I don't like the emphasis on "nothing we can do to stop it". Yes, certain processes are in motion which we cannot stop, but for every glacier and ice sheet which has been set in motion there are another ten that are on the verge. A certain amount of sea level rise now seems inevitable, but we can take action now to prevent the rise from being greater. This should be a call to action, not a call for despair.

But what if it's all a hoax and we make the world a better place for nothing?

1, And this action... what do see happening? The despair comes from the fact that in America, there is no willingness among our leaders to do anything substantial. The people who operate international finance have amassed wealth beyond what people will imagine, and our leaders are following them, not the people.

Sure, there are voices out there, and the people can get motivated, but who do you see, right now, in positions of power, in the media, in finance, in politics, that are doing anything besides pointing to the problem? The solution lies in dismantling our current energy and economic models, which are backed by the most wealthy, entrenched, and powerful people on the planet. None of them are interested, and many are deliberately working against anyone who tries to change the situation.

That is where our despair comes from. It would be great if we could gather every single owner of the oil industry, coal industry, and the banking industry that has invested in them, and killed them all. It is justice, they are traitors to humanity. What they are doing is the worst kind of crime against humanity ever perpetrated: wiping out our livelihood, perhaps the extinction of the species. But who is powerful enough to bring them to justice? They've hired the politicians and media to either leave them alone or convince everyone that they're really just misunderstood heroes.

No one, that's who. If there was a popular uprising, maybe, but they can just hire the military to take us out, labeling us "eco-terrorists." Just try and get some justice with that label on you. The best thing people are doing is simply trying to convince the rest of us that something's wrong. Well, that's been the plan for the past forty years and I don't see anything fundamental changing. There are still plenty of drooling idiots everywhere, (you know who they are on the Slog) who disdain any suggestion that humans are causing climate change, despite universal acceptance of this fact among the scientific community. These idiots are on the side of the traitors, but they're not really doing anything meaningful about it besides getting in the way, being a mindless boob.

Democracy is trotted out as the highest form of government. Yet we can see how utterly useless it is when facing a threat of global consequence. Because enough politicians can be bought to bring any solution to a halt. Notice what's been going on in DC for the past two years? A whole lot of nothing.

If there was an organized movement that was directly targeting the real problem, in dismantling our energy and economic structure and replace it with something sustainable, I'd be all over that in a second. But too many people are afraid to lose their comfort, in spite of the fact that our food chain is threatened and could collapse. So what you do propose we do?

@2 that is my favorite web comic on the subject as well.

sauce: http://imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu

Makes for better shipping however, like from Argentina to Australia.

Reminder that the #1 cause of global warming is livestock for food. Beef, pork, and cheese are the largest cause of this, greater than all the transport planes, cars, trucks, and boats put together.

The greatest change you can do is stop eating livestock products. The greatest change society can do is taxing and restricting livestock products that are hurting humanity. The greatest change The Stranger can do is hire an ethical food writer.

http://content.time.com/time/health/arti…

@1: Has anybody considered using nuclear winter to cancel out global warming?

@6: That wouldn't put it #1, that would put it #3 (or lower) behind electricity production and industry. Nice try, but as usual you are full of shit.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemis…

The problem is that the agreed upon science doesn't include a likely scenario that is scary to anybody. A few feet of increased sea levels and a few degrees of increased average temperatures over several decades just sounds like a lot of fun to be a part of. Something we can all look upon together and take pride that we helped change the world.

We're probably fucked. I would advise everyone to not have kids.

I just don't care.

Cheer up. The collapse of the food chain in the oceans will probably get us long before the West Antarctica ice sheet melts.

8- Sigh... Livestock's impact isn't only about emissions, but around half the non-ice land on the planet is bulldozed, used, and degraded for livestock pasture and growing crops to feed livestock (a fraction of which would be needed if people just ate the crops). Remember how we used to have a bunch of forests?

It's scientific consensus that livestock is the largest anthropogenic cause of climate change, including official stance by the United Nations. People just want to plug their ears about it, which is infuriating and irresponsible.

@15: Bullshit. It is funny that you talk about people plugging their ears when you are stating a fact without reference. And it is funny that you don't acknowledge that your reference had its value reduced and that it included items such as milk, eggs, and plow animals (is milk murder?). You are talking shit and you are being called out on it, again. You are the one with the closed mind and every argument you make on this site is somehow warped to support your anti-meat stance. It had to be #1 in you mind. You couldn't comprehend that it could be a problem while at the same time not being the greatest single problem.

There's not much to be done at this point to stop a drastic increase in pCO2 in the atmosphere. But maybe if we could stop calling it a hoax we might be able to minimize the increase and invest in geoengineering to mitigate its effects.

@15: Bullshit. Data or GTFO.

We can start by not voting for any republican in 2014 and 2016, that will be a good start to end the cycle of neglect of our environment. It won't happen overnight or in our lifetime, but if the cycle is reversed maybe our grandchildren can still listen to the birds and watch a tree grow. republican children can watch their I-phones for some virtual reality, and do some drugs.

@19: Fuck MSNBC. If you want to learn about climate change, buy a textbook or read the IPCC reports. MSNBC is just as misleading as Fox News except they smack their lips more.

@18: Because the extraction industries don't have the Democrats in their pockets as well? Neither of the two major parties of the United States is on the side of the people.

@19: Here is a good start:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Earth-System-3…

You can probably find this in a library (the UW library will almost certainly have it).

16/17: Here are two separate studies, from an NGO (NYT summary of it) and a scientific journal, both concluding livestock are causing now or in the near future more than 50% of anthropogenic climate change.

http://bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07…

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007…

@23: So what. The actual no-shit evidence is far more convincing that talking heads smacking their lips on how smart they think they are.

@24: You have got to be kidding me. I read the respiration section and laughed my ass off. I remember discussing this fallacy in my climate change class on why human beings weren't a massive contributor to global warming by just breathing.

Do a fucking energy balance equation. What do you think those livestock eat? This is a classic case of arguing from a conclusion. By the way, the actual journal article you cited noted that CO2 emissions would be 13 Gigatonnes by 2070 (and 7 Gigatonnes today). Today, the worldwide net is about 35 Gigatonnes per year. Hint: 7/35 ≠ 51%.

@24: And just to be clear, since it is apparent raku can't add, subtract, multiply, or divide: are cows eating oil? Are farmers magicking carbon into their bodies? If not, then I recommend you watch the introduction to The Lion King.

The science has shown for a while that anthropogenic climate change is going to have a very large impact on everyone despite what free market dimwits like to claim. Fracked natural gas and tar oil are the not the "bridge" to addressing climate change on a useful time scale.

livestock emissions are about methane, which is way more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. the CO2 issue with livestock is shifting compartments of available carbon from being locked up in forests and other vegetation to the atmosphere. although biological carbon is a zero-sum game, shifting a massive amount to the atmosphere will have an additive effect on fossil fuel emissions.

@27, 28: Raku's most basic fallacy is in assuming that if everyone stopped eating meat, the emissions associated with meat would simply go away, rather than be (partially or wholly) replaced with emissions from non-livestock farming.