Bay 12 Games Forum

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... so only one billion or so dead instead of three? Only five instead of seven? Only six and some change instead of the whole shebang? Or are we talking really lucky and only losing a few tens or hundreds of millions? What you're describing still has a death toll unseen in human history. I'd like to know ahead of time what to expect, so we can start trying to figure out ahead of time how to deal with all the corpses.

S'just... yeah. I've reached a point of damned morbid now. Throwing out a few comments, then eating supper and throwing in for the night. And for the record, MSH, I wish to hell I could see this issue like you seem to, right now. You seem to be considerably more optimistic, or at least less hopeless, about it.

Even if all, and I mean literally all of the ice on Earth were to be melted (a feat even under liberal estimates of temperature change) it still wouldn't flood all that much land. We'd lose a bunch of coastline cities and low areas, but most would stay high and dry.

The relocations alone you mentioned would cause an absolutely massive systematic shock to the countries that are forced to push them through, and the loss of life fallout from that would be (will be?) horrendous.

You do realize that the vast majority of the human population lives in those coastline cities and low areas, right? Moving them is definitely possible, but the logistics of doing so is terrifying.

Plenty of agricultural plant species could still be grown even if warming were to go total. They aren't that fragile to begin with, and are even less so now that GM strains are out there.

Plenty of strains could be, maybe. Why aren't they now? The states alone are going to be taking a massive hit to at least one of our primary food crops this year. It's not quite so simple to go from "having viable species that can survive in GW situation" to "growing enough to feed the human population." Throwing shiny new tech at the problem only does so much if it's not done preemptively.

Furthermore, life on this planet is all very adaptable. I might remind you all that there have been multiple extreme extinction events in the past, ones that killed off the vast majority of existing life on the planet, and that which was left obviously managed to thrive.

The life that managed to thrive after the major extinction events did so after expanses of time longer than the history of mankind... that's not very comforting to most macrofauna, including humans. To put it a different way, yes, life has survived multiple extreme extinction events. The verdict's still incredibly out on whether humans going to be able to survive this one, and more importantly, what sort of shape it's going to be in if we do. It's pretty damn likely we will if any non-insect megafauna does, but the shape we're in at that point...?

As for overcrowding, understand that every human being alive today could fit in the city of Los Angeles. We don't really take up that much space, and if push comes to shove you can fit a lot of people in a relatively small area. It isn't paradise, but it's doable.

Sticking people in small spaces causes massive issues. Logistics, psychological, and physiological issues we still haven't fully been able to deal with, as well as a very, very notable reduction in quality of life for tremendous swaths of the population involved.

"Isn't paradise" is a massive understatement of how bad what you're describing would be for much of that population.

And all of that, all of that, assumes a worst case scenario where no one does anything to stop climate change at all. In reality, environmentalism is mainstream politics in the US regardless of denialist Republicans.

Yeah, it's mainstream politics. The bigger issue is if it's mainstream business. If huge swaths of populations across the world are saying, "Do something about this goddamn now," and the powers that are actually funding the major sources of the problem are saying, "Nah." what the hell do we do?

Chanterelle? Mushrooms as... cake icing?

... I'll, uh. I... I'm glad you enjoy it. Not particularly fond of mushrooms.

Re: egg rice, it's not too complicated. Take the desired amount of eggs, mix them up in a bowl like you're planning on making an omelet. Cook up some rice, probably by steaming or boiling, and then somewhere between three and five minutes before the rice is done, stir the eggs into the rice. Let rice finish cooking, and you're done. It is incredibly simple, and much easier than scrambling the eggs separately and stirring them into the rice.

As for the full on breakfast rice, you just cook up some bacon and tear it up, stir into the cooked egg+rice, probably along with the cheese. And... whatever else. You pretty much just take whatever you'd normally have for breakfast and stir it into a pot of rice.

E: Lunch rice, dinner rice, pizza rice... "take X and stir it into a pot of rice" is a pretty simple way to add some variety

E2: Yes, my basic cooking strategy is "take whatever I feel like eating, put it in a bowl, and stir." It's... surprisingly effective.

Yeah, pour a cracked egg and you'll see it, a little stringy white glob stuck to the yolk.  Egg embryos do have umbilici, they're left over from before the eggshell forms.  And they're gross.  And picking them off can break the yolk, which is usually why I just scramble then.

Huh. I've never noticed. Or maybe I just assumed they were part of the white bits or something, I'unno.

But no, don't bother to take them off, or know anyone that does. I remove bits of egg shell if they manage to get in, but that's it.

Mind you, I can only really do scrambled or omelets, which is basically scrambled. That and just pouring the egg contents into rice a few minutes before the rice is finished cooking. Cooks the eggs, does nice things to the rice. Add cheese, breakfast! Or, well, eggs and rice. Breakfast rice needs bacon added in, too.

Well, it wouldn't really be freedom, though. More like benign (at best) neglect and being shoved into whatever wasteland the dominate species didn't feel like utilizing for something else, assuming there's any of said wasteland they're willing to not utilize. In the past, at least, humans have demonstrated semi-regularly they're quite happy to capitulate for better conditions in situations like that, hum...

Are there any wild horses that exist outside of preservation (or something similar) land? How are they doing?

Hahaha, it'll all be flavored soy.

Which, y'know? I've always said, if someone can pull off something that tastes and feels like meat, but was made from plants or whatever? Totally be all over that. Complete conversion to vegetarian if it were economincal. Providing it actually did taste that way and didn't have horrifying side effects.

I'm not so much a carnivore as I am someone that just doesn't like the taste and texture of most vegetables. Give me an alternative, and I'll happily let the cows and suchlike become useless (and shortly thereafter either extinct or vastly reduced in population ).

If there is, indeed, such a wall in the middle of the road, it can go down one of two ways.

1. We deftly swerve right before hitting it. The new technology to fix the problem becomes more popular as the danger becomes more apparent/closer.

2. We slam into it, claw out of the wreckage, and make a new car. The shit hits the fan, but we keep going anyways.


Both have been known to happen. However, I don't see us dying off all together. Humans are more resilient than that. Nature is more resilient than that.

Yeah, I mentioned hitting the wall and what happens from it. Some make it. Less than the amount that would if the folks driving would just see the wall and react appropriately. There's no guarantee the survivors still have all their limbs and no debilitating brain damage.

And swerving... it's not that simple. Technology isn't a miracle, and what we're dealing with isn't something that you can just throw shiny new tech at, snap your fingers, and have everything be okay... or at least it won't be, if we don't start throwing tech at it before the problem becomes even more evident. There's a reason so bloody many people are worried about this stuff, and worried about doing something about it sooner than later. The wall's not in the middle of the road, it's slam flat across it and there's no guarantee swerving would do anything but make it a sideswipe instead of a head-on, or, at best, "merely" clip the wall and kill one of the rear passengers. All that assuming the driver actually starts reacting soon enough to swerve.

It's not really an issue of extinction. That's a very edge case, even with us actively aiming to bugger everything up. The bigger issue is that... Just denying the wall's there, or going "oh, we'll fix the problem when we get there," or "Well, we're tough. Humans'll make it." That? That's going to see a lot of people dead, and put a lot more into a much worse situation than they'd be in if the folks with the resources, power, and opportunity would stop dicking around and start enacting preventative measures now. "Only two percent of the population died" is not goddamn acceptable.

But hell, who knows. A lot of this crap is pascal's wager with actual fucking consequences. I would be entirely damn happy if a good couple hundred years from now, the folks downplaying or ignoring the issues related to climate we're dealing with could go and say, "Told you so! No big deal." Problem is, if the folks shouting the skulls off about this are in the same situation...? "I told you so" for them is a seriously sickening prospect. Don't want vindication. Want prevention.

I just... want to know, somehow. How do we tap the driver on the shoulder and go, "Hey, maybe you're being a little reckless?" And then get them to actually react to that. Not slow down a mile and then speed up five. Just... something, you know? What's the option here besides hope I'm dead before the driver puts us through concrete? If there's genuinely no hope of changing the driver's mind, I'd like to know so I can just stop caring sooner than later.

Gotta love 'em, though.


Seriously, you gotta. Else you get the beatings again.

"Let none say, on pain of death, that I am not a kind and loving dictator."