discuss The Environmental Thread - Earth Matters, so what's holding us back?

[Cannuck]

I believe everyone would agree on at least one point - planet Earth matters! For years, scholars and environmentalists have touted the idea - that the boundaries of life on our planet have been stretched to a breaking point by human activity. From a scientific perspective, the notion of climate change is no longer up for debate. Our species and life as it exists on planet Earth now depends on the choices we humans make. Each individual with a brain possesses the ability to contribute solutions to our common current dilemma, so what's holding us back?

Is it our lack of knowledge; a conflict of interest; the lack of will, and/or other priorities that define the human race? Do we possess the courage to take an initiative, to act upon our convictions and choose to help preserve the Blue planet? Have our environmental problems become too big for individuals to tackle that we must leave it for governments to handle?

Are we limited by our own self-interests, by the confines of our own box or bubble? Have we merely been caught up in our daily mundane existence, distracted by the media and current affairs, that we fail to consider the future? Is Climate Change simply a hoax? Is the human species destined to evolve or are we doomed to extinction?

Here is place to discuss any pertinent thoughts or ideas you may have on the subject. Every thought counts. Please be respectful.

 

[Sutruk]

We have already passed the CO2 limit, that's the truth. We, the human species, have created many amazing technological advances, but on the way, we have forgotten the most basic, taking care of our living environment. We are destroying this incredible place called planet Earth, and we won't find nothing even remotely similar in many light years.

Our planet is like a living organism, and when it gets "sick" it just freeze, until it is recovered again. Unfortunately, the recovery time of our planet is not just a week or two, but tens of thousands of years. It has happened before, with nearly this same amount of atmospheric CO2 levels, and it will happen very soon at this rate. And it's called Glaciation.

Planet earth is like a "miracle" of the Nature, it has needed many different conditions, many accidental and "perfect" conditions, to be how it is actually our planet. Just turn the Earth's axis of rotation one degree more or less inclined, or push the Earth a little bit nearest the Sun, or a bit further away... and you can forget about the water or our amazing nice weather.

That's why we won't find any other habitable planet, even remotely, in many light years.

Just see Mars, Venus, Jupiter... see the climate conditions there... I think the world leaders may think that there are plenty of Earths out there, and we will jump to Mars and live there the same way we are living here.

Unfortunatelly they won't react until it's too late. And the "too late" talking about Climate change may be really too late.

Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

https://www.climate.gov/news-featur...ate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide

"The global average atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2019 was 409.8 parts per million (ppm for short), with a range of uncertainty of plus or minus 0.1 ppm. Carbon dioxide levels today are higher than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years."

 

[Cannuck]

Very good points @Sutruk We need each other and we need our home. No one person, institution or country can tackle the climate crisis alone. There will always be competing interests, but if the answers are already out there, and they are - we just need to be made aware. As a species, to take conscious action to correct, maybe even reverse, the damage already done - what will it take for us to get there?

 

[dna]

As those funds will be reinvested in the company to help save the planet, I assume most people would have no problem wit

The trusties will not liquidate the company. They will run the company as before.
The trusties will receive dividends which they will use to pay themselves a big salary.
They may contribute a pittance of the dividends to an environmental group, but they
are not required to do this. If you can't see that this was a ruse that they used
to avoid selling off a part of the company to pay their inheritance tax, then you are a child.

 

[Cannuck]

LOL, says maga majordomo mouthpiece

 

[Cal2]

Going to this thread's title of "Earth Matters, so what's holding us back?":

I'm wondering if a change in how things are being done/marketed could make a significant difference? An example, from the cover of Edward de Bono's 1979 book Future Positive:

“Of one thing we can be sure. The quality of our life in the future will be determined by the quality of our thinking.” Edward de Bono writes here of the positive future we can have if we want it. Societies, like organisms, develop certain characteristics that make further evolution impossible. At that point instructions and sacred ways of thinking have to be replaced with a more positive approach. Our negativity has to go. Our troubles are not due particularly to villains or stupid people, but to the exercise of high intelligence within bubbles of perception. We need to develop new concepts: some brand-new and some slightly different. De Bono firmly believes that’ we can no longer wait for drift and crisis management to carry us forward to a better future; instead we have to make a deliberate and positive effort to secure a positive future. The call is to arms: not the outmoded arms of gun and bomb but the focused power of human thinking unleashed from its pettiness."

Future Positive pdf - https://www.pdfdrive.com/future-positive-change-your-mindset-for-a-positive-future-e196792289.html

At least one company I'm aware of - XPrize - promotes themselves as 'A global future positive movement'. (Bolding mine.) https://www.xprize.org/about/mission

Could 'future positive' concept be improved on as far as possible effectiveness in getting things moving, moving in a positive direction?

 

[dna]

 

[dna]

Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2030s

The earth could be destroyed by meteors by 2029.
The United States have a nuclear war with Russia by 2024.
Solar flares from the Sun could destroy all life on earth by 2027.
Kamala Harris could become president by 2024.

 

[dna]

The air in Earth's atmosphere is made up of approximately 78 percent nitrogen
and 21 percent oxygen and 0.04% carbon dioxide.
If the green plants stopped taking carbon dioxide, they will die, and the human
beings and animals would not get oxygen and would die too.
But idiots want to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

 

[Cannuck]

And now a few words from Cannuck's hero:

@dna, you neither possess the knowledge, nor the wisdom, to engage in rational discourse... just as many of your tribe do not.

"If they do not have eyes to see, it is very difficult to show them. If they do not have ears to hear, it is very difficult to speak with them." -Hopi Prophecy

From the Bible...

"Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?" - Mark 8:18

"Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear." - Jeremiah 5:21

"Son of man, you are living in a rebellious house. They have eyes to see but do not see, and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious house." -Ezekiel 12:2

 

[Cannuck]

I've never quoted Greta, but she was right...

Wildfires in Canada have burned over one million acres...twice the size of Maine.

What We Can Learn From the Canadian Wildfires​

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/canada-wildfires-smoke-new-york-city/

 

[Cannuck]

I only have Nobel Prize winning scientists in my corner.

Scientists - plural. Who are these Nobel scientists of whom you speak?

Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Scientists Who Warned the World of Climate Change​

Together, the pioneering work of Manabe, Hasselmann and Parisi untangled the mysteries of the natural world's smallest components in our atmosphere to help us better understand large and complex physical systems. Their discoveries provide the foundation for current climate models that help predict the major warming and weather events, which scientists expect will intensify in the coming years.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nobel-prize-in-physics-awarded-to-scientists-who-warned-the-world-of-climate-change

“The climate scientists of today stand on the shoulders of these giants, who laid the foundations for our understanding of the climate system. It is important to understand that climate science is built on basic foundations of physics." - Ko Barrett, senior adviser for climate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

He is the poster child for not assuming a Nobel Prize is a qualification for anything.

Another Nobel leaureate in Physics, Dr. Ivar Giaever, resigned from the APS in protest. He had been a staunch skeptic of anthropogenic global warming for years, yet never worked in the field of climatology.

 

[Cannuck]

The long distance harm to health caused by wildfires​

Wildfires tend to produce large quantities of finer particulates known as PM2.5 and even finer nanoparticles, which are known to be particularly harmful to human health. This is largely because the tiny particles – which are more 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair and so too small to see – can penetrate the lung membranes when breathed in, damaging the respiratory system and passing into the blood stream.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200821-how-wildfire-pollution-may-be-harming-your-health

“The warmer we get, the more fire we get. The more fire we get, the more greenhouse gas emissions we get, which feeds the warming and this keeps on going until something changes.”

 

[Cannuck]

Studies suggest the Amazon Is Likely Emitting More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs​

https://weather.com/news/climate/news/amazon-rainforest-greenhouse-gas-emissions

https://www.nature.com/articles/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/amazon-rainforest-now-appears-to-be-contributing-to-climate-change

 

[Cal2]

Why investors pumped $100 million into a startup using microbial fungi to turn soil into a crucial tool in the fight against climate change​

• Soil is a huge carbon sink, but intensive agriculture has degraded its ability to store emissions.
• The startup Loam Bio wants to use fungi to boost soil health and help keep carbon in the ground.
• The fungi could help fight the climate crisis, but scientists have questioned its scalability.
• This article is part of "Gains in Green Tech," a series showcasing some of the most transformative solutions to the climate crisis. For more climate-action news, visit Insider's One Planet hub.

There is too much carbon in the atmosphere and not enough beneath our feet.

Soil forms the basis of food security, holding water and playing host to vast amounts of biodiversity. It also stores an enormous amount of carbon dioxide — a crucial element of healthy land that helps hold the nutrients and water needed for plant growth.

But soil carbon is in a sorry state, in part due to current agricultural practices. Soil degradation poses a major risk to food-supply lines, threatening to undermine crop and plant quality.

Loam Bio, a biotech startup, has set out to slow down the rapid advance of climate change while dramatically improving soil health at the same time. The Australian company, founded in 2019, has created a microbial fungi-seed coating to enhance agricultural crops' ability to store carbon in soil.

"It kind of blows my mind that there's so much we don't know about this incredible group of organisms," Guy Hudson, the CEO and a cofounder of Loam Bio, told Insider.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/new...1&cvid=a5d6fdf9f8824856baf579537c58f6bb&ei=32

 

[Cal2]

Going to the thread's original question of 'Earth matters, so what's holding us back?':

Trolls are leaving their giant footprints in the Seattle area.

Danish storyteller and environmental artist Thomas Dambo has constructed four of his six pieces as part of the public exhibition, “Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King.”

• Made from scrap wood and assembled with the help of volunteers, the trolls tell a tale of protecting nature and keeping waste out of landfills.
• “There are so many people who want to be a part of a positive change,” said Dambo (above, with Jakob 2 Trees). “Make people happy, they come and help you.” Read our Q&A and see photos from Issaquah, Wash.

----------
Bolding is mine.

 

[dna]

Matt Ridley is a science writer. I have 3 of his books myself....Genome, Viral and Francis Crick.
I thought I would look up his view on climate change. In this video he speaks about Carbon Dioxide.

 

[Cannuck]

One of the all-encompassing reasons is a lack of motivation and/or different motivation. If you've somehow navigated to this thread and come this far, means you're motivated in this direction. Others may be more likely to gravitate into different spheres of influence. For instance, why do we register certain domain names? It's probably because that is what we like to do, or think we'd like to do in the future, or perhaps that's where the money is. Money is a great motivator!

I've always maintained, that if I had all the money in the world (or even a million dollars in the bank, which seems to me to be a tidy sum nowadays), would I be doing what I'm doing right now?

If the answer to that question (and be honest) is:

NO - then I'm not doing what I really ought to be doing, and my lust for more could never be satisfied.

YES - then I am in the right place at the right time, doing what I ought to be doing, and I would find satisfaction.

This principal has worked for me. Of course, I'm human and have human failings, but in those failings is the lesson. I learn more from my mistakes than from being right, because if I were always right, what would I still need to learn?

All too often we get sidetracked by misplaced motivation. It's not a blame game, it's just a reality.

People who are motivated simply by money, and appear to have all the money in the world and still need more, are just chasing their tail IMO. Who am I to judge? However, while they may be content from having won, moving on to their next conquest, in reality there is something important missing, else they would be doing something that brings fulfillment (which wouldn't require money) and/or perhaps help others along the way in their life journey.

 

[Sutruk]

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-the-rise-and-fall-of-co2-levels-influenced-the-ice-ages

How the rise and fall of CO2 levels influenced the ice ages

"The Earth’s climate has been quite stable over the past 11,000 years, playing an important role in the development of human civilisation.

Prior to that, the Earth experienced an ice age lasting for tens of thousands of years. The past million years of the Earth’s history has been characterised by a series of ice ages broken up by relatively short periods of warmer temperatures.

These ice ages are triggered and ended by slow changes in the Earth’s orbit. But changing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 also plays a key role in driving both cooling during the onset of ice ages and warming at their end.

The global average temperature was around 4C cooler during the last ice age than it is today. There is a real risk that, if emissions continue to rise, the world warms more this century than it did between the middle of the last ice age 20,000 years ago and today."

 

[Cannuck]

Yes we have the technology now to create new life forms, even create life itself - that's miraculous! Our technological developments have allowed us to become the dominant species on this planet.

I've always maintained, that if I had all the money in the world (or even a million dollars in the bank, which seems to me to be a tidy sum nowadays), would I be doing what I'm doing right now?

Steve Jobs, "Don't waste your life living someone else's"

 

[Sutruk]

Yes we have the technology now to create new life forms, even create life itself - that's miraculous! Our technological developments have allowed us to become the dominant species on this planet. It's happening right before our eyes. Humanity itself, however, has evolved very little over the past millennia.

Everything changes, it is the constant order of things in our reality, nothing is permanent - yet as a race of sentient beings, I do believe we'd like to stick around awhile a little while longer though

We are right now the dominant species on this planet, but will we be the most successful species in terms of continuity or presence in this planet?

"Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago. The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.

The prehistoric reptiles known as dinosaurs arose during the Middle to Late Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, some 230 million years ago.
Dinosaurs mysteriously disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous Period, around 65 million years ago."

That means dinosaurs lived on this planet around 165 million years, while we are here from just 200,000 years ago, and on the last 100 years we have put his planet at its limits of CO2 and pollution.

We are Homo Sapiens, the "modern humans"... but I really wonder how much intelligent we are, if we have already damaged to the limits our precious planet, and won't pass too much the 50,000 years (with capacity for language) on this planet at this rate, compared to the 165 million years dinosaurs lived here.

When did dinosaurs become extinct?

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/when-did-...s_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products

Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous Period), after living on Earth for about 165 million years. If all of Earth time from the very beginning of the dinosaurs to today were compressed into 365 days (one calendar year), the dinosaurs appeared January 1 and became extinct the third week of September. (Using this same time scale, the Earth would have formed approximately 18.5 years earlier.) Using the same scale, people (Homo sapiens) have been on earth only since December 31 (New Year's eve). The dinosaurs' long period of dominance certainly makes them unqualified successes in the history of life on Earth.

 

[Cal2]

The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science

When people grow polarized over a body of evidence, or a resolvable matter of fact, the cause may be some form of biased reasoning, but they could also be receiving skewed information to begin with—or a complicated combination of both.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/denial-science-chris-mooney/

Reminds me of 2 dimensional thinking:

http://leanmeanprocessimprovement.com/dimensional-thinking/

https://thesecularjurist.wordpress....nking-and-the-limitations-of-human-cognition/

 

[Cannuck]

Earth’s oceans are storing record-breaking amounts of heat

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earth-oceans-storing-heat-record-breaking-amounts

Seas may have absorbed enough heat last year to boil 1.3 billion kettles of water

"Water temperature measurements from around the globe indicate that the total amount of heat stored in the upper oceans in 2020 was higher than any other year on record dating back to 1955, researchers report online January 13 in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Tracking ocean temperature is important because warmer water melts more ice off the edges of Greenland and Antarctica, which raises sea levels (SN: 4/30/20) and supercharges tropical storms (SN: 11/11/20)."

"The three other warmest years on record for the world’s oceans were 2017, 2018 and 2019. “What we’re seeing here is a variant on the movie Groundhog Day,” says study coauthor Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State. “Groundhog Day has a happy ending. This won’t if we don’t act now to dramatically reduce carbon emissions.”

Be thankful... it's not too late.

"We need to choose a plan that adds up.
It is possible to make a plan that adds up, but it’s not going to be easy.
We need to stop saying no and start saying yes.
We need to stop the Punch and Judy show and get building."

"We, humanity, cannot release to the atmosphere all, or even most, fossil fuel CO2.
To do so would guarantee dramatic climate change, yielding a different planet..."

J. Hansen et al (2007)

“Avoiding dangerous climate change” is impossible – dangerous climate change is already here. The question is, can we avoid catastrophic climate change?

David King, UK Chief Scientist (2007)

https://www.withouthotair.com/

 

[Cannuck]

10 grand challenges we'll face by 2050

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170713-what-will-the-challenges-of-2050-be

We're also turning the Earth into a huge garbage heap by contaminating it with our non-recyclables and societies' incessant need for the newest and trendiest consumer goods. Fortunately the Canadian government is banning the use single-use plastics in 2021...a step in the right direction IMO.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/canada-single-use-plastics-ban-2021/

Globally, 3/4 of food crops require pollination...

Disappearing Pollinators Hurt Biodiversity & Threaten Food Security

A sustained pollinator decline means lower yields from crops that depend on animals for pollination, and so prices would increase; or there would be less variety available as farmers switch from growing insect-pollinated crops to the restricted range of self-fertilizing ones that give reliable fruit or grain production.

https://blog.pachamama.org/disappea...cosystem-biodiversity-threatens-food-security

 

[Cannuck]

It’s no different with new resources that are being used to substitute, they had no idea that the natural earth resources would contaminate like they have when they invented petrol fuel, coal burning factories and ect .

What we “Might” think is eco friendly today from the new resources being implemented, may very well be as bad for the earth as what we are using right now, only time tells the fallout in mass use of these new resources IMO

In the mean time, the world must continue to operate in the manner it knows IMO

We can get the same or better results by doing things differently. Renewables are significantly undercutting fossil fuel companies for producing energy - the cost of energy is falling, not going up - like at the pumps. Old dinosaur powered coal power plants are less competitive and polluting, they need to be phased out. Fracking is another issue, using massive amounts of fresh water and contaminating local rives, lakes and groundwater in the extraction, releasing hydrocarbons and greenhouse gasses when burned.

If we do what we always done, we'll get what we always got.

 

[Cal2]

Humanity's Biggest Problems Require a Whole New Media Mode​

In this era of climate change and crisis, it's time for formats as varied, animal, and leafy as the world they seek to represent.

IN HER BRILLIANT essay Tentacular Thinking, Donna Haraway articulates the need for us to create a tradition that is “made up of ongoing multispecies stories and practices of becoming-with in times that remain at stake.” In these “times that remain at stake,” we need a media capable of telling not only our stories, but the stories of bacteria and fauna and beast—of helping us cultivate a “loving eye” toward the nonhuman world and tuning us into the “lyrics of the lichen” and the “volcanic poetry of the rocks,” as Ursula K. Le Guin hoped. Only when we have a media that deprivileges the Anthropos will we be able to use it to cultivate the radical relationships and care necessary to save the environment. Yet as Haraway indicates throughout her writings, this requires more than a simple shift in subject matter; rather, this media must strive to preserve the alienness that lies at the heart of nonhuman life—communicating “across irreducible difference” and relating “under the sign of significant otherness”—to avoid replicating the anthropocentric stance that so often leads to the exploitation of the green world. It is no easy task to transcend the optical, anthropic culture we have developed, but artists across a variety of disciplines are beginning to do just that.

https://www.wired.com/story/media-climate-change-film/