There’s a actually a super interesting explanation (and time will tell how accurate that explanation is) regulations from 2020 limited how much sulfur dioxide ships could emit and it turns out the sulfur dioxide was actually creating a slight cooling effect, so now we’re experiencing the full brunt of our existing emissions as the world climate rubber bands to where it would have been if ships weren’t spewing toxic sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. So presumably this recent trend will stabilize at some point and we’ll have our new normal
This is also why geoengineering is so extremely risky. If you ever stop for any reason the climate will rubberband to where it should have been rapidly
Standart deviation of anomaly? Hmm… How is the anomaly defined?
It appears to be in terms of number of std devs away from the mean temperature from 1991 to 2020
Sigma, you can say it.
sigma…
I think it is fair to wait exactly 2 more years to see if temperatures normalize following consecutive weird el niño / la niña cycles, but then yeah let’s hit the emergency trigger
climate scientists have already lit themselves on fire trying to warn people and it didn’t actually do anything
people are too religious to believe in science
The Religion: $$$$
“Bow down before the one you serve, you’re going to get what you deserve”
He was talking about money!
The al-ighty-ollar?
People are setting themselves on fire, throwing food at famous art or stopping traffic because it feels like a bad dream where you see the disaster coming and you’re trying to shake people to get them to understand that we have to DO something, and they just stare straight ahead like zombies.
These are people who are scared and frustrated because we’ve tried EVERYTHING and nobody actually cares. When I tried to impart this message on reddit, people were like “I get it but why can’t they just promote recycling or protest peacefully?” and then a 50-comment deep thread about whether or not the liquid soup can work its way through the screws on the plating that covers the artwork and what kind of lasting damage it might do.
Meanwhile, our destruction is literally around the corner. I don’t get it.
We deserve what’s coming.
Just don’t look up!
I do, but like most other people, I’m preoccupied with short term crises since, well, I need to survive those in order to be ready for the long-term ones.
In my opinion though, we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. The elite will manage to hang just a bit longer, but eventually they’ll cook and burn with the rest of us, or in their bunkers.
Anyways, shit’s already fucked to the point that I’ve given up. Just sit back, relax and take whatever life gives ya.
We deserve it. Let the insects have their turn.
Speak for yourself.
I do what I can. It’s certainly not as much as I could be doing, but it’s what I have the mental and emotional capacity to handle. I don’t have a ton of hope either, and it’s a big reason I decided not to have children, but I wouldn’t say I’ve given up completely.
I agree and I am not even preoccupied, but there simply hasn’t been any chance for me to make a dent in this. Hasn’t been for a long time, at least since 1900 (!!) where we basically already knew where everything was headed.
I never had kids of my own, because I didn’t want any, but the last 15 years or so I’ve becoming increasingly grateful that I made that decision. It at least allows me to sit back and contemplate doom without worrying about what my kids’ life on this planet is going to be like after I’m gone.
I’ve always done the reducing, reusing, and recycling, because it’s the right thing to do. Cut waaaaay back on dairy and beef purchases, I eat a lot of plant protein and use plant milk now. But it’s all a drop in the bucket. Only the governments can actually fix this, and they won’t because they are owned. I just sit around hoping it won’t get TOO bad before I’m dead.
The fiduciary responsibility scene from the new Fallout show hit hard.
S1E6
“Morton played a rancher who owned half of Missouri.”
“And what happens when the cattle ranchers have more power than the sheriff?”
“The whole town burns down.”
“Right, the whole town burns down. Vault-Tec is a trillion dollar company that owns half of everything. And after ten years of war, the U.S. gov’t is broker than a joke. The cattle ranchers are in charge, Coop.”
This is exactly the messaging of the oil companies and others who oppose climate action now that it’s too hard to deny. They want us to think it’s hopeless and give up trying to change anything. It’s not too late. Green energy is growing exponentially and has been possibly the fastest technological adoption in history. Millions of people are working on the science and technology to solve these problems. We just need some more collective action at the local and national levels. Carbon taxes, funding for green initiatives, local agriculture, and support for alternative transportation like e-bikes or other PEVs to start
If solving the problem becomes impossible, the backup plan should be retribution, not complacency. That way they have an incentive to work with us.
Did you miss the memo that current AI is already using more power than everything we’ve managed to save with green energy in the last decade? We ARE fucked, the only thing we’re still debating is the exact timespan. Which is asinine, the result will remain the same either way.
The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war, becausing nothing else will convince people. We’ve been trying (and failing) for decades.
I keep saying, if Putin starts a nuclear war, we might save humanity. A nuclear winter will cool the planet. And with most of us dying of radiation poisoning, we won’t have the ability to start pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. Yay!
I need some anon to write me a virus that will wipe out all datacenters in one go, something that will irrevocably fry all enterprise hardware beyond repair. Let’s start over, with decent trust busting and without the plastic this time.
(edit: I guess it’s not entirely clear but I’m expecting such a virus to hit the reset button on civilisation. Mass death, yes, but we won’t fuck the world beyond being liveable.)
The world will be fine
It will take a long time in our timespan, and we won’t be fine, but the world will. Just a minor blip in the history of this marble
The world will be fine.
People are fucked.
- George Carlin
Should i kill myself before all that unravels?
No, there’s always a shimmer of hope and the non zero chance that we mean something for someone that could make a difference, or help make the difference ourselves. Even sometimes the tiniest good-hearted gesture will do it.
The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war
Good news! The odds are looking pretty high for both of those!
The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war, becausing nothing else will convince people
We hd pandemic and war in Ukraine is raging on - and both only served right wing extremists to riseand ignore climate problems even harder. We are fucked. I don’t give up hope but it’s tiny
Necessity is the mother of invention, and new technology is only going to continue to use more and more energy. Conservation is not the answer.
Did you miss the memo that current AI is already using more power than everything we’ve managed to save with green energy in the last decade?
You got a source on that? Cause that sounds fake
Here’s one:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.02243v1
Below is an article on crypto mining, not AI, but I’d wager a guess and say you certainly can draw parallels from it:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023EF003871
Also, whatever the source of green/renewable energy is, it takes a couple years to offset the manufacturing of said energy source:
https://www.cooleffect.org/solar-carbon-footprint
So even if there’s no direct source on that 10 year claim, it probably isn’t too farfetched!
The article you linked doesn’t support your claims, is unpublished and reads like the homework of some undergrads.
Training AI models, while computationally expensive, cannot compare to crypto farms the size of warehouses everywhere around the world.
Carbon taxes fix the problem of using energy for dumb things. Climate change isn’t caused by us using energy, it’s caused by the fact that carbon pollution is free.
Bingo. Power usage isn’t the central problem, it’s the sources of power.
If the power is renewable, who cares how much it uses? Things are far from hopeless.
Because that power could have been used by someone else who’s depending on coal instead. You cannot separate power sources when on the grid.
That’s why we’re working to get rid of fossil fuel power generation entirely.
Humanity is just going to go through a culling. There will definitely be humans and there will definitely be habitable areas of the planet but there won’t be room for all 8 billion of us and depending on how much we actually do right now will determine how big the actual final number is
And honestly, would that be such a bad thing? 8 freaking billion of us is at least 7.5B too many.
And you’ll be first in line to be a member of the 7.5B that gets culled, right?
You can kill me right now if you want.
I dunno why the assumption is that everyone who makes the observation on overpopulation is so self-interested that they can’t imagine their own demise as part of it. We’ll all die in the approaching climate disaster, including you and me. The difference between now and later is small on a geological timescale.
You can kill me right now if you want.
Spare your self-contempt for somebody that cares.
You asked.
I did, unfortunately.
Actually yes, but that has more to do with 20 years of crippling depression and chronic pain than the coming climate disasters.
“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”
Yeah, fuck that Bircher Bullshit from “The Guidestones.”
People who say this imagine themselves and their families in the 0.5B but will end up in the 7.5B, suffering immeasurably in the process.
Nope, there’s nothing special about me or my family. We’re just insignificant eurotrash. Odds we’d be among the survivors are very low.
Nah I tried to get as close to the cities I think would be bombed so that I can go out in a puff of ozone
Actually, no! Once the really BIG human die-offs start, the hyperwealthy will ‘bunker up’ for a while and once the population shrinks back down, we won’t be putting out all that greenhouse gas anymore, and the earth will cool back down. They’ll keep a few cities in places like Norway or what have you around to keep providing food and fuel for their choppers and parties.
New Zealand and Hawaii. They’re already doing it.
I know several billionaires are already doing this in Hawaii. I feel like Hawaii is a bad choice. But I suppose if you have a giant yacht it’s not a problem.
But I feel like you’d want land with slaves under armed guard that till fields and raise livestock.
And shock collars to keep your security team “loyal.”
I was thinking you keep your security as part of the elite class, they would live basically as well as you and your other elites family / friend class. Maybe even with arranged marriages to ensure their offspring will be part of this same class, like royalty. You could build this into your society/culture. Maybe serving as a guard is like something every royal does for five or ten years.
The problem is it’s human nature to feel envy, and anger, towards people hoarding resources if you’re not one of those people. It’s all fun and games until the peasants revolt and take your wife and children hostage. And if you don’t share, they eventually will.
When did this place turn into r/collapse on Reddit?
June already bringing on intense heat waves in California and Mexico are probably driving the doomerism on the west coast.
Houston also got a nasty Derecho a few weeks back that wrecked downtown and shredded half the trees in my neighborhood.
I expect the next big hurricane is going to bring another wave of doomerism, as we all get another big dose of “Find Out”, while our Boomer elders continue to Fuck Around
Every single thing we are fighting for and does get through has prevented stuff from being even worse than they are now. Don’t ever give up.
Yeah, but if it’s inevitable going to end up at worse… Now I have to deal with this shit AND take care of the fuckin boomers… Shoulda just let them tear the bandaid off quick and have to deal with it themselves… ~devil’s advocate
What gets through? I simply don’t see it. Fossil fuel drilling in the US has hit an all-time high. Domestic car sizes are only getting bigger and we’re taxing or banning any small, cheap foreign EV imports. For every pipeline that gets stalled, three more are built. We don’t even bother reporting on spills anymore, despite their increasing frequency. We are epically fucked and we all know it.
Don’t ever give up.
Give up doing what? This isn’t Peter Pan. You can’t bring us under 1.5C by clapping.
You don’t think it could have been even worse by now? I do.
Will say though, I do wish to visit the timeline where Al Gore did not concede, and was president.
Every day, the daily rate of CO2 output beats the previous day. We haven’t even remotely slowed down.
Yea but at least some CEOs are getting great salary packages!
The rate of co2 growth is no longer exponential. This is improvement. Yes, it’s still growing, but at a slower rate than it used to. We’re moving in the right direction, thought much too slowly.
Think of it like a big ship hurtling along.
Currently, we’re braking. Still moving forward but slower. We need to stop and reverse, and that’s the plan, but we need to do it faster.
Yeah 1.5 is fucked. But we can still limit it under 2.0 or 2.5. Yes it is fucking horrific. But 1.5 does not mean everyone suddenly drops dead.
Also, the world isnt the US. Improvements are happening on a smaller scale. Some countries getting almost all energy through solar and wind.
Green energy becoming cheaper than fossil fuel.
Is it enough? Fuck no. But im not letting you cunts hop in with corporations and push the pedal to the metal.
Stop ignoring all the positive things happening to fix the climate. You are putting other people off helping with your doomer shit.
But we can still limit it under 2.0 or 2.5.
Unless I’m talking to a CEO of a major bank or Fortune 100 fossil fuel firm, “we” cannot.
You talk to politicians. Politicians talk to (or coerce) CEOs.
We can’t trust companies to get us out of this, but government is (or should be) stronger than companies, and government is (or should be) working for US.
And CEOs pledge campaign contributions and lobbying efforts to delay regulations against their corporate interests
Government should be the counter balance to private interests, but in a capitalistic system they act in tandem.
Haha good meme
Maybe someone needs to give the memo to these assholes, eh?
It’s not oil companies that burn the oil they pump, it’s their customers. I know it’s easy and convenient to point the fingers at this shitty industry and shift all the blame to them, but it’s also not how we can solve the problem.
You say that as if we weren’t massively subsidizing them, both directly and indirectly (e.g. by subsidizing the roads the cars that use their products drive on). You think that artificially-low price doesn’t have a massive impact on demand?
But again that’s not Exxon that is subsidizing roads or building cars, or forcing Americans to buy the biggest truck they can find. The issue is more complicated than “whoever pumps the oil out of the ground is liable for whatever happens to it afterwards”
It’s not about who’s fault it is; it’s about where to apply the policy leverage to obtain the correct behavior. I don’t give a fuck if Exxon is entirely blameless (and to be clear, they aren’t); the correct solution is still regulating Exxon.
The notion that the only way we could ever possibly consider trying to solve the problem is by cajoling the public to change their human nature, because regulating a few corporations (that only exist as a goddamn privilege in the first place, by the way!) is somehow off-limits, is 100% pro-fossil-fuel-industry disinformation.
the correct solution is still regulating Exxon
But it’s not! The correct solution is to kill the demand for oil.
It’s not Exxon that burns the oil they extract, it’s the entire economy and consumers that buy it from them. You can regulate Exxon all you want, that won’t change anything about that demand and the burning.
There’s a multitude of issues that individual citizens have a very hard time solving or getting around.
In the majority of the US (and the world, really) people have to own cars to get from A to B in order to survive (which coincidentally means we’re spending untold billions on the infrastructure to support that habit, at the cost of the liveable environment and citizens wallets, whether they drive or not).
Changing that is an enormous undertaking that will require an equally huge societal shift. In a culture where the car is the obvious choice it is next to impossible to get citizens to see that that choice is fucking them, and I’m sure Big Oil won’t ever do anything to change that perception because it will hit their bottom line. So unless you move to a city where you can live without a car and still have the (positive) freedom to go where you need to be you will need to vote and write your congressman to make it possible for you live without the yoke that is the car.
So yes, citizens burn gasoline because they must do so in order to afford a living. Further, as an aside, if people made the amount of money congruent with their productivity then maybe they wouldn’t have to commute so much in order to have a roof over their head and food on the table. We could relax production and increase leisure time. Maybe. I’m just some dumb cunt.
I fully agree - it is a systemic problem (which is why I’m pointing out just singling out oil companies is misguided).
But I wouldn’t go as far as making consumers simple victims of that system: we all also do choices that prioritize selfishness or instant gratification too. The number of pickup trucks in America that are used as one-person commuter is an obvious example - Americans could massively cut their gasoline consumption if they drove the same vehicles Japanese or Europeans chose. (and it’s not like those live a life of poverty and sacrifice)
…And that’s why we should be busting street dealers never direct out outrage at the kingpins providing the fentanyl! It’s in no way their fault that people are dying!
/s, just in case.
If fentanyl disappeared overnight we would all be better. If oil disappears overnight we are all dead.
You don’t solve global warming with simplistic analogies and “oil companies are responsible for everything”
No we wouldn’t be
Good luck producing enough food, water and other essentials while suddenly cutting all oil production. The entire world’s agriculture relies on oil and gas for fertilizers, machinery, transportation and sometimes cold storage.
Plastics aren’t even that old, it really is quite doable.
Over several decades maybe. Overnight definitely not.
Brought to you by billionaires
While I believe making sure more people are aware that climate change is a big deal, especially people with money that can actually do something about it, I’m hesitant to rely on data in a dire warning from McKensey in what is basically a We’re Hiring post.
Some tiny history of who McKensey is:
The firm has been associated with a number of notable scandals, including the collapse of Enron in 2001, the 2007–2008 financial crisis, and facilitating state capture in South Africa. It has also drawn controversy for involvement with Purdue Pharma, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and authoritarian regimes. Michael Forsythe and Walt Bogdanich, reporters for The New York Times, wrote a book entitled When McKinsey Comes to Town about the controversially unethical work history of the company.Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
I had not anticipated “Oh shit that’s a good point I should apply for a job with McKinsey” to be a takeaway that anyone would have to this post, let alone the assumed main takeaway from it.
Lol yeah I goofed pretty hard on that one
All good. I am chuffed that you were good-natured about it.
I even already had my coffee when I made the original comment. There was no excuse for my side fumbling.
You think affluent capitalists care? Lol, they’re probably trying to figure out how to make money out of this.
Going to make so much money selling bottled water after the next big hurricane.
“the end is nigh” but yeah insurance companies will probably be the first pillar of capitalism to fail. Unfortunately unless the publics views of migrants change, the public will continue to elect people who promise to abuse migrants.
There’s a real risk entire forests will fail. And obviously agriculture
Kinda feels like karma on a global scale. Humans evolved intelligence just to use it to systematically oppress each other, mostly in the name of feeling powerful. Not sure I’d call that “intelligence” and I think the planet would be better off without us.
The planet doesn’t give a shit about us. These are just natural processes (yes humans are a part of nature). We are just a particularly anomalous part of the system
The problem with that idea is us colonizers will still reap the rewards while karma exploits the less developed
Saving the environment? In this economy?
We can currently choose between:
- climate change causing drought, heat, rain, flooding and storms with hail or tornados;
- biodiversity loss preventing pollinating our food and capturing carbon (see climate change);
- nuclear war in a politically unstable world;
- tyrannic forms of government threatening our freedom;
- underpaid slave labour in a capitalistic society, also threatening our freedom;
- no way to divert that incoming meteor;
- business as usual causing the next pandemic;
- more old than young people leading to less care and less work altogether;
- AI taking over the world;
- any mix of the above leading to a collapse of society. Feel free to expand.
Seems we have chosen all of the above.
Choose your difficulty:
- Easy
- Hard
- Insane
- Impossible
- A secret fifth thing
