Technology, Science and the Environment.

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

As stated above a lot of what you mention has been baked into transition plans for many years now. As well as climate resilience scenarios. I know foxes talk does not equal international policy, but concentration has to be applied to the other 16 SDGs as well  

Certainly it does, but is there one more consequential pause outside of all out nuclear warfare, to say nothing of the likelihoods involved?

 

There's good reasons it must be a priority.

[grobyfox1990]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

Certainly it does, but is there one more consequential pause outside of all out nuclear warfare, to say nothing of the likelihoods involved?

 

There's good reasons it must be a priority.

The four most important SDGs are: Climate change, life on land, reduce inequality and sustainable consumption and production. Not my opinion, the UNs. There is mega resource and priority towards climate change, pretty much everything you've mentioned has been in progress for years now, it is nothing new, we all get it.

 

No point saving the world if a large proportion of the population lives in misery within it, that is scorched earth policy, reducing inequality has to be the new concentration area.

[leicsmac]

3 hours ago, grobyfox1990 said:

The four most important SDGs are: Climate change, life on land, reduce inequality and sustainable consumption and production. Not my opinion, the UNs.

And I'd wholeheartedly agree with that.

 

3 hours ago, grobyfox1990 said:

There is mega resource and priority towards climate change, pretty much everything you've mentioned has been in progress for years now, it is nothing new, we all get it.

 

I've no doubt this is true too, but the simple fact is at the present time what we're doing now as a species isn't stepping on the brakes enough to prevent a level of temperature increase that will result in very nasty consequences. Perhaps in a decade it might appear differently - for everyone's sake, I hope so.

 

3 hours ago, grobyfox1990 said:

No point saving the world if a large proportion of the population lives in misery within it, that is scorched earth policy, reducing inequality has to be the new concentration area.

Agreed, but we have to work both at the same time.

[leicsmac]

Anyhow, something a bit different:

 

In stuff I learned today, it turns out that the angle an asteroid hits the Earth has a significant effect on how damaging it is to the biosphere. Angles of between 45 and 60 degrees impact are the worst, apparently.

 

Personally I thought the thing would fvck up everyone's day no matter what angle it came in at, but it turns out it does make a difference.

[grobyfox1990]

22 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

And I'd wholeheartedly agree with that.

 

I've no doubt this is true too, but the simple fact is at the present time what we're doing now as a species isn't stepping on the brakes enough to prevent a level of temperature increase that will result in very nasty consequences. Perhaps in a decade it might appear differently - for everyone's sake, I hope so.

 

Agreed, but we have to work both at the same time.

Yeh agreed with that, especially the last sentence. The reason climate is in such a mess now is because no-one heeded the warnings many moons ago. Inequality is heading the same way, the warnings are flashing red now, needs serious work to address this. The TIFD project (taskforce for inequality related financial disclosures) is industry's response. 

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

Yeh agreed with that, especially the last sentence. The reason climate is in such a mess now is because no-one heeded the warnings many moons ago. Inequality is heading the same way, the warnings are flashing red now, needs serious work to address this. The TIFD project (taskforce for inequality related financial disclosures) is industry's response. 

Here's hoping everyone involved is up to the task.

 

Failure really isn't an option.

[The Bear]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

Anyhow, something a bit different:

 

In stuff I learned today, it turns out that the angle an asteroid hits the Earth has a significant effect on how damaging it is to the biosphere. Angles of between 45 and 60 degrees impact are the worst, apparently.

 

Personally I thought the thing would fvck up everyone's day no matter what angle it came in at, but it turns out it does make a difference.

Yes I remember seeing something about that on a documentary. Something to do with how much stuff gets thrown up into the atmosphere, which is determined by the angle of impact. 

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, The Bear said:

Yes I remember seeing something about that on a documentary. Something to do with how much stuff gets thrown up into the atmosphere, which is determined by the angle of impact. 

Yeah, that's about it. There was a relatively recent paper also released that suggested the Yucatan impact asteroid came in at 60 degrees, which added to the trouble for the dinosaurs (and pretty much everything else apart from single celled organisms and, oddly enough, crocodiles).

[leicsmac]

https://phys.org/news/2023-02-earth-global-reverse-long-term-cooling.html

 

A (reasonably) short primer on climate change before humans got stuck in - and how we ascertain exactly what went on. Informative.

[Jon the Hat]

17 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://phys.org/news/2023-02-earth-global-reverse-long-term-cooling.html

 

A (reasonably) short primer on climate change before humans got stuck in - and how we ascertain exactly what went on. Informative.

It is interesting that the majority of climate models don't return the same result as the natural archives, yet they are trusted as reliable forecast models to the degree that we assume we know the degree of change.  I guess we could be either under or overestimating, but this sort of suggests we overestimate.

[leicsmac]

29 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

It is interesting that the majority of climate models don't return the same result as the natural archives, yet they are trusted as reliable forecast models to the degree that we assume we know the degree of change.  I guess we could be either under or overestimating, but this sort of suggests we overestimate.

The correlation between carbon emissions and temperature increase seems pretty bulletproof to me, are you referring to the computer models themselves here?

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64710225

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64726522

 

When I see stuff like this, I despair that either the "market" or government can supply the solutions needed in the time required.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64740679

 

Better news: nature restoring an equilibrium (rather) swiftly when humans cannot or choose not to interfere. Shows the damage that has been caused can be repaired.

[leicsmac]

https://gizmodo.com/china-could-launch-13-000-satellites-disrupt-starlink-1850155775

 

...they're actually calling it "GW".

 

Anyone who has played a few Metal Gear Solid games will find this hilarious.

[leicsmac]

Doing some dissertation research and...

 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1910114117

 

"We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y."

 

"We show that in a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 y than it has moved since 6000 BP."

 

"Nevertheless, in the absence of migration, one third of the global population is projected to experience a MAT >29 °C currently found in only 0.8% of the Earth’s land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara."

 

Well, that might shake things up a bit. Imagine around 2 billion people over the next few decades being exposed to temperatures found only in the Sahara right now.

[leicsmac]

But to give a positive answer to the above...

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3

 

"Happily — and that’s a word we climatologists rarely get to use — the world imagined in RCP8.5 is one that, in our view, becomes increasingly implausible with every passing year."

 

The current modelling paints a picture where the above scenario, reliant upon an average temperature increase of 5 degrees C by 2100, isn't going to happen. Based on current efforts, somewhere around 3 degrees C is more likely.

 

That kind of increase is still probably going to hit a lot of equatorial regions really damn hard, though. We either need to mitigate or prepare for those consequences, or both.

 

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64815875

 

If the guy means that we can't prevent a level of temperature increase that will mean pretty drastic changes across the world, then yeah, I think he may sadly be right.

 

If he means that the changes will be dire and/or fatal, he's wrong. There is still time to limit things. Sadly, his point about the world being bereft of the kind of foresight and will needed at a high decision making level is pretty spot on, though.

[grobyfox1990]

13 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64815875

 

If the guy means that we can't prevent a level of temperature increase that will mean pretty drastic changes across the world, then yeah, I think he may sadly be right.

 

If he means that the changes will be dire and/or fatal, he's wrong. There is still time to limit things. Sadly, his point about the world being bereft of the kind of foresight and will needed at a high decision making level is pretty spot on, though.

I think he means it is too late for a Paris-aligned world, which it clearly is

[leicsmac]

7 minutes ago, grobyfox1990 said:

I think he means it is too late for a Paris-aligned world, which it clearly is

And I would agree, hence the first sentence of my post.

 

But at the same time, we still have to work towards - and nudge as many people as possible towards - doing what we can to make sure the changes aren't as awful as they could be.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64815782

 

Some good news.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64804007

 

"Twitter insiders have told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, following lay-offs and changes under owner Elon Musk."

 

.... hands up who saw this coming?

[marbles]

15 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64804007

 

"Twitter insiders have told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, following lay-offs and changes under owner Elon Musk."

 

.... hands up who saw this coming?

Lolol

They never protected users in the past from any of that.
 

 

Edited 7 March 2023 by marbles

[leicsmac]

15 minutes ago, marbles said:

Lolol

They never protected users in the past from any of that.
 

 

Could just be folks with an axe to grind, but it's the kind of thing where a detailed investigation is needed to be sure either way.

 

In any case, my take is that if it is true, then it's not overly surprising. No one ever said freedom was always nice, after all.

[marbles]

7 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Could just be folks with an axe to grind, but it's the kind of thing where a detailed investigation is needed to be sure either way.

 

In any case, my take is that if it is true, then it's not overly surprising. No one ever said freedom was always nice, after all.

The point is - it was like that before Elon.  If it’s like that now, how is he to blame?

Sure you can say “he should clean it up”, but you certainly can’t blame him for introducing those things.

Sorry, but that article has a very obvious bias.

[leicsmac]

9 minutes ago, marbles said:

The point is - it was like that before Elon.  If it’s like that now, how is he to blame?

Sure you can say “he should clean it up”, but you certainly can’t blame him for introducing those things.

Sorry, but that article has a very obvious bias.

If the Beeb suddenly have decided to go all poison pen on dear old Elon then it would be good to have a concrete reason why, and more importantly why now, and not tomorrow or yesterday. They've certainly given positive coverage of a fair few of his other ventures.

 

And with respect, the idea that Twitter was like that before he took it over is as unfounded as the assertions in the article are in terms of actual evidence, and perhaps should be qualified and shouldn't be stated as fact.

 

At the very least, he might be accountable for not doing enough to "clean it up", as you said.

 

Don't get me wrong - I think what the guy has done in terms of getting manned and other spaceflight programs moving again is superb,  but at the same time I'm not going to overlook that he, like anyone else with that kind of power, has flaws that make themselves apparent.