Re-freezing Arctic with a submarine

[dietert1]

Slow as it is coming, human made climate change is still to rapid for many. Sometimes even scientists appear to be surprised how it develops. Like they were surprised by the Fukushima accident. Maybe those were engineers, not scientists. Or managers without any knowledge in nuclear energy.
Looks like the Australian government was recently caught by surprise, too. Just saw a photo showing wildfires raging close to Sydneys water supply installations.

Regards, Dieter

[coppice]

Like they were surprised by the Fukushima accident. Maybe those were engineers, not scientists. Or managers without any knowledge in nuclear energy.

I think you may be confusing public statements with actual human emotional responses. Nobody building these half baked nuclear systems is ever actually surprised when a blantantly dumb design decision they had no veto over leads to tragedy. Any genuine surprise will be that it took so long for a problem to really bite them.

[dietert1]

That's what i meant: Stupid decisions taken by people who should not be in a position to take decisions, nor to influence other people at all. I know that many engineers and scientists are confronted with this problem and i think not being part of something is better than being part of something catastrophic killing hundreds or thousands of people.
I was told that all civil engineers involved in the Brumadinho dam disaster (which killed about 300 people) are out now, most of them unable to continue their previous lives, even with medical help, due to journalists in front of the sites. They were well trained professionals who relied on promises made by Vale managers, which were never fulfilled.

Regards, Dieter

[donotdespisethesnake]

Only in your imagination. E.g., it takes an idiot or an ignorant or a brainwashed alarmist to believe that the sea levels have to be what you'd like them to be. You know it's been changing all the time, but you think you can stop it now when only 12 thousand years ago it was 120 metres lower and one could go walking in a straight line across the English channel, or the Baltic sea from Poland to Sweden. Newsflash! It's going to keep rising no matter what you do. And then there will be another glaciation and... Newsflash! It's going to descend again hundreds of meters. Sorry but that's what mother nature has got for you.

Much as I hate to concede anything to deniers, you have a point. If we can't cope with 1-2m of sea level change, how would we cope with 120m? It's notable that many cultures have "flooding myths", but they probably are based on real flooding events that took place since the last glaciation. But the good news there is that humans have broken the Ice Age; there won't be another glacial period for several million years. Phew!

Of course, Global Warning is far from the only or biggest threat humans face, whether artificial or natural. In order to survive longer than a few thousand years, humans will have to become an intentional species. It is no longer enough just to "let things happen" because the consequences of our combined actions are too great. In the long term, we would need to manage the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to achieve a stable climate. There are thousands of other pollutants to manage as well. Can you imagine the international cooperation to achieve that? No, nor can I.

We need to have a much more redundant civilization to survive serious disasters. When something like Yellowstone pops, that is going to cause a global disaster. Our attitude to that? That probably won't happen so we don't need to worry about it. After a lorry drivers strike in the UK which lasted only a few weeks, we were close to collapse. "Three meals from anarchy"  is probably not far off the mark.

I think advanced human civilization has probably peaked. We'll probably muddle on for a few hundred years or so, but the collective wisdom required to address the issues will always be lacking. The fundamental issue is that we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth ecosystem, which is obviously not sustainable. The only two options are fewer people or a lower standard of living, both of which are anathema bordering on taboo subjects. Technology will not save us. We will get to find out what a post-apocalypse world will look like.

While the world literally burns, the world's superpowers are squabbling over domestic politics.

I suspect we also have an answer to the Fermi paradox. For any advanced civilization, there will be an extended period with a high risk of self-extinction before that civilization becomes wise and motivated enough to exercise proper self-control. Once the easy to access mineral resources are gone, there is no second chance. You can't travel through space with windmills.

tldlr; we are doomed anyway, so don't worry.