Hence the need to find another planet that can sustain us. We move to that planet, destroy it, too, and find more planets to colonize. Sounds like a sci-fi movie or series, doesn't it? But I think science fiction is truer than we know. The writers were smart enough to think further into the future than most average folks.

THAT is scary about the grain reserve. I have not read anything anywhere about our food supply. The powers that be keep us in the dark.

I don't think I will go to bed wondering whether I will wake up with our Earth going down the tubes. I will leave space travel to (many) generations that follow me.

Yes, it certainly won't be in MY lifetime. But my granddaughters may see that happen.

Perhaps. "The Sky is Falling" has been around for quite a long time. I fear nuclear war far more than climate change.

I fear human nature more than anything. We are our own worst enemy!

beckygardener said:I fear human nature more than anything. We are our own worst enemy!

But I think we're winning! Right?

drdawg said:Perhaps. "The Sky is Falling" has been around for quite a long time. I fear nuclear war far more than climate change.

Ken that is a valid fear too. All we need is for one of our finest get a cell phone call or a text all bets are off because we know what they do in a car....... we can all light up in a flash. LOL

Our leaders do not know how many the US have in their arsenal so I do not have a lot of faith that what we have in our own backyard is safe.


How Many Nuclear Weapons Does the US Have? Don't Ask a Congressman

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po...

Ken, you might be right that nuclear war is MORE dangerous than climate change.

Now that the biggest richest nations are less likely to push that button, North Korea, Iran (soon or sooner) and other counties whose rationality we don't recognize ARE or soon will be willing to, as soon as they feel a need.

After enough crop failures caused by climate changing faster than plants and farmers can adapt (but not faster than plant diseases and pests can adapt) every country with crop failures and nuclear weapons will be very motivated to convince richer nations to take their point of view into account.

For example by threatening, or starting, a nuclear war. Starvation trumps diplomacy.

The DoD figured that out many years ago, and listed among their probablyenear-future military missions having to deal with forced mass migrations caused by crop failures and famines caused by rapid climate change.

Gee, what's happening all around the Middle East and northern Africa? Refugees. And they are "only" fleeing ISIS.

When they are fleeing "we CAN'T grow enough food here", I expect large wars to be among the consequences (along with mass famines and civil unrest with nihilistic groups like ISIS multiplying).

I read that modern high-yield crops are optimized for their exact micro-climate, to the point that potatoes are bred and marketed for bands less than 100 miles wide, North-South. The exact plant pests and diseases change that rapidly, and optimum climate/growth is (I guess) dialed in pretty precisely for some crops.

So even a small change in climate will wreak havoc on commercial crop yields.
MAYBE we could adapt if the changes were gradual or consistent - but we expect chaotic changes until they are so severe that 'something else happens". We can't adapt when we don't know what he climate will be like from year to year.

And good luck convincing consumers to change from wheat to breadfruit or taro or yams. Oh, well, people too conservative to change will first just have to spend most of their income on basic food, then, when conditions become more severe, starve. Or migrate en mass to some country with more food. I.e., war.

We've already seen our winter Hardiness Zones change by a half-zone.
Seattle had the VERY hottest July it EVER recorded.
How unusual is the current drought? Much of California blew past "severe drought" and "extreme drought" a while ago. Now they have to call it "Exceptional Drought".

WA already spent its whole annual budget on fighting forest fires and now the armed forces are helping out.
"In 2015, for the first time in the Forest Service’s 110-year history, those costs will consume more than half the agency’s budget, according to a report released this month. If the trend continues, two-thirds of the Forest Service budget will be spent on fires by 2025."
http://www.seattletimes.com/se...

Maybe after global temperatures rise another few degrees, seasonally excessive rains and cyclonic storms will put any remaining fires out.

How much of the country is having a RECORD drought?

When I had a chance to see an Alaskan glacier, you could stand where it reached just a few years ago, and be UNABLE TO SEE where the glacier has already retreated to.

The MEASURED and unarguable temperature changes and sea-level-changes are already enough to convince 97% of climatologists that climate is changing faster than it has in tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but that the change IS due to human-released CO2 - driving it higher than it has been in 650,000 years.

Expand these images to see the grossly obvious "hockey stick" in the present, where human burning of CO2 has totally altered the balance of the atmosphere.

I think this decade is like the moment between SEEING a flash of lightning and hearing the BOOM. We know something big is coming, but not what.

https://www2.ucar.edu/news/how...



Personally, I was convinced the first time I saw a Keeling Curve, back in the 1980s.
I thought it was obvious (but not proven) then.





I think it's as obvious (now) as a fart in church, and proven as well as anything that complex can be proven.

But not every scientist agreed, until the last few years.
Now it's around 97% agreement among climatologists.

Maybe the other 3% are just stubborn, but based on what I see on television and read, they are paid to lie, by groups with very short-term, short-sighted political agendas that do NOT include passing on a livable planet to our grandchildren. Politicians owned by the Koch brothers, for example.

I understand that not everyone agrees (unless they have scientific training in climatology and are NOT paid to lie). But the last few years of consistently unusual weather (and near-total consensus among experts) convinced me the rest of the way.

I used to think that there was room for skeptics to disagree, but not lately. The climate measurements (not models or projections, but measurements) are now too obvious.

So it's just a matter of time as to "how" and "when" we are exterminated?

Opinions are like navels: everyone has one, and they are all different.

I'm sure that CO2 is already at a level that is causing change, and is obviously still headed almost straight up, not inflecting down. If that doesn't change, it's only a matter of time until this planet's climate becomes unrecognizable.

(We might HOPE that it will take more than a few more decades, but speaking for all our descendants: WHO CARES whether it takes them 20 years or 200 years to starve?)

What matters is not whether disaster is assured in 20 years, or 200. What matters is starting to make hard decisions EARLY ENOUGH that we (might) still have a chance to reverse this without totally destroying the world economy (as the only alternative to destroying the ecosystem). That would have been smart, and that boat may already have sailed.

For that to change, politicians all over the world would have to do intelligent, difficult things. Looking only at USA politics for the moment, I have zero hope of that.

My actual hard-core very-strongly-held belief is that we ought to be at least a LITTLE bit careful with our planet, until we have several spares, and even then, most species are smart enough not to poop in their own beds.

Excuse me: Most OTHER species are smart enough to not poop int heir own beds. Humans, I guess, are not that smart if there is any money to be made by USING UP THE PLANET.

Say there is "only" a 90%, 50% or 20% chance that anthropogenic CO2 will cause massive crop failures and/or sea level rises that take away significant coastal area. That chance should have every person on the planet jumping up and down anxiously until we have a proven solution.

Because we don't want our descendants to try to live in a desert or where daily temps routinely go over 110F.

Yes, the species survived ice ages, but if we are smarter than chimps, we won't make our grandchildren huddle in caves until the planet cleanses itself.

I think it was Al Smith who said "Let's look at the record."

So far, in the USA at least, we have a LOT of people who seem to be saying "It's not yet PROVEN that horrible things are CERTAINLY going to happen, so let's do nothing and make things worse at the rate of 9 BILLION tons of CO2 per year until I get a promotion for keeping quarterly profits up, up, up.

Rick - You are the reincarnation of George Carlin. I am laughing so hard I nearly fell out of my chair! But you are SOOOOO RIGHT!!!

beckygardener said:Rick - You are the reincarnation of George Carlin. I am laughing so hard I nearly fell out of my chair! But you are SOOOOO RIGHT!!!

Rick is Channeling Carlin!!!!

That's much too high praise!

But I wish! He was a comic genius.

In a doctor's office some months back I read a National Geographic magazine. It's not a prediction, and it's more than a probability - it's a fact - that there won't be much of Florida left in 100 years; New City and other places like London, UK, will all be under water ! This was a scientific study. There is nothing that can be done about it. But if my son inherits my house and then any grandchildren and their children; eventually it wouldn't be much of an inheritance. I know that 100 years is a long way off; but scientifically speaking it's not. All of the previous studies had projected this out much further, but it's accelerating.

Right now I've got my mind on a possible hurricane that may hit the east coast of Florida next week (we should know more in a couple of days). The house has been through a few hurricanes in the past and survived; but all the "stuff" in my gardens -- I just don't know where I would put it all. All the orchids would have to be moved as those strong winds would just lift them right out of the pots (went through that once and that's why all my older orchids don't have any labels). Evacuation is not in my plan -- not with the dogs -- and I've ridden one out before (horrible).
Now I'm in a crappy mood !

Elfrieda - If it is a category 1, it shouldn't be that bad. Just batten down the hatches and make sure you have supplies like batteries and water.

Elfrieda, predicting our world 100 years in the future is not "fact". It is what I call an educated-guess. The smartest climate scientists often cannot predict with any certainty what will happen next month. Just my opinion.

Hopefully that tropical storm won't develop into much of anything. I don't know whether there are areas of FL that need the rain. I would guess that west central Fl has had all the rain it wants/needs for a while.

Thanks Rick!

I love how this topic is often marginalized, even by educated people that I would expect to know better... But yea... We all have our opinions...

Personally I think the idea of finding another planet to live on is a laugh!
It's taken billions of years for the inhabitants of earth to shape it into the planet we know, we can't recreate that, not ever!

I think I'll try to just lurk on this thread from here on out... The only thing I've found funny was the use of the word "navel".... I have trouble biting my tongue when "navels" continue to marginalize our "opinions"😈

Elfrieda, my thoughts and prays will be for your safety and everything will be okay. Stay safe. Plants and Things can be replaced but your life cannot.

Swayback, I agree I have enjoyed this topic. Thank you Becky for starting the topic. As a gardener it has been very interesting, as a member of the human race it has pushed me to think a little more of what I do in my every day life of other things I could do to contribute to making life better for the next generation.

Ken you are right they cannot predict with complete certainty the weather for next week. That scares me even more. Suppose the 100 yrs is wrong. Now it is not only my children and their children will suffer IT IS ME!

That would be sort of justice to the big corporations and the powers to be that chased the dollars with zest and confidence that nothing would happen until long after they were dead. It will not be justice for someone that tried to help in the event that the scientist were right. I look at it like buying insurance. I do not expect that I will lose my house to a unseen event but I still buy insurance .....J-U-S-T I-N-C-A-S-E!!!!!

>> Personally I think the idea of finding another planet to live on is a laugh!
It's taken billions of years for the inhabitants of earth to shape it into the planet we know, we can't recreate that, not ever!

I have mixed feelings about that: on the one hand, it's probably true. recreate a world as hospitable to life as earth? probably never.

On the other hand, considering how difficult it was to get legislation controlling organo-phosphate neurotoxin insecticides (nerve gasses that kill mammals just as well as they kill insects), and fluorocarbons, we are NOT as smart as chimps and getting our neighbors to stop pooping where we ALL live, how much hope is there that we will control a SUBTLE eco-system-killing pollutant?

"Not very subtle" if you look at the Keeling Curve, but subtle enough that some people deny the fact that you can extrapolate the very steep line to reach CO2 concentrations high enough to kill things, no matter how you think that level is.

The level is already higher than it has been in 65,000 years, and we are adding to the problem at the rate of 9 billion metric tons per year. (That is net increase, already allowing for the rate that vegetation, oceans and soil can absorb it.)

9,000,000,000 metric tons per year NET CO2 increase.

Ballpark, lately, 2 PPM per year net increase.

That's how fast the train is rushing down the tracks towards us. And we can't make up our minds whether or not we need to get off the tracks. We say "it won't run over us SOON".

???

The CO2 level over the past half-million years has been in the range of 190-280 PPM. That caused (or was caused by) multiple Ice Ages, interglacials and interstadials.

Those LESSER fluctuations already, historically, caused many mass extinctions and drove human ancestors into caves.

We have already pushed the atmosphere OUTSIDE the range it has never left in the last 650,000 years.

We ALREADY exceeded the most extreme changes of the past, that caused and reversed entire ICE AGES.

CO2 levels averaged 401.3 PPM in July 2015

http://co2now.org/current-co2/...

The highest it has been in the last 65,000 years was around 300 PPM ... but now it is 400 and climbing higher every year while we "debate" whether we "should" take corrective actions.

The human species lives in the only lifeboat in the world.
That boat has holes in the hull and water is rushing in.
We're stilling making the holes bigger.
And we debate whether we should plug the holes, or even start bailing.


Pick whatever CO2 level that you think will surely affect climate disastrously - three TIMES the normal level? Ten times? Twenty times? As much as there is in the atmosphere of Venus?

Whatever number you pick, the steep Keeling Curve WILL reach that lethal number unless we manage to change the whole world's economy to stop pumping out THIS much CO2.

If we don't, we will deserve the climactic consequences, up to decimating the population and destroying civilization or much worse.

I don't see any reasonable doubt about "it's going up like rocket and will continue until we make very difficult changes".

I don't see any reasonable doubt about "Once the effects cause mass crop failures and mass migrations, some country or countries will go to war to try to save their own people."


I think it is a terrible shame that the earliest reports of climate change were popularized or even exaggerated until they went beyond what could be PROVEN at the time. That sparked a backlash and distrust. Political deceit and propaganda took that tendency farther.

I hope that enough people get past the early exaggerations enough to demand difficult, expensive, economy-changing changes. The alternative is certain disaster eventually, and probably severe consequences in the next few decades (or years).

You can laugh if "certain disaster" is too hard to believe until it is too late.

You can dismiss the issue if you think it probably won't be a problem for a "long" time and you don't care what happens past the next generation.

Certainly reasonable people, even I, recognize "there is not any certainty of NEAR-TERM DISASTROUS consequences". That part of what Ken is saying, I agree with.

But long-term consequences are only unpredictable when the causes are many and complex or subtle and small.

Here, the CONSEQUENCES are complex, but the CAUSE is simple and HUGE.

Add 9 billion metric tons of CO2 per year and the concentration goes up. Fast.

Whether "disaster" takes 2 years or 20 or 200, it is still planetary, species-extinction-level disaster. On an individual or family level, maybe it's hard to look ahead 200 years and conclude specifics.

But on a planetary, species level, and a Keeling Curve DOCUMENTING, not extrapolating, unprecedented levels of CO2 and a STEEP upward curve with INFLECTION UPWARDS, it is easy to see that some extreme sever change WILL occur.

I didn't start beating the drum in panic-mode until the last few years. The out-side-the-curve abnormal weather is now obviously an abnormal CHANGE, not normal fluctuations.

I always figured (just in my opinion ... I don't claim this is still mainstream scientific opinion) that the climate has enough inertia that it would take a while to respond consistently to the CO2 rise, but once the effects became obvious, they would probably become a very rapid "flip" to some other stable climactic state, probably one inconsistent with growing crops where they now grow.

Hence crop failures, hence mass famine, hence mass migrations and wars.


This following parallel has been obvious to me since the mid-80s, and I'm still baffled that anyone CAN disagree with it. Some do disagree, but it amazes me.

Consider the growth curve of bacteria in a closed system like a flask.

It goes up exponentially until they exhaust their food or pollute their flask with their wastes enough to poison themselves. Then most of them die. Simple. No one ever says "who could have predicted THAT would happen?"

Consider the growth curve of humans in a (mostly) closed system like this planet.

It has gone up almost exponentially for a few hundred years. Now we are polluting our planet with our industrial wastes enough to poison ourselves. Crops yields have already started to trend down due to adverse weather.

Our grandchildren (or great-great-grandchildren, in the "optimistic" scenario) will stake us out in the omnipresent desert if we ask them "Who could have predicted THAT would happen?"