I’m Scared of Climate Change

[Nefer-Ankhe]

I’ve always had a growing anxiety about global warming since I learned about it in middle school, but since the Amazon fires my anxiety is near unbearable! I’ve been experiencing nightmares and partial insomnia and nothing seems to be allaying my fears! 

I fear there’s too many people in denial dismissing it as a hoax, and too many short-sighted corrupt politicians in power. 

So I’m just asking if I can please have an onslaught of positive things people, groups, governments, countries and etc have been doing to return the Earth to good health!! Help restore my faith (and maybe even yours) in humanity and a return to a healthy world! 

Thank you kindly! Any positive insights would be greatly appreciated, more than you would know! 

[Piney]

It is scary and more people have to get involved to help reverse it rather than hope for outside help.

Get involved! 

This is where I'm involved. 

https://www.ucsusa.org/

[Robotic Jew]

It deeply worries me for my children. I'm afraid of what type of world they'll be forced to adapt to once I'm dead and gone.

[+Desertrat56]

1 hour ago, Nefer-Ankhe said:

I’ve always had a growing anxiety about global warming since I learned about it in middle school, but since the Amazon fires my anxiety is near unbearable! I’ve been experiencing nightmares and partial insomnia and nothing seems to be allaying my fears! 

I fear there’s too many people in denial dismissing it as a hoax, and too many short-sighted corrupt politicians in power. 

So I’m just asking if I can please have an onslaught of positive things people, groups, governments, countries and etc have been doing to return the Earth to good health!! Help restore my faith (and maybe even yours) in humanity and a return to a healthy world! 

Thank you kindly! Any positive insights would be greatly appreciated, more than you would know! 

I realized a long time ago that I have to do my part in this as I am as culpable as anyone else buying and using zip lock bags, plastic wrap, items in plastic containers that don't get re-used, driving when I could walk (like 10 blocks or so).  I know the plastic recycle business is in dire straits in the U.S. because it was so dependent on selling trash to the chinese, but now they have gotten smarter and don't buy it so it is now going into the land fills like it did 10 years ago.  So, I take reusable bags shopping (a habit very few U.S. Americans have even now), I buy products in glass and aluminum instead of plastic, I re-use any plastic that comes into the house that I can and what I can't re-use goes in the grocery store recycle bin so that they can see what a waste they are allowing.  I also compost all compostable things like fruit that has gone bad, the ends off the vegetables that we don't eat, shredded paper, etc.  I am only one person but I am not the only one changing my habits. 

Do some research on how many products are produced by the oil industry one way or another.  They are a big part of the problem and us being chained to transportation that is fueled by oil products is a big reason we don't have more, better electric cars.  The electricity producers are getting better and including renewable sources to produce the electricity for large cities, so that is a good thing.  Some places like Texas and Boston (yes really) are cutting the path for the rest of the U.S.  California has a lot of legislation but they can't come close to the leaps in alternative electricity production that Texas has done.

There is good news and you have to commit to being part of the good news.

What ever you need to do to alleviate your anxiety, you do it, whether it is stockpiling food, growing a garden, boycotting plastic products, you have to be active.  None of us can just sit and wait for a saviour to come and solve any problem, we have to work towards the solution in any way we are able, and in the meantime others will be doing the same.

[zep73]

If you're worried about the world's oxygen supply, don't be. Forests are self-sufficient. They spend their own oxygen, and do not add any to the rest of the world.

https://theconversation.com/amazon-fires-are-destructive-but-they-arent-depleting-earths-oxygen-supply-122369

The problem with the wild fires is mostly about the threat to biodiversity and adding CO2 to the athmosphere.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Nefer-Ankhe said:

I’ve always had a growing anxiety about global warming since I learned about it in middle school, but since the Amazon fires my anxiety is near unbearable! I’ve been experiencing nightmares and partial insomnia and nothing seems to be allaying my fears! 

I fear there’s too many people in denial dismissing it as a hoax, and too many short-sighted corrupt politicians in power. 

So I’m just asking if I can please have an onslaught of positive things people, groups, governments, countries and etc have been doing to return the Earth to good health!! Help restore my faith (and maybe even yours) in humanity and a return to a healthy world! 

Thank you kindly! Any positive insights would be greatly appreciated, more than you would know! 

First, the Amazon fires are not as bad as the media is mkaing them out to be.  Burned areas recover their carbon-sequestration ability in about four years.  Farmers have to keep clearing the forest to keep it at bay.  In tropical forests, most of the nutrients are contained in foliage and in living plants.  When these are burned, the productivity rapidly leaches out of the soil.  After a few years, the land is no longer productive for corn farming and is allowed to return to jungle.  At the end, it is far less productive than before it was cleared, but it is once again pulling CO2 out of the air and putting oxygen into it.  In the end, Brazilians will have to live with the damage they have done, but it will have little effect on the rest of us.

In the US we practiced the same slash-and-burn agriculture.  Much of the land in the south has been exhausted by this and is far less productive than it could be.  In Kentucky, you can see sharp lines where the old hedge rows were.  The line between forest and reforested fields is very clear 150 years after the land was cleared.  We sacrificed that land to grow a few years worth of corn and cotton.

Second, the deniers are in the ascendency only because the denier-in-chief occupies the Whitehouse.  Once he's gone, most of the regulations and policies he has damaged will be reinstated with draconian consequences for those who have failed to obey them while tRUMP was in office.  The industries realize what is coming, so most are not cooperating with tRUMP.  By requiring restoration of disturbed sites, obstreperous companies can be forced to repair the damage at their expense, or shut down production at the affected sites - no ex post facto laws needed.

 

Yesterday tRUMP signed an order opening the Tongass National Forest to mining, drilling and logging.  The media, Sierra Club, etc. are all up in arms, but I doubt that any of this will ever happen.  The USFS will have to first develop a new forest plan - it's required by law.  That will take two or three years.  Who is going to be in the Whitehouse then?  To prepare a timber sale takes about two years to get through the authorization process and get the timber marked and tallied, put up for bid and sold.  So it will be five years before anything happens on the ground.  And then, the Forest Supervisor can cancel the whole process with a one-page memo.  So even if tRUMP wins re-election, not more than 2% of the forest will ever get cut under tRUMP's order.  What will probably happen is any timber prepared for sale will go into the regular cutting program and tRUMP's order will be ignored.  tRUMP, of course, will claim credit for any that was prepared on Obama's watch, but that is how American politics works.

About the mining and drilling part of the order:  have you ever seen the requirements for site restoration, road-building standards, etc.?  Tonnage restrictions on roads could shut down most mining/drilling activities.  Mining/drilling won't happen unless the Forest staff wants it to.

 

It is time to prepare for a post-tRUMP world.  Things that tRUMP is ordering now will not be anything more than architect's drawings by the time he leaves office.  If we had the planning-and-design phase for post-tRUMP projects already completed, we could cut two years off the implementation time.

Doug

[lost_shaman]

13 hours ago, Nefer-Ankhe said:

I’ve always had a growing anxiety about global warming since I learned about it in middle school,

This is exactly why current Climate Catastrophic Mythologies should not be taught in Schools. It's BS and also actually causes early onset anxiety as self reported here for example. 

 

[+Not A Rockstar]

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/14/694202210/you-may-be-surprised-to-learn-which-two-countries-are-making-the-globe-a-lot-gre

 

some good news on reforestation efforts

[Piney]

12 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

I realized a long time ago that I have to do my part in this as I am as culpable as anyone else buying and using zip lock bags, plastic wrap, items in plastic containers that don't get re-used, driving when I could walk (like 10 blocks or so).  I know the plastic recycle business is in dire straits in the U.S. because it was so dependent on selling trash to the chinese, but now they have gotten smarter and don't buy it so it is now going into the land fills like it did 10 years ago.  So, I take reusable bags shopping (a habit very few U.S. Americans have even now), I buy products in glass and aluminum instead of plastic, I re-use any plastic that comes into the house that I can and what I can't re-use goes in the grocery store recycle bin so that they can see what a waste they are allowing.  I also compost all compostable things like fruit that has gone bad, the ends off the vegetables that we don't eat, shredded paper, etc.  I am only one person but I am not the only one changing my habits. 

My Indian grandparents were staunch environmentalists and anti-plastic and I'm the same way. Cloth hand towels, dishrags and washrags. Only glass, stainless steel, iron or ceramic ware for cooking, eating and storing. No freezer bags. I freeze stuff in Tupperware but it's the only thing I use it for and it's vintage second hand stuff from them.

No coffee filters. Perk pot. 

 

[Piney]

2 minutes ago, Not A Rockstar said:

some good news on reforestation efforts

Compliments of a little nudging from a certain religion that Mao tried to wipe out. 

[Nefer-Ankhe]

Thank you guys for your responses! I do as much as possible to lower my carbon footprint, I’m actually vegan, never buy plastic wrapped produce, have my own garden, compost, recycling, bring my own bags to the grocery markets and etc. However sometimes it feels pointless when the contribution of green house gas emissions is on such a systemic and cooperate level! 

 

12 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

I realized a long time ago that I have to do my part in this as I am as culpable as anyone else buying and using zip lock bags, plastic wrap, items in plastic containers that don't get re-used, driving when I could walk (like 10 blocks or so).  I know the plastic recycle business is in dire straits in the U.S. because it was so dependent on selling trash to the chinese, but now they have gotten smarter and don't buy it so it is now going into the land fills like it did 10 years ago.  So, I take reusable bags shopping (a habit very few U.S. Americans have even now), I buy products in glass and aluminum instead of plastic, I re-use any plastic that comes into the house that I can and what I can't re-use goes in the grocery store recycle bin so that they can see what a waste they are allowing.  I also compost all compostable things like fruit that has gone bad, the ends off the vegetables that we don't eat, shredded paper, etc.  I am only one person but I am not the only one changing my habits. 

That’s reassuring and inspiring to hear your productivity in playing your role in lowering your carbon footprint! Much respect! Encourages me to continue and up my game! 

 

11 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

is time to prepare for a post-tRUMP world.  Things that tRUMP is ordering now will not be anything more than architect's drawings by the time he leaves office.  If we had the planning-and-design phase for post-tRUMP projects already completed, we could cut two years off the implementation time.

I fully understand what you’re saying, but what if Trump gets voted in again?

 

[Nefer-Ankhe]

26 minutes ago, lost_shaman said:

This is exactly why current Climate Catastrophic Mythologies should not be taught in Schools. It's BS and also actually causes early onset anxiety as self reported here for example. 

 

On the contrary I think it is VERY important that schools teach the looming threat of human accelerated global warming. 

 

 

['Walt' E. Kurtz]

We're doomed :-(

[tmcom]

42 minutes ago, Nefer-Ankhe said:

On the contrary I think it is VERY important that schools teach the looming threat of human accelerated global warming.

Geeses, no schools should show this!

You will see at the end, (and you can skip some) that they show clear evidence, (backed up by an expert in gases) that there is NO Impending Doom at All! This is a Congressional hearing, so lying equals prision.

Just a disguisting money grab, nothing else, (impending doom).

Please seek out Real sites or real facts, when researching this, (like the excellent one above) and Tony B, video series, (the Mad thread has some) and there will be no fear and no anxiety, leave that to the real nutters.

Edited August 31, 2019 by tmcom

[+Desertrat56]

12 hours ago, Piney said:

My Indian grandparents were staunch environmentalists and anti-plastic and I'm the same way. Cloth hand towels, dishrags and washrags. Only glass, stainless steel, iron or ceramic ware for cooking, eating and storing. No freezer bags. I freeze stuff in Tupperware but it's the only thing I use it for and it's vintage second hand stuff from them.

No coffee filters. Perk pot. 

 

I found some silicon bags that replaced zip locs.  I use them for freezing, refrigeration and for my grandson's lunches.  They come in many different sizes and shapes depending on the company that makes them.  I use unbleached coffee filters and they go in the compost.  I do use a lot of paper but I compost it instead of putting it in the landfill, I also use it to line the garden beds to keep the weeds down.  It eventually degrades.  I don't know what the ink on the paper does to the soil though.  I also have some vintage tupperware that I use to store dry goods in.

[+Desertrat56]

12 hours ago, Piney said:

Compliments of a little nudging from a certain religion that Mao tried to wipe out. 

I forgot about that.  I only buy free trade coffee from Arborday Foundation, which takes donations to help communities by making sure they have clean water and a good schools and training in growing coffee varieties that grow in the shade so they don't need to clear forest to survive.  They teach them how to set up and run a business of selling their coffee and Arborday is one of their buyers.  Those of us who donated 20 years ago now buy the coffee and it is about the same price as a bag from starbucks but everyone I give it to says it is the best coffee they have had.  (except my 86 year old aunt who will only drink Folgers )  One of the varieties I buy is grown in Chile.

[+Desertrat56]

13 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

This is exactly why current Climate Catastrophic Mythologies should not be taught in Schools. It's BS and also actually causes early onset anxiety as self reported here for example. 

 

As opposed to random shooter drills and metal detectors at the doors, or a cops office on campus?

[+Desertrat56]

12 hours ago, Impedancer said:

We're doomed :-(

Probably, but miraculously humans have survived on earth a long time and been doomed most of it for one reason or another.

[lost_shaman]

15 hours ago, Nefer-Ankhe said:

On the contrary I think it is VERY important that schools teach the looming threat of human accelerated global warming. 

 

 

Obviously you were not taught anything close to the truth or you would not be having trouble sleeping or be in a state of fear.

[Guest]

17 hours ago, Piney said:

My Indian grandparents were staunch environmentalists and anti-plastic and I'm the same way. Cloth hand towels, dishrags and washrags. Only glass, stainless steel, iron or ceramic ware for cooking, eating and storing. No freezer bags. I freeze stuff in Tupperware but it's the only thing I use it for and it's vintage second hand stuff from them.

No coffee filters. Perk pot. 

 

I spent several years in the southwest, including Chimney Rock, Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon.  From what I saw, Indians four hundred years ago weren't any better at conservation/preservation than we are now.  The difference is that they didn't have bulldozers.

An Indian powwow site on USFS land near Bonners Ferry, Idaho was completely trashed out:  broken glass everywhere; rusting, burned out car hulks and trees hacked down and broken, not even used for firewood.  It is time to drop the myth of the Indian-as-conservationist and replace it with genuine concern for the environment.  I congradulate you for what you are doing, but many more need to adopt a land ethic.

Doug

[Guest]

1 hour ago, lost_shaman said:

Obviously you were not taught anything close to the truth or you would not be having trouble sleeping or be in a state of fear.

The problem is that most teachers do not feel qualified to talk about global warming and the few who do are afraid of the political backlash.  Thus, nothing is being done.

Doug

[Piney]

Just now, Doug1o29 said:

An Indian powwow site on USFS land near Bonners Ferry, Idaho was completely trashed out:  broken glass everywhere; rusting, burned out car hulks and trees hacked down and broken, not even used for firewood.  It is time to drop the myth of the Indian-as-conservationist and replace it with genuine concern for the environment.  I congradulate you for what you are doing, but many more need to adopt a land ethic.

 

Powwow monkeys and Rez Trash will always be trash, and my people were rice gathering agroforesters, so we weren't bad. Corn is and was. 

[Guest]

16 hours ago, tmcom said:

Please seek out Real sites or real facts, when researching this,

I agree.  But you're not posting any.  Why not practice what you preach?

Doug

[Guest]

17 hours ago, Nefer-Ankhe said:

I fully understand what you’re saying, but what if Trump gets voted in again?

Then American democracy could well be dead.

BUT:  at last count, any Democrat who runs against tRUMP is pretty-much guaranteed 278 electoral votes.  And that's enough to put him/her in office.

Hillary is not in the race.  There will be few protest votes for third parties; thus, little chance for third parties to steal electoral votes from the other candidates.

tRUMP has failed to keep most of his promises, particularly those concerning jobs.  The rural states are hurting from his tariffs.  They won't be voting for tRUMP next time around.  Coal-mining jobs are not reappearing in Appalachia because the best coal is gone and nothing tRUMP can say will change that.  He has failed to deliver jobs to Appalachia.  If that doesn't cause his supporters to switch parties, it will probably cause them to stay home and not vote.

tRUMP's had-core base is about 20% of the population.  Another 25% or so will follow him as long as they think he is helping their causes.  But an economic slowdown, now being predicted, will make heavy inroads into those numbers.

I don't think we have to worry about tRUMP after the next Inaugaration Day.  What we need to worry about is whether the Dems can take the Senate.  They're only two seats from doing it now, but there are two Dem seats at risk.  There are also two Republican seats at risk.  I'd say the Senate races are too close to call.  But wait until 2022:  there will be a bunch of Republican seats come up for re-election.

In the end, tRUMP has shown Americans why they need to vote.

I heard someone say that tRUMP was sent by God - because He ran out of locusts.

Doug

[Tatetopa]

18 hours ago, Impedancer said:

We're doomed :-(

Of course we are, from birth.  Don't let it ruin your day today though.

Edited August 31, 2019 by Tatetopa
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