...GOP zealots are raptured asap. Until then, the U.S. as a whole won't be part of the solution.

ASAP -- maybe a bumper sticker?

then for starters don't drive petrol guzzlers for the last 80 years or so.

I don't know what we can do, or if we can do anything. I wish I did.

80 degrees in the winter. Tomorrow and the next day are expected to set new record highs for those dates by more than 5 degrees.

Not sure that says anything about global warming. It may well be cooler than average someplace else.

and we're up to the 7th straight record-breaker heat-wise today.

not all processes are reversible and I think we are probably there. About the only thing we might be able to do is to slow down the rate a little bit. But probably not much there either. And considering that, as we move forward, the US will become just one of 3 or 4 major players in the game, ultimately we probably can't do anything.

The change is going to actually accelerate and more fossil fuels are going to be burned in the coming years.

As the effects of the changes increase, we'll burn more fuel to combat the symptoms, which will dump more gas into the atmosphere.

Rinse, repeat.

there are folks that understand how this works. I read Jared Diamond's book How Society's Choose to Fail (or something really similar to that) at least six years ago and realized then that it was too late. Don't know the official terminology, but even if we stopped today, right this moment, there is the forward momentum - or the after-effects - of what we're doing now that will carry on for years.

It means that the appearance of the effects lags well behind their original cause, and the effect continues even after the cause has been removed. CO2/warming has very strong hysteresis.

Yes, from every point you care to look at the human situation it's too damned late. We're well into the collapse zone at this point, and very few even realize it.

Nothing is going to change in terms of modern society. In fact it is escalating. We are making changes, but they are fractional. Electric cars. They're still cars. They still require rubber, glass, infrastructure.

Population is the big discussion no one wants to have. The most recent one was scrubbed from DU's greatest page rather quickly. I learned a lot from that.

not immediately maybe, but the odds are good that over the course of a century or so cropland will turn to arid steppe in North America, Europe and Asia and leave the planet unable to support anything like the current human population.

The planet has the capacity to produce much more food than it does. The problem will be economic, food will be horribly expensive. In that environment one will probably see tainted food on the market more often. The most likely route to a population reduction would be disease, exacerbated by environmental conditions in the world, and tainted food and water.

seriously.

Right?

through laws that limit childbearing or through policies that decrease poverty and increase health care (these policies lead to declines in the birth rate, ultimately).

what is your approach or are you just spouting population control glibly?

NOW, you're talking about actual birth control, which is different.

Well educated, middle-class people tend to have fewer children because that is in their interest (and their children's interest), so promoting those things is always good.

But the first thing we have to do is get everyone to understand the down side of NOT controlling the population.

We also have to overcome the resistance from "be-fruitful-and-multiply" religious teachings.

So there's no magic bullet. But there's a great need to do what we can.

Getting the information out is surely the first step.

I think that decisions to voluntarily reduce birth rates for the sake of the planet are noble and necessary. I wonder if this country's history of eugenics and forced sterilization of people of color and certain groups of mentally challenged people make this a sticky subject to breach. However, I think that progressives and people on the left know the difference between eugenics and personal choice.

It is a shame the US has to deal with ignorance so vast that states are taking reproductive rights away from women (or attempting to!!!), and condemning homosexual love-- when the Earth is so crowded with people.

This is one of the main reasons that women need to retain personal reproductive choice--because she knows whether or not she can care for this child, or if there is enough food, and if she can retain a healthy existence while pregnant. Women are having this primal and basic wisdom taken away from them, and without it the balance of life has been destroyed.

The denial of contraceptive funding (starting in the 80s?) across the world has created countless suffering for millions of women and children--so unnecessary and so preventable. Plus after Rode vs Wade was passed, crime rates dropped significantly--yet another RW dangerous denial of reality.

(The rise of fundamentalism globally has spread a dangerous myth about Armageddon, which has brainwashed people into revering an afterlife while enabling a Hell on Earth to unfold. This destructive interpretation of sacred texts needs to be replaced with a more hopeful, realistic and workable vision of the future. Religious leaders need to take responsibility for their influence on human behavior!)

directly from the mic. They want their ww3 so badly, they don't care how many lies they have to tell their obedient followers to accept and welcome their hell. To the mic I say go back to hell where you came from; stop creating hell on paradise (the earth).

Politics and vested economic interests have interfered to prevent any decisive action.

Instead, I think we need to prepare for how to deal with a warmer climate. Don't know what the people in Florida and Bangladesh can do. As for me, I'm gonna put my tomato plants out earlier.

So we might as well try to like global warming. The climate change is not going to ever be too likable, tho.

What we must do is prepare for the changes. Move to higher ground. Be ready for the refugees. Adjust crop schedules.

Here is something I just today began to consider: Dry Ice is compressed CO2, right? So it makes perfect sense that as CO2 expands it holds heat. That -the heat holding properties of CO2- is what the science says is the reason for global warming, so it seems to be a fairly easy way to explain to dunderheads how excess CO2 is, in fact, the culprit?

It's happening. But not from the proper end of things. We should be reducing population. And I know we are not going to stop living a modern lifestyle. Because that is the other factor aside from the number of users. So engineers like me are going to be putting effort into changing things. I'm part of a group that is starting up a fuel cell project. Wish us luck.

I was wondering whether such an update would come sooner or later.

Thanks for the thread, MindMover.