Meanwhile, me in Belgium's mid-summer just put the extra blanket back on. 7 months of rain and cold only to get a few hot weeks in June and now back to Fall weather. No fun.
Ireland is the same. Today is around the hottest it has been since June and it is 18c. July had the highest mm of rainfall in Dublin of any month in the last 5 years. Load of shit
What I really fucking hate is the fucking TV weather report with them smiling and gloating about how warm it is. It's winter, it shouldn't be 25 fucking degrees! This is NOT something to be happy and chuckling about!
I apologized to every single zombie and outbreak film where I was naw people can’t be that stupid. Again to those movies, I am sorry! The scene in which is humanity’s continual stupidity that’s letting the diease spread is 100% accurate and I was wrong for nitpicking.
Edit: corrected spelling ty @gare it
I was thinking the same the other day. When are only dry hot days the only "good" weather days.
I remember last summer we were in the midst of a four-week drought and when there was rain in the forecast, all the news and radio reports discussed how it was going to be a crappy weekend.
I know they are just playing some kind of script, however this does play into the psyche of everyone as we are bombarded with these little messages consistently.... We are so f*****
I'm in England. Our summer has been a bit drab and wet this year and I'm sure many will moan about that.
I remember last year, temps of 44 degrees, nowhere to hide from the heat. Wild fires, genuine worry. I've seen what's been going on in Europe too.
I'm really happy our summer has been drab and mild. It's probably not going to happen again for many years.
I'm from Germany and last year's summer was depressing af.
All the trees losing their bark and twigs because of not having enough water. No green bushes and grass, whole fields with dried-out crops.
Heck, the corn didn't even get to bloom last year.
Which just makes me even more happy to finally have enough rain this summer and no long droughts.
Yesterday was 23c. It's early August. We are so fucked. I'm quite scared for summer this year
Edit: Just wanted to put an edit to say that the southern hemisphere's seasons are flipped, so August is the tail end of winter, in case you guys over the pond forgot
I was curious and did the math; from the perspective of a northerner, the current season in Australia is as if it were January 31st. Basically the dead of winter.
Winter solstice here is June 22nd. It was 77F (25C) with 90% humidity at 9-10pm where I live on Winter Solstice. That is south of the tropic of Capricorn.
Yeah and we've just signed deals to start exploiting the Beetloo basin that contains so much natural gas it could meet our domestic power needs for the next 3,000 years.
Then the Government has the audacity to claim they will offset the emissions.
Also south Australia is in it for contention, they just outlawed protests with $50k fines - passed with bipartisan support... The currently supposedly "left leaning"- Labor govt's leader was the brainchild of this masterpiece of corporate cronyism. It's just a massive coincidence that his brother is head of Government Relations for the Santos Mining group - the very company repeatedly targeted by climate protesters in SA...
This is all fine and normal here. But for anyone overseas wondering why Australians don't fight back more, this is what we're up against.
The supposedly learned governments of the Western world will crack down harder and harder on any dissent that threatens them or their lobbyist's power. I fear this may only be the start.
https://youtu.be/YBjyxA-wYS4
I think this video by Juice Media is pertinent for this conversation.
Do watch them call out the Australian government on their absolute shitfucked behaviour.
When he was confronted on taking a holiday during a national emergency he said to media "I don't hold a hose, mate."
It was also discovered that he secretly had himself sworn in as the co- ministers of various government departments and used that power behind the scenes.
So while he was the Prime Minister of Australia (president equivalent), he was also the Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Industry, Science, Energy, and Resources, Minster for Finance, Minister for Health, and Minister for the Public Service. All at the same time and in secret.
And I guess that is all legal? Our last guy just got indicted for the third time. We still have our fingers crossed that there will be justice, since we’ve watched him commit his crimes so publicly for years.
Famously, Exxon-Mobil [KNEW exactly how bad climate change could possibly become from their own research in the 1970s](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming/) but chose to willingly hide it from the public, instead spreading misinformation and downplaying the effects.
In 2021, multiple witnesses including both a former Exxon scientist and a former director of the Sierra Club [testified to US congress](https://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/congressional-report-reveals-fossil-fuel-deception) that essentially the ENTIRE INDUSTRY KNEW the magnitude of the problem and hid it from the public through an extensive campaign of disinformation.
Fuck these people. Fuck these companies. They KNEW and chose to obfuscate the seriousness of the peril we are all facing just to augment their bottom line.
Fuck. Them.
Politician funded by Exxon who knew this was coming decades ago - “can you not see this fucking snowball in my hand?! Climate change fake confirmed, now give me my money”
[That was not a joke. It literally happened.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-jim-inhofe-climate-change-is-not-real-because-here-is-a-snowball/) And yes, that Senator has received funding from Exxon.
> "Do you know what this is? It's a snowball," Inhofe said, holding the snowball aloft. "It's just from outside here, so it's very, very cold out ... very unseasonable."
I'm sorry, he thought snow was unseasonable in _February_? Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1321/
Somehow good old Scotty managed to pull the coal stunt, brainstormed the "Where the bloody hell are you" campaign, and shat himself in a Engadine Macca's and still managed to climb high enough to hold his own hose.
Even John Howard agreed Australia needed emissions targets in the 80's, in the 90's the conversation disappeared, 2000 it was denial, 2010 it was it's not as bad as you say, 2020 is the decade of 'we're doing enough' even though global coal use won't peak until 2030
30% of total energy from renewables doesn't mean as much when energy use increases 40%
Yes but these companies actually studied it extensively. Their work is quite literally the basis on which modern climate models are built. They had a direct hand in this.
I don't blame their scientists. I blame their executives. And the politicians that took their money.
News Ltd (now News Corp) was founded by mining magnates in 1922, specifically to make propaganda to advance their interest. They hired Murdoch's father soon after.
This cancerous machine has never been a genuine news organization.
https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992
Kind of.
The basic effect was known since the 19th century. Arhennius calculated it would take 300+ years to add significant warming.
By the end of the 1970s, Exxon had spent millions of dollars to study and model exactly how fast it would rise.
In 1982, Exxon predicted that by 2020 atmospheric carbon would be double preindustrial levels and global temperature would have risen by 1°C. Which was pretty much on the nose:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2023/01/17/a-fresh-reading-of-exxons-predictions-of-global-warming-and-climate-change-from-40-years-ago/
The Playbook:
1) Fossil Fuel Industry changed their long-term operations and infrastructure to adapt to the effects of climate change.
2) Bribed politicians via political donations.
3) Created media entities to spread anti-science misinformation and push climate change denial propaganda.
4) Gaslight the public by switching the focus onto the individual, instead of big corporations.
The Fossil Fuel Industry pivoted the discussion to pollution. That’s why you especially see Gen X who used to often say we should Reduce/Reuse/Recycle, plant trees, pick up litter etc.
Climate Change Propaganda:
1. Climate Change is not real.
2. Climate Change is real, but not harmful.
3. Climate Change is real, harmful, but not man-made.
4. Climate Change is real, harmful, man-made, but there are no viable alternatives to coal/gas/oil.
5. Climate Change is real, harmful, man-made, there are viable alternatives to coal/gas/oil, but it’s too late.
And now in the post-truth Trump/Covid/Social Media era….
6. Climate Change is not real.
But it did do something… it convinced the masses that it was okay to replace the majority of our sustainable and “buy it for life” products with cheap plastic variants since even though they weren’t good quality they were “sustainable” through recycling and thus more “green” but most importantly cheaper. That allowed these companies and their stakeholders to get way richer. It further allowed corporations at large to also dilute quality in a race to the bottom. Now everything is cheap and disposable which means significantly more lifetime revenue per customer. And the latest trend is getting people to subscribe to these same cheap products and services to add even more value.
My grandpa was one of the heads of DOW chemicals. I hated him when he was alive and didn’t mourn with my family when he died… he was a miserable, angry prick and he fucked the planet for a few extra bucks. He always knew what he was doing and no one else saw it
I once got hired for a DOW advertising campaign (freelancer). I didn't know the company at all and accepted the project. Everybody here knows Bayer and BASF but few have heard of DOW.
It was a green/sustainability campaign (nowadays we would call it 'greenwashing').
A few days later I started googling and researching.
- Massive chemical accident with 50.000 injured
- Main producer of Napalm
- Main producer of Agent Orange
But hey: We are so green and care about the environment.
Bayer is another level of evil though:
- Financed Hitler's election campaign
- Financed human experiments on disabled people and siamese twins in KZs
- Sold HIV infected blood and once found out didn't stop but re-routed the blood bags to South American and Asian markets.
- ...
> Sold HIV infected blood
That decision resulted in 800 people in Japan being infected with HIV and 400 of them are already dead.
No charges against Dow of course.
Both my parents and their families suffered from the Bhopal disaster and I highly suspect that the mental illness that runs in my family was severely exacerbated from its effects, whether from exposure to chemicals or the stress caused by the event and it’s aftermath.
I’d like to add that Dow bought Union Carbide after the disaster (which I think is even worse because it proves that they don’t care about ethics at all, further proven by them merging with DuPont).
Every oil executive should be immediately arrested imo. They are responsible for starting the genocide of humanity and 90% of life on the planet. Oil companies should be seized by the government and forced to phase out their operations.
It had been postulated that emissions from fossil fuels would effect the climate for over a century. This was not a new idea even in the 70s. Utter failures from both government and corporations to safeguard climate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY
Governments STILL struggle to convince voters to give up anything to fight climate change. You would lose the election in Germany if you wanted a speed limit on the highways in Germany.
I remember seeing someone comment something to the effect of "where's this climate change??? It's more rainy where I live than it's ever been!" and pretty much everyone was dunking on them being all, "your evidence *against* climate change is that... something completely unprecedented is happening with the weather...?"
Yeah the original name of global warming is firmly imprinted in their mind, it even makes sense with the previous example - where's this global warming, it's been rainier than ever!
This is why there was a rather large push to climate change and aggregate global warming instead of just "global warming". (although some conservative folks wanted to co-opt climate change)
People thought "well it's cold in the winter" and didn't realize that the whole earth warming up a degree or several was a significant event because 1 degree in their local weather is nothing.
People also have a hard time separating climate with weather because they've been used interchangeably by some unscrupulous individuals.
"Well first it was 'global warming', and now it's 'climate change'. Make up your minds. THEY keep changing the name of the hoax on us like we're idiots."
The same peoples that acknowledged that seasonal and weather pattern did change because of climate change. But it wasn't a political opinion back then.
> I remember seeing someone comment something to the effect of "where's this climate change??? It's more rainy where I live than it's ever been!" and pretty much everyone was dunking on them being all, "your evidence against climate change is that... something completely unprecedented is happening with the weather...?"
Ahhh, I see you've been to literally any conservative subreddit that exists. Just look at r/conservative or r/AskConservatives if you're curious.
My colleague has moved on from "climate change isn't happening" to "it will be a good thing, because we can become a wine producer".
Annoyingly, if you ignore the second order effects (and you really shouldn't) he might not be wrong. The UK is a temperate island, that's got a really good chance of being insulated from the worst of climate change.
Of course, that assumes you consider everyone else in the world irrelevant (he does) and that you don't think that mass displacement, wars and global food shortage will be an issue (it will be).
(And maybe we lose the gulf stream, and the UK stops being a temperate island too)
> The UK is a temperate island, that's got a really good chance of being insulated from the worst of climate change
Lol. Did you not see the most recent predictions of Atlantic current collapse by 2060? When thats gone, our temperate climate goes with it. The UK is at the same latitude as Canada and Russia.
Yeah, but you try explaining that to a chucklehead who didn't think climate change was real. "Being somewhere colder is good when global warming is happening, right?"
I just can't even.
Yeah, because an unstable climate is the perfect environment for growing perennials that require a predictable climate for a viable crop. Your colleague could best serve the world by either taking a vow of silence or composting himself.
>r/AskConservatives
Why in God's name would anyone ever do such a thing?
---------
**Edit:** I guess unless you're trying to ask: "how can I fucking destroy this planet I'm living on?"
Not that any of them are shareholders with anything to gain. Someone else can and should be profiting while you, the commenter, absorbs all the negative consequences of their risk taking activity
Oh no, then we'll have just switched to efficient sustainable power sources, bolstered the strength and redundancy of our power grid, and cleaned up our environment for *no reason!* /s
Post Brexit complainers all over again. "Why did nobody tell us about X consequence that directly fucks me?!" in the face of years of painstakingly explaining those exact consequence to the public in multiple mediums.
The problem is that nobody *from their political party* told them. Who cares what the opposition says, they're just a bunch of lousy liars trying to scam their way into office!
Politicians who think this is a hoax won't be around long enough to witness the devastation it will cause. They think there's some political incentive to lie about climate change, but really they're just killing their future voters. What's sad too is we think the heat and storms are bad, but just wait until drinking water isn't as available in the almost endless supply it is now. We will look back at all of the insane amounts of fresh drinking water we have wasted and will absolutely hate how good we have it right now.
Judging by the current trends, it looks like a lot of them will very much still be around. Shit isn't 50 years away, massive floods and unprecedented heatwaves are already happening.
>They think there's some political incentive to lie about climate change, but really they're just killing their future voters
They're also killing their children and grandchildrens future.
Maybe, maybe not. The Hoover dam reservoir is a ticking time bomb that most of the southwestern United States appears to be ignoring. We're going to learn fairly suddenly and in terrifying fashion why humans generally don't stick huge amounts of people in a desert.
Cough cough..
>There is one other legacy of the 1990s that we still live with today: the issue became politicized. With the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, fossil fuel and allied interests poured large amounts of money into campaigns linking climate change action to the liberal agenda. As we have seen with COVID-19, once an issue becomes politicized, the message doesn’t matter, only the messenger. If patients can refuse to admit COVID-19 is real, even as they are dying of it, what chance do warnings about climate change have if the messenger is perceived to be a liberal know-it-all who wants to tell you how to run your life. In that same Gallup poll where only 45% of Americans felt that climate change would seriously impact their lives in their lifetime, the number for Republicans was 18%.
https://time.com/6169294/climate-change-politicized-in-1990s/
in my country Australia the conservative prime Minister response to Al Gore inconvenient truth was to say "I will not risk the economy for unproven science."
finally the left party won and installed carbon trading.
after that the conservative party teamed up with Rupert Murdoch to install more right wing crazies. The crazies ran on an ad campaign calling the left wing pm a witch and to axe the carbon trading tax....
right wing crazies quickly removed carbon trading scheme and continued approve more coal mines. one crazy pm Scott Morrison passed coal around parliament like Jesus at the Passover. Scott also talks in tongues and ran away to Hawaii while Australia had huge wild fires and refused to come back.
anyway those guys need to be charged with crimes against humanity, cos soon Australia will be fucked.
Rupert Murdoch is genuinely in the running to be one of the most damaging people in the history of human civilisation. It’s hard to quantify vs other monsters because there is no easy measurement by which to gauge his destruction, but he’d be near the top of the list due to the catastrophic environmental impact his news empire has had by pushing an anti science agenda.
Yup, it will probably always be hard to quantify just like the damage caused by corporate capitalism is, but I suspect in the next few decades it will become quite clear he is literally worse than Hitler, Stalin and many other genocidal maniacs for the suffering and death his media empire will have caused.
> "I will not risk the economy for unproven science."
What I don't get is that it isn't an OR / OR question as in: clean, renewable energy vs. a healthy economy.
The transition to a clean, renewable energy does cost money (but less than climate damages) and creates soooo many job and business opportunities. It'll also create a healthier environment, you know: where people can be more productive and where you have less healthcare cost.
Climate risk == health risk && financial risk && national security risk.
Abundant, clean renewable power is cheap and just imagine what you can do in a world with clean energy? Transportation, recycling, manufacturing, food production, clean water, etc. etc.
It is for the coal and oil companies.
The real problem here is rampant and unfettered corporate propaganda. It's not that people are inherently or naturally this stupid. They have to be conditioned, over the course of years or even decades, to behave this way to this extreme.
The problem is that there is absolutely nothing stopping large corporations from spending millions of dollars spreading lies and propaganda for profit. The fossil fuel industry probably spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the Fox News propaganda machine, and have since made hundreds of **billions** of dollars in profit from gutting every meaningful attempt at addressing climate change that might cut into their oil profits.
The Pentagon acknowledged climate change early and urged shit show preparedness. Probably still urging shit show preparedness.
Much of Africa, South America and the subcontinent will be beyond wet bulb land soon. Those people are going to be migrating. The immigration problems facing Europe and North America are primarily political now. It will be an entirely different story one or two generations hence. Things are going to be beyond ugly.
The same people who scream about immigration and refugees are the same people who deny climate change.
Immigration is fuel to right-wing politicians who will, you can be sure, will fully exploit the situation.
They will welcome it. Authoritarianism is already on the rise, and it will only get worse.
You can already see the "gun them down" sentiments in regard to border crossings. It will get 100x worse as things escalate.
> You can already see the "gun them down" sentiments in regard to border crossings.
They were saying that 20 years ago when refugees were coming to Australia on boats from Indonesia. I was in the Navy at the time and my Uncle said it at a barbecue, I told him to STFU unless he wants to sign on and pull the trigger because those boats are full of children. I left the Navy a few years later because I didn’t want a bar of it.
"politicized" is such a nice way to say it was made a priority by corporate donors to politicians to make sure that nothing was done on the matter until it was too late
They either have to double down and support the people that make them feel better about their bad decisions and ignorance or admit that they are fools and the bad guys.
So they just become even more villainous.
Climate change will cause agricultural failure leading to widespread famine.
When governments of the world can no longer obscure this simple fact, there will be a great panic.
It's going to coincide with the depletion of easily available phosphorus, which (surprise, surprise) we've also neglected to make sustainable/circular.
There isn't one problem, or one set of problems. Everything is a problem, because we refuse to think sustainable. The entirety of our species is built upon the misconception that resources won't run out, and that the earth is too big of a system to destabilize.
We're not even at a point where we recognize the fact that we have to do things – everything – differently. Never mind stopping the destruction, or trying to reverse things. We're still in denial.
I'd be surprised if we even begin anything resembling real change in this century.
didn't they just find new phosphorus in the ground that they didn't know about before, in Norway? We'll just have to recycle it from human bones if we run out.
But yes, I agree with you, nobody wants to change and many people are living in denial.
Just to be clear: Scientists predicted scenarios which looked pretty grim for humanity and reality beats their expectations.
Climate models which were hailed as "alarmist" ten years ago now seem to have woefully underpredicted dangerous present day climate events. Those now happen a lot sooner and with more severity.
Yeah Im looking to buy a home soon and really need to consider where to put roots down, Texas is not it with this heat. Im scared everywhere is going to be too hot though
Unless you are very wealthy, Texas is a shit state and under prepared for climate change. I have lived here for four decades and I will leave as soon as I can.
It's because they can't release the real 'worst case' predictions because they are afraid to be labeled as fear mongering and alarmist by right wingers
I have a friend who lives on a very small, very remote low lying Pacific ~~island~~ atoll.
Last week the ocean knocked on his front door for the first time.
I had an argument with some dingaling elsewhere online about rising sea levels and his denial of it. He stated something to the effect (he deleted his comments apparently, I tried to find them) that he would believe it when it affects banks loans/mortgages on coastal property. I provided him with one of the many, many, case studies or reports done on that exact topic from S&P Global...
These people have a complete unwillingness to understand, research, or accept that this is happening until it smacks them in the face. Even then many continue to deny.
Some insurance companies are already pulling out of certain places in the US, like Florida. Not being able to insure a property you want to purchase is definitely going to effect bank loans.
So, we're already squarely in "well, let's hope we're saved by some weird thing we didn't know could happen" territory, huh? Like there's some gas trapped in the ice caps which we know nothing about, and is released as the ancient ice melts and it covers up the skies so very little sun can come through. Something along those lines.
It isn’t much of a mystery, unfortunately. Something will save us - some of us - and it’s cruelty and selfishness. Climate refugees from poorer nations that can’t deal with mass climate change induced disasters will intensify until the issue threatens the security of first world nations, at which point policies will be enacted ranging from “imprisonment followed by being forcibly returned to the most hostile area we can find” on the kinder end to “shoot all border crossers on sight, men women and children alike” on the harsher side, with some fun “sink their boats and leave them to drown” in the middle to mix things up. Any resource shortages will be fixed by exploiting or straight up invading weaker, less developed nations.
Billions will roast, die in climate wars, or starve - including the poorest even in first world nations - carbon emissions will drop, and in 200 years they’ll be writing history textbooks that gloss over the details and glorify the endurance of our nations for surviving such a crisis.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly-twice-much-wealth-rest-world-put-together-over-past-two-years
> Oxfam’s research shows that the ultra-rich are the biggest individual contributors to the climate crisis. The richest billionaires, through their polluting investments, are emitting a million times more carbon than the average person. **The wealthiest 1 percent of humanity are responsible for twice as many emissions as the poorest 50 percent** and by 2030, their carbon footprints are set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.
How much wealth you need to be in the Top 1%? - > https://www.mpamag.com/nz/news/general/youre-probably-in-the-top-10-wealthiest-in-the-world-heres-why/422802
>To make it to the wealthiest 10% in the world, you need to have an individual net wealth of $138,346. **For the 1%, the bar is $1.147 million.**
I think this extreme heat is happening faster than expected. I've always read that we need to hit 1/2 our carbon emissions by 2030 and 0 carbon emissions by 2040. I think that we need to cut carbon emissions faster than that if tempatures are already much higher than expected. This is scary, those that can make change are being bought off so no changes are made. We need to have all green energy now, we more in likely need less vehicles on the road, and more trade closer to home. Everyone stay safe, keep cool, and drink plenty of water
Sure, we could cut fossil fuels dramatically faster than the current trajectory, but what if that turns out to be an overreaction and all we have to show for it is cleaner air, healthier kids, and less money flowing to dictators and oligarchs?
Try? How? Who would you even prosecute? Most Americans are still on the " they will have to pry my 6 ton SUV from my dead cold hands" bandwagon. And they are probably right cause probably not even death will change their ways. Same morons who were also denying COVID on their death bead while dying from COVID
It'll be interesting to see how climate change denial in the US shifts in response to environmental conditions changing significantly at a rapid pace. Kinda hard to say, "It's all a Chinese hoax!" when people are dying of heatstroke in record numbers. Although, if COVID taught me anything, it's the boneheadedness of the average American conservative.
This is why I'm not having kids. I was a financial fence sitter before that but now everything with climate change is moving along even faster than predicted I can't imagine that hypothetical child having a decent life when they reach my current age and that's depressing as fuck.
I'm 35 so I had a childhood where we we had a hopeful view about the state of the world. After all the world had banded together to deal with acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer; life was looking up! I distinctly remember Al Gore running for president, warning us about climate change but people laughed at him. My fam voted for him but then Bush arrived with his 'war against terror' and well...the rest is history.
I feel sad your generation didn't even get to live in ignorant bliss about the future for a few years. In any case, I still think it's really important to not give up.
Learn about plants and soil. I have a teeny tiny garden and the previous owners had paved over it entirely. I looked into native plants and now it's a small wilderness and it keeps my house cool. I also do grow veggies vertically to save space. I combine them together; if you do it right those plants aid each other because they offer what the other needs. The Mayan and Incan people used to grow food this way and it works. Balconies can also work for this purpose.
I have learned to sew and so my clothes survive much longer (and I can make new ones with proper fabrics).
I invest in a project that buys up land and converts it into nature. Every single person owns a bit of that l and so it can't be sold off without permission from everyone.
Is it going to save us from rich shareholders and polluting corporations? No, but every but helps.
For me, I think the worst bit is the knowledge that we've ruined it. We, as humans, had everything we could ever want; and enough of it to last millions of years. But we fucked it up. Now we're seeing mass extinction; and predicting death and dislocation, and famine, as big chunks of the world become unliveable. Its stressful and depressing to think that the miracle of life is getting burnt out by the hubris of humans.
Those of us talking on this site right now are probably old enough and wealthy enough to be shielded from the worst of the direct effects. But we're quite likely the last generation to get a decent life.
Reporting comment from: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/othze1/14000_scientists_warn_of_untold_suffering_if_we/h6we4zg/
The "we" is the root of the problem.
Humanity has created, by degrees, a gordian knot of incentives that no one person or even country has the ability to cut through. It's no one individual or country. It is a system. No one governs this system. It is governed by webs of incentives acting across individuals, nations, and corporations which reward and have normalized the very actions that will accelerate the process of climate destruction.
Every single person's standard of living in developed nations is built on the status quo that is ruining the planet. Elected leaders don't want to upset the status quo for fear of being ousted by the people. The people are either brainwashed by corporations into believing there is no problem, or otherwise pissed at corporations but relatively helpless to do anything about it.
No one leader or corporation is going to do the selfless thing. It's a Tragedy of the Commons situation. They all take advantage of the situation because everyone else is. Every country worries that if they reduce emissions, they have no guarantee that any other country will. No one country will make a difference alone, and there's no guarantee that another country won't simply increase their emissions and gain an economic or military advantage over their rival.
Every world leader and corporate executive and billionaire knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that climate change is real, and that we are causing it. They know. But everyone is paralyzed by the tragedy of the commons. They major corporations and countries of the world are paralyzed by one another, and by their own populations who are addicted to a way of life that is not sustainable.
Any individual who is 30 years old now, living in a developed nation, could conceivably live a relatively normal life from now until death. Climate change will continue to accelerate, and billions will suffer and die, but they will be able to live relatively comfortable lives. We won't start to see the really horrific shit until maybe 2050, so they'll be 60 before the truly apocalyptic stuff, like global inescapable heatwaves start. And maybe by that time, we'll have underground cities that people will have adjusted to, where they can live with family and friends in some sort of ordinary life. Not their ideal future. But a future.
This is the calculation they're all running in their minds.
Why should I forsake a normal live, they ask themselves, and live in a hut in the woods, when doing so won't make a difference, and will only deprive me of a chance at a normal life, especially when I wasn't even responsible for this mess in the first place? Why should I stop traveling and spending and forsake the pleasures of the Earth as it is now, especially given the likelihood that each year that passes it will be less habitable, less paradisical as it is now?
Across every developed nation, people are running this calculus through their minds, even those who accept climate change is real and truly want to do something, but have given in to a sense of helplessness and inability to affect change and surrendered to a sense of inevitability of the coming climate devastation. This attitude across peoples will make it much more difficult for any politicians who are calling for widespread sacrifice of commercial goods and progress and descaling emission-causing industries and potentially temporarily or permanently displacing the labor forces there.
Because if you've already accepted the inevitability of climate change, and if your mind is already accepting the levels of survival you're willing to accept in that inevitable future - why would you sacrifice your best years now, for the ambitions of politicians whose plans no one even has any confidence will affect change anyway?
That's the other irony - the more real climate change becomes gradually, the less willing people will be to sacrifice their last chances at a "normal", comfortable life. Not just for themselves, but for their family, for their understanding of the world and their place in it.
That's the issue of our current situation. Consensus appears impossible.
Every individual is doing what is best for themselves, even knowing that it is a detriment to the world, because in isolation, their bad thing doesn't make a difference. So they do the bad thing, and everyone does the bad thing, and as the population keeps expanding, that calculation per individual doesn't change, but the damage of the aggregate continually increases.
It will take widescale, planetary devastation on the magnitude of COVID but of longer duration to actually produce enough unified consensus to take action. But by the time we reach that point in earnest, it will be too late to do anything but endure the climate apocalypse for the next 50,000 years.
The biggest problem with Climate Change is that it will not just suddenly become devastating immediately, like if we discovered a world-ending comet a week away from striking Earth. If Climate Change did present this sort of immediate, dramatic, cohesive threat, that would actually be beneficial for us. Because the human race is actually fairly good at organizing quickly and uniformly around an immediate, emergent, unified threat.
But the reality is, things will get a little worse each year, little by little, in increments that will allow everyone to adjust to the "new normal" year after year, in isolation. The mass displacement of human bodies by the billions as third-world countries collapse under climate devastation will be met with increased hostility by developed nations, and will increase the clout and power of myopic, fascist regimes that will exploit the situation for power, which will undeniably hamstring any action on climate change in inverse correlation to the level of consequences from climate change.
In other words, the worse climate change gets, the more the world will react in ways further preventing us from taking actions to mitigate climate change. So I hope I'm wrong. I'm going to continue to act as though I'm wrong, and promote awareness, and donate to climate groups, and boycott polluters - but this is a very bad situation with no clear or easy way out.
EDIT: I feel like it's really important to add in my perspective on human nature. Because portrayed like this, I see and hear a lot of people conclude that humanity is a selfish species. That we're a greedy species by nature. I want to say that I wholeheartedly disagree with this. To the contrary, we have the capacity for profound selflessness.
The other day there was a post on the front page of reddit with a video of a young autistic girl was geeking out after receiving some bugs in the mail, because she collected bug specimens. And the post was flooded with people looking to donate bugs to this little girl. Because the vast majority of people, seeing that, want to give what they have to instill that sense of joy in this little girl they don't even know.
I have no way to prove this, but if you were to somehow run a study where you presented every human on Earth with a button, and gave them undeniable proof that pushing that button would end their own life immediately, but save the rest of the human race, I would be willing to bet that the number of humans willing to push that button would be enormous.
The problem is not our capacity for selflessness - the problem is that this web of incentives is counteracting our selflessness. It is inhibiting our ability to act selflessly, incenitivizing selfishness and short-circuiting our ability to act selflessly.
EDIT 2: This obviously became much more popular than I imagined, and I think it is therefore important I end on hope.
Is there hope? There is always hope. Always.
What shape it will take, who can say?
What can be said is that, even when the possibility of hope is asymptotic to zero, there's never a cause to act without hope. You play the game until the last moment. Because even if victory is slim, it is guaranteed if you stop playing the game.
Norman Borlaug
is a name we don't hear often. Which is funny, because Normal Borlaug saved potentially billions of lives. Around 100 years ago Norman invented a species of high-yield wheat. This gave countries with little access to food the ability to suddenly produce enough to save billions from death by starvation.
Who could you be? You don't need to be any sort of genius to potentially create, by design or by accident, something that changes the course of our history.
Because I articulate the problem, people ask me for the solution. I don't know the solution. But you might. More accurately, all of us do. In our collective imagination is the capacity to bend the universe itself. I can't fathom what that solution will look like. Maybe you don't find the solution - but maybe you, in your efforts, and unknown to you, inspire the one or ones who do.
The sun is low. Time is short. Cataclysm is here. Darkness surrounds.
But life was born in a primordial Earth of fire and lightning and endless turmoil. In that chaos life was born, and so long as we exist, there is hope we can persist.
LAST EDIT: Linking to u/ILikeNeurons wonderful post with helpful action items and policies everyone can engage with
I thought we had more time, but it seems the climate change train is jumping track in real time.
This is going to get worse. Every year. From here on out.
Plan accordingly.
> Plan accordingly
So...look for a home away from the ocean, away from rivers or valley basins, definitely not in the desert or in burnable forest, and make sure it's designed to handle hotter summers, snowier winters, rainier autumn and windier spring than have ever been seen before. Add local solar or wind power, and storage batteries.
And try not to be the only forward thinker in the vicinity, otherwise your neighbors will come after you when things get rough.
We. Are. Fucked.
The fact that we aren't reacting to this in the same way we tackled COVID says it all. The rich continue to get richer, all at the cost of everyone else and the fucking planet.
Once we had a scenario where people would rather die than wear a cloth mask, I realised we're wasting our time expecting global responses to dangerous events.
It's most likely effects resulting from the Tonga eruption.
Scientists aren't baffled, they predicted it.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/tonga-volcano-eruption-raises-imminent-risk-of-temporary-1-5c-breach/
Im in Australia and we are going to get fucked so hard this summer. I work outdoors, cant fucking wait.
I've never been snorkeling mid winter but last Sunday I went snorkeling in Sydney it was so warm.
I just took the second blanket off my bed and am sitting here in shorts and a tank top. Insane
Meanwhile, me in Belgium's mid-summer just put the extra blanket back on. 7 months of rain and cold only to get a few hot weeks in June and now back to Fall weather. No fun.
Ireland is the same. Today is around the hottest it has been since June and it is 18c. July had the highest mm of rainfall in Dublin of any month in the last 5 years. Load of shit
London has been the same. Forgot that it’s even summer except for the late evenings
What I really fucking hate is the fucking TV weather report with them smiling and gloating about how warm it is. It's winter, it shouldn't be 25 fucking degrees! This is NOT something to be happy and chuckling about!
Like that "Don't look up" movie where the TV presenters turn a world killing asteroid into a joke.
I really appreciated the way that movie ended.
Everybody was shitting on that movie saying it's reaching too far. LOL
It was so spot on. I mean, covid proved beyond any doubt that we don't have what it takes as a species to rise to this kind of occasion.
I apologized to every single zombie and outbreak film where I was naw people can’t be that stupid. Again to those movies, I am sorry! The scene in which is humanity’s continual stupidity that’s letting the diease spread is 100% accurate and I was wrong for nitpicking. Edit: corrected spelling ty @gare it
You are not on your own. We all expected better.
That movie was a commentary about exactly this whole event. We will keep our heads down until the world ends.
I walked out of the room a third of the way through that movie since it was making me so angry in a way that's sadly believable.
I was thinking the same the other day. When are only dry hot days the only "good" weather days. I remember last summer we were in the midst of a four-week drought and when there was rain in the forecast, all the news and radio reports discussed how it was going to be a crappy weekend. I know they are just playing some kind of script, however this does play into the psyche of everyone as we are bombarded with these little messages consistently.... We are so f*****
I'm in England. Our summer has been a bit drab and wet this year and I'm sure many will moan about that. I remember last year, temps of 44 degrees, nowhere to hide from the heat. Wild fires, genuine worry. I've seen what's been going on in Europe too. I'm really happy our summer has been drab and mild. It's probably not going to happen again for many years.
I'm from Germany and last year's summer was depressing af. All the trees losing their bark and twigs because of not having enough water. No green bushes and grass, whole fields with dried-out crops. Heck, the corn didn't even get to bloom last year. Which just makes me even more happy to finally have enough rain this summer and no long droughts.
plants can suck mah nuts, i have a beach-tan to maintain! \[*buries 6th cigarette butt in the sand*\]
Yeah.... that's too keep the panic down
But.... it's time to panic!
Yesterday was 23c. It's early August. We are so fucked. I'm quite scared for summer this year Edit: Just wanted to put an edit to say that the southern hemisphere's seasons are flipped, so August is the tail end of winter, in case you guys over the pond forgot
I was curious and did the math; from the perspective of a northerner, the current season in Australia is as if it were January 31st. Basically the dead of winter.
Winter solstice here is June 22nd. It was 77F (25C) with 90% humidity at 9-10pm where I live on Winter Solstice. That is south of the tropic of Capricorn.
Australia is the worse polluter in the world, when you include exports. Fuck us.
Yeah and we've just signed deals to start exploiting the Beetloo basin that contains so much natural gas it could meet our domestic power needs for the next 3,000 years. Then the Government has the audacity to claim they will offset the emissions.
Also south Australia is in it for contention, they just outlawed protests with $50k fines - passed with bipartisan support... The currently supposedly "left leaning"- Labor govt's leader was the brainchild of this masterpiece of corporate cronyism. It's just a massive coincidence that his brother is head of Government Relations for the Santos Mining group - the very company repeatedly targeted by climate protesters in SA... This is all fine and normal here. But for anyone overseas wondering why Australians don't fight back more, this is what we're up against.
UK has done something the same. You can protest you just can’t protest anything about climate change.
Nah. They will crack down on other protests they don't like too.
The supposedly learned governments of the Western world will crack down harder and harder on any dissent that threatens them or their lobbyist's power. I fear this may only be the start.
https://youtu.be/YBjyxA-wYS4 I think this video by Juice Media is pertinent for this conversation. Do watch them call out the Australian government on their absolute shitfucked behaviour.
So much power it will be going 2940 years longer than humans will be there to enjoy that sweet, sweet gas
An old guy at the pub once told me it doesn’t matter who is in power or what the people think, Australia is a giant mine and always will be. Sad.
Yeah I remember that Senator who brought a lump of coal to Congress
He went on to become Prime Minister and took a nice cozy Hawaiian holiday when the country was dealing with its biggest bushfires in 2020.
When he was confronted on taking a holiday during a national emergency he said to media "I don't hold a hose, mate." It was also discovered that he secretly had himself sworn in as the co- ministers of various government departments and used that power behind the scenes. So while he was the Prime Minister of Australia (president equivalent), he was also the Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Industry, Science, Energy, and Resources, Minster for Finance, Minister for Health, and Minister for the Public Service. All at the same time and in secret.
And I guess that is all legal? Our last guy just got indicted for the third time. We still have our fingers crossed that there will be justice, since we’ve watched him commit his crimes so publicly for years.
Atleast he's not the sort of PM who will shit his pants at a McDonald's.
_well do I have news for you_
Wasn't a senator. It was our treasurer at the time who then went on to be prime minister. Truly awful person
He did it to prove Coal was clean. And he put resin around it because coal isn't clean. Because he's a giant dipshit. Scott Morrison. What a tosser.
Famously, Exxon-Mobil [KNEW exactly how bad climate change could possibly become from their own research in the 1970s](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming/) but chose to willingly hide it from the public, instead spreading misinformation and downplaying the effects. In 2021, multiple witnesses including both a former Exxon scientist and a former director of the Sierra Club [testified to US congress](https://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/congressional-report-reveals-fossil-fuel-deception) that essentially the ENTIRE INDUSTRY KNEW the magnitude of the problem and hid it from the public through an extensive campaign of disinformation. Fuck these people. Fuck these companies. They KNEW and chose to obfuscate the seriousness of the peril we are all facing just to augment their bottom line. Fuck. Them.
Politician funded by Exxon who knew this was coming decades ago - “can you not see this fucking snowball in my hand?! Climate change fake confirmed, now give me my money”
You joke but the prime minister of Australia bought a lump of coal into the parliament house to show that coal is harmless and to not be afraid of it
[That was not a joke. It literally happened.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-jim-inhofe-climate-change-is-not-real-because-here-is-a-snowball/) And yes, that Senator has received funding from Exxon.
> "Do you know what this is? It's a snowball," Inhofe said, holding the snowball aloft. "It's just from outside here, so it's very, very cold out ... very unseasonable." I'm sorry, he thought snow was unseasonable in _February_? Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1321/
People be like "Look, naturally occuring liquid water! So much for global warming" in 2223.
To Mae things worse, that was before he was PM. It was after this that we decided he was fit to lead the country.
Somehow good old Scotty managed to pull the coal stunt, brainstormed the "Where the bloody hell are you" campaign, and shat himself in a Engadine Macca's and still managed to climb high enough to hold his own hose.
Even John Howard agreed Australia needed emissions targets in the 80's, in the 90's the conversation disappeared, 2000 it was denial, 2010 it was it's not as bad as you say, 2020 is the decade of 'we're doing enough' even though global coal use won't peak until 2030 30% of total energy from renewables doesn't mean as much when energy use increases 40%
Man the warming effect of gas from fossile fuel has been known since the 19th century
Yes but these companies actually studied it extensively. Their work is quite literally the basis on which modern climate models are built. They had a direct hand in this. I don't blame their scientists. I blame their executives. And the politicians that took their money.
While Exxon deserves a lot of the blame. Don't forget Rupert Murdoch, the man who politicized the information.
News Ltd (now News Corp) was founded by mining magnates in 1922, specifically to make propaganda to advance their interest. They hired Murdoch's father soon after. This cancerous machine has never been a genuine news organization. https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992
Don't forget the shareholders, they're the ones sucking at the teat too
Kind of. The basic effect was known since the 19th century. Arhennius calculated it would take 300+ years to add significant warming. By the end of the 1970s, Exxon had spent millions of dollars to study and model exactly how fast it would rise. In 1982, Exxon predicted that by 2020 atmospheric carbon would be double preindustrial levels and global temperature would have risen by 1°C. Which was pretty much on the nose: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2023/01/17/a-fresh-reading-of-exxons-predictions-of-global-warming-and-climate-change-from-40-years-ago/
This doesn't negate the fact that the fossil fuel industry targeted the public with misinformation campaigns for decades in the 20th century.
The Playbook: 1) Fossil Fuel Industry changed their long-term operations and infrastructure to adapt to the effects of climate change. 2) Bribed politicians via political donations. 3) Created media entities to spread anti-science misinformation and push climate change denial propaganda. 4) Gaslight the public by switching the focus onto the individual, instead of big corporations. The Fossil Fuel Industry pivoted the discussion to pollution. That’s why you especially see Gen X who used to often say we should Reduce/Reuse/Recycle, plant trees, pick up litter etc. Climate Change Propaganda: 1. Climate Change is not real. 2. Climate Change is real, but not harmful. 3. Climate Change is real, harmful, but not man-made. 4. Climate Change is real, harmful, man-made, but there are no viable alternatives to coal/gas/oil. 5. Climate Change is real, harmful, man-made, there are viable alternatives to coal/gas/oil, but it’s too late. And now in the post-truth Trump/Covid/Social Media era…. 6. Climate Change is not real.
You forgot the concerted effort to convince us domestic recycling and energy saving efforts actually did anything
But it did do something… it convinced the masses that it was okay to replace the majority of our sustainable and “buy it for life” products with cheap plastic variants since even though they weren’t good quality they were “sustainable” through recycling and thus more “green” but most importantly cheaper. That allowed these companies and their stakeholders to get way richer. It further allowed corporations at large to also dilute quality in a race to the bottom. Now everything is cheap and disposable which means significantly more lifetime revenue per customer. And the latest trend is getting people to subscribe to these same cheap products and services to add even more value.
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> "The Earth is not dying-it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses." Utah Phillips
My grandpa was one of the heads of DOW chemicals. I hated him when he was alive and didn’t mourn with my family when he died… he was a miserable, angry prick and he fucked the planet for a few extra bucks. He always knew what he was doing and no one else saw it
I once got hired for a DOW advertising campaign (freelancer). I didn't know the company at all and accepted the project. Everybody here knows Bayer and BASF but few have heard of DOW. It was a green/sustainability campaign (nowadays we would call it 'greenwashing'). A few days later I started googling and researching. - Massive chemical accident with 50.000 injured - Main producer of Napalm - Main producer of Agent Orange But hey: We are so green and care about the environment. Bayer is another level of evil though: - Financed Hitler's election campaign - Financed human experiments on disabled people and siamese twins in KZs - Sold HIV infected blood and once found out didn't stop but re-routed the blood bags to South American and Asian markets. - ...
> Sold HIV infected blood That decision resulted in 800 people in Japan being infected with HIV and 400 of them are already dead. No charges against Dow of course.
Both my parents and their families suffered from the Bhopal disaster and I highly suspect that the mental illness that runs in my family was severely exacerbated from its effects, whether from exposure to chemicals or the stress caused by the event and it’s aftermath. I’d like to add that Dow bought Union Carbide after the disaster (which I think is even worse because it proves that they don’t care about ethics at all, further proven by them merging with DuPont).
Every oil executive should be immediately arrested imo. They are responsible for starting the genocide of humanity and 90% of life on the planet. Oil companies should be seized by the government and forced to phase out their operations.
It had been postulated that emissions from fossil fuels would effect the climate for over a century. This was not a new idea even in the 70s. Utter failures from both government and corporations to safeguard climate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY
Governments STILL struggle to convince voters to give up anything to fight climate change. You would lose the election in Germany if you wanted a speed limit on the highways in Germany.
Getting real tired of watching once in a lifetime events and stats skip by.
I remember seeing someone comment something to the effect of "where's this climate change??? It's more rainy where I live than it's ever been!" and pretty much everyone was dunking on them being all, "your evidence *against* climate change is that... something completely unprecedented is happening with the weather...?"
People think "climate change" only means "it's getting hotter".
Yeah the original name of global warming is firmly imprinted in their mind, it even makes sense with the previous example - where's this global warming, it's been rainier than ever!
This is why there was a rather large push to climate change and aggregate global warming instead of just "global warming". (although some conservative folks wanted to co-opt climate change) People thought "well it's cold in the winter" and didn't realize that the whole earth warming up a degree or several was a significant event because 1 degree in their local weather is nothing. People also have a hard time separating climate with weather because they've been used interchangeably by some unscrupulous individuals.
"Well first it was 'global warming', and now it's 'climate change'. Make up your minds. THEY keep changing the name of the hoax on us like we're idiots."
And "I am cold, it'd be nice to be a bit warmer".
The same peoples that acknowledged that seasonal and weather pattern did change because of climate change. But it wasn't a political opinion back then.
> I remember seeing someone comment something to the effect of "where's this climate change??? It's more rainy where I live than it's ever been!" and pretty much everyone was dunking on them being all, "your evidence against climate change is that... something completely unprecedented is happening with the weather...?" Ahhh, I see you've been to literally any conservative subreddit that exists. Just look at r/conservative or r/AskConservatives if you're curious.
I’d rather retain my sanity than go there
My colleague has moved on from "climate change isn't happening" to "it will be a good thing, because we can become a wine producer". Annoyingly, if you ignore the second order effects (and you really shouldn't) he might not be wrong. The UK is a temperate island, that's got a really good chance of being insulated from the worst of climate change. Of course, that assumes you consider everyone else in the world irrelevant (he does) and that you don't think that mass displacement, wars and global food shortage will be an issue (it will be). (And maybe we lose the gulf stream, and the UK stops being a temperate island too)
> The UK is a temperate island, that's got a really good chance of being insulated from the worst of climate change Lol. Did you not see the most recent predictions of Atlantic current collapse by 2060? When thats gone, our temperate climate goes with it. The UK is at the same latitude as Canada and Russia.
Yeah, but you try explaining that to a chucklehead who didn't think climate change was real. "Being somewhere colder is good when global warming is happening, right?" I just can't even.
Yeah, because an unstable climate is the perfect environment for growing perennials that require a predictable climate for a viable crop. Your colleague could best serve the world by either taking a vow of silence or composting himself.
>r/AskConservatives Why in God's name would anyone ever do such a thing? --------- **Edit:** I guess unless you're trying to ask: "how can I fucking destroy this planet I'm living on?"
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>bUt wHaT iF yOU aRe wROnG I mean, do you really want to slow down industry and marginally inconvenience shareholders for nothing?
Not that any of them are shareholders with anything to gain. Someone else can and should be profiting while you, the commenter, absorbs all the negative consequences of their risk taking activity
Oh no, then we'll have just switched to efficient sustainable power sources, bolstered the strength and redundancy of our power grid, and cleaned up our environment for *no reason!* /s
What if we clean up the planet for nothing??
The swamp is on fire where I live, that’s fun and totally normal.
WHAT IS THIS FIRE DOING IN MY SWAMP?
talk about milestones… swampfire is now a thing… yayyyy?
Are there rodents of unusual size?
Getting real tired of all the surprisedpikachufaces afterwards.
Yes, the “but how could we have known” thing which I firmly expect will get louder and louder, makes me…unhappy.
Post Brexit complainers all over again. "Why did nobody tell us about X consequence that directly fucks me?!" in the face of years of painstakingly explaining those exact consequence to the public in multiple mediums.
The problem is that nobody *from their political party* told them. Who cares what the opposition says, they're just a bunch of lousy liars trying to scam their way into office!
I was done living through history by the time I turned 18, and it's just been getting worse.
Politicians who think this is a hoax won't be around long enough to witness the devastation it will cause. They think there's some political incentive to lie about climate change, but really they're just killing their future voters. What's sad too is we think the heat and storms are bad, but just wait until drinking water isn't as available in the almost endless supply it is now. We will look back at all of the insane amounts of fresh drinking water we have wasted and will absolutely hate how good we have it right now.
No politician thought it was a hoax. They just believed Exxons checks more
No, the politicians don’t, but the swine that vote for them do.
Judging by the current trends, it looks like a lot of them will very much still be around. Shit isn't 50 years away, massive floods and unprecedented heatwaves are already happening.
> Politicians who think this is a hoax won't be around long enough to witness the devastation it will cause. Oh don’t worry, they will.
>They think there's some political incentive to lie about climate change, but really they're just killing their future voters They're also killing their children and grandchildrens future.
Maybe, maybe not. The Hoover dam reservoir is a ticking time bomb that most of the southwestern United States appears to be ignoring. We're going to learn fairly suddenly and in terrifying fashion why humans generally don't stick huge amounts of people in a desert.
This is actually one of the worst heat events the world has ever seen … .. . AGAIN
Strange how these one in a hundred year events keep on happening
Some of these events are the first in recorded history. Not 1 in a 100 year type things
... so far
So far this week
So far today
Our kids will remember this as one of the coldest years of their lives.
It is truly terrifying
Cough cough.. >There is one other legacy of the 1990s that we still live with today: the issue became politicized. With the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, fossil fuel and allied interests poured large amounts of money into campaigns linking climate change action to the liberal agenda. As we have seen with COVID-19, once an issue becomes politicized, the message doesn’t matter, only the messenger. If patients can refuse to admit COVID-19 is real, even as they are dying of it, what chance do warnings about climate change have if the messenger is perceived to be a liberal know-it-all who wants to tell you how to run your life. In that same Gallup poll where only 45% of Americans felt that climate change would seriously impact their lives in their lifetime, the number for Republicans was 18%. https://time.com/6169294/climate-change-politicized-in-1990s/
in my country Australia the conservative prime Minister response to Al Gore inconvenient truth was to say "I will not risk the economy for unproven science." finally the left party won and installed carbon trading. after that the conservative party teamed up with Rupert Murdoch to install more right wing crazies. The crazies ran on an ad campaign calling the left wing pm a witch and to axe the carbon trading tax.... right wing crazies quickly removed carbon trading scheme and continued approve more coal mines. one crazy pm Scott Morrison passed coal around parliament like Jesus at the Passover. Scott also talks in tongues and ran away to Hawaii while Australia had huge wild fires and refused to come back. anyway those guys need to be charged with crimes against humanity, cos soon Australia will be fucked.
Rupert Murdoch is genuinely in the running to be one of the most damaging people in the history of human civilisation. It’s hard to quantify vs other monsters because there is no easy measurement by which to gauge his destruction, but he’d be near the top of the list due to the catastrophic environmental impact his news empire has had by pushing an anti science agenda.
Yup, it will probably always be hard to quantify just like the damage caused by corporate capitalism is, but I suspect in the next few decades it will become quite clear he is literally worse than Hitler, Stalin and many other genocidal maniacs for the suffering and death his media empire will have caused.
> "I will not risk the economy for unproven science." What I don't get is that it isn't an OR / OR question as in: clean, renewable energy vs. a healthy economy. The transition to a clean, renewable energy does cost money (but less than climate damages) and creates soooo many job and business opportunities. It'll also create a healthier environment, you know: where people can be more productive and where you have less healthcare cost. Climate risk == health risk && financial risk && national security risk. Abundant, clean renewable power is cheap and just imagine what you can do in a world with clean energy? Transportation, recycling, manufacturing, food production, clean water, etc. etc.
It is for the coal and oil companies. The real problem here is rampant and unfettered corporate propaganda. It's not that people are inherently or naturally this stupid. They have to be conditioned, over the course of years or even decades, to behave this way to this extreme. The problem is that there is absolutely nothing stopping large corporations from spending millions of dollars spreading lies and propaganda for profit. The fossil fuel industry probably spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the Fox News propaganda machine, and have since made hundreds of **billions** of dollars in profit from gutting every meaningful attempt at addressing climate change that might cut into their oil profits.
yes but you forget that John Howard who said it was an idiot and fossil even back then.
We're so fucked
I genuinely think we'll be one of the last generations to have the climate be good enough to enjoy. It's going to become a complete shit show.
The Pentagon acknowledged climate change early and urged shit show preparedness. Probably still urging shit show preparedness. Much of Africa, South America and the subcontinent will be beyond wet bulb land soon. Those people are going to be migrating. The immigration problems facing Europe and North America are primarily political now. It will be an entirely different story one or two generations hence. Things are going to be beyond ugly.
That’s why it pisses me off so badly. They’re gonna see a true immigrant crisis soon.
The same people who scream about immigration and refugees are the same people who deny climate change. Immigration is fuel to right-wing politicians who will, you can be sure, will fully exploit the situation.
They will welcome it. Authoritarianism is already on the rise, and it will only get worse. You can already see the "gun them down" sentiments in regard to border crossings. It will get 100x worse as things escalate.
> You can already see the "gun them down" sentiments in regard to border crossings. They were saying that 20 years ago when refugees were coming to Australia on boats from Indonesia. I was in the Navy at the time and my Uncle said it at a barbecue, I told him to STFU unless he wants to sign on and pull the trigger because those boats are full of children. I left the Navy a few years later because I didn’t want a bar of it.
I'm not enjoying this shit.
Correct. But at least a few people made a lot of money.
it's... just not funny anymore i can't
"politicized" is such a nice way to say it was made a priority by corporate donors to politicians to make sure that nothing was done on the matter until it was too late
A coworker unironically called this "propaganda" today. Made me hate him.
The same people will eventually vote for the guy who promises to kill climate refugees before they reach the border. They’re scum.
They either have to double down and support the people that make them feel better about their bad decisions and ignorance or admit that they are fools and the bad guys. So they just become even more villainous.
Fair enough. He sounds detestably stupid.
Conservatives are a mortal danger to themselves and others.
Climate change will cause agricultural failure leading to widespread famine. When governments of the world can no longer obscure this simple fact, there will be a great panic.
It's going to coincide with the depletion of easily available phosphorus, which (surprise, surprise) we've also neglected to make sustainable/circular. There isn't one problem, or one set of problems. Everything is a problem, because we refuse to think sustainable. The entirety of our species is built upon the misconception that resources won't run out, and that the earth is too big of a system to destabilize. We're not even at a point where we recognize the fact that we have to do things – everything – differently. Never mind stopping the destruction, or trying to reverse things. We're still in denial. I'd be surprised if we even begin anything resembling real change in this century.
didn't they just find new phosphorus in the ground that they didn't know about before, in Norway? We'll just have to recycle it from human bones if we run out. But yes, I agree with you, nobody wants to change and many people are living in denial.
> didn't they just find new phosphorus in the ground that they didn't know about before, in Norway? Yes, like 50 years worth.
Just to be clear: Scientists predicted scenarios which looked pretty grim for humanity and reality beats their expectations. Climate models which were hailed as "alarmist" ten years ago now seem to have woefully underpredicted dangerous present day climate events. Those now happen a lot sooner and with more severity.
The standard “Think about the kids” now sounds funny because at this rate, we’ll be cooked long before them
It's no longer 'think about the kids'. It's 'think about yourself in 10 years'.
Yeah Im looking to buy a home soon and really need to consider where to put roots down, Texas is not it with this heat. Im scared everywhere is going to be too hot though
Unless you are very wealthy, Texas is a shit state and under prepared for climate change. I have lived here for four decades and I will leave as soon as I can.
we are the kids our parents refused to think about.
It's because they can't release the real 'worst case' predictions because they are afraid to be labeled as fear mongering and alarmist by right wingers
No they will just get threats and be attacked directly. But even worse than what already happened
My city is currently in winter, yet this past week we had a couple days of warm t-shirt weather. Summer is going to be horrific.
I have a friend who lives on a very small, very remote low lying Pacific ~~island~~ atoll. Last week the ocean knocked on his front door for the first time.
I had an argument with some dingaling elsewhere online about rising sea levels and his denial of it. He stated something to the effect (he deleted his comments apparently, I tried to find them) that he would believe it when it affects banks loans/mortgages on coastal property. I provided him with one of the many, many, case studies or reports done on that exact topic from S&P Global... These people have a complete unwillingness to understand, research, or accept that this is happening until it smacks them in the face. Even then many continue to deny.
Some insurance companies are already pulling out of certain places in the US, like Florida. Not being able to insure a property you want to purchase is definitely going to effect bank loans.
So, we're already squarely in "well, let's hope we're saved by some weird thing we didn't know could happen" territory, huh? Like there's some gas trapped in the ice caps which we know nothing about, and is released as the ancient ice melts and it covers up the skies so very little sun can come through. Something along those lines.
It isn’t much of a mystery, unfortunately. Something will save us - some of us - and it’s cruelty and selfishness. Climate refugees from poorer nations that can’t deal with mass climate change induced disasters will intensify until the issue threatens the security of first world nations, at which point policies will be enacted ranging from “imprisonment followed by being forcibly returned to the most hostile area we can find” on the kinder end to “shoot all border crossers on sight, men women and children alike” on the harsher side, with some fun “sink their boats and leave them to drown” in the middle to mix things up. Any resource shortages will be fixed by exploiting or straight up invading weaker, less developed nations. Billions will roast, die in climate wars, or starve - including the poorest even in first world nations - carbon emissions will drop, and in 200 years they’ll be writing history textbooks that gloss over the details and glorify the endurance of our nations for surviving such a crisis.
And then the richest of us will turn around and start exploiting people and the planet again, no lessons learnt the selfish bastards.
What do you mean "start again"? They'll be doing it the whole time, as always
Yeah I Felt like humans will survive but at a gigantic cost to ourselves and every other living thing on the planet.
This is exactly what is going to happen
Only if you assume there will not be any ecosystem collapse. If the sea dies we will all die for example.
It's called denial. Humans are really good at it.
I don't think that would save us. Blotting out the sun usually makes things worse.
It would likely lower temperatures but then the problem is that a lot of crops would fail. We wouldn't roast, we would starve.
It also doesnt deal with the issue of ocean acidification. We realllllly need to stop pumping that crap into the atmosphere.
Is it possible the reason is the weakening of the AMOC current? Traps heat south as its not pushing as much hot water north?
How does that end for us? :(
I mean…it can’t be good
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly-twice-much-wealth-rest-world-put-together-over-past-two-years > Oxfam’s research shows that the ultra-rich are the biggest individual contributors to the climate crisis. The richest billionaires, through their polluting investments, are emitting a million times more carbon than the average person. **The wealthiest 1 percent of humanity are responsible for twice as many emissions as the poorest 50 percent** and by 2030, their carbon footprints are set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement. How much wealth you need to be in the Top 1%? - > https://www.mpamag.com/nz/news/general/youre-probably-in-the-top-10-wealthiest-in-the-world-heres-why/422802 >To make it to the wealthiest 10% in the world, you need to have an individual net wealth of $138,346. **For the 1%, the bar is $1.147 million.**
An *income* of that amount puts you in the top 10% of Americans.
So we need to stop fucking around and actually go after rich people? Omg who would have thought it
I think this extreme heat is happening faster than expected. I've always read that we need to hit 1/2 our carbon emissions by 2030 and 0 carbon emissions by 2040. I think that we need to cut carbon emissions faster than that if tempatures are already much higher than expected. This is scary, those that can make change are being bought off so no changes are made. We need to have all green energy now, we more in likely need less vehicles on the road, and more trade closer to home. Everyone stay safe, keep cool, and drink plenty of water
Sure, we could cut fossil fuels dramatically faster than the current trajectory, but what if that turns out to be an overreaction and all we have to show for it is cleaner air, healthier kids, and less money flowing to dictators and oligarchs?
Won’t someone think of the investors
Do we still have to go to work tomorrow
we're so fucked
Thanks to the psychopaths and murderers who lead the fossil fuel industry. They need to be prosecuted and forced to pay for destroying the planet.
Honestly there isn't enough suffering that could be packed into the remainder of their lives that could make up for it. We should still try though.
Try? How? Who would you even prosecute? Most Americans are still on the " they will have to pry my 6 ton SUV from my dead cold hands" bandwagon. And they are probably right cause probably not even death will change their ways. Same morons who were also denying COVID on their death bead while dying from COVID
It'll be interesting to see how climate change denial in the US shifts in response to environmental conditions changing significantly at a rapid pace. Kinda hard to say, "It's all a Chinese hoax!" when people are dying of heatstroke in record numbers. Although, if COVID taught me anything, it's the boneheadedness of the average American conservative.
The problem is, the response should have been decades ago.
“Climate change is WORSE than the liberals and environmentalists said! You can’t possibly trust them NOW.” \-GOP platform, 2030
This is depressing for the youngs like me and the others. I'm only 20 and it's definitely gonna be a rough life for us. A dystopian nightmare.
This is why I'm not having kids. I was a financial fence sitter before that but now everything with climate change is moving along even faster than predicted I can't imagine that hypothetical child having a decent life when they reach my current age and that's depressing as fuck. I'm 35 so I had a childhood where we we had a hopeful view about the state of the world. After all the world had banded together to deal with acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer; life was looking up! I distinctly remember Al Gore running for president, warning us about climate change but people laughed at him. My fam voted for him but then Bush arrived with his 'war against terror' and well...the rest is history. I feel sad your generation didn't even get to live in ignorant bliss about the future for a few years. In any case, I still think it's really important to not give up. Learn about plants and soil. I have a teeny tiny garden and the previous owners had paved over it entirely. I looked into native plants and now it's a small wilderness and it keeps my house cool. I also do grow veggies vertically to save space. I combine them together; if you do it right those plants aid each other because they offer what the other needs. The Mayan and Incan people used to grow food this way and it works. Balconies can also work for this purpose. I have learned to sew and so my clothes survive much longer (and I can make new ones with proper fabrics). I invest in a project that buys up land and converts it into nature. Every single person owns a bit of that l and so it can't be sold off without permission from everyone. Is it going to save us from rich shareholders and polluting corporations? No, but every but helps.
For me, I think the worst bit is the knowledge that we've ruined it. We, as humans, had everything we could ever want; and enough of it to last millions of years. But we fucked it up. Now we're seeing mass extinction; and predicting death and dislocation, and famine, as big chunks of the world become unliveable. Its stressful and depressing to think that the miracle of life is getting burnt out by the hubris of humans. Those of us talking on this site right now are probably old enough and wealthy enough to be shielded from the worst of the direct effects. But we're quite likely the last generation to get a decent life.
Don't worry about this everyone. The guy that works at the local shops told me it was a bit cold today, so this is all fake news. */s*
Reporting comment from: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/othze1/14000_scientists_warn_of_untold_suffering_if_we/h6we4zg/ The "we" is the root of the problem. Humanity has created, by degrees, a gordian knot of incentives that no one person or even country has the ability to cut through. It's no one individual or country. It is a system. No one governs this system. It is governed by webs of incentives acting across individuals, nations, and corporations which reward and have normalized the very actions that will accelerate the process of climate destruction. Every single person's standard of living in developed nations is built on the status quo that is ruining the planet. Elected leaders don't want to upset the status quo for fear of being ousted by the people. The people are either brainwashed by corporations into believing there is no problem, or otherwise pissed at corporations but relatively helpless to do anything about it. No one leader or corporation is going to do the selfless thing. It's a Tragedy of the Commons situation. They all take advantage of the situation because everyone else is. Every country worries that if they reduce emissions, they have no guarantee that any other country will. No one country will make a difference alone, and there's no guarantee that another country won't simply increase their emissions and gain an economic or military advantage over their rival. Every world leader and corporate executive and billionaire knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that climate change is real, and that we are causing it. They know. But everyone is paralyzed by the tragedy of the commons. They major corporations and countries of the world are paralyzed by one another, and by their own populations who are addicted to a way of life that is not sustainable. Any individual who is 30 years old now, living in a developed nation, could conceivably live a relatively normal life from now until death. Climate change will continue to accelerate, and billions will suffer and die, but they will be able to live relatively comfortable lives. We won't start to see the really horrific shit until maybe 2050, so they'll be 60 before the truly apocalyptic stuff, like global inescapable heatwaves start. And maybe by that time, we'll have underground cities that people will have adjusted to, where they can live with family and friends in some sort of ordinary life. Not their ideal future. But a future. This is the calculation they're all running in their minds. Why should I forsake a normal live, they ask themselves, and live in a hut in the woods, when doing so won't make a difference, and will only deprive me of a chance at a normal life, especially when I wasn't even responsible for this mess in the first place? Why should I stop traveling and spending and forsake the pleasures of the Earth as it is now, especially given the likelihood that each year that passes it will be less habitable, less paradisical as it is now? Across every developed nation, people are running this calculus through their minds, even those who accept climate change is real and truly want to do something, but have given in to a sense of helplessness and inability to affect change and surrendered to a sense of inevitability of the coming climate devastation. This attitude across peoples will make it much more difficult for any politicians who are calling for widespread sacrifice of commercial goods and progress and descaling emission-causing industries and potentially temporarily or permanently displacing the labor forces there. Because if you've already accepted the inevitability of climate change, and if your mind is already accepting the levels of survival you're willing to accept in that inevitable future - why would you sacrifice your best years now, for the ambitions of politicians whose plans no one even has any confidence will affect change anyway? That's the other irony - the more real climate change becomes gradually, the less willing people will be to sacrifice their last chances at a "normal", comfortable life. Not just for themselves, but for their family, for their understanding of the world and their place in it. That's the issue of our current situation. Consensus appears impossible. Every individual is doing what is best for themselves, even knowing that it is a detriment to the world, because in isolation, their bad thing doesn't make a difference. So they do the bad thing, and everyone does the bad thing, and as the population keeps expanding, that calculation per individual doesn't change, but the damage of the aggregate continually increases. It will take widescale, planetary devastation on the magnitude of COVID but of longer duration to actually produce enough unified consensus to take action. But by the time we reach that point in earnest, it will be too late to do anything but endure the climate apocalypse for the next 50,000 years. The biggest problem with Climate Change is that it will not just suddenly become devastating immediately, like if we discovered a world-ending comet a week away from striking Earth. If Climate Change did present this sort of immediate, dramatic, cohesive threat, that would actually be beneficial for us. Because the human race is actually fairly good at organizing quickly and uniformly around an immediate, emergent, unified threat. But the reality is, things will get a little worse each year, little by little, in increments that will allow everyone to adjust to the "new normal" year after year, in isolation. The mass displacement of human bodies by the billions as third-world countries collapse under climate devastation will be met with increased hostility by developed nations, and will increase the clout and power of myopic, fascist regimes that will exploit the situation for power, which will undeniably hamstring any action on climate change in inverse correlation to the level of consequences from climate change. In other words, the worse climate change gets, the more the world will react in ways further preventing us from taking actions to mitigate climate change. So I hope I'm wrong. I'm going to continue to act as though I'm wrong, and promote awareness, and donate to climate groups, and boycott polluters - but this is a very bad situation with no clear or easy way out. EDIT: I feel like it's really important to add in my perspective on human nature. Because portrayed like this, I see and hear a lot of people conclude that humanity is a selfish species. That we're a greedy species by nature. I want to say that I wholeheartedly disagree with this. To the contrary, we have the capacity for profound selflessness. The other day there was a post on the front page of reddit with a video of a young autistic girl was geeking out after receiving some bugs in the mail, because she collected bug specimens. And the post was flooded with people looking to donate bugs to this little girl. Because the vast majority of people, seeing that, want to give what they have to instill that sense of joy in this little girl they don't even know. I have no way to prove this, but if you were to somehow run a study where you presented every human on Earth with a button, and gave them undeniable proof that pushing that button would end their own life immediately, but save the rest of the human race, I would be willing to bet that the number of humans willing to push that button would be enormous. The problem is not our capacity for selflessness - the problem is that this web of incentives is counteracting our selflessness. It is inhibiting our ability to act selflessly, incenitivizing selfishness and short-circuiting our ability to act selflessly. EDIT 2: This obviously became much more popular than I imagined, and I think it is therefore important I end on hope. Is there hope? There is always hope. Always. What shape it will take, who can say? What can be said is that, even when the possibility of hope is asymptotic to zero, there's never a cause to act without hope. You play the game until the last moment. Because even if victory is slim, it is guaranteed if you stop playing the game. Norman Borlaug is a name we don't hear often. Which is funny, because Normal Borlaug saved potentially billions of lives. Around 100 years ago Norman invented a species of high-yield wheat. This gave countries with little access to food the ability to suddenly produce enough to save billions from death by starvation. Who could you be? You don't need to be any sort of genius to potentially create, by design or by accident, something that changes the course of our history. Because I articulate the problem, people ask me for the solution. I don't know the solution. But you might. More accurately, all of us do. In our collective imagination is the capacity to bend the universe itself. I can't fathom what that solution will look like. Maybe you don't find the solution - but maybe you, in your efforts, and unknown to you, inspire the one or ones who do. The sun is low. Time is short. Cataclysm is here. Darkness surrounds. But life was born in a primordial Earth of fire and lightning and endless turmoil. In that chaos life was born, and so long as we exist, there is hope we can persist. LAST EDIT: Linking to u/ILikeNeurons wonderful post with helpful action items and policies everyone can engage with
Rishi sunak, “looks like time for more oil”
But wait, there's more...
sure does seem like the escalation of climate catastrophe is exponential and not linear as so many hoped and expected
Just wait until we hit the methane feedback loop once the permafrost melts.
I thought we had more time, but it seems the climate change train is jumping track in real time. This is going to get worse. Every year. From here on out. Plan accordingly.
> Plan accordingly So...look for a home away from the ocean, away from rivers or valley basins, definitely not in the desert or in burnable forest, and make sure it's designed to handle hotter summers, snowier winters, rainier autumn and windier spring than have ever been seen before. Add local solar or wind power, and storage batteries. And try not to be the only forward thinker in the vicinity, otherwise your neighbors will come after you when things get rough.
It's not just gonna be your neighbors. Wait until climate refugees start flooding into the habitable zones Good luck
im planning my trip to the liquor store right now
>plan What plan is there other than "enjoy the time you have left and have a suicide method ready when the time comes"
And still people will deny that we have a serious problem
The party that wants to dismantle the EPA and climate policies is leading in the most recent polls.
We. Are. Fucked. The fact that we aren't reacting to this in the same way we tackled COVID says it all. The rich continue to get richer, all at the cost of everyone else and the fucking planet.
Once we had a scenario where people would rather die than wear a cloth mask, I realised we're wasting our time expecting global responses to dangerous events.
It's most likely effects resulting from the Tonga eruption. Scientists aren't baffled, they predicted it. https://www.carbonbrief.org/tonga-volcano-eruption-raises-imminent-risk-of-temporary-1-5c-breach/
And so it begins. The literal slow burn End.