I haven’t read that article but I thought the Permian extinction was attributed to a severe greenhouse effect caused by activity of shield volcanos in what is now called the Siberian traps.
Don’t be confused, we are all stuffed.
I re-read that and other articles on the Permian extinction. Very interesting.
A few different inputs caused that extinction event and greenhouse event compared to what we are facing now with increased carbon and methane levels in the atmosphere.
Increased sulfur levels, Ozone destroying gases, different land mass locations, changes to the ocean are missing inputs to what we are doing to change the climate via our influence of industrialisation.
Ozone gases: check
changes to oceans: check
Different land mass locations: no, despite the “Reunite Gondwanaland” activists.
Increased sulphur. I posted about the potential of this 20 years ago, to general derision here from people saying it was too alarmist. As I recall from the article I read 20y ago, increasing ocean uptake of CO2 not only leads to acidification but will lead to dissolved H2S getting closer to the surface. Massive burps of H2S will not be fun - and that was a big part of the Permian extinction.
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Something in Switzerland is overheating? Damn.
Yet another reason nuclear wouldn’t work in this country?
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That’s cool, there isn’t actually enough water in any of the regions proposed by the LNP to cool the as yet uninvented reactors that would destroy our economy for a hundred years anyway. It can’t heat up and kill the ecosystem if it’s already been exhausted!
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No amount of wax on, wax off is going to help.
He’s not wrong. Every possible indicator is pointing to catastrophe, every impassable red line is way in the rear view mirror.
I find it fkg hard looking at young kids these days, my niece and nephew, my friends’ kids. In their lifetime, the world is going to be an unrecognisably worse place. They’ll cop all the consequences that my generation has failed to avert. They’ll experience hunger or even genuine famine, they’ll to live in a world of resource wars and hundreds of millions of climate refugees. They’ll see the death of the Great Barrier Reef, the last wild tiger and the last wild koala. Much of the food we eat, the travel we enjoy, the places we love will be science fiction to them. All their lifetimes they’ll watch things get worse, and they’ll know that for their kids it’ll be even worse still and so on and on for the next hundred generations. I love these kids, but in 20 years time it’s going to be real hard for my generation to look theirs in the face.
It’s a bit lovecraftian in a way, the sheer scale of the disaster we’ve caused. It’s something so huge and incomprehensively awful and so actually hard to believe and accept that the mind shies away from focusing on it too long.
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About 50 years ago, Kurt Vonnegut predicted this in his story “■■■■ you, Andromeda”. (I mentioned this in the US politics (!) thread recently).
He predicted that the way people would adjust to the last koala, etc. would be to say “They couldn’t cut the mustard in the modern world”. That is, it’s sad, but not our fault, it’s theirs.
I often wonder if that is what is driving the political instability we are seeing currently as the political powers pivot towards the end game. Talks about taking Canada and Greenland as Putin is still fighting for Ukraine with its rich bread basket for example. They would know and they are preparing. The ruling class are gobbling as much as the can, whilst they can.
My worry is that it will get extremely violent when food becomes scarce. I have thought a lot about that situation as a father of a young daughter. My hope is that she has strong ties with her community and a good network if that time comes. Homesteading and a stockpile of resources won’t help when gangs of starving people are roaming the streets, it will be strong communities that will get through.
I have learnt someone today and it’s not even 5 am! 
That is actually perfect.
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Whilst being chiefly responsible
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Indeed. I would love to see justice but I don’t have hope that will happen. They are also controlling the narrative.
What a sad situation it is that the planet will be destroyed because of the greed of so few.
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Appropriate to post this:
And to deal wiith their own water shortages, many governments are trying to make that small bubble of ocean water more hypersaline.
Are they ?
Perhaps it is better said that it is the consumer class that are the prime mover of climate change. Consumer demand new toys and industry complies and profits.
Governments can make tougher laws but in virtually every democracy in our World Greens Parties get little or no electoral support. It is even worse in most non democratic countries though China are probably the best example of trying to do it better.
Blame the “Ruling Class” if you like but it is actually a shared responsibility to look after our environment.
If that’s a comment on desalination, it isn’t going to impact the salinity of the ocean globally. It will impact locally if there isn’t much water movement to spread the desalination return line concentration out.
Desal will be a bit like evaporation at a global scale, with the used water returning to the sea over time.
Yes, there is not enough people doing desal yet, compared to the numbers burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. People were probably saying the atmosphere is big enough and what we do won’t make a difference to it. In fact, some are still saying that.
Yes, comrade Fox, absolutely.
Over the years big oil, mining and other resource industries, as well as related industries such as automobiles, have spent billions in lobbying, PR campaigns and funding junk science in order to obfuscate both the seriousness of the problem and their responsibility for it.
- Both Shell and Exxon have ignored the findings of their own scientists
- PR firms such as Philip Morris, who also represented Big Tobacco, were hired to ensure there was no broad public consensus on climate change-
- even today in Germany, a place with a far better record of renewable energy use than Australia, the automobile industry lobbies the government for favourable legislation on emissions targets - -
- attempts to alleviate the consumer culture you’ve mentioned have been met with stiff resistance. Public transport use is one of the more effective measures one can utilise to reduce their carbon footprint, however the man chiefly responsible for the promotion of electric cars has also spent vast amounts of his own time and money lobbying against any implementation of public transport in the U.S -
- hell, the whole concept of a “carbon footprint” was the invention of BP in 2005 or so in order to shift the blame away from big business into the hands of consumers - -
- Gina Reinhart funds the IPA, the Koch Brothers the Heritage Foundation, and other such examples as blatant attempts to both influence public opinion and ensure politically favourable outcomes which are harmful to the environment.
Politicians make politically unpopular decisions all the time, so I don’t believe it’s up to the voters either. If such examples mattered, Americans would have health care and gun control. While I do agree we all share a responsibility, the fact is that there’s very little consumers could have done, even en masse, to prevent the damage done to the environment so far. The hidden behemoths behind our CO2 output are outside the reasonable free market choices available to us, such as global supply chains, power generation and air travel. The reason action has not been undertaken in these areas is because certain interest groups didn’t want it to occur.
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