We are still screwed: the coming climate disaster

Yeah, our military has been preparing for climate change for a while. But it’s not their place to contradict the position of or civilian government.

Maybe instead of a Space Force, we could have some kind of agency with the mission to respond to climate-related disasters? Like a federal agency to manage emergency response?

Did Trump actually manage to fuck up another hurricane?

He’s doing a tremendous job, the biggest hurricane response from any administration ever. It’s like you don’t even read statements from the White House, Gordon!

This has to be fake news. Only a few people die in hurricanes, and not due to the hurricane of course. It can also never be the government’s fault. The state must have done something wrong. And everyone who has a pulse and isn’t the devil love’s Trump. Now let’s skip over to Melania so we can hear how she’s the most bullied person on the planet and knows hardship that is 100x worse than anyone who just had their house blown away.

To be fair, with the climate changing it really just feels like one long single hurricane these days. By that logic, he’s just fucked up on the one hurricane still.

I wish the hurricane could have been named Melania instead of Michael.

OK, now it’s getting serious.

If the extinction of the coffee bean wasn’t going to get people going, in this country, I don’t know beer would make a dent. Perhaps in other countries though.

Insert ‘This is fine.’ image here…

I remember the results they had in Germany were scary enough.

Jesus. I don’t even know what to say. I’ve just got this anxious pit in my stomach with all the climate-related news coming out over the past couple weeks. Like I knew things were bad, but it’s going from “thank God I don’t have kids and grandkids to worry about” to “holy shit, this could get really bad in my lifetime”.

When I watched Soylent Green as a kid, it was traumatizing. Watching it again recently, it felt somewhat like an utopia.

I’ve been thinking a bit about Kim Stanley Robinson’s book Aurora lately. It’s about all the problems they run into trying to maintain a viable ecosystem on a generation ship. It drove home to me how the systems that ultimately keep us alive are so complex and poorly understood. And that there is no magical spirit keeping those systems from careening out of control.

I like the bicycle-powered apartment. I want one of those!

I haven’t heard of that one, that’s perfect timing – was literally just browsing for a new book this morning! I did recently read Children of Time which has one plot about the survivors of the human race being on an ark ship, but it’s not the same thing.

Read his latest, New York 2140. Dealing with the aftermath of rising sea levels. Not as scientific as his other novels, but an interesting look at how people deal with the inevitable.

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Yeah, people who study the natural sciences tend to be more freaked out about climate change because it gives you a deeper sense of how all of these systems work together and how minor changes to an ecosystem can lead to cascade or even collapse. The systems we understand are part of larger systems and, as you say, in addition to the things we know about, there’s a ton we don’t fully understand and can’t anticipate. That plus the natural conservatism of scientists is what leads me to believe that things are going to fall apart faster than people think as systems start to cascade.

Climate scientists talk a lot about various feedback loops and try to factor them into their calculations but those are only the ones we know about. It seems like, on a regular basis, we’re discovering new effects that will likely lead to additional feedback loops. The snowball is well on it’s way downhill and it’s only going to pick up speed.

Sorry for the grimness. In my personal and professional life I’m almost pathologically optimistic but this is the one area where my pessimism seems to outstretch even that of the choir.

On the bright side, missing the end of the world by 30 years would be like reading an incredible book with the last chapter torn out. At least now you get to see how it all ends. (See – Optimism!)

Just … just.