Ultimately mother earth will repair herself, by shedding us pesky humans.

still do nothing.

You are right - the Earth is going to be fine.

Leaving a population of under 2 billion, which will still be declining. I think the dieoff will to be recognized as a dieoff by 2025.

Wait a minute, he is just another environmental scientist, so he must be making money off of his claims. You know the deniers can tell us exactly how he can profit from climate change, but I sure can't unless he is selling air conditioners.

No pity for them.

professor advised the class to "get a gun and a cabin in northern Michigan/UP" if you want to try to survive. Seems that would be a viable place to 'hole up."

He said the professor's place was outside the Twin Cities, off the grid, solar/wind for electric and a wood stove for heating. Lots of land for gardening.

The professor basically told him the same thing your friend heard from his professor

On edit: this was almost 10 years ago, when only the "crazies" contemplated a global collapse of civilization from climate change.

I still have the original Mother Earth News booklets....
There were plenty of far seeing people back then, using new terms like "carrying capacity" "population bomb"
Nuclear power problems were not yet part of the discussion.

Fast forward to now....and I find that not having grandchildren is comforting, as is knowing that I have less than 20 more years on this planet.
Imagine that....not being around in 20 years is actually a comforting thought.
Who coulda seen that?

I don't worry about survival planning since I'm in my 60s. Even if everything starts to fall apart relatively soon, I'm not spry enough to struggle for a place in a Mad Max world. I'll leave that struggle to the young, and I suspect they won't thank me for it.

Every once in awhile, between bouts of Clinton vs. Sanders vs. Trump, I have those piercing moments of clarity: "all of this will be swept away soon." What seems to matter so much right now is only for the short term, just getting through the next few years as if business as usual will continue for the rest of this century. We know it won't, but there's no scenario for the kind of preparation that should be happening.

If I had children and especially grandchildren, I'd be urging them to get off the grid and prepare for the storm.

I have given my 2 now middle aged..( Yikes!!) sons all the information and wisdom I have, but they are not as alarmed as I am.
And there is so much I am powerless over, yet it is hard to watch the various forms of slow moving disaster heading towards us, ESP. fukishima.

You know, "they" talk about the exceedingly high percent of Americans who do not have even $2,000 on hand in case of serious emergency.
No one is talking about even larger numbers of us who do not have more than 30 day supply of vitally needed prescriptions on hand, like blood pressure or insulin meds.
a thin lifeline connects us to the actual sources of these meds, which is mostly in India now.

and those are impossible to get now, in Argentina, where all supply lines are being severed, except for the richest people there who can pay for smuggled goods.

Yet, we go on, as if it cannot happen here.

We're currently at 407.4 ppm.

Up 4.3 ppm from this time last year, up a whopping 23 ppm from this time a decade ago: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html

>> Week beginning on April 17, 2016: 407.42 ppm
>> Weekly value from 1 year ago: 403.18 ppm
>> Weekly value from 10 years ago: 384.79 ppm

Bugger ... I'd missed that update ...!

...not decreasing.

I mean, it could, possibly, just might be involved.

They actually think that renewables are working, and that it's a good idea to throw even more money at them.

I would advise them to open science books, but I don't think they'd be interested.

There is a set of people who hear what they want to hear, and I strongly believe that the words "Think" and "Progress" being in their name is actually an abuse of language, since they only thing that they "think" about is what they want to hear, and the only "progess" they make is when they convince people to throw more money at stuff that, um, doesn't work.

The only thing that is progressing is the acceleration of the degradation of the atmosphere, and I would suggest repeating the same rhetoric year after year, decade after decade, when it clearly isn't working, is hardly "progress."

In 2015 and 2016 we are seeing unprecedented increases in carbon dioxide accumulations, and I assure you, it's not because the ocean suddenly lost all of its carbon dioxide absorption capacity instantaneously.

So called "renewable energy" is a trivial form of energy, and to announce, as they do, that it is "surging" is delusional. Two years ago, world energy demand was on the order of 550 exajoules per year, it is now at 570 exajoules and solar and wind combined have never, not once, produced 5 exajoules in a single year, this after at least of 30 years of trying, and after the expenditure of trillions of dollars and the mining of vast quantities of toxic and rare metals to support it.

As for dangerous fossil fuels "leveling off:"

The realities of tracking coal use, for one example, perhaps the most pernicious of the three dangerous fossil fuels, but only marginally worse than the other two are not found at "Thinkprogress," but in the primary scientific literature, for example, here: Uncertainties around reductions in China’s coal use and CO2 emissions.

Of course, over at "Think Progress," a bourgeois Western website, they're not sure if Chinese, Indians, or the inhabitants of poor nations even less prosperous per capita than those two giants, exist. They're members of that set who think that if enough rich Americans run out and buy Tesla electric cars while staring at pictures of wind turbines, all will be well.

All hasn't been well, all isn't well, and as long as we're looking at "Think Progress" for answers, nothing will be well.

Enjoy the rest of Memorial Day.

I have posted about this, and I think people wondered what I meant when I said "sinks". I wasn't even completely sure. But it's clear now that it's the case.

I think predicting a system this complex is impossible to do with accuracy. But we have a species which has turned into a pestilence, and is so far over it's population (while burning stuff), that I fear the time is not very long before we hit hard stops. So far we've gotten a free ride via thing like ocean acidifications, rather than purely atmospheric CO2 increases.

Judging from how many are still buying the establishment/consumer mindset, this situation is only going to be solved by a few scientists, as opposed to immediate reduction in energy demand via personal responsibility, god forbid. Even the most progressive conversations I'm having exclude any concept of altering personal behavior. So far the solution is coming from incremental change, such as meat being bad. Meat, filiment lightbulbs, water, and all kinds of things are being seen as the problem. Until we can get past that, only a few will be helping to alleviate this situation.

The problem does not lie outside of our behavior. At least that's my take on immediate change. Ultimately we may end up with hoverboards. I'm not sure why we want them though.