The year predicted for the glacier's collapse was an extrapolation based on data and models available at the time. While the timing was off, the thing is going away visibly for everyone!
In hindsight they shouldn't have set the date, but contrast the fast decline with the long existence. Maybe even let people guess or bet the exact year to involve them and make them think.
Taking it fucking seriously as a nation and implementing any of the possible externality capture models in earnest. That means a rapidly scaling(5 year) decline in oil subsidizes to zero, a rapidly scaling ban on fossil fuel power (10 year) and a rapidly scaling (10 years) deployment of a carbon tax credit system, and at least a 100x government research grants on carbon capture technology.
All of the above, in sufficient numbers, would achieve surefire results without taking absurd risks and massive gambles. All of it, and many other things, have been researched and talked about to death for years, rigor and scrutiny that geo engineering has not.
They haven’t been implemented because vested interests have billions of dollars to keep those changes from happening, and the public has not put their ballots behind it, leading to very unserious short term thinkers in positions of power. Change that, and we could easily afford to do this, we have the money and lack the willpower.
Frankly, I would've agreed with your opinion... Maybe 20-30 years ago?
I think it's clear that nothing will be done - and initiatives that end at a national level are meaningless from a climate perspective.
You should definitely still try to get your locality to do them, because they increase your quality of life by reducing local pollution... It climate change relevant? No.
15-20 years ago I would've said we need a more global approach to this, actual binding agreements - enforced globally through a body that has the ability to force the nations to actually adhere to them.
But now, in the last 5-10 years I've most certainly lost any kind of hope that such a initiate would not end being leveraged by someone like trump to sabotage others.
Honestly, I currently consider any climate change oriented political decisions to be irrelevant at best. It's gonna happen, so if you do something - do it for your local environment. If you try to signal with global warming I am forced to see you as at best a hopelessly naive person, as I was 30 years ago
About Wolf Tivy's idea of "xenohumanism": strip "humanity" of all ape-ish historical contingency and identify the convergent "true man" as sum of "human" capabilities like language, philosophy, sociality, intelligence, consciousness
The little ice age was between ~1300 and 1850. It's now nearly 200 years later and I don't think it unreasonable that, say, glaciers melt faster the smaller they get.
Once warming gets to a point we may not need desalination plants. The boil off from the ocean will perpetuate rainfall. Clean water for everyone. Never mind the 100+ mph winds that go along with that.
Why would a random thing in the world specifically target anything? Nature throws things against the wall and keeps what sticks.
Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedychrum_rutilans, a parasite on a parasite. Did it target beewolves specifically? And now its hosts are dying, was it his fault he chose the 'wrong' target?
Not the anthropocentricity is to criticise, but the idea of nature targeting. OP asked a well meaning question where sth. can be be learned from. Thank you.
The whole targeting phrasing mixes cause and effect. Evolution, as we currently understand it, is working differently: it is random effects and seeing what sticks, as you phrased, not targeting anything specifically.
The level of consciousness where the phrase targeting makes sense is way higher.
With utilitarian and anthropocentric world view you mean the 'target thinking' ascribing intention to nature, and not what is targeted, which are only incidentally humans here.
We hear a lot about LLMs lately, they solve reasoning, mimic empathy, and awaken consciousness miraculously. As long as we do not understand the workings of the mind and brain, it reminds me of the days when machine learning or Bitcoin were the cure for everything.
In hindsight they shouldn't have set the date, but contrast the fast decline with the long existence. Maybe even let people guess or bet the exact year to involve them and make them think.