25 years of science stuck somewhere in my brain downloaded when I was reminded of both axial and orbital procession! It all makes sense now.
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So, what you’re saying is that long-term, non-anthropogenic climate change is because of a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff?
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But how will your commute be under 20 feet of water?
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Groovy?
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Most of the Seattle area is high enough to remain un-flooded in the worst-case estimates for sea level rise (~70 meters if all the polar ice melts). However, the Seattle Port is pretty much fucked and you’ll be able to take the ferry right over Georgetown, across which you’ll need to build bridges. But you’ll probably want to wait to build those bridges because the Seattle Fault is estimated to be under significant stress and is part of a fault system that will experience mind-boggling weight redistribution as sea level rise levers the North American West Coast. How earthquake-resistant are your skyscrapers? And hopefully your famous rain won’t dry up with the changes in the Pacific currents due to desalination, because your fire stations are scheduled to be put the test.
Nonetheless, you’re correct that you’re in one of the more elevated coastal cities and will probably retain more housing infrastructure than most others, which means you’ll be a hot destination for refugees fleeing from Cali, Oregon and Canada with nothing but what they can carry because property insurance companies are going to go belly up like the oceanic ecosystem once everyone and their uncle is filing claims. The Syrian refugee crisis will look quaint by comparison.
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He put Asterix on the timeline.
The unmitigated Gaul!
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Great illustration, as always.
Quick plug for one of my favourite charities: An average tree sequesters one tonne of CO2 throughout it’s lifespan, and you can have them planted for about $0.15 each through trees.org. They plant them in forest gardens for communities all over the world.
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I just imagine the chart to be 60 feet wide–and perfectly linear.
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May as well link this here: The #Veep is out: Hillary Clinton chooses Tim Kaine as Vice President
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Gall, even.
(Gallae can refer to that people, or to the priestesses of Cybele; Volcae/Welsh/Walloons/Gauls/Wallachs comes from another root and can refer to many different peoples; Goidels/Gaels comes from a third root.)
(And Latinized forms of Celtic group names are often a-declension regardless of gender, for example Volcae and Gaesatae, not unlike the a-declension masculine of “agricolae poetas laudant.”)
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And massively exaggerates the abruptness of early-Earth climate shifts.
It’s almost as if someone deliberately chose that chart in an attempt to create a misleading impression of the reality. How strange.
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I wish the climate deniers would just say what’s really going on:
“Look, these climatic effects won’t harm our children…
They’ll only harm our children’s children’s children.
Or, at worst our children’s children.
So, fuck them, right? I don’t even know those assholes.”
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Your comment deserves more attention. Scary shit indeed.
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I don’t think that’s how they think.
It’s more like the warming of the Earth was inevitable, it’s only the timeline we changed. Technically that might be right, but there are lots of consequences to that.
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Did you read the XKCD mouseover?
[After setting your car on fire] “Listen, your car’s temperature has changed before.”
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I think the true terror of climate change is existential. I don’t want that to undercut the billions of future human lives it will impact through forced migration and increased disease ranges or the species extinction: both will be utterly devastating. But I can’t help but think of our species and what it means for out future if we fail to keep our societies ticking. Climate change is a filter, like the Malthusian limits of pre-industrized agricultural growth, or the threat of nuclear war. If we fail to safely pass a filter our societies shatter, and it is a very open question whether we will claw back to a progressive technological society we had before that filter.
I largely see our collective civilization as a nest for discovering and utilizing increasingly complex and useful technologies. The more accommodating we can make the nest (increasing equality/connectivity/opportunity, reducing war/pestilence/poverty) the faster we discover and utilize these technologies. The worse this environment becomes the less effective we are at pushing forth.
Climate change is the mother of all debuffs, and the higher the temperature rises the more dots we get on us.
I’m worried that at a certain point the nest just fails to adhere. Would we be able to claw back to cities with enough size to support universities with enough brains to discover AI, support space flight, and cure diseases if we are constantly losing our most productive lands, having to absorb millions of unending climate migrants, and fighting perpetual wars?
What is it to be human if we cannot reach those greater plateaus?
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We all commute in a yellow submarine / Yellow submarine, yellow submarine / We all commute in a yellow submarine / Yellow submarine, yellow submarine…
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I’m not saying that’s what I personally think, just how some people that don’t see the urgency of our current situation sometimes see things (at least in my limited experience).
But to answer your question, yes I did. The alt-text is sometimes the best part of XKCD.
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This is like that video for High on Fire’s “The Black Plot,” in that it will melt your face off.
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This is obvious nonsense because the world was created in 4004 B.C. and climate change was invented by Al Gore to take away American’s right to drive Coal Smokers.
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