How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth

Re:How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth ... by sgolecha on Thursday September 26, 2019 @04:30PM (#21085182)

I wish people took this seriously. This is a slow moving disaster and that elicits a non-response from most of us. Once the temperatures rise beyond 2C, there are many consequences - 1. Food yields and nutrition drops significantly. 2. Entire species go extinct (we already see that happening). We cannot survive independently. An entire ecosystem is needed for us to lead a healthy and happy life. E.g. insecticides are causing die-offs of butterflies, bees etc.. 3. Once wild weather becomes the norm - fires, food shortages, hurricanes etc.. massive rioting will follow. Insurance will be expensive or non-existent (they already don’t cover Act of God) and that means financial insecurity for most of us.

The other overlooked fact is that the greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long long time. So, once the climate changes it won’t be a 1-day/1-week or a 1-year event. We talk a lot of geo-engineering etc.. but why not make small sacrifices now (eat less meat, buy local and used stuff, no single use plastic, less air-travel etc..) and save the beautiful planet that we already have. Yes, it will cause some economic dislocations but we will be fine. Companies will adapt or healthy and environment friendly alternatives will come up.

Take this seriously folks. We don’t have another planet to go to and our children are counting on us.

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Re:How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth ... by dorgo on Thursday September 26, 2019 @05:14PM (#21085623)

> small sacrifices

My impression ist that people are talking about sacrifices for the sake of sacrafices and not to solve the problem. If the global warming (and related problems) would be (magically) solved tomorrow, they would be disappointed because no sacrifices were needed any more.

Are sacrifices even enough to solve global warming?

And sacrifices have a marketing problem. It's hard to sell them to billions of people.

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Re:How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth ... by sgolecha on Thursday September 26, 2019 @06:35PM (#21086336)

I am not talking about sacrifices for its own sake. What I am saying is to do things that reduce greenhouse emissions. The problem needs to be tackled in top-down (government policies) and bottoms-up (where consumers make behavioral changes).

Europe seems to be more in tune with top-down. In the US, bottoms-up seems to be the only option. Once people change their purchasing decisions - e.g. stop buying anything that comes in individual plastic packing etc, companies will be forced to make changes. Another example - stop giving non-sensical loot bags in b'day parties or stop taking or giving gifts altogether.

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Re:How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth ... by sgolecha on Thursday September 26, 2019 @04:56PM (#21085450)

Another way to think about this: Let's say I give you $100M. You can either invest responsibly in a well diversified portfolio (less risk adjust return) or play Russian roulette. Would like like to play roulette with your children/grand-children's lives or the entire living ecosystem ? Think about it for a sec.

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