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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Rude Pundit: How Fucked the Climate Is in Two Photos (Updated)
Hey, kids, here's what's going on in Yosemite National Park. It's a wildfire. It ain't the biggest fire ever, or even this year in California, but it's burning some nice places.
Down the road about 650 miles, just one state over, Phoenix, Arizona is experiencing its worst flooding in, like, ever.
Fire and floods, motherfuckers, fires and floods. Biblical shit right there. Need more?
The fucked climate is fucking over the birds, too. Yeah, the habitats and migratory routes of more than half the bird species in the United States are under the global warming gun. The drought in California wiped out 90-95% of all the raptor nests. No baby hawks, no baby eagles, no baby falcons.
At least this way when people tell you that marching to protest inaction on climate change, as we are going to do on Sunday, is for the birds, you can answer, "Yes. And the people, too."
Update: And also out today: Greenhouse gases are increasing at an even faster rate. "Experts warned that the world was 'running out of time' to reverse rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) to tackle climate change." Of course, we'll do nothing, fucking ourselves and our children even more.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2014/09/how-fucked-climate-is-in-two-photos.html
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)We are in the new climate. It will get much worse.
LiberalLoner
(9,762 posts)freedom fighter jh
(1,782 posts). . . even if we need prevention first and foremost.
At this point there is so much damage already done, and so much now unstoppable in the pipeline, that we need mitigation and adaptation.
If we don't do a lot of prevention as well, there won't be much hope for the next generation.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)continue to insist that it's not that bad, or that there will be technology that will fix the problem.
And then there are the climate deniers and destroyers who want to line their pockets or hasten te return of Jesus or some other shit.
CrispyQ
(36,482 posts)It's our big brain that got us into this mess!
I think as a collective we know we're fucked & we're partying like it's 1999.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)In fact, it's the one hope we have right now. EOM
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Yes, technology can indeed help us solve the problem. In fact, you'd have to be a hardcore Luddite or naive to think otherwise!
Yeah, I don't mean to sound terribly harsh. But when you think about it, it's all a key part of the mitigation strategy that's needed. You may have heard, for instance, of Co2 scrubbing technology at power plants? It's only one small step, but it's there. And let's not even get started on clean energy, etc.
Really, our main problem is that we need to fix the world's socioeconomic issues, at least as much as possible, even if not perfectly so. Because just reverting to a low-tech, low-population society won't solve things. If anything, it'll actually make things worse, including the fact that the world's elite, at least those who are so inclined, will hoard even MORE resources, and even MORE water, farmland, etc.....because that's just how it will end up being.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Way to go, Rude!
Thank you, meegbear.
PADemD
(4,482 posts)They're waiting for The Rapture.
pscot
(21,024 posts)than rapture ima bet.
secondwind
(16,903 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)He would have be to come up with a different title. In just a few years they expect the ice to be completely gone.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers.html
kairos12
(12,862 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)But glad you were able to see it. What an awesome thing
Indydem
(2,642 posts)had been in retreat for at east 24 years.
Climate change is not new. It is being accelerated by mankind, but we have been warming for millennia.
marym625
(17,997 posts)with the start of the industrial revolution. But the rate of the destruction has increased drastically in the last 5 or 6 decades.
I believe that the first thing that will make the naysayers wake up, which has already started, is when people are shooting each other for water. Like they are in Yemen.
caraher
(6,278 posts)Since the end of the last ice age we've not been warming... what we've seen in the past decades is all on us. If you look at the past 10,000 years or so stable or cooling would be much better characterizations than warming:
The last two millennia look like this:
I don't think looking at either the past two millennia or the past ten suggests we were warming anyway, and have simply accelerated what was happening already.
It's true that the picture at Kilimanjaro is far more complicated, and seems to be more about atmospheric moisture and precipitation than temperature and melting.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)around this time they'd mass together down in the dunes to begin migration.
tecelote
(5,122 posts)The scary thing is that it was only three or four years ago that we hadn't noticed. Monarch's were a common summer visitor.
A few years later and we have only seen a half dozen all summer.
With climate change, the discussion does not include pesticide poisoning as often as it should.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)has had their head up their ass since, oh, 1972 or so.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)newfie11
(8,159 posts)She was so far ahead and
This idiot
World should have listened!
alterfurz
(2,474 posts)...and then we won't." -- James Kunstler
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)freebrew
(1,917 posts)Why just jump headfirst into doing anything? We still got profits to make.
(smilies? Really?)
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)that will help. NOT.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)You may consider yourself a "product of the Reagan Era" but I consider myself a child of the 50s and 60s, and the Rachel Carson era. And I am 60+, and I am surrounded by organic gardeners and small farmers who are also 60+.
You are *still* painting with a broad brush. My WWII era "Greatest Generation" parents and my eldest sister, (very early boomer) voted Reagan. My middle sister (middle boomer) and I (late boomer) voted straight dem our entire lives. As did our friends and peers.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)Fine, whatever.
I live in an area surrounded by 60+ year old organic gardeners and small farmers. I took a walk at my dinner break last night and passed an elderly man protesting the drone war. On my way to work tomorrow morning, I will pass by the Rachel Carson preserve.
But if you want to spread it around that "we're" up against me, my friends and my neighbors, so be it. You are still tarring us with a broad brush.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Now THAT'S a bubble.
I know someone who posts pictures of himself and his girlfriend at the gun range after the whole Bundy Ranch thing and who's first reaction was to run out for more ammo after Ferguson. The guy is CONVINCED the shit is going to hit the fan and he's "ready" and thinks anyone who isn't is an idiot.
You know,....cuz,....zombies and stuff.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)Before I lived here, I lived in a suburban, high density, high-tech area. Still surrounded by non-Reaganites.
Again, you are broad-brushing a very large group of people (multiple generations) based on *your* experience.
Looking by age group in 1984 -- all age groups voted more for Reagan than Mondale. My age group at the time voted the 2nd lowest for Reagan.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_84.html
From the linked table:
18-24 / 39% Mondale / 61% Reagan
25-29 / 43% Mondale / 57% Reagan
30-49 / 42% Mondale / 58 % Reagan
50-64 / 39 % Mondale / 61 % Reagan
65 + / 36% Mondale / 64 % Reagan
Furthermore, the 2 groups that had the highest percentage for Mondale (which represent most of the 50%) combined to be less than 50% of the voting population.
The 3 groups with the highest percentage for Reagan (which include those who today would be mostly under 50 and all over 80 or dead) combined to be over 50% of the population.
IOW, numerically we were less representative of the total vote than the groups that voted in higher percentages for Reagan.
AllyCat
(16,194 posts)Maybe horses will start to make sense again for travel and farming. Would be hard to rise one to work, but sure would be cool to spend more time with my horse and stop the pollution at the same time. In the meantime, car pooling is my only option. We don't even have a bus, cab, or bike path to our small city less than 20 minutes from Madison. And it was strangely, a number of Progressives that poo-pooed the idea of a regional transit authority here. And all the conservatives.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)I was really happy to find the horsie gifs the other day.
Not pro, made that decision 40 years ago and have regretted it ever since. I currently have a beautiful arab mare in my back yard. Riding has sucked this year due to the combination of weather and my work schedule, but next year will improve after I quit one of my 2 p/t jobs and replace it with social security. My prior arab, a rescue gelding that I kept for 23 years and lost to old age, I had trained to schooling PSG.
I am planning on selling my current home and moving further into the boonies within the next few years. If I'm able to do that, then I will breed, raise and train either morgans or arabs, or morabs for future transport and farm work. I currently live in an area not far from where some small farmers never stopped working their farms with horses. One small farmer interviewed on WERU last year talked about how their community of small farmers was even looking into horses for inter-farm transportation instead of cars.
I can see a future where large draft horses are traded for smaller, multi-purpose horses that are easier keepers. New England was built on the backs of the morgan. I expect that tradition to expand in the future, possibly within my lifetime.
AllyCat
(16,194 posts)Sorry to hear about your mare. I lost my Preliminary event mare last summer at 25. I'm not a good dressage rider. In fact, it was my worst phase. But I inherited this Dutch WB trained to third and he's fun to play around on. He'll jump a little, but it's not his favorite so we just hop over trees that have fallen on the trail. The kids ride him when he feels like listening to them.
Lots of folks at our barn drive and I am thinking about asking for some lessons! Terrific you found a niche that will work for your talents and community needs. I am getting more in the habit of riding my bike around town to run errands, at least until the snow flies.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)I was in a rough board situation at a farm with a small, private track. I hired myself out for care, lessons and training to various boarders. That included a guy who had 2 harness horses -- I jogged them for him daily for a year or so. It was a blast. I also had limited experience when my best friend across the street got a pony and cart, so the 2 of us drove her around.
So I'll need training in driving, although I did ground drive my filly as part of her training. Plus I want to learn to twitch logs. The local county fairs here include competitions in log pulling. Mostly large draft horses, but haflingers have also become popular here. I'd like to see a return to morgans. We don't need to import light draft; just get the foundation lines back here again. And I think morgans cross with arabs much better than the haflinger crosses I've seen. The haflinger-arab crosses look like they have the typical problems that F-1 generation warmbloods had. Draft-hotblood are just too unlike in basic type so you end up with a lot of disasters. Whereas foundation morgans are much more like old-style arabs -- just with more substance.
It was my old gelding that I lost; my mare is young and enjoying her vacation. Sorry you lost your mare. My 1st teacher was a big-time eventer (Lockie Richards), and wanted me to go in that direction. I was a very good jumping rider, but lack the courage (or insanity, lol) required for eventing. I wanted to learn dressage from the time I saw Miracle of the White Stallions when I was 11.
Btw, according to Robert Hall, eventing is really just dressage with running and jumps in between
AllyCat
(16,194 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)any references for your claim.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)These are the people who voted for RMoney, prior to that they voted for Palin (John who?), prior to that they voted for Bush,...TWICE, prior to that they voted for Dole to stop the EVIL Bill Clinton from destroying America.
They can't remember Daddy Bush but are damn proud to have voted for Reagan TWICE.
(Although they claim they didn't vote for Bush.)
They got their political ejumacation from Glenn Beck's blackboard.
They also consider themselves devout Christians because they don't drink beer while they watch some TV preacher from their recliner. After that is the game so it's considered blasphemy to not to pop a can.
And as I said, there are a LOT of them.
Good goddamn thing women get to vote too.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)seriously, just stop it.
Don't even bother replying, because I won't again. You're going on ignore because you're just making shit up and then changing the subject when the facts prove you wrong.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)Make up your mind, eh?
Actually, don't bother. You're just spinning your wheels here. I have better things to do with my time. Have a nice day.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)BlindTiresias
(1,563 posts)Most of the 50+ population I encounter either don't care because they "got theirs", say platitudes about how hopeful they are the younger gens will fix the mess, or are actively evil and sadistic right wingers.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)Sounds like you hang around right-wingers. Too bad.
Most of the 50+ I know, which would be everybody I work with and the 50+ on DU, are quite the opposite.
BlindTiresias
(1,563 posts)The actual evil sadists are not the majority, it is mostly people self-absorbed and apathetic or pollyannas who are eager to have young people fix stuff. I also know a lot of fantastic 50+ people too but the era they grew up in seemed to have a negative effect on notions of community and social responsibility.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)I'm 50+ and I know no one who says such a thing. A few are deniers that it's human activity causing it, but none of my friends are that callous regarding their families.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)To think that I'm old enough to remember guys like Frazier Smith on KMET in LA. Prior to that were guys that used to tell the audience where the next Vietnam protest was being held before they played The Doors.
Now it's guys like the Pigman ready to throw things around in his studio as he reads a poll that says a majority of Americans wouldn't mind seeing their taxes go up to solve Global Warming. "Do you see what's happening here????"
Romulox
(25,960 posts)lady lib
(2,933 posts)I look at my two daughters and wonder what the future holds for them, and especially, what it holds for the generation that will follow theirs.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Earth could become another Venus.
tazkcmo
(7,300 posts)I care.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)tazkcmo
(7,300 posts)"A lot of 50+ types saying all the models predict disaster after they're dead so they don't care."
You didn't specify. My bad.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)I'm 58 and I'm concerned for our littlies. I've hunkered down where I can grow my own food, with a near pristine river in close proximity.
(Here in north Arkansas, we've had a clement summer with ample rain, so my fundie boss and other conservatives are sure that 'global warming' was invented by Al Gore so he could make lots of money.)
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)chervilant
(8,267 posts)the ones who think it's "Armageddon" time.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)BobbyBoring
(1,965 posts)there are many in America now that pay absolutely no attention to this. My niece is pregnant with her second child and wants 2 more. When I asked her if she was aware of all the things her kids will encounter, she looked at me like I was from Mars and asked what I was talking about. She's a school teacher.
Scarey!
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Durrr.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)the REAL elephant in the room is overpopulation. Too many people, period. It's the root of the warming, and is the reason the effects from the warming, like the fires, are so terrible.
This planet cannot sustain 7 billion people and adding more every day. For the sake of the planet it would be a good thing if some disease got loose which spread to nearly everyone and had a mortality rate of at least 50 percent. I'm certainly not predicting anything like that, and in personal and human terms I wouldn't like it at all, but if at least half of the population were removed very quickly, there'd be some breathing space. But if the remaining people simply reproduce like crazy and quickly get the population back up, it won't matter in the long run. Because at the rate we're going, in the long run we're going to make this planet unlivable.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)abortion clinics will go a long way in reducing the population.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)the irony and sarcasm in your post, the sad truth is that the lack of those clinics won't have a perceptible affect on population numbers. Oh, the lack will matter a great deal to the individual women who no longer have access to needed health care, including abortions, but the sheer excess numbers of people goes well beyond this.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)the past, we have to look at empowering women to limit their families. We have to look to the future by giving women the knowledge and access to control their fertility. Everywhere that has been tried in the past, populations have stabilized and even decreased, but now we have this retrograde movement to prevent women from doing so.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)But even if we are able to wave a magic wand and give all women everywhere in the world absolute control over their reproduction, our population will still continue to grow. I believe I've seen some estimates on this, and that we'd top 10 billion people before the world population would stabilize, and maybe contract a bit. We don't have the many decades it would take to bring the world population down to a truly sustainable level, probably no more than one billion people, just by family planning alone. Even China, which famously had a one-child policy for quite a while, saw steady population growth during that time.
Obviously, I agree that women should have control over their own fertility, but I'm honestly afraid it's too little, too late.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)Cleita
(75,480 posts)I think we are getting there with the situation in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Ebola and other epidemics, and global climate change which will bring more disease and affect the food supply. I hope our disastrous world leaders take a look at this and start planning for it.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)and it's not as easy to get as a cold or the flu. If it mutates into an airborne virus, we are pretty much doomed.
I suspect that the current survival rate, right around 50%, is that high only because most of the time a person who gets it is surrounded by people well enough to take care of him. Once more people are sick, again think of the cold or flu, that care will diminish exponentially.
Obviously, I'm positing a sort of worst-case scenario, and I don't realistically think Ebola will make that leap.
SnakeEyes
(1,407 posts)Is it possible to reverse things now? From what I've heard, and I'm not well versed in the science, is that many believe we are past the point of no return (no backward glances) and that if we were to stop polluting at the rate that is mathematically needed then we'd basically be living in the stone age because we just don't have replacement resources that can sustain the existing population's needs when we limit/stop doing xyz that is causing global climate change.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)past time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)louis-t
(23,295 posts)Every time a front moves through, trees come down, power goes out, and floods everywhere. Every time. 40-60 mph winds. There's one going through right now. Big stinkin' mess.
mwrguy
(3,245 posts)I remember the Salt River cutting South Phoenix off from the north, and losing bridges.
Cars swept away at Indian Bend wash.
dbackjon
(6,578 posts)Not the widespread rain, and amounts in a short period of time - 6" in 6 hours in some parts.
Sky Harbor recorded more rain than EVER recorded. By far.
Indian Bend was higher than I have ever seen it (I live three blocks from it)
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)"I ain't worried 'bout nothin'. Gawd's got my back!!!"
niyad
(113,434 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,371 posts)Thanks for the thread, meegbear.
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)... we do. We do the wrong thing about every issue every single time.
flvegan
(64,409 posts)on an individual level, that would start to make a change for the positive, almost without thinking.
Yeah, that whole "eating meat" thing. Alas, bacon tastes sooooo good.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)like war, bombs and their aftermath, burning oil wells, chemical plant explosions, slash burning of cut forests, mass tire burning in war torn areas, fuel spills as a side effect in battle, buildings burning toxic compounds after being hit by missiles, missile fuel and their byproducts, war games, war ships and their dumping, missile tests in the ocean, explosives testing in the ocean.... the list goes on....
These are the huge and ugly sources of pollution and global warming we rarely discuss. Do we actually think that our meager tinsel efforts at saving the planet with our 35mpg cars and recycling cardboard and milk cartons are any match for the war/killing machine and it's industries? Does it even begin to rival the hate ideologies of human millennia that are the source of all war power, intent and mass manipulation?
To save the planet we have to recognize that the problem is far more complicated and memetically ingrained than separating cans and bottles.
I will never stop fighting for life and the planet and I will teach my children to do the same and they hopefully will teach their children and theirs. But when the earth brushes humankind aside in the next few generations, it won't be because some of us didn't seek the impossible.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)I totally agree with you about the difference in scale between what we as individuals
can do and the effect of the war machine (and also the pollution from the extraction
of the fossil fuels themselves, never mind just from burning them).
The underlying problem is greed - the desire to get more of "whatever" for oneself .
The war machine is a means to an end: it uses people & things to feed the greed of the
decision makers.
The overpopulation issue is an accelerant: it amplifies the effect of each individual's greed.
The disparity of wealth is a reinforcement, a positive feedback mechanism that ensures
that the plutarchy stays on top and that their decisions are carried out.
The issue driving all of these is greed ... and that isn't going away until the world changes.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)Amazing.