Fear, Panic, get prepared, the ice is coming....

raburrell said:

Yes. Education.
People are perfectly capable of understanding this stuff at the level they need, but as Yorkist pointed out a few posts back, they're content to confirm their own biases instead.
'That's too hard' is a math-Barbie answer. We can do better.

Click to expand...

Not bad.

Except that I'm not the one saying it's too hard. I simply said we can try simplifying the message.

When I said, "Throwing money at the problem", I was kind of thinking of starting some major terraforming efforts...not just trying to get new, greener technology out there, but what about jacking up the planet's albedo to reflect heat away from us, at least until we can figure out how to sustain quality of living without putting tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

Or, as my Dad keeps saying, "Lets paint Texas white."

Don said:

I don't know about geologically, but the "climate catastrophe fearmongering cycle" seems to be returning to the pace of the 20s and 30s.

Click to expand...

Considering that the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history occurred in the mid-1930s, owing to a combination of climatic fluctuation and ignorant human cultural practices, I'd say they weren't far off track with the warnings back then.

caw

raburrell said:

People are perfectly capable of understanding this stuff at the level they need, but as Yorkist pointed out a few posts back, they're content to confirm their own biases instead.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid it's even worse than that. It's not pure laziness anymore, it's wishful thinking.

Yorkist said:

Why are people so willing to believe lies, even when those lies are easily disproven?

Click to expand...

Because if they believe the lie, they don't have to go through the horror of realizing how fast the world is crumbling around them and how difficult it'll be to stop it. And they don't have to think about their own behaviour in relation to the truth either.

Somehow, we've utterly failed to create a society in which children learn early on that a painful truth is better than a comforting lie. That's not just in regards to climate, it's the #1 killer of interpersonal relationships and goddess knows what else. And now it's going to cost millions of lives.

Which makes me sad and angry.

blacbird said:

Considering that the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history occurred in the mid-1930s, owing to a combination of climatic fluctuation and ignorant human cultural practices, I'd say they weren't far off track with the warnings back then.

Click to expand...

Those who don't know history: doomed to repeat it since, well, prehistory.

...so, did anyone want to paint Texas white?

Alessandra:

It needs to be part of a tale, I think, showing everything together. But that's exactly what I meant in terms of simplicity.

Figured I'd bump this thread rather than starting another, because oh yeah, the ice thinning is happening on the other pole, too.

From "Antarctica is Melting from the Bottom Up":

As much as 90 percent of the ice loss in some parts of Antarctica happens beneath the water, according to researchers who report that much more ice is melting from the undersides of submerged ice shelves than previously thought.

Click to expand...