!"
What the actual article says is taking the step of:
So, why is it that you suddenly start shouting about abortion?
Do you want to actually reduce the rate of abortion? That turns out to be really simple: abortion rates decrease when people have access to birth control. Simple.
Boy, it would be really convenient of all these simple cultures would just stop procreating in the first place. Maybe the WHO could just pay some group to just sterilize them, like they did in Kenya? But you know what would really "eliminate" the problem? What if we just eliminated those humans, so they don't burn all those fuels without scrubbers, and pollute those lakes, and cut down the forests for fields to grow food? After all, those leftists are looking out for the "greater good", so it's ok if it's nonconsentual.
What part of "access to education and voluntary family planning" is it that you are referring to here?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Rather than shouting anyone down, do what China does, ignore the yammerheads and Just Fucking Build It. This applies to carbon-free energy sources and it also applies to projects that cut energy demand, like regional high speed rail.
If we really intend to phase out fossil fuel usage by some reasonable year like 2050, there is no other way.
I don't give a flying fuck what they do or whether they like it or not. Their shitty job is negatively impacting the globe for generations to come.
They can update their skills, or retire, or take opiates and watch soap operas until they die, eat a bullet... it's up to them.
"Continue destabilizing the planet because I like my job" isn't an option I'm willing to let them have. I really don't care about the consequences for them. Climate change isn't something we thought up last year, scientists have been talking about it for the last 40 years at least. Current coal miners knew about it before they bumbled into the profession. Personal responsibility much?
Large parts of them have opposed the easy transition and instead whine about the war on coal and conspiracy theories. They're now facing a hard transition through their own choices. The fact that they're slightly more fucked than the rest of us is at least something to smile about.
Vote. Vote for people who will join the Paris agreement, who will enact legislation that reduces emissions on a national level.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The bigger the number the more true the reasoning...
In the old days we would have need only _one_ scientist, one with a sound argument. There was one Pitagoras, one Tales, one Copernicus, one Einstein.
15ooo scientists - this is a disgrace.
The average person can stop consuming so much for starters. There's a lot you can do but all of it breaks down this consumer/producer economic system we're so accustomed to. You basically have to at a cultural level, lower your standard of living expectations (which is why it will never happen--greed and self-preservation).
The less product you buy, the less your energy footprint is. Everything you purchase requires loads of energy. Once demand for said products drops, they'll disappear off the market and all the supplemental energy used in the production chain will follow.
The fact of the matter is, population growth will inevitably lead to a tipping point at a global level. As overall life expectancy increases and birth rates continue to grow faster than death rates, it will happen since Earth has finite surface space. All we can really hope to do is slow these rates down until we hopefully make new discoveries and develop new technologies that allow us to keep ahead of these problems (clean energy supplies, population management, etc.).
The biggest issue were currently aware of as a species are caused from the effects of climate change. Most your climate change denier groups are preparing for such changes, they're just not acknowledging it because the institution they stand behind has much to lose from vast public acceptance. In recent history, the tobacco industry played this game for a long time, companies heavily dependent on lead and lead addatives did the same thing. They promote science when it's to their benefit but dispute and ignore it when it's not all under self-preservation.