President Donald Trump

Ok, when talking to a guy who thinks the human species is on the verge extinction you said you were pessimistic meaning we could have continued improvement for a potentially very long time.

I don't share Nut Nut's view that we are on the verge of extinction. I have no idea how to define the top (or how you are defining it). I certainly don't know whether we are at the top at this very moment. The sheer probability of it all would suggest that we are not. But I still don't feel especially optimistic about the future. Is this really so hard to understand?

No, it's just unsurprisingly kinda dumb. So I'll take the blame for not just accepting it at face value from the start.

I admit that it would work nicely within your structure of stamping another number and a job title on it but to rephrase ... no, I personally don't think it would work out very well - most importantly for the pet, and secondly for the owner. Of course, it would work well for the state so have at it.

But even if we completely remove any empathy for this discussion, I would still be against it for the same reasons that I'd be against community children and some sort of forced foster care as some better alternative. Animals, as a whole simply live better when they've formed a strong attachment to someone, as opposed to an orgy of never-ending strange folk looking to give them a rub down.

But again, it's a great idea for those who want to control others when using emission levels as a justification for it.

It's interesting how the critics in this conversation simply bypass the asserted likelihood and impact on human civilization of fundamentally altering the ocean circulation.

What is the AMOC and what does it do ?

1) Planetary Heat Distribution

Imagine a house with a hot water boiler and a set of pipes that transfer heat to all sections of the house. On Earth, the boiler is the equator which receives all of that sunlight. The AMOC is the pipe which transfers that heat to the N Atlantic region keeping European, UK and Scandinavian temperature mild. Paris is actually at a more northern latitude than Fargo, North Dakota.

The amount of heat transferred is 1.2 Petawatts. 100x total human power generation.

What is the mechanism which drives it ?

The ocean circulation is driven by a density gradient. Density is a function of temperature and salinity.

Warm water from the tropical Atlantic travels north over the surface. Evaporation makes it saltier. As it travels north, it releases heat to the surrounding. At its northern apex, it becomes the densest version of water, cold and salty. It sinks to the bottom of the ocean and then makes the trek south to the S. Atlantic and surfaces again.

The OC in AMOC stands for overturning circulation. It's one big loop with downwelling in the N. Atlantic and upwelling in the S. Atlantic.

Has the AMOCstopped before ?

Absolutely, it last stopped about 13,000 years as part of the regular 100k year transition from ice age to warm period associated with CO2 levels increasing from 180 to 280 parts per million.

That warming caused massive ice melt which flooded the N Atlantic with fresh water. Although cold, the lack of salt made the water lighter and it stopped sinking in the N Atlantic, shutting down the AMOC. This ushered in the 1,200 year period of the Younger Dryas which concluded about 11,700 years ago when the AMOC restarted. It has not stopped during the era of human civilization.

Why might the AMOC stop in the near future ?

The AMOC has already slowed by ~ 15% since 1950. Similar to the last stoppage when Earth emerged from an ice age, the Earth is once again warming as CO2 levels have increased from 280 to 430 ppm. Melting ice from Greenland has been accelerating in recent decades from 60 billion tons annual loss in the 80's to 250 billion tons annually at present. Increased rainfall in the N. Atlantic is also freshening the water. and reducing the density. As the AMOC slows, less salt is delivered to the N Atlantic, further decreasing the density.

We have effectively initiated a feedback loop which is deepening. Not only are we getting closer to a collapse tipping point each year, we are accelerating toward it.

What do we reach the tipping point to a new AMOC collapse ?

We don't know this exactly and the science is emerging. A recent study put the probability at 59% to reach a tipping point between 2037 and 2064. In geologic timing, that's basically the present.

What are the consequences of AMOC collapse ?

1) Hemispheric Heat Redistribution

Paris is actually 2 degrees further north than Fargo, ND. So the winters become colder in Paris than Fargo. Further north, it's basically game over as it becomes too cold to survive and grow food.

The heat accumulates further south and those locations get warmer.

2) East / Gulf Coast Sea Levels Rise 2 feet

The AMOC circulation is like a vacuum cleaner pulling the water off the US East Coast. When you turn it off, the water piles up. A great deal of that highly inhabited coast becomes uninhabitable.

It's not just the 2 feet of sea level rise .... we'll have stronger hurricanes pushing storm surge into those regions on top of that higher sea level. Hurricane strength will increase as a result of the increasing north / south temperature gradient.

3) The oceans will burp out about 75 ppm of CO2. That's about 35 years of additional CO2 emissions at current rates.

In combination with the stalled AMOC, the heat at lower latitudes and in the Southern hemisphere will increase dramatically. Several degrees C in a geologic instant.

4) Weather Chaos

The rain will occur in different times, places and volumes than those which have accompanied the advance of human agriculture. There will be widespread agricultural failure and starvation. Earth's carrying capacity for humans will probably drop by over 50%.

5) Spread of disease

Lots of disease spread is currently bounded by the temperature of the organisms which carry it such as mosquitos and ticks. In places like the US which will largely be getting warmer, you'll have more disease spread.

5) Governance Chaos

There's no rulebook for how to manage a massive global population decline, especially when some of the countries which are going under are in possession of WMD's like nukes and deadly technology like nuclear power plants that have the potential to leak waste into the environment. That's why I raised the question in prior threads .... "how do we decide who lives or who dies".

Is it even possible to prevent the AMOC from collapsing in the near future ?

Maybe. But any possibility to stop it involves turning off the feedback loop which is accelerating it toward collapse. And that involves turning off the human pump of heat trapping gases like CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.

There is a real world in which a variable and vulnerable AMOC exists and a fantasy world in which it does not.

My critics here at 2+2 live in a fantasy world.

Perhaps fantasy improves the quality of life ? I have a fantasy that we cooperate in order to avoid AMOC and civilization collapse.

(fyi - the AMOC collapse isn't the only danger we face. But it's a relatively compact one in terms of being able to explain a likely knockout punch for human civilization)

You're still doing it nut nut

You are making any case for your solution, by going on about bad the problem is - that is not the dispute. We need to address what to do about it, not insist our solution is correct because the problem is all too real.

I agree that it's fantasy to think that civilization as a whole will cooperate in any meaningful way.

We do cooperate in a very meaningful way. Look how fast green tech developed by some is used by others. More and faster please - invest and use regulation to speed up development and implementation. It's been far too slow given the scale of the problem but even so it is happening.

One of the problems with a free society is that there are no restrictions on the spread of truly dangerous ignorance.

From the perspective of someone like myself who puts a premium on the continuity of human civilization, the prideful ignorance being displayed here is criminal.

I don't think it would be inappropriate to criminalize the perpetuation of ignorance which is hazardous to our children's future.

People make sarcastic comments about children being fondled when their actions will lead to their future starvation.

I've proposed very clearly what to do about it.

Implement UBI and eliminate the liberty to pollute that comes with present day capitalism.

That cooperation is inadequate.

It's like celebrating an exam score of 30 on a scale of 0-100.

The 30 points do indeed mean something meaningful. The student got something right.

But they still fail the test and fail the class.

Nature doesn't award participation trophies. There is a minimum standard in order to avoid civilization collapse and the green tech adoption you are pointing to is far short of the minimum standard.

That's because people can't even articulate a preference for this.

Evolution has resulted in our becoming tribal entities. We are programmed to belong to sub-groups opposed to other sub-groups.

If an American calls for global government .... they will be ostracized as anti-American.

I may not have the power to avert the collapse of human civilization, but I have the power to explain it.

The qualities we need more of are not technological, they are spiritual.

We need more gratitude for what we have. We need more awareness of our vulnerabilities. We need more compassion for the experience of others.

We need less consumption. Our logic is backwards to the extent it measures the wellness of a society based upon a high level of consumption.

What exactly is it that conservatives are trying to conserve ? Conservatism is an oxymoron .... it's all about preservation of a consumption orgy.

Trump is the avatar of a species which is programmed for tribal divide and conquer.

He's an example of someone who has no problem with the extermination of large numbers of people. He is comfortable being above the law and being the all powerful monarch who demands that people bend the knee.

He isn't responsible for the circumstances which led to his rise and the demand for someone willing to lead a population reduction. He isn't responsible for anything.

His DNA and privileged background just put the opportunity on a platter for him and he took to it naturally.

If we don't like Trump ... we can look in the mirror and say that he is a creature of our creation. If we can't bring ourselves to say that we wish for global cooperation, then we're going to suffer the alternative of attrition by tribal warfare which he is perfectly designed to adminster.

Did you guys know that Nutty has googled countless times "How to actually shove your head up another person's *******"

I assume the following:
We agree on the problem
We agree were not doing enough.
We agree that it' far too late to stop many of the dire consequences. (not limited to directly climate related. we face wars and authoritarianism)
We agree it may be too late to stop it running away
We agree we still need to do our best to mitigate and prevent it getting worse.

If you think spirituality is the answer then we depart. imo we need to face reality not what appears to be some fantasy we can't afford to indulge in.

Can we have a Nut Nut containment thread please?

Given that this is now an essentially unmoderated forum, probably not.

A society where they benefit from laws but are not subject to them while a underclass is subject to laws while not benefitting from them.

If you focused on understanding instead of using chatgpt to help you write useless essays you might get somewhere.

That’s true. The main problem is that we don’t live in a tribe, we live in a modern multicultural democratic republic. Tribal thinking is toxic in that environment.

Maybe some day you will learn how to communicate rather than just explain.

Seeing Trump's financial disclosure was pretty eye opening and telling. It was pretty obvious but this made it 100%

Obviously he did the pump and dump with crypto(to his own supporters) but the crazier thing was the tariffs. When you see his trading it's pretty obvious it was completely a grift. All the experts said the idea of tariffs bringing back manufacturing was nonsense and the idea the trade deficit was the US getting ripped off made no sense. It was all done for market manipulation.

This video is a day after Trump imposed tariffs and pulled them back:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vZQ24xe2n...

Openly bragging about it and the fact all this corruption is right in the open is wild. No one would have believed this possible 15-20 years ago.

All this going on in plain site while a big chunk of Americans really believe he's trying to "drain the swamp" and "make America great again".

A crazy time to be alive

But but Nutty said that he isn't that bad. And Nutty is the smartest philosophiser in the whole universe!

Unsurprisingly dumb? Yikes. I didn't recall you ever expressing the view that I was generally dumb.