Just 5 years left to stop climate change

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Clarke

No, the problem is a government structured in a way that promotes selfish thinking.

It is not so much the government as it is the economy. After all the present economic system is largely based on the flawed logic that if just everyone acts in his own self interest, somehow a good, stable and just economy will emerge. Thats Ayn Rand and all that - its not in the government, its in the economy. The governments sadly have become slaves to the economy though, so you are right in the end I guess, but it is a larger picture

Originally Posted by Human No More

All the nimbyism regarding solutions to the problem is what is endangering the world. Without that, there would not be any new coal/oil power stations built and even the ability to shut extant ones down before the end of their operational life

What does it have to do with NIMBY - If there is no NIMBY, people would maybe just accept a coal plant in their backyard. Provided it has good scrubbers to remove the particles and sulfur from the exhause. CO2 after all does not smell or bother the neighbors. And actually some regions were profiting from it. The west of Germany kept mining coal and burning it for a long time after it had become uneconomic - mainly to keep the jobs of the miners and steel workers and all that.

Exactly. Oil was going to run out in the 80s 90s 2000s 2010s 2020s, right? The world was going to end in 1988 1992 1994 2000 2012. When people believe something will happen, they will always keep setting the date further forwards when it doesn't turn up.

Hehe, yeah - nuclear fusion was always said to be "just around the corner in just 20 years" (that constant has not been broken as of yet).

But peak oil - I dont know. Looking at this chart - at least production seems to have reached a plateau snce about 2004, some slight increase is predicted by the IEA if all kinds of unconventional oil will be used. The environmental impact is rising sharply and the EROEI is dropping as sharply. I think these are clear signs that we are "scraping the bottom of the barrel". Of course there will be oil in the future. The statement that "oil will run out" is nonsense. The problem is not that one day there will not be oil when the day before it was there. It is that the production cannot be increased and eventually decreases while prices shoot up, only stopped by a severe economic crisis.
And more on topic with climate change - people were predicting climate change within 2-3 decades about 2-3 decades ago. And what happened? Nothing? We are still alive? That was not what they said back then. What they said was that climage is changing and global surface temperatures would rise. And they did. And now it is more than half a degree centigrade warmer than in the 1970ies. The alarmists of their time were right - just that we dont all sweat in winter by now does not mean that there is no problem. Climate change wont work that way. But still - even personal experience begins to show it. This year, trees around southern Germany started to go in bloom again in Oktober instead of around March/April next year. They started to get leafs and buds, just to be killed by frost. Of course its anecdotal (Probably happened before in history) but the hard science supports that the change is here.
These predictions about 5 years is also not that in 5 years the world will turn into a hothouse and deserts will be in the UK - but a certain threshold will be passed that has a meaning - that after that date, it will require massive efforts and uneconomic actions (like shutting down newly built coal plants - what company would do that voluntarily?) to save the greenland ice shield from melting.

Originally Posted by Loverofnature

interestingly enough, the readings of the atmosphere read, that the atmosphere is actually retracting, which is the sign of a cooldown and not a warm up.
physics teacher told me that

No offense, but I think a physics teacher is hardly a source I would build my world view on
And even if the atmosphere as a whole cools - the part we have to be concerned about is surface temperature because this is where the ice and the biota are.