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In reply to the discussion: Mankind must go green or die, says Prince Charles [View all]GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)is Mother Nature herself. We are no longer driving the climate bus.
The wheels will fall off in earnest in about 18 years, when the global temperature rise heads towards +2 degrees Celsius in 2030. Because of the inertia of the world's social, industrial and climate systems, along with the human inability to respond appropriately to future risk, there is absolutely nothing we will or even can do to prevent this.
Worse, unless we stop using fossil fuels entirely (!) the global temperature will not stabilize. And even worse than that, on our current trajectory we will stop using fossil fuels entirely. On our present growth pattern, we'll drain our fossil fuel reserves entirely dry around 2060 - at which point things just ... stop; but the temperature will just keep on rising.
Over the next few decades the weather is going to get steadily, catastrophically worse, leading to an accelerating cycle of crop failures, water supply failures and spreading social upheaval. No amount of green energy , energy efficiency measures, carbon taxes or even rationing can prevent that from happening at this point. At best they might delay the final outcome by a decade or so.
Basically, our social fate follows the temperature curve. We are just entering the knee of that curve now, and it will become progressively steeper over the next 40 years - even if the social chaos becomes severe enough to halt our industrial progress. In 2050 the global temperature rise will pass 3 degrees C at which point it's pretty well game over for GlobCiv 1.0.
The crisis has begun now; a significant portion of the global system will fall apart around 2030; the lights will be out by 2050. We have less than 40 years left as a functioning civilization.
Getting from here to our eventual, inevitable ultra-low-energy lifestyle in just 40 years is going to be a cast-iron, gold-plated woofer, no question about it. But it's going to happen, regardless of anyone's wishes or objections. Rant and rail all you want, that's what the evidence shows.
Oh, and about the rabies thing?
I would gladly trade off a few deaths from old-fashioned rabies against the modern epidemic of heart disease and cancer that is burning though the world today. We are no closer to bringing those under control than we are to controlling our use of fossil fuels.
An estimated 17.3 million people died from Cardiovascular diseases in 2008
7.6 million people worldwide died from cancer in 2008
Tobacco kills nearly 6 million people each year
The harmful use of alcohol results in 2.5 million deaths each year
All those are climbing due to our modern living arrangements. Rabies? Not so much...
Annual Number of Deaths from Rabies Hits 70,000 Worldwide
What you created with your reference to rabies is a classic straw man.