Mickey Leland Federal Building At 1919 Smith St.

[BigFootsSocks]

Too late to fix it? Wow that's a depressing statement..."it's already screwed so f*** it, hope my grandchildren like terraforming Mars"

[samagon]

depressing, or realistic?

 

There are nearly 200 individual countries, do you really think that all 200 of them could come to agreement to stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere?

 

I'll play along and assume that this is indeed the case, that every country can agree to stop burning combustible material that emits CO2, what about what's already there? You suggesting we should Terra-form our own planet? Otherwise, it's going to take decades for the atmosphere in its current state to have lasting effects and it will take even longer for the CO2 to dissipate to pre-industrial levels.

 

I'm not even hopeful that our own country can come to a solution, let alone every country, and especially the poorer nations (of which 50% of CO2 comes from). 

 

So we can MAYBE, just MAYBE slow the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, but that doesn't fix the problem that's already there, and all it does is slow down the problem for future generations.

 

What about deforestation? What about livestock farting? These are all factors as well.

 

Anyway, I do believe that the current climate change is anthropogenic, and I'm all for doing the right thing, leave the place better than how we found it, but it's not going to happen, at least not in the current world political climate. Depressing, sure it is, but it's also realistic. Climate change scientists should really adjust their message from 'we need to stop' to 'you guys are all idiots, we need to plan for how we are going to overcome this'.

 

I'm doing my part to reduce my carbon footprint though, I took the catalytic converter off my car, because it converts NOx, CO, and other things into CO2, so I reduced my CO2 footprint by doing this. It's the little things we can all do that have the biggest impact, or so I've been told. (not really, I haven't removed my catalytic converter, please don't send the FBI to arrest me).

 

Sorry for the off topic.

Edited July 15, 2015 by samagon

[Nate99]

Let's not minimize the expected impact (assuming you believe climate scientists).

 

 

Just reading upon it a bit, I found stuff saying that the rate of sea level rise is both historically slow and really fast, so I don't know who to believe on that.

 

A difference of a few inches is going to make billions of dollars of difference as to what the best approach would be, but we'll only know that in hindsight and we may not be able to execute it anyway. For the net benefit, even in the best of outcomes, it feels like throwing good money after bad. At worst, the water will creep up very slowly, I think we can deal with whatever changes occur a lot better than we can prevent or even minimize them.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Nate99

[Ross]

Just reading upon it a bit, I found stuff saying that the rate of sea level rise is both historically slow and really fast, so I don't know who to believe on that.

 

A difference of a few inches is going to make billions of dollars of difference as to what the best approach would be, but we'll only know that in hindsight and we may not be able to execute it anyway. For the net benefit, even in the best of outcomes, it feels like throwing good money after bad. At worst, the water will creep up very slowly, I think we can deal with whatever changes occur a lot better than we can prevent or even minimize them.

 

That's been my opinion for a long time. I believe all of the efforts to "stop" the rise of CO2 are a waste of time, and that learning how to adapt will work far better. My other belief is that we can adapt to hotter temperatures and rising sea levels. We can't really adapt to a kilometer thick sheet of ice over 2 thirds of the planet. If global warming prevents an ice age, that's a win.

 

[BigFootsSocks]

That's been my opinion for a long time. I believe all of the efforts to "stop" the rise of CO2 are a waste of time, and that learning how to adapt will work far better. My other belief is that we can adapt to hotter temperatures and rising sea levels. We can't really adapt to a kilometer thick sheet of ice over 2 thirds of the planet. If global warming prevents an ice age, that's a win.

 

Ok, what samagon wrote made sense, but this I really don't understand. Climate change scientists are not focused solely on the human impact of rising temperatures; it's the impact it has on every living species across the globe. 

 

 

When I see someone say it's pointless to stop the rise of CO2, I think of the pictures of China. You know, the ones where you can't see the hulking supertall structure across the street from the camera because the sheets of smog that blanket the city.

But yeah, we've already done this much, LET'S JUST GIVE UP NOW.

[Nate99]

When I see someone say it's pointless to stop the rise of CO2, I think of the pictures of China. You know, the ones where you can't see the hulking supertall structure across the street from the camera because the sheets of smog that blanket the city.

But yeah, we've already done this much, LET'S JUST GIVE UP NOW.

 

That's a completely different issue. Particulate matter pollution on a China level scale does reduce quality of life, fairly straightforwardly.  Rising CO2 levels might reduce quality of life very slowly over a century in places (while providing net benefits elsewhere) due to secondary impacts predicted by dizzyingly complex models that are often wrong.  It is far too fuzzy to call it a pending calamity worth pouring trillions of our economy in to an effort to minimally affect, but not stop those secondary effects.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Nate99

[BigFootsSocks]

Alright I'm really confused about what you just wrote for a few reasons;

1) Lowering quality of life how? What net gains do raising CO2 levels somehow bring? Those are too very bold claims that seem to go against what 97% of scientist (speaking on climate change) say, and you provide no source sooooo..

2) How exactly are those models wrong and, again, proof?

3) In your opinion, it may not be worth it it, but I still don't see where you pulled any information on the projected cost vs benefit issue.

I think it's incredibly naive to vaguely accept the idea of climate change like most of you are doing and simply saying "there's nothing we can do." Im not one for extreme nationalism but...that's so unAmerican...It's supposedly costly so we might as well give up for future generations to deal with it? I mean, that seems to be the de facto opinion on most major issues for us today but climate change isn't one of those issues you just push under the rug and ignore

[samagon]

for fear of the mods shutting us down in this thread, I made a new one!

 

http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/topic/32403-climate-change/

 

Climate change, and the politics surrounding it are fascinating, I do enjoy reading about it and engaging in conversation about it.

[infinite_jim]

Project completion.

[monarch]

^^^ very nice!  props for sharing....

[hindesky]

Huge AT crane is hoisting material to the roof.