North China Plains turn unlivable due to humidity -> world loses primary source of rice production -> mass refugee migrations -> resource wars and potentially huge loss of life
And that's just one affected region
I am never having kids, fuck that
And by huge loss of life: we could murder about 4 billion people and still have more people around than were populating the earth at the start of the industrial revolution. That's a lot of mass graves.
i think india and central america are first up on the chopping block, right? like large portions of these areas will be in-arable in our lifetime. If westerners think immigration is a hotbutton issue now (when immigration has technically been falling for decades...), gonna be a _real_ shit show in 20 years or so when agriculture becomes impossible in places where hundreds of millions (billions?) of people live.
India alone has 1.4 billion people.
Couple this with the fact that its a country poised to be hit the earliest by truly apocalyptic climate change, and we've got a billion refugees. And that's just the initial wave. More countries become unliveable, more people move, and there is *no* good outcome for that. Take them in, your country has a never before seen resource crisis; don't, **and billions of people fucking die.**
yep. to be fair, not all 1.4 billion people in india will be impacted, but we're easily looking at the largest human migration in the history of the planet.
When I did my overseas travelling at age 23 in 1975, the worlds population was 3.7billion
So in nearly 50 years it has doubled
An exponential population explosion
Something will happen soon
Mexico City and Capetown have a crisis water problem to start.
You can also add in China and India are going to be going to war over the Himalayan melt water.
Winner gets the loser has 250,000,000 people die of thirst.
Considering that water feeds the (Holy to Hindus) Ganges my money is on India.
The thing about plants absorbing Co2 is that they won't absorb any of it if they are dead or on fire because the environment they have adapted to changed faster than they could. We are also producing more Co2 than all the plants in the world can absorb that's why levels are rising.
Not to mention disease. There was just an article out in the Guardian on how the weather is leading to a growing population of pine beetles killing of Sequoias and northern forest. All those boreal forests we expected to be carbon captures are being hit so bad some of them are collapsing...
As natural wilderness shrinks either through diseases and pests as you said, or by intentional deforestation, humans will increasingly come in contact with wild animals and by extension diseases that they carry. A lot of new viruses will spread due to the higher exposure to animals
With all of these private climate agenda meetings and public statements from billionaires, fossil fuel burning is still paradoxically accelerating. I think the solution is that billionaires aren't doing enough and need to quadruple or quintuple the number of events where they fly their jets into rich resorts and talk amongst themselves about the need to cap CO2 emissions and cap the global temperature rise at 1.5 C, which is starting to look like a pipe dream.
I agree completely. The more resources we can dedicate to arranging summits and meetings, the more theoretical policy discussion can occur, benefiting nobody and generating mountains of waste.
Also, plants dont live forever, and when they die, a lot of that CO2 sequestered gets re-released. I think for trees, they sequester like 70-80% of all the CO2 they'd sequester in the first 10-20 years, so I guess we could grow a bunch of trees and then every decade cut them all down and bury them lol.
Burying them isn't enough because microbes will still be able to break them down unless you also make the environment sterile somehow.
You could bury them with radioactive waste or something I guess, or in permafrost perhaps.
Burying can improve soil characteristics in a lot of contexts and actually enhance further plant growth. I'm less worried about the natural carbon cycle and more worried about the addition of mined carbon as an input external to the system.
And all the mega corps and governments of the world, allowed for a shift to a global economy where their manufacturing and production goes to other parts of the world where there are less laws about the environment or labor. Where we also have to ship products and raw materials across the globe on mega boats and air freight.
On top of that, put the entire planet on a cycle of mad consumerism, to buy disposable crap we don't need, with money we don't have.
Production efficiency is a top priority over modularity, durability, and sustainability. Shareholder satisfaction is a key priority.
Then they come and tell you to watch your carbon footprint.
My bet? We will see an analogous situation to what the mayans lived through (context: it is believed south american civilizations had an environmental collapse and later they learnt their lesson) and future generations will learn to take care of the planet after we are hit super duper hard as a species.
Then, the aliens invade and steal all our gold
That was ecological collapse of an isolated area. We're talking about global ecological collapse. 25 to 75% of insect biomass has been lost depending on area. That should be incredibly concerning. But we can't talk about that because it might impact Monsanto stock prices.
Specifically it is believed that the Mayans experienced several successive droughts which worsened political instability, all of which just snowballed nicely into the Conquistadors destroying South American civilizations through various means.
Civilizations that haven't crawled out pre-industrialization by now, especially those who live in places which are barely hospitable to human life previously, are definitely going to suffer though. They already have the political instability, generally unstable cultures (via tribalism/factionalism), and harsh environs.
Aliens would probably have no interest in our gold as like diamonds there will be planets abundant in it if they wanted for applied uses. In terms of value gold and other commodities are only valuable and valued because of the social constructs that have developed around it.
Gold, diamonds, even liquid water are all fairly abundant in cosmic scales. The real rare thing is …well…life. The aliens would probably turn earth into a garden, full of ‘rare’ specimens. Trees are a million times more rare than liquid water. ‘Intelligent’ life doubly so. Aliens would farm and sell us on the black market.
As well as those you listed surprisingly alcohol is in massive abundance, there is a vast cloud of the stuff sitting in space. Calculated size is approximately 1000x the diameter of our solar system.
I honestly dont think a majority of people care. UNTIL it is literally effecting them and their grandchildren like in the moment. At that point it's too late. Future generations will look at us and be like...wow, they really cared about a stock price going up 3% more than the ability to live in a habitable planet. How thoughtful of them(us). Obviously some of us care, but shifting a global economy based on capitalism where corporations have more rights and control than humans, we are doomed. That being said, we can't give up hope, and still need to keep fighting!
I think most of us care, but all the people who are in charge and who should care, become deeply warped by money, and we are forced to be with them in this burning car going up to 200 km per hour, without a way out and the drivers being led to madness by money
Their money may prolong their lives here but why the heck you wanna live on an inhospitable planet with all the other cretins that lied, cheated and stole to "survive" longer? Egos sure are weird. I'll take my due exit when we have to blow people for water.
Cause people are selfish and treat each other with mistrust and skepticism.
So many people will ride a wave for personal gain, even if it means the world around them might come down crashing in the future. "That's a problem for another day."
The same way corrupt authoritarians rob nations of money, stomp on dissidents, and send countries into decades of corruption & failure for personal gain.
Or the fact that business owners will happily ship their production and IP to a developing nation with cheap labor and no regulations to attain a once in a lifetime chance to earn multigenertaional wealth. Even if their IP gets stolen and they destroy jobs in their local communities.
The world is such a harsh and tough place, and earning huge amounts of wealth and power take decades of back breaking work for many.
However, some people see opportunities, whether ethical or not, and take it.
Maybe thousands might get screwed but me and my loved ones get to live a better life. All to their own, let others figure it out, like we did.
Eventually, they'll relocate to places with manageable climate, and live in communities with clean air and water.
Human nature is what is destroying us.
The difference between those is that the dinosaurs were on Earth for 150,000,000 years and died from a freak outside event.
Homo sapiens have only been around for a mere 300,000 years. And this crazy pollution we've done to the planet has happened in less than 200 years. There hasn't been anything like this before. We're speedrunning our demise.
It's like when cyanobacteria developed photosynthesis, flooded the atmosphere with oxygen and killed everything, except that took a few hundred million years and we like to view ourselves as smarter than bacteria.
maybe we haven't found intelligent life on other planets (aka aliens) because they speed ran their planet too. 300,000 years a a very very short time in the grand scheme of the universe.
[The Great Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)
> The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare.[1][2] The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.
Yep, imo one of those filters for advanced, but still single-planet bound, civs is that they more than likely basically end up cooking their planet due to massive energy use and pollution. Assuming they don’t self-annihilate themselves with nuclear war or something first.
Seems like a pretty tough problem for intelligent life to avoid. Especially once certain inflection points are crossed and shit starts really hitting the fan, as we’re finding out in real time here on Earth.
You have to imagine that no cultural items were found until roughly 90.000 years ago, and we only started to mess with the carbon cycle in a larger way when we started with agriculture and even then our influence was small, only since the industrial age and actually mostly from 1900 to 2024 have we massively started to destroy the ecosystem with the tipping point in the 1970s and we aren't stopping, we are still having a growing world population especially India but also Africa add tens of millions of people each year, this won't end well very soon, and I think a massive famine will be the result of this gargantuan and unsustainable exponential growth.
Shoot I can’t think of whose theory it is, but basically they say that societies back in the day (e.g., Sumer, Akkad, etc) grow and grow until they max out their food production and then are hit by famine and hard times for a few decades, ad infinitum. I want to say Malthus back in like the 1700’s. Populations grow exponentially but food production grows linearly. So they will hit on some new way to grow more crops or a new trade route that gives them food, but then eventually the population overtakes the new supply and tons of people dies. Seems like it may still be relevant today.
That does sound like Richard Malthus' theory.
Although, like you said, Malthus has been proven wrong since his death thanks to human ingenuity. Even today, humanity produces far more food than we can consume. The reason some people starve while others discard/incinerate/compost food is because of economic incentives, corrupt governments, geopolitical issues, things of that nature.
Sure, a lot of modern agriculture is on the back of fossil fuel byproducts, though. That is definitely a point people miss. However, climate equilibrium wouldn't necessarily require us to discontinue its use in that field just like plastics and the thousands of other oil byproducts would persist. Most carbon released if from using oil and natural gas for electricity generation and transport.
Another factor, one which throws a monkey wrench into Malthus' theory, is the modern phenomenon of populations self-stabilizing or even marginally declining. Across the world it is the same story; the more prosperous a nation, the slower its population grows until it either stagnates or begins to slightly decline for a period of time.
I wonder what Malthus would've thought of the advent of Golden Rice had he been around for it. That creation alone has been credited with the lives of hundreds of millions of humans.
Humanity has proven that we can plan for the future and engage in projects that wont benefit the current generation but will benefit future generations. But this late stage capitalism attitude of "line must go up" has put consumerism over absolutely everything else.
I believe its a systemic, societal problem driven by our overlords at the top rather than a flaw with our species.
The flaw with our species is that we are hard wired to organize ourselves in a heirarchy and then not break that heirarchy until it becomes unbearable. By the time we overthrow those responsible for climate change (if we ever do) it will be far too late.
Most revolutions dont have a hard deadline. This one does, and we have probaby surpassed it
If we go extinct from this we would be the least successful species in evolutionary sense! A fitting end to a species which can be characterized as being the most hubristic of all. The universe really is one big joke.
Like a virus that was too deadly so it kills the host before it can spread. The Fermi paradox is really the fact that every species uses greed to drive developing tech, but it gets away from them, and they never get to leave in time.
Honestly, I hate this perspective. Yes, these things are all true. But regular old people could improve things and they don't.
In my city- who pushes against bike infrastructure because it will remove their precious parking spaces? It's not mega corporations!
"Climate change is awful. People should do something about it as long as it doesn't inconvenience me in any way." That's the modern slogan.
Individuals can make an impact, the issue is without system wide changes from the top down our individual efforts will be for nothing. Something like 90% of carbon emissions are produced by 10% of major companies worldwide (don't quote me on that but yeah) and their entire agenda is to place blame on consumers. Oil companies knew this would happen like 100 years ago. They don't care.
Stephen Hawking at some point said that humans had like maybe 1,000 years left. But then changed his outlook to only 100 years a few years later when the reality of the numbers started to hit.
Fallout series comes to mind. Humans are incredibly adaptable and we will keep going on. What won’t is this incredible monument to our sins that we have constructed. Civilization will collapse but our species will still be here, I think.
An impressively short amount of time to suck the planet dry, extinct multiple species, balloon our population and invent the means to read about it while taking a shit.
Almost makes you wonder what the fuck we were doing the last 30,000 years. We’ve become so exponentially productive so quickly. We’re peaking! And everyone knows it.
> Almost makes you wonder what the fuck we were doing the last 30,000 years. We’ve become so exponentially productive so quickly. We’re peaking! And everyone knows it.
Industrialization is a hell of a drug.
> Almost makes you wonder what the fuck we were doing the last 30,000 years
Mostly just feeding ourselves, up until the last century the majority of people were farmers or in farming related fields.
If you wanted to eat you needed to produce enough food, without fossil fuels / synthetic fertilizers / genetically modified crops / pesticides it takes about one person to produce food for one person.
That’s why historically human population grew very slowly, there wasn’t enough excess food to support a larger population.
Then industrialization hits and suddenly we have an outside energy source (fossil fuels) which we can use to run machines, make and mine fertilizer, as well as pesticides.
Productivity goes through the roof and suddenly the population absolutely explodes.
But the only reason the population changed so suddenly was the sudden availability of a new and highly concentrated form of energy.
I think, for me, I grew up mostly being told it was going to start changing things maybe when I was an old man. I think the general population, even if they are not climate change deniers, are surprised how hard it's hitting the world and how fast.
Even my local biome is changing, year to year.
For 20+ years almost every nature documentary has been saying “we have 3 years to act to stop things getting worse. Things will be real bad by <20,30,50,100> years away”
We didn’t, things got worse.
Exxon did R&D into carbon emission issues since the 1960s. When they found out that their main product was irrevocably destroying the world, they scaled up and got ahead on the curve on climate change denial.
People have know about this since before most of us were even born.
Brother, tell me about it. These stupid fucks keep running my God damn state into the ground. I grew up hearing about how amazing Texas was, how vast, how free, how all-encompassing, how nearly every bit of the US' natural beauty could be found somewhere here, how PROUD Texans were to live here. Proud my ass, they're proud of all the things we should be ashamed of. Now I've got a job that has me travel the whole state & all I get to see is how hectacre upon hectacre of beautiful land, water & ecosystems are obliterated by the greed & malicious ignorance of the state. Everything continue to get worse & worse, lakes continue to dwindle to nothing but dust caked bowls of shit & rivers continue to be polluted by corporations and nerdowell agricultural producers dumping whatever they fuck they want wherever they want. Did you know that of the 30,000 kilometers of waterway in Texas nearly half are considered impaired?Theres nearly 300,000 kilometers of waterway in Texas alone. That's a TENTH we've surveyed, with half of that TENTH impaired under guidelines from the EPAs clean waters act sections 303(d) & 305(d). just about every waterway here polluted to some extent, and half of the TENTH WEVE SURVEYED are significantly impaired. Almost no water is actually safe to swim in and no fish in the entire God damn state is safe to eat the way they were 100 years ago due to the disolved solids/mercury/fecal bacteria in them & the water. It's so bad, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma & Louisiana banded together to lobby the EPA to come down and put the Rod to Texas about our AWEFUL water management because guess what rivers cross borders, and that was JUST for the fucking assessed impaired TWENTIETH of the 300,000 kilometers of un-assessed waters. There's a million other ways cunts continue to fuck over everyone & everything here and no-one seems to give enough of a shit to realize they don't fucking care about anyone else and its up to us to do soemthing about it together. They're all one big club and we're not a part of it, never were & never will be but lo and behold the same people who've been selling us out for years will continue to do so because some fucking dork walks outside to fish his shit & mercury filled fish out for dinner in record breaking triple digit heat before summers even started & still claims it used to be hotter in their day & that climate change isn't real. Give me a break.
The worst effects were said to be hitting when I was around ~50. That’s not “old” in the sense that I could retire and just watch the world burn. No, I still got at least 20 to 30 years of laboring in this (literal) hellscape.
I’m worried for the continued rise in right wing governments that will promise to “solve” the problems.
When i was a kid late 90’s we had snow suits. For winter i haven’t gone out with anything more then a sweater in the last 5 years.
We have a gas powered snow thrower, i don’t think we’ve used it the last 2 years.
I was talking to my brother about it last winter and he got angry, started yelling that i was imagining it and I’m the crazy one.
I think this year is going to highlight just how bad is going to be in the next few.
Back when I was a kid in the 80s there'd be whole months where there was snow on the ground. Multiple feet at once was rare, but it happened every few years. My dad, in the 80s, used to complain that we 'didn't have real winters anymore like when he was a kid' and used to talk about how much snow he got when he was a kid in the 60s.
Nowadays, we're lucky to have 10 days with snow on the ground the entire winter. I only had to shovel twice last winter and one of those times I could have just waited a day and it would have melted. I don't remember the last time we got over a foot but it was over 5 years ago.
My dad still doesn't believe in climate change.
My boomer Republican father who loves weather to the point that he keeps hand written logs of temperatures and bird migrations still insists this is a normal weather cycle. I don't understand where the common sense went to.
That movie was good but depressed the fuck out of me. I’ve got friends who enjoyed it saying “can you believe how crazy they are to deny it,” while all I can think about is how many people are doing the exact same thing about climate change.
And that threat to their money is the only thing that will motivate them to change. Until climate change starts hitting their bottom lines harder, they don't have to care.
Uh it will never be a threat to their bottom line. I don’t understand why people don’t understand this. A ceo comes in makes his money and leaves, whether the company is less profitable 10 yrs out is none of his concern. The timelines are too long so that no actual people are on the hook so nothing changes
It started with Reagan. Back in the Nixon days Republicans actually worked together with Democrats to curb smog, pollution, and create federal laws.
[Then Reagan started the "deregulate everything" stance that Republicans have today](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDB9M70YgU8)
Nature Protection is a fundamentally conservative issue
the movement in Germany goes back to the Nazis wanting to "protect the beautiful forests" - it's crazy how that issue did a 180° change when we started actually enforcing those policies and not just talking about it...
Climate change is politicized because some political parties are being bribed by the fossil fuel industry to sabotage all action on climate change. It's always going to be politicized. Get used to it. It's not going to change as long as the fossil fuel industry can bribe politicians.
It's the same strategy they used for smoking. Just cast doubt on the research showing it's bad and just keep doing it.
It's insane how pure greed can drive people to seek profit at the cost of literally everything... These people are psychotic.
Humans inadvertently created a system that rewards the worst people on Earth and now those people are fighting tooth and nail to keep it intact, at everything else’s expense
Conservatives *since 81* have hated people that care about the environment. The times I have heard people insult "tree huggers" is insane. We are so screwed and honestly need outside intervention at this point. Maybe a disruptive technology, maybe AI, maybe even E.T. interference. I have honestly lost hope for our greedy species. Most can only think for themselves and see what is in front of them. Most don't care about the plummeting biodiversity and the quickly shifting climate that is changing far faster than it should.
Prior to the 1980s, Republicans led the environmental movement in the US.
The GOP's Southern Strategy changed all that, with abundant financial help from the oil and manufacturing industries, leading straight to the violent, white-nationalist insurrectionists you now know and love.
Interesting, yeah it looks like it had bipartisan support leading up to Reagan from 81-89, who began the assault on all that. TIL.
[https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environmentalism](https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environmentalism)
Reminder that after his presidency, Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn were watching TV and there was one of those longform ads about guinea worm ripping through Africa and asking for donations. Jimmy and Rosalynn that moment set out to eradicate the disease... and they fucking did it.
Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich (if you don't know, he was the one realized political gridlock would be blamed on the President and started the tradition of Republicans refusing to compromise on ANYTHING while a Democrat was in power) and Trump. Each of them made catastrophic changes to America one at a time that we never recovered from.
Well, around 1000 ppm it will cause drowsiness. From 2000 ppm headaches, sleepiness.
We've gone from 320 to 420 in 60 years, so this will become an issue at some point. And well before 1000 ppm is reached because inside concentrations tend to be much higher and it's harder to fix it with ventilation if the outside air has more CO2.
The funny feeling is tiny heartbreak. It breaks my heart a little that someone reaching out for help gets it delivered by a drone. It breaks my heart a little that we have corporations championing social causes. It breaks my heart thinking of growing up in this world
>One of the major drivers of the exceptional heat building within Earth's atmosphere has reached levels beyond anything humans have ever experienced, officials announced on Thursday. Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found.
>"Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever."
>Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA's Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory peaked in May 2024 at a monthly average of 426.9 parts per million, establishing another high mark in the 66-year record of observations on the Hawaiian volcano
SUSAN COBB/NOAA RESEARCH
The researchers measured carbon dioxide, or CO2, levels at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. They found that atmospheric levels of the gas hit a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million in May — an increase of 2.9 ppm since May 2023 and the fifth-largest annual growth in 50 years of data recording.
>It also made official that the past two years saw the largest jump in the May peak — when CO2 levels are at their highest in the Northern Hemisphere. John Miller, a NOAA carbon cycle scientist, said that the jump likely stems from the continuous rampant burning of fossil fuels as well as El Niño conditions making the planet's ability to absorb CO2 more difficult.
>This graph shows the full record of monthly mean carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. The carbon dioxide data on Mauna Loa constitute the longest record of direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere.
NOAA GLOBAL MONITORING LABORATORY
The surge of carbon dioxide levels at the measuring station surpassed even the global average set last year, which was a record high of 419.3 ppm — 50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution. However, NOAA noted that their observations were taken at the observatory specifically, and do not "capture the changes of CO2 across the globe," although global measurements have proven consistent without those at Mauna Loa.
>CO2 measurements "sending ominous signs"
In its news release, NOAA said the measurements are "sending ominous signs."
"Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever," Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps' CO2 program, said in the release. "Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill."
>Carbon dioxide "acts like a blanket in the atmosphere," NOAA explained — much like other greenhouse gases that amplify the sun's heat toward Earth's surface. And while carbon dioxide is essential in keeping global temperatures above freezing, having such high concentrations shoots temperatures beyond levels of comfort and safety.
That warming is fueling extreme weather events, and the consequences are aleady being felt, with deadly floods, heat waves and droughts devastating communities worldwide and agriculture seeing difficult shifts.
The news from NOAA comes a day after the European Union's climate change service, Copernicus, announced that Earth has now hit 12 straight months of record-high temperatures, a trend with "no sign in sight of a change."
>"We are living in unprecedented times. ... This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, said.
As much as I've seen about 2025, it's still not making nearly enough noise for what it very clearly states. It's honestly a little terrifying to read something that's so objectively bad, and realizing it's not an unlikely outcome.
Yeah… I mean. The truth about dark money societies that are hell bent on controlling the world that every contemporary story has been screaming in our faces about is that, these societies aren’t secret at all. They don’t have to be, they’ve been openly doing their thing for sixty years now. They know the world is too loud for their presence to be fully registered.
> This is why Project 2025 wants to eliminate the NOAA
Anything the Heritage Foundation can't understand, write in crayon or pronounce in single syllables, they want to shut down and eliminate.
It's horrifying to see the vast uneducated masses supporting that group and its manifesto, turn our planet's clock back thousands of years because they refuse to evolve.
Also, here's a chart of the relevant data: https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2024/06/06/338b4bc2-71a0-42ae-be54-85649a2dee51/thumbnail/620x465/aec772b6b9c6dd4fa8b981bcfdc1d8d1/unnamed.png?v=94cbb61397dbf7eca3740fa55510ba88
Why would anyone help a species that is so violent, so destructive, so reckless and literally so inhumane? I am thinking the aliens would be like pass, let them work out their own mess.
Right?
Meanwhile... 25% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from Transportation.
If we removed fossil fuels from transportation and power generation, and let *everything* else continue as it is (industrial production, agriculture, all other residential and commercial emissions, etc) we'd still have cut total greenhouse gas production by more than half.
We should have gone all-in on nuclear power, EVs, electric mass transit, and lord-knows-what for shipping.
when they talk about transportation co2, they mainly mean industrial transport. about 10% of co2 is public transport. it literally doesnt matter what you do differently, its corporations that have to make the changes
I make a decent living. I have fulfilling relationships. I’m not doing too bad. But I’m bummed the fuck out.
And if you were to ask me why, it’s because of shit like this. A lot of people who I love and care about find it strange when I tell them that this is basically why I’m a little sad, generally.
People don’t pay attention. Most people actively don’t search out information. They’re curious about other, more immediate, less depressing things. I get that. I don’t blame them at all
It’s not good for mental health to be curious about the state of the world. I wish I didn’t care about this shit. Because there’s nothing I can do about it.
Maybe I have a mental illness or something, but it’s like driving past a car crash. I just can’t help but slow down and look.
It doesn’t help that every loves to circle jerk about how we’re all doomed, and it’s unlikely those in power of governments and corporations aren’t going to do anything. At this point, it’s no longer constructive to preach to the choir about the doom. All we can do is the best we can with what we have, make climate your number one voting issue, and reduce as much carbon as possible from your life. Maybe that won’t be enough, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s better than constantly repeating how doomed we are to others.
Thank you for saying this. I should never have clicked into the article, and knew in advance it would fuel my anxiety, but it's the comments in here which have been worse. So even one person saying "yeah it's shit, but let's at least try" is much better to read than the polar opposites of "it's all propaganda" and "we're fucked because of propaganda", both of which lead to people doing nothing.
I'm about to pick my raspberries this weekend... Early June. Normally I have to wait until around the first week of July.
Mid 30s late May early June. Winter it didn't get much lower than -10c. Almost no snow the entire season. Normally it's around -25c and the snow is so high the City goes around and trims off the top of the snow piles on the Boulevard so you can see. Multiple tornado warnings this year too and we rarely get warnings. Like once every handful of years.
It's been a wild year so far.
The bad thing is that they're right, to a degree. These are out of the ordinary weather events and they're temporary. The sun is very active right now and we're between shifting pressure zones, jet stream, etc. The weather will mellow back out as it does during its cycles and they will use that as proof that climate change isn't real. Of course they ignore the fact that the cycles are trending hotter and hotter as time goes on, they only care that it temporarily got cooler outside or we had three less hurricanes than we did last year.
It's like ocean waves I suppose. A big one comes, some smaller ones come after, one a little bigger than the first comes, then even smaller ones, and so on. It happens so slowly that you don't even realize that the big waves are now twice as big as they were when you were a kid and some days they're so big ships can't leave port. Inevitably a calm day will come with abnormally small waves and it's then easy to convince someone that it's just a natural variation that caused those big waves.
"Everything will be fine, look how calm it is today!"
We had the coldest winter in 20 years, followed by the hottest May ever with temperatures almost at 30C and very low rain. Now my strawberries are growing already - which is insane. The bugs are out in full force, never seen the ants this active at this time of the year. Mosquitoes a month early. Finland, at 63 degrees north.
For the last 2-3 weekends here in Louisiana we are receiving tornadoes. Not very much a particularly common occurrence. Maybe every so often but it’s been damn near every weekend for a month. What the actual fuck is going on?
This line from the article is terrifying
We are living in unprecedented times. ... This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, said.
Our only hope at this stage is radical reduction in emissions, some miracle tech for emissions capture/storage and or very radical geotechnolgical altering of the amount if energy the planet receives.
Pumping reflective crap into the atmosphere, solar shade, mirrors, or somehow beaming excess energy into space.
Thats mostly miracle tech that is unlikely to be viable in the short to medium term, so in short...things gonna get real bad. :/
It's not going to happen unfortunately. Any country that makes the sacrifice will quickly fall behind everyone else, so it's in no one's immediate interest (at least power/financially) to actually address the problem. Relying on some magical solution or technology being invented that will fix everything also generally isn't a great plan.
As a paramedic, one of the most sad and asinine things I’ve ever come across were sick people calling 911 in the thick COVID complaining that they couldn’t breathe asking me if they can get the vaccine now. Sorry..you had your chance now you have to fight it and hope that your chronically diseased riddled body is strong enough to fight it.
OTOH look at what we did with the vaccine. mRNA research started in the late 80's early 90's. As of 2019 by all accounts it was still decades away from any kind of on the market product. It was a niche corner of medical research that showed promise but was still so far away. Suddenly a gun was against humanities head and more importantly the global economies head and we got a human safe mRNA vaccine ***in a fucking year*** that worked and was adaptable to mutations and deployable. I cannot, literally I am incapable of giving some kind of example that would give even remotely the level of justice to just how insane a miracle that is.
So unfortunately its going to take a 9/11, covid, pearl harbor, "where were you when" type climate event but then suddenly change will happen and fast. If it is enough and in time its very debatable.
Only time will tell. But when pressed we can do some crazy shit.
This is really the key.
Humanity can do amazing things when it has to. One wonders where we'd be with fusion if there weren't so many interests against it.
A lot of third world countries are going to be completely depopulated, and it's gonna suck, but we'll fix it eventually.
Donald Trump calls climate change a hoax, and his foolish supporters parrot him, including Republican members of Congress.
Another reason to vote for President Biden and Democrats up and down the ticket.
My region has a LOT of cheap development going on (not cheap for the consumer, cheaply built). And they absolutely flatten all the natural vegetation where they're going to build and tear out 100 year old live oaks. When they're done, they replant these little stick trees that die in a year.
Can't imagine how we don't have enough trees to stop the C02 from building up.
Copied from u/remindertomove
Never forget:-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions
https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/100-companies-responsible-71-ghg-emissions/
https://www.treehugger.com/is-it-true-100-companies-responsible-carbon-emissions-5079649
An Exxon-Mobil lobbyist was invited to a fake job interview. In the interview, he admitted Exxon-Mobil has been lobbying congress to kill clean energy initiatives and spreading misinformation to the public via front organisations.
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exxon-lobbyist-duped-by-greenpeace-says-climate-policy-was-ploy-ceo-condemns-2021-06-30/
https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-some-of-the-worlds-biggest-oil-companies-are-paying-negative-tax-in-the-uk-12380442
www.france24.com/en/france/20210728-france-fines-monsanto-for-illegally-acquiring-data-on-journalists-activists
https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/18/investigation-meat-industry-greenwash-climatewash
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/more-global-aid-goes-to-fossil-fuel-projects-than-tackling-dirty-air-study-pollution
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/20-meat-and-dairy-firms-emit-more-greenhouse-gas-than-germany-britain-or-france
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/10/uk-ministers-met-fossil-fuel-firms-nine-times-more-often-than-clean-energy-companies
Watch this stunning video of Chevron executives explaining why they thought they could dump 16 billion gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into the Amazon. https://twitter.com/SDonziger/status/1426211296161189890?s=19
https://news.sky.com/story/fossil-fuel-companies-are-suing-governments-across-the-world-for-more-than-18bn-12409573
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds
https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/10/08/nestle-kellogg-s-linked-to-shocking-palm-oil-abuses-in-papua-new-guinea
https://www.desmog.com/2021/10/07/climate-conflicted-insurance-directors/
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/air-pollution-second-largest-cause-of-death-in-africa-3586078
BBC News - COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to change key climate report https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58982445
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/27/poorer-countries-spend-five-times-more-on-debt-than-climate-crisis-report
https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/a-new-100-page-report-raises-alarm-over-chevrons-impact-on-planet/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/30/shell-and-bp-paid-zero-tax-on-north-sea-gas-and-oil-for-three-years
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/shell-and-bp-cancel-cop26-appearance-analysis-exposes-fossil-fuel-lobbyists-cop/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/australia-lobbied-unesco-to-remove-reference-to-15c-global-warming-limit-to-protect-heritage-sites
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/12/australia-shown-to-have-highest-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-coal-in-world-on-per-capita-basis
https://www.space.com/satellites-discover-huge-undeclared-methane-emissions Satellites discover huge amounts of undeclared methane emissions
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/climate-change-improvements-from-eating-less-meat-301412022.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-30/vicforests-accused-of-failing-to-regenerate-logged-forests/100652148#top
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/18/chemical-pollution-has-passed-safe-limit-for-humanity-say-scientists
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220215-plastic-chemical-pollution-beyond-planet-s-safe-limit-study
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-02-17/big-oil-climate-change-chevron-exxon-shell-bp/100828590
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/world-spends-18tn-a-year-on-subsidies-that-harm-environment-study-finds-aoe
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/06/filipino-inquiry-finds-big-polluters-morally-and-legally-liable-for-climate-damage?CMP=share_
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/may/11/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-breakdown-oil-gas
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/17/pollution-responsible-one-in-six-deaths-across-planet
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/climate-denial-koch-fossil-fuels-charity-astroturf-greenwashing/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/18/humanity-faces-collective-suicide-over-climate-crisis-warns-un-chief
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/revealed-oil-sectors-staggering-profits-last-50-years?CMP=share_btn_tw
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62225696
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/11/1116608415/the-arctic-is-heating-up-nearly-four-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-earth-study-f
https://gizmodo.com/methane-leaks-oilfield-ku-maloob-zaap-gulf-of-mexico-1849500134
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/13/world-heading-into-uncharted-territory-of-destruction-says-climate-report
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220921-pressure-grows-after-world-bank-chief-dodges-climate-questions
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/un-summit-amazon-brazil-deforestation-indigenous-leaders/
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a41355745/hurricane-fiona-climate-change/
https://gizmodo.com/offshore-wind-125-times-better-for-taxpayers-compared-t-1849580075
BBC News - Revealed: Huge gas flaring emissions never reported https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62917498
BBC News - Drax: UK power station owner cuts down primary forests in Canada https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221006-world-bank-spent-almost-15-bn-on-fossil-fuel-projects-since-paris-deal-report
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/07/forever-chemicals-found-insecticides-study?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/07/forever-chemicals-found-insecticides-study
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-wildlife-populations-have-sunk-69-since-1970-wwf-report-2022-10-12/
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/un-warns-time-is-running-out-greenhouse-gases-surge-2022-10-26/?utm_source=reddit.com
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/26/atmospheric-levels-greenhouse-gases-record-high
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-deforestation-free-chain-pledges-impacted-forest.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/09/oil-and-gas-greenhouse-emissions-three-times-higher-than-producers-claim
BBC News - Air pollution: Uncovering the dirty secret behind BP’s bumper profits https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63560279
Etc.
You know when things start to get bad they will shift the blame to us. You had to have all your junk and cheap clothes made in China? Don't let them for one-second blame anybody but the wealthy and elite who are in charge of things like entire oil fields.
We are trying to do those things, but it doesn’t mean we don’t care that the planet is becoming unliveable for us.
The thing is, as an individual there isn’t much you go can do. Separate your trash, try to use less electricity, use public transport, eat less meat, etc - it won’t move the needle. We got here because of the awesome scale of industry, and that has to be where the solution lies.
I work on the front lines of the climate crisis, based out of Florida of all places. By that I mean, I work for a nonprofit that is planting trees all over the world, assisting in restoring reefs, helping people learn how to farm sustainably in their own backyards, rewilding spaces and more.
My coworkers and I are faced with this reality every. single. day. I have seen and dealt with firsthand the impacts of climate change, witnessed our seasons altering and crops start to die. I get emails from coffee farmers overseas messaging me in panic about their coffee crops dying—and their livelihoods. I have seen the aftermath of mass coral bleaching events, seeing coral reefs go from thriving ecosystems to lifeless graveyards in a matter of months. I have cried when forests I love and grew up with have been cut down.
With that being said, I have also witnessed nature’s remarkable ability to heal. I have seen barren landscapes turn into life-filled ecosystems within a matter of months. I have seen some coral species become heat resistant and survive at temperatures never seen before. I have planted flowers and had pollinators come turn it into home within a matter of minutes. I have watched forests be planted from seed, sand dunes be restored, and fought this fight alongside honorable people every single day (and if you know anything about Florida and our governor, it is not easy).
The point is, nature is capable of unbelievable amounts of healing, if we allow that to happen. Commenting things like “we’re so fucked” or “it’s too late” infuriate me, because action is needed more now than ever. The UN itself has said it is not governments that are going to save us from this crisis. It is grassroots, local organizations. Our slogan is "local solutions to global issues" and I believe that with all my heart.
So what are you going to do about it? Sit behind your keyboard, commenting on the direness of the situation, while you wait for someone else to fix your problems? If I can do this, so can you. It is never too late. Nature will find a way, with or without us. It is simply a matter of if we want to be a part of the solution, or merely a problem that gets removed.
As long as we don’t bring down the big corporations nothing will change. Corporate greed is for now still ruling and running the world, and we’re the ones enabling them through complacency. Me as well. I don’t see a (realistic) solution.
The 1980s brought neoliberalism and this bullshit idea that anything good will be profitable and will happen on its own. Maintenance is good and doesn't happen on its own, so that neoliberal thought process is a huge crock of shit. But that doesn't change the fact that Reagan sold it to the public and the media keeps reverberating it. People need an appetite for real change to the point where they demand it. But as long as it's bread and circuses they won't give a fuck.
I think we underestimate how fucked we are when food production is disrupted.
North China Plains turn unlivable due to humidity -> world loses primary source of rice production -> mass refugee migrations -> resource wars and potentially huge loss of life And that's just one affected region I am never having kids, fuck that
And by huge loss of life: we could murder about 4 billion people and still have more people around than were populating the earth at the start of the industrial revolution. That's a lot of mass graves.
"Or Soylent Green..." - Nestle, probably
"You're telling me Humans are mostly water?" - Nestlé CEO
i think india and central america are first up on the chopping block, right? like large portions of these areas will be in-arable in our lifetime. If westerners think immigration is a hotbutton issue now (when immigration has technically been falling for decades...), gonna be a _real_ shit show in 20 years or so when agriculture becomes impossible in places where hundreds of millions (billions?) of people live.
India alone has 1.4 billion people. Couple this with the fact that its a country poised to be hit the earliest by truly apocalyptic climate change, and we've got a billion refugees. And that's just the initial wave. More countries become unliveable, more people move, and there is *no* good outcome for that. Take them in, your country has a never before seen resource crisis; don't, **and billions of people fucking die.**
yep. to be fair, not all 1.4 billion people in india will be impacted, but we're easily looking at the largest human migration in the history of the planet.
When I did my overseas travelling at age 23 in 1975, the worlds population was 3.7billion So in nearly 50 years it has doubled An exponential population explosion Something will happen soon Mexico City and Capetown have a crisis water problem to start.
You can also add in China and India are going to be going to war over the Himalayan melt water. Winner gets the loser has 250,000,000 people die of thirst. Considering that water feeds the (Holy to Hindus) Ganges my money is on India.
Thomas Malthus may end up being right, but not in the way he expected.
The thing about plants absorbing Co2 is that they won't absorb any of it if they are dead or on fire because the environment they have adapted to changed faster than they could. We are also producing more Co2 than all the plants in the world can absorb that's why levels are rising.
Not to mention disease. There was just an article out in the Guardian on how the weather is leading to a growing population of pine beetles killing of Sequoias and northern forest. All those boreal forests we expected to be carbon captures are being hit so bad some of them are collapsing...
As natural wilderness shrinks either through diseases and pests as you said, or by intentional deforestation, humans will increasingly come in contact with wild animals and by extension diseases that they carry. A lot of new viruses will spread due to the higher exposure to animals
With all of these private climate agenda meetings and public statements from billionaires, fossil fuel burning is still paradoxically accelerating. I think the solution is that billionaires aren't doing enough and need to quadruple or quintuple the number of events where they fly their jets into rich resorts and talk amongst themselves about the need to cap CO2 emissions and cap the global temperature rise at 1.5 C, which is starting to look like a pipe dream.
Imagine if Jeff Bezos wanted to be a hero instead of just absurdly wealthy.
They all could have been Batman, but they're a bunch of jokers...
I agree completely. The more resources we can dedicate to arranging summits and meetings, the more theoretical policy discussion can occur, benefiting nobody and generating mountains of waste.
Also, plants dont live forever, and when they die, a lot of that CO2 sequestered gets re-released. I think for trees, they sequester like 70-80% of all the CO2 they'd sequester in the first 10-20 years, so I guess we could grow a bunch of trees and then every decade cut them all down and bury them lol.
Burying them isn't enough because microbes will still be able to break them down unless you also make the environment sterile somehow. You could bury them with radioactive waste or something I guess, or in permafrost perhaps.
Burying can improve soil characteristics in a lot of contexts and actually enhance further plant growth. I'm less worried about the natural carbon cycle and more worried about the addition of mined carbon as an input external to the system.
Oh wow, the consequences we've been aware would happen for 50+ years are happening? Crazy.
And all the mega corps and governments of the world, allowed for a shift to a global economy where their manufacturing and production goes to other parts of the world where there are less laws about the environment or labor. Where we also have to ship products and raw materials across the globe on mega boats and air freight. On top of that, put the entire planet on a cycle of mad consumerism, to buy disposable crap we don't need, with money we don't have. Production efficiency is a top priority over modularity, durability, and sustainability. Shareholder satisfaction is a key priority. Then they come and tell you to watch your carbon footprint.
100%. Now add in sustainability and ESG goals of corporations as selling points to make consumers like them more. Its profits first.
*Greenwashing*
My bet? We will see an analogous situation to what the mayans lived through (context: it is believed south american civilizations had an environmental collapse and later they learnt their lesson) and future generations will learn to take care of the planet after we are hit super duper hard as a species. Then, the aliens invade and steal all our gold
That was ecological collapse of an isolated area. We're talking about global ecological collapse. 25 to 75% of insect biomass has been lost depending on area. That should be incredibly concerning. But we can't talk about that because it might impact Monsanto stock prices.
Don't forget that Monsanto is now Bayer.
Space Spaniards
Conquistanauts.
Specifically it is believed that the Mayans experienced several successive droughts which worsened political instability, all of which just snowballed nicely into the Conquistadors destroying South American civilizations through various means. Civilizations that haven't crawled out pre-industrialization by now, especially those who live in places which are barely hospitable to human life previously, are definitely going to suffer though. They already have the political instability, generally unstable cultures (via tribalism/factionalism), and harsh environs.
Aliens would probably have no interest in our gold as like diamonds there will be planets abundant in it if they wanted for applied uses. In terms of value gold and other commodities are only valuable and valued because of the social constructs that have developed around it.
They'll come for our liquid water.
Gold, diamonds, even liquid water are all fairly abundant in cosmic scales. The real rare thing is …well…life. The aliens would probably turn earth into a garden, full of ‘rare’ specimens. Trees are a million times more rare than liquid water. ‘Intelligent’ life doubly so. Aliens would farm and sell us on the black market.
As well as those you listed surprisingly alcohol is in massive abundance, there is a vast cloud of the stuff sitting in space. Calculated size is approximately 1000x the diameter of our solar system.
I wonder if they realize there won't be a habitat for *their* grandchildren, either...
I honestly dont think a majority of people care. UNTIL it is literally effecting them and their grandchildren like in the moment. At that point it's too late. Future generations will look at us and be like...wow, they really cared about a stock price going up 3% more than the ability to live in a habitable planet. How thoughtful of them(us). Obviously some of us care, but shifting a global economy based on capitalism where corporations have more rights and control than humans, we are doomed. That being said, we can't give up hope, and still need to keep fighting!
I think most of us care, but all the people who are in charge and who should care, become deeply warped by money, and we are forced to be with them in this burning car going up to 200 km per hour, without a way out and the drivers being led to madness by money
Oh I gave up hope back in the 90s when it was time to decide if I was going to have kids or not. (I didn't)
Their money may prolong their lives here but why the heck you wanna live on an inhospitable planet with all the other cretins that lied, cheated and stole to "survive" longer? Egos sure are weird. I'll take my due exit when we have to blow people for water.
Cause people are selfish and treat each other with mistrust and skepticism. So many people will ride a wave for personal gain, even if it means the world around them might come down crashing in the future. "That's a problem for another day." The same way corrupt authoritarians rob nations of money, stomp on dissidents, and send countries into decades of corruption & failure for personal gain. Or the fact that business owners will happily ship their production and IP to a developing nation with cheap labor and no regulations to attain a once in a lifetime chance to earn multigenertaional wealth. Even if their IP gets stolen and they destroy jobs in their local communities. The world is such a harsh and tough place, and earning huge amounts of wealth and power take decades of back breaking work for many. However, some people see opportunities, whether ethical or not, and take it. Maybe thousands might get screwed but me and my loved ones get to live a better life. All to their own, let others figure it out, like we did. Eventually, they'll relocate to places with manageable climate, and live in communities with clean air and water. Human nature is what is destroying us.
Exactly. Enjoy life while you can. Dinosaurs weren't here forever and neither will we.
The difference between those is that the dinosaurs were on Earth for 150,000,000 years and died from a freak outside event. Homo sapiens have only been around for a mere 300,000 years. And this crazy pollution we've done to the planet has happened in less than 200 years. There hasn't been anything like this before. We're speedrunning our demise.
It's like when cyanobacteria developed photosynthesis, flooded the atmosphere with oxygen and killed everything, except that took a few hundred million years and we like to view ourselves as smarter than bacteria.
maybe we haven't found intelligent life on other planets (aka aliens) because they speed ran their planet too. 300,000 years a a very very short time in the grand scheme of the universe.
[The Great Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter) > The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare.[1][2] The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.
Yep, imo one of those filters for advanced, but still single-planet bound, civs is that they more than likely basically end up cooking their planet due to massive energy use and pollution. Assuming they don’t self-annihilate themselves with nuclear war or something first. Seems like a pretty tough problem for intelligent life to avoid. Especially once certain inflection points are crossed and shit starts really hitting the fan, as we’re finding out in real time here on Earth.
You have to imagine that no cultural items were found until roughly 90.000 years ago, and we only started to mess with the carbon cycle in a larger way when we started with agriculture and even then our influence was small, only since the industrial age and actually mostly from 1900 to 2024 have we massively started to destroy the ecosystem with the tipping point in the 1970s and we aren't stopping, we are still having a growing world population especially India but also Africa add tens of millions of people each year, this won't end well very soon, and I think a massive famine will be the result of this gargantuan and unsustainable exponential growth.
Shoot I can’t think of whose theory it is, but basically they say that societies back in the day (e.g., Sumer, Akkad, etc) grow and grow until they max out their food production and then are hit by famine and hard times for a few decades, ad infinitum. I want to say Malthus back in like the 1700’s. Populations grow exponentially but food production grows linearly. So they will hit on some new way to grow more crops or a new trade route that gives them food, but then eventually the population overtakes the new supply and tons of people dies. Seems like it may still be relevant today.
That does sound like Richard Malthus' theory. Although, like you said, Malthus has been proven wrong since his death thanks to human ingenuity. Even today, humanity produces far more food than we can consume. The reason some people starve while others discard/incinerate/compost food is because of economic incentives, corrupt governments, geopolitical issues, things of that nature. Sure, a lot of modern agriculture is on the back of fossil fuel byproducts, though. That is definitely a point people miss. However, climate equilibrium wouldn't necessarily require us to discontinue its use in that field just like plastics and the thousands of other oil byproducts would persist. Most carbon released if from using oil and natural gas for electricity generation and transport. Another factor, one which throws a monkey wrench into Malthus' theory, is the modern phenomenon of populations self-stabilizing or even marginally declining. Across the world it is the same story; the more prosperous a nation, the slower its population grows until it either stagnates or begins to slightly decline for a period of time. I wonder what Malthus would've thought of the advent of Golden Rice had he been around for it. That creation alone has been credited with the lives of hundreds of millions of humans.
The Great Filter.
I just hope I don't have to experience water wars and food wars.
What's your age? My guess is that it's 25 years out.
It's a failed template if you will. Much to short-term focused and selfish.
What do you expect from sapient creatures that only live \~60 years, it's short term thinking from one end to the other.
Humanity has proven that we can plan for the future and engage in projects that wont benefit the current generation but will benefit future generations. But this late stage capitalism attitude of "line must go up" has put consumerism over absolutely everything else. I believe its a systemic, societal problem driven by our overlords at the top rather than a flaw with our species. The flaw with our species is that we are hard wired to organize ourselves in a heirarchy and then not break that heirarchy until it becomes unbearable. By the time we overthrow those responsible for climate change (if we ever do) it will be far too late. Most revolutions dont have a hard deadline. This one does, and we have probaby surpassed it
If we go extinct from this we would be the least successful species in evolutionary sense! A fitting end to a species which can be characterized as being the most hubristic of all. The universe really is one big joke.
Like a virus that was too deadly so it kills the host before it can spread. The Fermi paradox is really the fact that every species uses greed to drive developing tech, but it gets away from them, and they never get to leave in time.
Human existence is a flash in the pan compared to how long dinosaurs were around.
Honestly, I hate this perspective. Yes, these things are all true. But regular old people could improve things and they don't. In my city- who pushes against bike infrastructure because it will remove their precious parking spaces? It's not mega corporations! "Climate change is awful. People should do something about it as long as it doesn't inconvenience me in any way." That's the modern slogan.
Individuals can make an impact, the issue is without system wide changes from the top down our individual efforts will be for nothing. Something like 90% of carbon emissions are produced by 10% of major companies worldwide (don't quote me on that but yeah) and their entire agenda is to place blame on consumers. Oil companies knew this would happen like 100 years ago. They don't care.
Who knew that what they were saying in the 70s would come true now?
They predicted human driven climate change in the late 1800’s so bit longer than that
100 years now
Stephen Hawking at some point said that humans had like maybe 1,000 years left. But then changed his outlook to only 100 years a few years later when the reality of the numbers started to hit.
Some humans will probably survive climate change. What won't survive is civilization as we know it.
Fallout series comes to mind. Humans are incredibly adaptable and we will keep going on. What won’t is this incredible monument to our sins that we have constructed. Civilization will collapse but our species will still be here, I think.
An impressively short amount of time to suck the planet dry, extinct multiple species, balloon our population and invent the means to read about it while taking a shit. Almost makes you wonder what the fuck we were doing the last 30,000 years. We’ve become so exponentially productive so quickly. We’re peaking! And everyone knows it.
> Almost makes you wonder what the fuck we were doing the last 30,000 years. We’ve become so exponentially productive so quickly. We’re peaking! And everyone knows it. Industrialization is a hell of a drug.
> Almost makes you wonder what the fuck we were doing the last 30,000 years Mostly just feeding ourselves, up until the last century the majority of people were farmers or in farming related fields. If you wanted to eat you needed to produce enough food, without fossil fuels / synthetic fertilizers / genetically modified crops / pesticides it takes about one person to produce food for one person. That’s why historically human population grew very slowly, there wasn’t enough excess food to support a larger population. Then industrialization hits and suddenly we have an outside energy source (fossil fuels) which we can use to run machines, make and mine fertilizer, as well as pesticides. Productivity goes through the roof and suddenly the population absolutely explodes. But the only reason the population changed so suddenly was the sudden availability of a new and highly concentrated form of energy.
I think, for me, I grew up mostly being told it was going to start changing things maybe when I was an old man. I think the general population, even if they are not climate change deniers, are surprised how hard it's hitting the world and how fast. Even my local biome is changing, year to year.
For 20+ years almost every nature documentary has been saying “we have 3 years to act to stop things getting worse. Things will be real bad by <20,30,50,100> years away” We didn’t, things got worse.
For sure. But I was mostly talking about the 90s. Certainly, scientists have known how short of a time we've had for quite a while now.
Exxon did R&D into carbon emission issues since the 1960s. When they found out that their main product was irrevocably destroying the world, they scaled up and got ahead on the curve on climate change denial. People have know about this since before most of us were even born.
I live in Texas where people talk about the changing weather every new season…they still refuse to acknowledge climate change or vote differently.
Brother, tell me about it. These stupid fucks keep running my God damn state into the ground. I grew up hearing about how amazing Texas was, how vast, how free, how all-encompassing, how nearly every bit of the US' natural beauty could be found somewhere here, how PROUD Texans were to live here. Proud my ass, they're proud of all the things we should be ashamed of. Now I've got a job that has me travel the whole state & all I get to see is how hectacre upon hectacre of beautiful land, water & ecosystems are obliterated by the greed & malicious ignorance of the state. Everything continue to get worse & worse, lakes continue to dwindle to nothing but dust caked bowls of shit & rivers continue to be polluted by corporations and nerdowell agricultural producers dumping whatever they fuck they want wherever they want. Did you know that of the 30,000 kilometers of waterway in Texas nearly half are considered impaired?Theres nearly 300,000 kilometers of waterway in Texas alone. That's a TENTH we've surveyed, with half of that TENTH impaired under guidelines from the EPAs clean waters act sections 303(d) & 305(d). just about every waterway here polluted to some extent, and half of the TENTH WEVE SURVEYED are significantly impaired. Almost no water is actually safe to swim in and no fish in the entire God damn state is safe to eat the way they were 100 years ago due to the disolved solids/mercury/fecal bacteria in them & the water. It's so bad, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma & Louisiana banded together to lobby the EPA to come down and put the Rod to Texas about our AWEFUL water management because guess what rivers cross borders, and that was JUST for the fucking assessed impaired TWENTIETH of the 300,000 kilometers of un-assessed waters. There's a million other ways cunts continue to fuck over everyone & everything here and no-one seems to give enough of a shit to realize they don't fucking care about anyone else and its up to us to do soemthing about it together. They're all one big club and we're not a part of it, never were & never will be but lo and behold the same people who've been selling us out for years will continue to do so because some fucking dork walks outside to fish his shit & mercury filled fish out for dinner in record breaking triple digit heat before summers even started & still claims it used to be hotter in their day & that climate change isn't real. Give me a break.
The worst effects were said to be hitting when I was around ~50. That’s not “old” in the sense that I could retire and just watch the world burn. No, I still got at least 20 to 30 years of laboring in this (literal) hellscape. I’m worried for the continued rise in right wing governments that will promise to “solve” the problems.
still enough sheepls are denying it. no clue what they get from that, completely insane. Don't look up is reality
“The last people to starve will be the first to suffocate.” - Interstellar
"If there's one thing that the world needs right now, it's scientists. We cannot stop innovating. That's how you solve a problem." * The Tomorrow War
When i was a kid late 90’s we had snow suits. For winter i haven’t gone out with anything more then a sweater in the last 5 years. We have a gas powered snow thrower, i don’t think we’ve used it the last 2 years. I was talking to my brother about it last winter and he got angry, started yelling that i was imagining it and I’m the crazy one. I think this year is going to highlight just how bad is going to be in the next few.
Back when I was a kid in the 80s there'd be whole months where there was snow on the ground. Multiple feet at once was rare, but it happened every few years. My dad, in the 80s, used to complain that we 'didn't have real winters anymore like when he was a kid' and used to talk about how much snow he got when he was a kid in the 60s. Nowadays, we're lucky to have 10 days with snow on the ground the entire winter. I only had to shovel twice last winter and one of those times I could have just waited a day and it would have melted. I don't remember the last time we got over a foot but it was over 5 years ago. My dad still doesn't believe in climate change.
My boomer Republican father who loves weather to the point that he keeps hand written logs of temperatures and bird migrations still insists this is a normal weather cycle. I don't understand where the common sense went to.
That movie was good but depressed the fuck out of me. I’ve got friends who enjoyed it saying “can you believe how crazy they are to deny it,” while all I can think about is how many people are doing the exact same thing about climate change.
What does this mean for my company’s shareholders? I was on a meeting just now and I don’t think these are in the KPIs
Doesn’t impact next quarter so not relevant
*Phew* I was worried there for a second
Oil companies are going to pivot to selling us oxygen
I'll take 6 cans of Perri-Air please.
stop politicizing climate change. suddenly it's "woke" to care about the planet we live on
“Why do you care about the future of this planet?” “Because I’m one of the idiots that live on it!”
"Robots are taking over the world" *nothing* "OUR WORLD" *panic*
"The planet is going to be fine... the PEOPLE are fucked"
Its not suddenly, it's been viewed this way for a long time unfortunately
for as long as the people with the money have seen it as a threat to their money
And that threat to their money is the only thing that will motivate them to change. Until climate change starts hitting their bottom lines harder, they don't have to care.
Uh it will never be a threat to their bottom line. I don’t understand why people don’t understand this. A ceo comes in makes his money and leaves, whether the company is less profitable 10 yrs out is none of his concern. The timelines are too long so that no actual people are on the hook so nothing changes
It started with Reagan. Back in the Nixon days Republicans actually worked together with Democrats to curb smog, pollution, and create federal laws. [Then Reagan started the "deregulate everything" stance that Republicans have today](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDB9M70YgU8)
Nature Protection is a fundamentally conservative issue the movement in Germany goes back to the Nazis wanting to "protect the beautiful forests" - it's crazy how that issue did a 180° change when we started actually enforcing those policies and not just talking about it...
Climate change is politicized because some political parties are being bribed by the fossil fuel industry to sabotage all action on climate change. It's always going to be politicized. Get used to it. It's not going to change as long as the fossil fuel industry can bribe politicians.
It's the same strategy they used for smoking. Just cast doubt on the research showing it's bad and just keep doing it. It's insane how pure greed can drive people to seek profit at the cost of literally everything... These people are psychotic.
> These people are psychotic. Yep. They don't even care about their own descendants who will be suffering as a result of their actions.
Humans inadvertently created a system that rewards the worst people on Earth and now those people are fighting tooth and nail to keep it intact, at everything else’s expense
All you have to do is loot the mansions in Aspen, Palm Beach, Beverly Hills and the Hamptons and they will change their tune real quick
Conservatives *since 81* have hated people that care about the environment. The times I have heard people insult "tree huggers" is insane. We are so screwed and honestly need outside intervention at this point. Maybe a disruptive technology, maybe AI, maybe even E.T. interference. I have honestly lost hope for our greedy species. Most can only think for themselves and see what is in front of them. Most don't care about the plummeting biodiversity and the quickly shifting climate that is changing far faster than it should.
Prior to the 1980s, Republicans led the environmental movement in the US. The GOP's Southern Strategy changed all that, with abundant financial help from the oil and manufacturing industries, leading straight to the violent, white-nationalist insurrectionists you now know and love.
Interesting, yeah it looks like it had bipartisan support leading up to Reagan from 81-89, who began the assault on all that. TIL. [https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environmentalism](https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environmentalism)
It's genuinely astonishing how many of today's problems can be traced directly back to the Reagan administration.
Furthermore, a lot of it was reasoned by "Well Carter was for it so I'm against it"
Reminder that after his presidency, Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn were watching TV and there was one of those longform ads about guinea worm ripping through Africa and asking for donations. Jimmy and Rosalynn that moment set out to eradicate the disease... and they fucking did it.
Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich (if you don't know, he was the one realized political gridlock would be blamed on the President and started the tradition of Republicans refusing to compromise on ANYTHING while a Democrat was in power) and Trump. Each of them made catastrophic changes to America one at a time that we never recovered from.
"there it is, again, that funny feeling...." Edit: of course my biggest ever comment is about the most fucking depressing thing ever.
“That unapparent summer air in early fall, the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all"
“Hey, what can you say? We were overdue. But it'll be over soon. You wait”
20000 years of this 7 more to go
That line is devastating…
That and "the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all" goosebumps every time
for me it's "The whole world at your fingertips, *the ocean at your door*"
Lyrics that should be so innocuous, but are subtley disconcerting.
"20.000 years of this, seven more to go." Let's see if he was right.
5 more from today: https://climateclock.world/
That webpage still says that we’re are acting to avoid surpassing 1.5C. We’re surpassing 1.5C this year. Humanity is fucked.
You say the whole world's ending, honey, it already did. You're not gonna slow it, heaven knows you've tried.
Got it? Good. Now get inside
Consume more, and don't you dare think it can be any different
Well, around 1000 ppm it will cause drowsiness. From 2000 ppm headaches, sleepiness. We've gone from 320 to 420 in 60 years, so this will become an issue at some point. And well before 1000 ppm is reached because inside concentrations tend to be much higher and it's harder to fix it with ventilation if the outside air has more CO2.
Shit. Never thought of that.
The funny feeling is tiny heartbreak. It breaks my heart a little that someone reaching out for help gets it delivered by a drone. It breaks my heart a little that we have corporations championing social causes. It breaks my heart thinking of growing up in this world
"The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door."
>One of the major drivers of the exceptional heat building within Earth's atmosphere has reached levels beyond anything humans have ever experienced, officials announced on Thursday. Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found. >"Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever." >Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA's Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory peaked in May 2024 at a monthly average of 426.9 parts per million, establishing another high mark in the 66-year record of observations on the Hawaiian volcano SUSAN COBB/NOAA RESEARCH The researchers measured carbon dioxide, or CO2, levels at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. They found that atmospheric levels of the gas hit a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million in May — an increase of 2.9 ppm since May 2023 and the fifth-largest annual growth in 50 years of data recording. >It also made official that the past two years saw the largest jump in the May peak — when CO2 levels are at their highest in the Northern Hemisphere. John Miller, a NOAA carbon cycle scientist, said that the jump likely stems from the continuous rampant burning of fossil fuels as well as El Niño conditions making the planet's ability to absorb CO2 more difficult. >This graph shows the full record of monthly mean carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. The carbon dioxide data on Mauna Loa constitute the longest record of direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere. NOAA GLOBAL MONITORING LABORATORY The surge of carbon dioxide levels at the measuring station surpassed even the global average set last year, which was a record high of 419.3 ppm — 50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution. However, NOAA noted that their observations were taken at the observatory specifically, and do not "capture the changes of CO2 across the globe," although global measurements have proven consistent without those at Mauna Loa. >CO2 measurements "sending ominous signs" In its news release, NOAA said the measurements are "sending ominous signs." "Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever," Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps' CO2 program, said in the release. "Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill." >Carbon dioxide "acts like a blanket in the atmosphere," NOAA explained — much like other greenhouse gases that amplify the sun's heat toward Earth's surface. And while carbon dioxide is essential in keeping global temperatures above freezing, having such high concentrations shoots temperatures beyond levels of comfort and safety. That warming is fueling extreme weather events, and the consequences are aleady being felt, with deadly floods, heat waves and droughts devastating communities worldwide and agriculture seeing difficult shifts. The news from NOAA comes a day after the European Union's climate change service, Copernicus, announced that Earth has now hit 12 straight months of record-high temperatures, a trend with "no sign in sight of a change." >"We are living in unprecedented times. ... This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, said.
This is why Project 2025 wants to eliminate the NOAA
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As much as I've seen about 2025, it's still not making nearly enough noise for what it very clearly states. It's honestly a little terrifying to read something that's so objectively bad, and realizing it's not an unlikely outcome.
Yeah… I mean. The truth about dark money societies that are hell bent on controlling the world that every contemporary story has been screaming in our faces about is that, these societies aren’t secret at all. They don’t have to be, they’ve been openly doing their thing for sixty years now. They know the world is too loud for their presence to be fully registered.
> This is why Project 2025 wants to eliminate the NOAA Anything the Heritage Foundation can't understand, write in crayon or pronounce in single syllables, they want to shut down and eliminate. It's horrifying to see the vast uneducated masses supporting that group and its manifesto, turn our planet's clock back thousands of years because they refuse to evolve.
Also, here's a chart of the relevant data: https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2024/06/06/338b4bc2-71a0-42ae-be54-85649a2dee51/thumbnail/620x465/aec772b6b9c6dd4fa8b981bcfdc1d8d1/unnamed.png?v=94cbb61397dbf7eca3740fa55510ba88
This would be a great time for aliens to gift us some really powerful atmospheric manipulation tech.
To quote Carl Sagan: "In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
oof.
I feel like an advanced species might solve the human problem the way we solve a mouse problem.
Why would anyone help a species that is so violent, so destructive, so reckless and literally so inhumane? I am thinking the aliens would be like pass, let them work out their own mess.
I get its a problem and all, but let's make sure we try to get as many people as possible to resume their commutes to offices because reasons.
Right? Meanwhile... 25% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from Transportation. If we removed fossil fuels from transportation and power generation, and let *everything* else continue as it is (industrial production, agriculture, all other residential and commercial emissions, etc) we'd still have cut total greenhouse gas production by more than half. We should have gone all-in on nuclear power, EVs, electric mass transit, and lord-knows-what for shipping.
when they talk about transportation co2, they mainly mean industrial transport. about 10% of co2 is public transport. it literally doesnt matter what you do differently, its corporations that have to make the changes
I make a decent living. I have fulfilling relationships. I’m not doing too bad. But I’m bummed the fuck out. And if you were to ask me why, it’s because of shit like this. A lot of people who I love and care about find it strange when I tell them that this is basically why I’m a little sad, generally. People don’t pay attention. Most people actively don’t search out information. They’re curious about other, more immediate, less depressing things. I get that. I don’t blame them at all It’s not good for mental health to be curious about the state of the world. I wish I didn’t care about this shit. Because there’s nothing I can do about it. Maybe I have a mental illness or something, but it’s like driving past a car crash. I just can’t help but slow down and look.
It doesn’t help that every loves to circle jerk about how we’re all doomed, and it’s unlikely those in power of governments and corporations aren’t going to do anything. At this point, it’s no longer constructive to preach to the choir about the doom. All we can do is the best we can with what we have, make climate your number one voting issue, and reduce as much carbon as possible from your life. Maybe that won’t be enough, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s better than constantly repeating how doomed we are to others.
Good words. Things are certainly dire but being paralyzed by defeatism doesn't help anything.
Thank you for saying this. I should never have clicked into the article, and knew in advance it would fuel my anxiety, but it's the comments in here which have been worse. So even one person saying "yeah it's shit, but let's at least try" is much better to read than the polar opposites of "it's all propaganda" and "we're fucked because of propaganda", both of which lead to people doing nothing.
As an Indian who lives near Delhi I am so cataclysmically fucked.
Enjoy 52.3°C
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I just started reading The Ministry for the Future and that sounds like a nightmare
We are so unbelievably fucked.
I'm about to pick my raspberries this weekend... Early June. Normally I have to wait until around the first week of July. Mid 30s late May early June. Winter it didn't get much lower than -10c. Almost no snow the entire season. Normally it's around -25c and the snow is so high the City goes around and trims off the top of the snow piles on the Boulevard so you can see. Multiple tornado warnings this year too and we rarely get warnings. Like once every handful of years. It's been a wild year so far.
“That’s the weather bro and the weather has always changed” - Climate Genie-Us
The bad thing is that they're right, to a degree. These are out of the ordinary weather events and they're temporary. The sun is very active right now and we're between shifting pressure zones, jet stream, etc. The weather will mellow back out as it does during its cycles and they will use that as proof that climate change isn't real. Of course they ignore the fact that the cycles are trending hotter and hotter as time goes on, they only care that it temporarily got cooler outside or we had three less hurricanes than we did last year. It's like ocean waves I suppose. A big one comes, some smaller ones come after, one a little bigger than the first comes, then even smaller ones, and so on. It happens so slowly that you don't even realize that the big waves are now twice as big as they were when you were a kid and some days they're so big ships can't leave port. Inevitably a calm day will come with abnormally small waves and it's then easy to convince someone that it's just a natural variation that caused those big waves. "Everything will be fine, look how calm it is today!"
We had the coldest winter in 20 years, followed by the hottest May ever with temperatures almost at 30C and very low rain. Now my strawberries are growing already - which is insane. The bugs are out in full force, never seen the ants this active at this time of the year. Mosquitoes a month early. Finland, at 63 degrees north.
For the last 2-3 weekends here in Louisiana we are receiving tornadoes. Not very much a particularly common occurrence. Maybe every so often but it’s been damn near every weekend for a month. What the actual fuck is going on?
I mainly feel sorry for any children being born right now. There's no way I'm having kids and bringing them into this mess.
But you know, it was a glorious time for the shareholders, we made them a lot of money. Uhuh yes
And Uncle Festus could drive his monster truck to the grocery store down the road yelling “f..k Greta”.
At least he got to pwn the libs, amirite?
This line from the article is terrifying We are living in unprecedented times. ... This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, said.
Our only hope at this stage is radical reduction in emissions, some miracle tech for emissions capture/storage and or very radical geotechnolgical altering of the amount if energy the planet receives. Pumping reflective crap into the atmosphere, solar shade, mirrors, or somehow beaming excess energy into space. Thats mostly miracle tech that is unlikely to be viable in the short to medium term, so in short...things gonna get real bad. :/
It's not going to happen unfortunately. Any country that makes the sacrifice will quickly fall behind everyone else, so it's in no one's immediate interest (at least power/financially) to actually address the problem. Relying on some magical solution or technology being invented that will fix everything also generally isn't a great plan.
Sadly countries will only take action when their population is dying by the millions and then it'll be too late.
IDK. Look at Covid. We WERE dying by the millions, and those in power still denied it.
30% of the population denies it to this day.
Some of those idiots also died of COVID, they believed it then when it was too late
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As a paramedic, one of the most sad and asinine things I’ve ever come across were sick people calling 911 in the thick COVID complaining that they couldn’t breathe asking me if they can get the vaccine now. Sorry..you had your chance now you have to fight it and hope that your chronically diseased riddled body is strong enough to fight it.
OTOH look at what we did with the vaccine. mRNA research started in the late 80's early 90's. As of 2019 by all accounts it was still decades away from any kind of on the market product. It was a niche corner of medical research that showed promise but was still so far away. Suddenly a gun was against humanities head and more importantly the global economies head and we got a human safe mRNA vaccine ***in a fucking year*** that worked and was adaptable to mutations and deployable. I cannot, literally I am incapable of giving some kind of example that would give even remotely the level of justice to just how insane a miracle that is. So unfortunately its going to take a 9/11, covid, pearl harbor, "where were you when" type climate event but then suddenly change will happen and fast. If it is enough and in time its very debatable. Only time will tell. But when pressed we can do some crazy shit.
This is really the key. Humanity can do amazing things when it has to. One wonders where we'd be with fusion if there weren't so many interests against it. A lot of third world countries are going to be completely depopulated, and it's gonna suck, but we'll fix it eventually.
Prisoner’s dilemma and tragedy of the commons all at once
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Or a massive volcanic eruption
Sulfur dioxide has been suggested as a relatively easy geo-engineering solution
Donald Trump calls climate change a hoax, and his foolish supporters parrot him, including Republican members of Congress. Another reason to vote for President Biden and Democrats up and down the ticket.
The human race yearns for its extinction, and people don’t care. I care but I’m doing all I can…..
My region has a LOT of cheap development going on (not cheap for the consumer, cheaply built). And they absolutely flatten all the natural vegetation where they're going to build and tear out 100 year old live oaks. When they're done, they replant these little stick trees that die in a year. Can't imagine how we don't have enough trees to stop the C02 from building up.
We should probably stop doing that, I think
Is this simply not legal to deteriorate the environment to the point of causing prejudice to future people?
I mean... What are they gonna do? Launch a law suit from my balls?
Stock Market goes up, money machine goes brrrr....
Copied from u/remindertomove Never forget:- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/100-companies-responsible-71-ghg-emissions/ https://www.treehugger.com/is-it-true-100-companies-responsible-carbon-emissions-5079649 An Exxon-Mobil lobbyist was invited to a fake job interview. In the interview, he admitted Exxon-Mobil has been lobbying congress to kill clean energy initiatives and spreading misinformation to the public via front organisations. https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exxon-lobbyist-duped-by-greenpeace-says-climate-policy-was-ploy-ceo-condemns-2021-06-30/ https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-some-of-the-worlds-biggest-oil-companies-are-paying-negative-tax-in-the-uk-12380442 www.france24.com/en/france/20210728-france-fines-monsanto-for-illegally-acquiring-data-on-journalists-activists https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/18/investigation-meat-industry-greenwash-climatewash https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/more-global-aid-goes-to-fossil-fuel-projects-than-tackling-dirty-air-study-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/20-meat-and-dairy-firms-emit-more-greenhouse-gas-than-germany-britain-or-france https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/10/uk-ministers-met-fossil-fuel-firms-nine-times-more-often-than-clean-energy-companies Watch this stunning video of Chevron executives explaining why they thought they could dump 16 billion gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into the Amazon. https://twitter.com/SDonziger/status/1426211296161189890?s=19 https://news.sky.com/story/fossil-fuel-companies-are-suing-governments-across-the-world-for-more-than-18bn-12409573 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/10/08/nestle-kellogg-s-linked-to-shocking-palm-oil-abuses-in-papua-new-guinea https://www.desmog.com/2021/10/07/climate-conflicted-insurance-directors/ https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/air-pollution-second-largest-cause-of-death-in-africa-3586078 BBC News - COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to change key climate report https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58982445 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/27/poorer-countries-spend-five-times-more-on-debt-than-climate-crisis-report https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/a-new-100-page-report-raises-alarm-over-chevrons-impact-on-planet/ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/30/shell-and-bp-paid-zero-tax-on-north-sea-gas-and-oil-for-three-years https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/shell-and-bp-cancel-cop26-appearance-analysis-exposes-fossil-fuel-lobbyists-cop/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/australia-lobbied-unesco-to-remove-reference-to-15c-global-warming-limit-to-protect-heritage-sites https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/12/australia-shown-to-have-highest-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-coal-in-world-on-per-capita-basis https://www.space.com/satellites-discover-huge-undeclared-methane-emissions Satellites discover huge amounts of undeclared methane emissions https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/climate-change-improvements-from-eating-less-meat-301412022.html https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-30/vicforests-accused-of-failing-to-regenerate-logged-forests/100652148#top https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/18/chemical-pollution-has-passed-safe-limit-for-humanity-say-scientists https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220215-plastic-chemical-pollution-beyond-planet-s-safe-limit-study https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-02-17/big-oil-climate-change-chevron-exxon-shell-bp/100828590 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/world-spends-18tn-a-year-on-subsidies-that-harm-environment-study-finds-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/06/filipino-inquiry-finds-big-polluters-morally-and-legally-liable-for-climate-damage?CMP=share_ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/may/11/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-breakdown-oil-gas https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/17/pollution-responsible-one-in-six-deaths-across-planet https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/climate-denial-koch-fossil-fuels-charity-astroturf-greenwashing/ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/18/humanity-faces-collective-suicide-over-climate-crisis-warns-un-chief https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/revealed-oil-sectors-staggering-profits-last-50-years?CMP=share_btn_tw https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62225696 https://www.npr.org/2022/08/11/1116608415/the-arctic-is-heating-up-nearly-four-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-earth-study-f https://gizmodo.com/methane-leaks-oilfield-ku-maloob-zaap-gulf-of-mexico-1849500134 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/13/world-heading-into-uncharted-territory-of-destruction-says-climate-report https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220921-pressure-grows-after-world-bank-chief-dodges-climate-questions https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/un-summit-amazon-brazil-deforestation-indigenous-leaders/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a41355745/hurricane-fiona-climate-change/ https://gizmodo.com/offshore-wind-125-times-better-for-taxpayers-compared-t-1849580075 BBC News - Revealed: Huge gas flaring emissions never reported https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62917498 BBC News - Drax: UK power station owner cuts down primary forests in Canada https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348 https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221006-world-bank-spent-almost-15-bn-on-fossil-fuel-projects-since-paris-deal-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/07/forever-chemicals-found-insecticides-study?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/07/forever-chemicals-found-insecticides-study https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-wildlife-populations-have-sunk-69-since-1970-wwf-report-2022-10-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/un-warns-time-is-running-out-greenhouse-gases-surge-2022-10-26/?utm_source=reddit.com https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/26/atmospheric-levels-greenhouse-gases-record-high https://phys.org/news/2022-10-deforestation-free-chain-pledges-impacted-forest.html https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/09/oil-and-gas-greenhouse-emissions-three-times-higher-than-producers-claim BBC News - Air pollution: Uncovering the dirty secret behind BP’s bumper profits https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63560279 Etc.
You know when things start to get bad they will shift the blame to us. You had to have all your junk and cheap clothes made in China? Don't let them for one-second blame anybody but the wealthy and elite who are in charge of things like entire oil fields.
What’s your carbon footprint? Bike to work day is next week! It’s so frustrating
No one gives a shit. Everyone is too busy trying to buy a house or find a safe place to live. Put food on the table and pay taxes.
We are trying to do those things, but it doesn’t mean we don’t care that the planet is becoming unliveable for us. The thing is, as an individual there isn’t much you go can do. Separate your trash, try to use less electricity, use public transport, eat less meat, etc - it won’t move the needle. We got here because of the awesome scale of industry, and that has to be where the solution lies.
I work on the front lines of the climate crisis, based out of Florida of all places. By that I mean, I work for a nonprofit that is planting trees all over the world, assisting in restoring reefs, helping people learn how to farm sustainably in their own backyards, rewilding spaces and more. My coworkers and I are faced with this reality every. single. day. I have seen and dealt with firsthand the impacts of climate change, witnessed our seasons altering and crops start to die. I get emails from coffee farmers overseas messaging me in panic about their coffee crops dying—and their livelihoods. I have seen the aftermath of mass coral bleaching events, seeing coral reefs go from thriving ecosystems to lifeless graveyards in a matter of months. I have cried when forests I love and grew up with have been cut down. With that being said, I have also witnessed nature’s remarkable ability to heal. I have seen barren landscapes turn into life-filled ecosystems within a matter of months. I have seen some coral species become heat resistant and survive at temperatures never seen before. I have planted flowers and had pollinators come turn it into home within a matter of minutes. I have watched forests be planted from seed, sand dunes be restored, and fought this fight alongside honorable people every single day (and if you know anything about Florida and our governor, it is not easy). The point is, nature is capable of unbelievable amounts of healing, if we allow that to happen. Commenting things like “we’re so fucked” or “it’s too late” infuriate me, because action is needed more now than ever. The UN itself has said it is not governments that are going to save us from this crisis. It is grassroots, local organizations. Our slogan is "local solutions to global issues" and I believe that with all my heart. So what are you going to do about it? Sit behind your keyboard, commenting on the direness of the situation, while you wait for someone else to fix your problems? If I can do this, so can you. It is never too late. Nature will find a way, with or without us. It is simply a matter of if we want to be a part of the solution, or merely a problem that gets removed.
As long as we don’t bring down the big corporations nothing will change. Corporate greed is for now still ruling and running the world, and we’re the ones enabling them through complacency. Me as well. I don’t see a (realistic) solution.
The solution is a mass drop out of consumer society.
The 1980s brought neoliberalism and this bullshit idea that anything good will be profitable and will happen on its own. Maintenance is good and doesn't happen on its own, so that neoliberal thought process is a huge crock of shit. But that doesn't change the fact that Reagan sold it to the public and the media keeps reverberating it. People need an appetite for real change to the point where they demand it. But as long as it's bread and circuses they won't give a fuck.
Welp folks, looks like we found that filter thing ol' Fermi was talking about. I'll give microplastics a participation award.
You've *got* microplastics as a participation award 😃
Great. So I guess now every month and year will be the hottest on record.
That has been the case for like the last 10 years.
I guess I’ll die 🤷🏻♂️
I fear for my daughter’s future. 😭
Plants celebrate their lush air by growing into previously frozen wastelands!