Yes, it is very important.

However, it is almost invariably the political constellations that most strongly oppose local and national change which also oppose international policy on environmental issues.

So the “What about country X” tend to be rather hollow protests, since it comes from the same voices that fight tooth and claw against binding international agreements.

It’s used as an excuse to do nothing, not as an actual suggestion.

How is that any different than people who ***** and moan about their station in life and demand that someone else come in and fix it?

You can make that exact same argument about the people who spend 180k on a useless degree and then can't afford their daily avocado toast, but blame the evil corporations for it.

Or the people who have no marketable skills but somehow believe they're entitled to live in the most desirable and thus most expensive cities just because that's where their parents set down roots decades ago?

It's okay to demonize the people who play the game of Capitalism at the highest level, but not okay to hold the largest polluters accountable?

Telling Americans to stop driving cars and eating meat is no different than telling the chronically underemployed to suck it up and skip the daily Starbucks.

Lol Inso0, trying to sneak in some totally irrelevant right wing talking point as a response to a post which has the square root of **** all to do with it, under the guise of "how is this thing different from this other [totally different] thing?"

I can’t really recall much of anyone telling anyone to do anything in this thread.

But if you want to sit on the fence and whine about every other nation, I can guarantee you that there are people in those nations that also want to sit on the fence and complain about our nations. So we can sit around blaming each-other, or we can ignore the naysayers and move on forward.

That we have to rethink how we do things as a society as we face new challenges both on the macro and micro-level is nothing new. Water distribution, roads, electricity, education, sewers, garbage, new crops, new agriculture… the list goes on and on and on. Sometimes we are successful, sometimes we are not and leave our ruins as nice tourist attractions for future generations to gawk at.

We're not sitting on the fence here in the US, but we're also not freely offering to destroy our economy and give up all the modern comforts to potentially slow the sinking of a ship when other countries are still poking more holes in the hull.

Of course, that assumes the ship is indeed sinking, which nobody actually knows for certain.

Vonnegut nailed it decades ago. We could have had a habitable planet but we were too damn cheap.

Lol yeah. Same thing in 1990. Everybody who knew what they were talking about was projecting warmer temps over the next 30 years. People who had no clue were saying maybe it'll be warmer or maybe it'll be cooler. It's pretty easy to put no work or intelligence into a subject and say anything is possible.

Wasn't the whole ice age prediction ultimately a result of rising temperatures in the first place? My recollection has always been that the prediction stemmed from the idea that rising temperatures would result in water from melting Arctic ice disrupting the gulf stream in the Atlantic, resulting in a major decrease of warm air circulating up to Western Europe that would cause a cycle of less snow melting in the area -> more of the Sun's energy being reflected -> more snow etc. that would eventually have a stronger negative forcing effect on temperature than the positive effect caused by GHG emissions.

I might be remembering some of those details incorrectly but it's absolutely and definitively false to say that there was ever any consensus besides there being a significant increase in global temperatures due to GHG emissions. You can find plenty of specific predictions as to what might happen as a result of these increases that turned out to be wildly incorrect but the general predictions regarding the temperature rise due to GHG emissions have actually been incredibly accurate going back all the way to the 60s or 70s.

That pretty much describes you to a tee! (In my humble opinion, of course.)

Yeah, you can make the same sort of shallow criticisms about theoretical physicists: "they must know nothing because you can find individual models'" that predicted extra dimensions or SUSY at LHC scales!!".

But really that is just good phenomenology. The point of models is to put out things that can be falsified in the near future so you can improve your understanding by eliminating failed models. When you have a good general theory that is largely successful, like quantum field theory or increased human CO2 output will change the climate it's important (and difficult) to come up with models that actually can be falsified in our lifetimes. As a math guy it took me a while to understand that with respect to particle phenomenology.

Trying to explain how science works to lagtight is a Sisyphean task - trust me, I've tried.

Earth is not a habitable planet?

Trusting drunkards is -EV.

You might like Vonnegut, give him a try sometime.

Dude, even on my worst binge I haven't come close to hallucinating the sort of batshit insane crap you believe in.

I have read a number of Vonnegut's short stories. He is great.

Back to my question: Is Earth a habitable planet?

Dude, please cite even one example of something that I believe that is demonstrably false.

Thanks, dude!

We've only had this conversation about 50 times in about as many threads, but I am aware of your amnesia issues, so I invite you to go find one of those instances yourself.

Nice dodge, dude!

I enjoy our dialogues, so please don't drown in your own vomit after binge drinking.

Yes.

*whew*

For now.

We should try to make the most of it but also realise that the earth is not enough for humanity.

It will soon be time to **** off. Let's try to make it that far.

I would tie that thought back to Inso0 take that not much can be done or changed that would be meaningful or worthwhile.

Does anyone think we can actually 'get off this planet' in any meaningful time frame that could make us not improving our actions or outputs moot?

to my question above, i for one think this planet will be very hostile for humans in generations to come if we just continue without slowing the changes. I do not see 'off world' solutions being that impactful in any meaningful time frame but those might get accelerated as this planet becomes less bearable.

Not our issue to suffer thru but for the grandkids, kids, this might be a real issue.

Time frames are problematic but I predict some people on this forum will live long enough to see humans born who will never touch foot on planet earth

Even I might but I most probably wont.

Note: that's assuming we dont suffer runaway climate change first. Which may already happened but best to assume it hasn't.