Are we toast?

[LukeZ]

Disclaimer - I have not actually fully read the 2021 IPCC Climate Report

Has anyone seen the news in the last couple days about the most recent predictions with the Earth's climate? Things are not looking too great.

It seems like a lot of things are going to sh*t right now, especially in the US. Just in the past year with riots and Covid and the election and material shortages (at my work, we were just quoted a 60-week lead time on some new CT cabinets. They're literally just metal boxes - the CTs are not even included! That is over a year away from now!)

I don't think the report is saying that "by 2050, the forests will have all burned down and the ice caps will be gone and rain will stop falling". I think it's more accurately saying that if things continue going the way they have been, than many things that we consider to be just inconveniences today will be permanent in the future. For example, material shortages. That's not to say that the environment won't be f'd up as well - it for sure would be.

I guess I mostly just wanted to rant about how dissatisfied I am with the mentality of a lot of people today. We live in a world where the focus is on consuming - its all about taking everything you can get, not caring about your neighbors, doing what is most convenient for yourself, and doing what is the fastest.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with my pop-pop on his farm as a kid. The quote of his that I remember most is, "It's all about that damn dollar."
He continually told me of how back in his day, things were made to last. When things broke, you got them fixed (as opposed to throwing them away and buying replacements). You didn't take more than you needed and you helped out your neighbors if you had more than enough. If any of you know any farmers, you know how frugal they are - and rightfully so. When I go over to my pop-pops now to cut grass for him (he's at the point where he can't move around too much anymore), I use the same 1976 Ford 1000 that he used to cut the exact same grass 45 years ago! That old tractor still runs like a dream too - I can't even tell you how many thousands of hours it has on it. That's because it has been taken care of for it's entire life, and was always repaired whenever it needed to be.

Nowadays, it seems like things are built with purposefully short lifespans. Whatever it takes to get people to buy more stuff. All that these huge corporations and manufacturers care about is money and growth. To quote a very wise person, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."

I don't want to make the discussion about EVs and fossil fuels even though they both play a major role - this is more about the state of society.

I'm not saying that things are 100% over for us - I think that once appearing 'green' and being actually sustainable becomes marketable enough to make major money, huge corporations will start to change. It's just that things look bleak as of now. The simple math is this: when you consume more, you throw away more.

Does anyone else share this sentiment?

Also, I'm thankful for everyone on this forum who keeps these old G-bodies alive. History and cool cars aside, you're doing the Earth a favor!

 

[DRIVEN]

 

[78chevolds]

<<Does anyone else share this sentiment? >>
YES
That is why I am going off grid as much as I can. Society is unraveling and operating at a lower frequency. Regarding the climate, we are having planetary changes but it is only partially caused by humans. People in power always misuse power and take advantage of the people they govern to gain more power by putting more fear into people. Fear is a low frequency and keeps people from a higher frequency whereby they can think independently and freely. Those in power want fear in the people they govern because it makes them easier to govern.

In addition to planetary changes there are solar changes, weakening magnetosphere of our planet, which is contributing more to our environment then they are telling you. Check out https://suspicious0bservers.org/

Regarding consumption. You have to shut that out, they brainwash everyone unknowingly to them that they need this or need that. It reminds me the John Prime song's chorus from "Spanish Pipedream"

"Blow-up-your-tv
throw-away-your-paper
go-to-the-country
build-you-a-home
plant-a-little-garden
eat-a-lot-of-peaches-
try and-find-jesus-on-your-own"

Associate with like minded people and you will be much saner and more at peace.

 

[81cutlass]

I remember when I was younger and going through Boy Scouts we did a lot of conservation and pro environmental things (plant trees, pick up garbage, learn about trees and plants, etc.) Gives you a perspective about how beneficial the environment can be by enjoying it. Leave no trace, hunting and fishing intelligently can benefit the ecosystem.

I also come from a long line of cheap farmers. Stuff gets scrapped when it can no longer be fixed. And even when it is scrapped it gets repurposed in many ways. Farmers are some of the more eco friendly people their well being relies on how well they take care of the land. Trying things such as low or minimum tillage to prevent soil runoff, sampling soil to determine what nutrients are missing and target applying what things are missing, installing drainage so excessive subsurface moisture can drain and the soil will filter and capture the nutrients instead of just running off. Nutrient runoff and pesticide drift is negative to the farmers wallet and they spend a lot of time and money trying to prevent that.


One of the lessons from scouts I learned was the three R's. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. People do the recycle thing well, but if you really look into it most of our recycling gets just thrown away.

The Reduce and Reuse thing is something hardly ANYBODY talks about.

I personally do not like single use plastic. Why does toilet paper need to be double wrapped? Why can't we just buy oil by the gallon at the local parts store out of a 55 gallon drum? Why can't we get the 5 gallon bags of milk instead of the gallon plastic jugs?

A lot of it boils down to convenience. People DEMAND convenience over all else. A lot of people talk about how they want to be green, but that only happens if it doesn't inconvenience them in any way.

You don't just solve C02 emissions problems by just replacing gasoline cars with electric cars. You don't make buildings 'green' by tearing down the old one that worked perfectly fine and replacing it with a new one with 20% less energy usage. You don't reduce your environmental footprint by ordering a wingding from oversees that has to be transported via air freight and delivered to your door in 2 days.


I red an article saying that if you wanted to actually address the issues you would essentially have to have the standard of living of someone from the US in the 1920's or current average standard of living of someone in Bolivia or Nigeria. You would be allowed to take one cross country airplane trip every three years, you would have a 1800 calorie diet, a family of 4 would be limited to living in a 400sq ft house. You could drive 2800 miles a year or something low like that. You could have one laptop for every family of four and 1 cell phone for everyone. You could buy 18lbs of clothing a year. Retirement investments in the stock market would be non existent because the consumer based economy would essentially have to be eliminated.

Nobody wants to live the life you likely need to live in order to meet the goals they set out (not even the people creating the goals, which is why nobody explicitly states them)

 

[LukeZ]

The Reduce and Reuse thing is something hardly ANYBODY talks about.

Great point - couldn't have said it better.

You're right about more places needing to sell their items in bulk or BYOC as well.

Sad that a lot of people either don't understand or don't give 2 sh*ts.

 

[doood]

Don't believe the "experts" with all the letters after their names - this is part of the leftist power-grab just like COVID. The letters after the bureaucrat's names are meant to impress first world pawns like the tacky medals filling up the breast of a third-world general's uniform are meant to impress middle eastern goat herders.

There are real environmental problems with real solutions but they don't snag headlines - just keeping plastic out of the Ocean would be a great start. How hard could that be? If CO2 is a real issue, then build lots of Nuclear Power stations - duh. It works; pays my bills. Instead we do the opposite (now resigned Andrew Cuomo recently shut down Indian Point). The left isn't actually worried about climate change - the proof is their non-embrace of nuclear power. Imagining that the infinitely complex system of the Earth's atmosphere can be dialed in with a single variable like CO2 concentration is bad science meant only for mass consumption/manipulation. Besides, if CO2 will increase the temperature some, then that is good, because we've been oscillating through ice ages over the last several million years. I use a fermenter to keep a bubble of CO2 under a bell jar in my aquarium to stimulate plant growth and drop Ph half a point - good stuff - the stuff of life.

Things are actually getting better, but that is not the narrative. Have faith. Turn your BS filter up to 11.

I didn't bring up politics, but there is my four cents as a "Master of Science" since '04 now a "Science Denier" as of 2020.

 

[Cuse99]

If every human disappeared overnight in 100 years the climate would still change. At one time Saudi Arabia was under water, Antartica was attached to South America, we had several ice ages, and 6 great extinctions. The earth is changing and changing and changing.

 

[64nailhead]

Of course the world is coming to an end - the energy vs entropy discussion is not a hypothesis - it's a fact. At some point the sun is not going to be emitting light and heat energy, when that happens life as w know it will be over. When will these type of things happen? Don't know and I can't fathom concerns about events that might occur 1.5 million years form now.

Thinking about things such as this leaves me to draw to conclusions : 1st, just because our planet is destined to be non inhabitable someday isn't a solid reason to expedite the process; 2nd, just in case our world is going to cease to exist in my lifetime I'm trying to live everyday and not 'leave anything on the table' for tomorrow (I chase my wife around like I'm a teenager )


Lastly, I give this thread 18 posts before it's no more.

 

[81cutlass]

My wife's and my grandparents saved EVERYTHING. NOTHING went to waste.

You never knew if the margarine container in the fridge had margarine, soup from 3 days ago, or a hamburger. They almost never went out to eat, everything was made from scratch. They saved used aluminum foil and washed it, folded it back up and put it in the drawer.


Years ago they used to make flour sacks out of floral patterns because people would repurpose the fabric into clothing. Henry Ford famously required seat suppliers to make the crates larger than needed because they would repurpose the boards for beds of model T pickups.

Today effing cucumbers are plastic wrapped.

I interned in an assembly facility of a fortune 100 company a few years back and this little emissions solenoid was placed in a plastic bag that was in a small cardboard box which then was in a box of 20 solenoids which was on a crate that was a box with 1000 solenoids.

I bet if you eliminated the idiotic consumer packaging industry that has almost no value add besides people expecting their products to LOOK good you could make some significant gains.

 

[DRIVEN]