Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
Targan
To give you an idea of how bad HW would be lets simulate it on Australia - now I could give you a long description of disasters - or you could just go watch the latest Mad Max movie to get a good idea of what would be left of civilization there given an HW/Kidnapped type scenario played out there where maybe 1/16 of the population is left or less
and yes I highly recommend that movie if you are an action junkie but I miss Mel
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I recall a thread probably a couple of years ago now where we talked about the devastating effects of literally a handful of ICBMs being targeted at Australia in the Twilight War. Because our major population centres and industrial areas are so geographically concentrated, Australia as a nation would pretty much cease to exist. I didn't like reading it, but the logic was inescapable. I think you'll find that acceptance of being the underdog runs strong in the Australian psyche. During WWII there were a couple of years there where we were staring down the barrel of a full-scale Japanese invasion and potential subjugation. Admittedly we never had to fight our colonial masters for our independence, but we've been living on the edge a long time.
Past episodes of climate change are a known fact, there's no disputing that, and human involvement in them was somewhere between miniscule and nil. What's happening to the climate now is mostly to do with CO2 levels in the atmosphere rising very quickly. We know how much carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere and where it's coming from, and we know how the greenhouse effect works. Human-induced global warming doesn't require your acceptance or belief to be true.
I find it simultaneously amusing and deeply concerning that some of the most vocal deniers of human-induced climate change come from North America, and North America during the last century and into this current century was one of the greatest contributors to increasing the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Having said that, on a per-capita basis Australians have been some of the worst contributors in recent times. Once again there are psychological factors at play for many Americans and Australians alike. It's easier to deny that we're the cause than taking responsibility, and to really meaningfully try to fix the problem we'd almost certainly have to dramatically hurt our industries and our lifestyles, with no guarantee that the up and coming major polluters like China and India will hold back at all.
Just finally, Howling Wilderness never explicitly states that the disrupted rainfall patterns over the US were permanent, or even long term. There's nothing stopping a GM having the rainfall patterns starting to normalize for the 2002 growing season.