Look at this! Read it! We need to do something, not tomorrow, not ten years from now, but right the hell now.

And he's losing.

Edit: Which is not a reason to slack off in trying to turn that around. I went canvassing for him on Saturday!

They said, if Bernie isn't the nominee.

Their biggest issue was climate change. Only Sanders and Stein have robust proposals.

which would be devastating to the global climate.

especially in our attitudes regarding economics and the use of the earth's resources. The fundamentalism of capitalist ideology simply must be replaced by an ideology that adheres to the principles of science and logic.

The old guy with the white hair is the only goddamned candidate who focuses on this.

I am 66 years old, we have two children, two grandchildren.

The Republicans on this issue are effing awful.

And of the Dems -- I sure support Bernie.

Go Bernie!

And no, I'm not freaking out. Things can and probably will get pretty bad, but that depends on what bad means. It isn't going to make the planet unlivable, but it might make it a challenge.

I take the position that the spy did in Bridge of Spies did, 'Will it help?'

Freaking out NEVER helps. Determined work and dedication to an ideal works.

Quit driving your car so much. Quit buying garbage from China. Start putting REAL pressure on politicians to start charging a DIRECT carbon tax to everyone and use the money to start alleviating the problem and quit this 'corporations are to blame' shit because the carbon is being burned for things you and I want.

Take a REAL stand.

Freaking out isn't such a bad thing you know. Sometimes that's what it takes to get a body to wake up and realize what they need to do! The prelude to your "determined work and dedication to an ideal".

That's one of the very few things that being low income does bring to the table. You do without the car and walk or use public transit. You grow as much of your food as can and raise chickens in the back yard. You don't buy shit from China - you reuse, repurpose, redo and recycle what others are tossing out (be the person that others send THEIR used shit to so it can get that last bit of use is squeezed out!).

Unfortunately, I don't have the pull to be heard over the clamor of the corporate lobby when it comes to being heard by the politicians. But I'm always open to suggestions to ideas on how to make a noise. Perhaps if enough people start freaking out those politicians will hear the racket, eh?

You are a physicist. I'm sure you're a hella smarter than me. But I'm not at all reassured by the claim of "It isn't going to make the planet unlivable, but it might make it a challenge." Mebbe THAT is the attitude that helps to assure that the change never comes. It's too much like downplaying the effects that climate change brings. Make it a challenge? That statement is where you lost me.

How about for humans?

Sure it willl be liveable for some lifeforms, but history
has shown that large lifeforms do not do well in warming
events.

that isn't the end of the world. We would probably have to burn virtually all the sequestered carbon to get there. I sincerely hope that won't happen.

Here is why cataclysmic bullshit is counter productive.

Tell me what the atmospheric CO2 level has to be, what model inputs have to be, and tell me which long term input/output contribution changes were entered into which model(s) for this claim to be true. It isn't in the article. It never is. Just the cataclysmic results are presented, which sells articles. So, all I have to do is say that this prediction is total crap and YOU can't refute it because you don't know how or when this prediction can occur. In fact, almost forty percent of the US will believe the opposite, that this is crap, although the latest Gallup Poll out today gives us some hope that this may be changing slowly but surely.

We are well and truly fucked regardless. Wow, the end of the world is at hand!!!!!! That's why you drove a record amount of miles last year. That's why the airlines had record numbers of flights last year. That's why we purchased record amounts of stuff last year when every last thing we bought had a carbon pollution price tag attached from both transportation as well as country of origin because most of our shit comes from the worst polluters.

I repeat, TIMES UP. You can run in circles and scream and shout that the end of the world is at hand (which it isn't), or you can use your head and fight the good fight. It is going to take insane changes to our very economic systems to get this fixed. You're going to have to nationalize all transportation systems and spend trillions (yes trillions) of dollars to change how we move stuff. You're going to have to nationalize energy production as well, because corporate capitalism will ensure that the cheapest energy is produced, not the cleanest. You're going to have to pony up that this is the result of having a high standard of living and you're going to have to agree that we have to pay for emerging countries to achieve even a small part of our 'luxury'.

The poor always pay the heaviest price. That's why we have to stop what we are doing, which isn't working, and get busy fixing.

Like, for example, enough warming to thaw the underwater methane hydrates or the Arctic permafrost. And it appears we are dangerously close to that precipice: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/08/3643953/greenland-permafrost-thaw-microbes/

The point of my posts is not to argue the science. I know the science at its most fundamental level. I know what predictive modeling is, how it is written and I also know its inherent uncertainties. I understand and know the limitations imposed by insufficient information regarding changes resulting from variations in the system not to the system. I know the inherent problems associated with over-constraint and under-constraint of the model. I also know beyond the shadow of a doubt, at least to me, that this carbon influx can and will result in tremendous loss of life if it is not addressed in the very near future, like right now. I've even got skin in the game, my grandson.

However, for the average reader, the article gives zero information that I asked about. They get ivory tower bullshit scientific talk in general terms but no specifics or explanations of their validity. Why should they believe it? How do they know that the authors didn't rig the problem to get the doom and gloom output?

That is one reason that I claim that what we have done and continue to do insofar as solving the problem IS NOT WORKING. At least it's not working at a rate that will provide any real correction to the problem. Poll after poll PROVES this to be true.

It has been shown by people far more knowledgeable than me on social science that two of the reasons climate activism isn't working is our hypocrisy and our agent of doom stance. As an example it was forecast that the polar ice pack would disappear by now. Didn't happen. It is doing a real good job of going away, but it remains a 'talking point' of deniers to this day that the 'doom and gloom' predicted by Al Gore and his 'acolytes' (of which I am a proud member) has at least one thing going against it. It should have been presented differently. This has got to stop. We have to stop doing what doesn't work.

I would assume that you would agree that virtually nothing has actually happened to prevent extreme climatic change in the future. Carbon cap and trade is a total joke. Paris is a total joke. We are at 400 ppm and increasing at a rate no less than 3 ppm per year with no real end in sight. We have zero plans and zero commitments to stop this insane march.

Paleocene proxy studies indicate that the atmospheric concentration was approximately 500 ppm, at least at the end of it. That gives us less than 30 years until we have the same or nearly the same global climates at that time, varied because of continental changes such as the Rocky Mountains and crustal movements. I would further assume that you would agree that unless we get our act together RIGHT NOW, there is zero chance that that concentration will not be reached by 2050. This doesn't even begin to tell the story of what happens at 650 to 700 ppm which is well documented in EECO studies.

Shock articles that have no clear statement of how it was done are counter-productive. There has to be a concerted effort to put things in terms that the public can understand, such as what the scientists assumed in their study. It would help if they would show that their prediction falls in line with paleo studies where what actually happened is known. In other words, the article, its presentation of the study and its results, must include enough transparency about the methods used that the general public can grasp that the study had no end result bias attached. That kills several denial arguments dead in their tracks and may get things going in the right direction.

With things the way they are and how they are being confronted, I say my standard pessimistic mantra;

TIMES UP

That's why Houston and Texas in general is quite air-conditioned. Houston is on the same latitude as Cairo, Egypt. The British used to pay the consulate in Houston hardship pay due to the climate, the same as they would to their outposts in India.

I've lived in San Antonio as well, and it's pretty damned humid, although it doesn't rain quite as much as Houston. That's why there are lots of military bases there. Because of the sun, it's good flying weather most of the time. San Antonio is 200 miles west of Houston.

When the humidity is high (don't ask me how high, I'm not an HVAC engineer), it does NOT cool off at night like it does in dry climates. The temperature and humidity stay high. Fans make it worse for poor people without air conditioning, because they act like a convection oven and push the hot humid air around more quickly. They cook you faster, basically. A swamp cooler would not help any. You MUST have air conditioning to remove the water from the air. I don't know the water capacity of hot air, but it can hold a lot of water.

I grew up in Houston without central air, and inadequate window units. Many a night it was too hot to sleep, and I would sit up and read James Michener novels. The reason that lots of people moved to the South, to the Sun Belt from the Rust Belt, is because of air conditioning. It is a necessity in many places, even up north when there are heat waves.

At least not here in Phoenix where everything is covered on asphalt. The lows I can expect in the summer months are in the 90s. That's the norm here and it has always sucked

The concrete and asphalt holding the heat in the urban areas as heat sinks.

I've been in Oklahoma in the summer and felt cool breezes in the afternoon across concrete parking lots in Oklahoma City, and it does cool off at night there. But then Oklahoma City isn't as paved as Phoenix.

Basically from Texas you have to get north into Oklahoma for it to be dry enough to cool off at night. Or west to West Texas, which turns to rocks and cactus and scrub (The Hill Country) to desert.