Temperatures above 50C used to be a rarity confined to two or three global hotspots, but the World Meteorological Organization noted that at least 10 countries have reported this level of searing heat in the past year: the US, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India and China.
In Iran, the heat index – a measure that also includes humidity – has come perilously close to 60C, far above the level considered safe for humans.
Heatwaves are now commonplace elsewhere, killing the most vulnerable, worsening inequality and threatening the wellbeing of future generations. Unicef calculates a quarter of the world’s children are already exposed to frequent heatwaves, and this will rise to almost 100% by mid-century.
Capitalism is a death cult.
Living and dying are the same process. You can’t be born without dying. You could say biology condemns us all - very loosely - to a cult of death, as we must all participate.
Capitalism is worse than that. Capitalism is an ideology of exploitation. I’m fine with dying, it’s my fault for being born. I don’t see why I must submit to exploitation while I do, temporarily, exist.
it’s my fault for being born.
is it? I don’t recall ever asking to be born, i’m pretty sure that just kind of happened.
I’m a Buddhist.
i’m not familiar with Buddhism so if there is something i’m missing here, that would be why lol.
I don’t recall ever asking to be born
Who would do the asking and what would be providing the answer?
this is a good question, amusingly enough there is no answer, philosophy sucks.
Just because you can’t recall it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. As a spermatozoon, you eagerly swam towards that egg, then that egg could have chosen to abort at any time. Yet here you are alive. You chose to be here. Deal with it, accept it and move on with your life.
Just because you can’t recall it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. As a spermatozoon, you eagerly swam towards that egg, then that egg could have chosen to abort at any time. Yet here you are alive. You chose to be here. Deal with it, accept it and move on with your life.
does a delusional person choose to have delusions?
Things that are outside of our psychological realm, and physical control are quite literally something we have no control over.
Yeah, there are plenty of things we have little to no control over.
Having delusions is one of them for sure, but can we say for certain we don’t at least influence what those delusions are or which direction they take?
i mean you probably influence them, but much like dreams, are they really representative of anything other than your mind left to its own devices?
Human conception may start at the sperm race, but human consciousness doesn’t begin until a few years into childhood, so at the end of the day, who knows.
Can thought be considered a process that begins after being affected by an external stimulus? And without prior experience on which to base our response, we can only react according to the conditions set by that stimulus?
So is it truly we who control our thoughts or are we just acting in a predetermined set of reactionary impulses based on the accumulation of our personal experiences and gained knowledge over our lifetime so far?
We who are so easily influenced into outrage by trigger phrases specific to our fears or spurred into action by resonating soundbites promising our desires, are those our thoughts or are they just the mind left to its own devices?
I really don’t know. But it’s probably some food for thought in a way.
That’s because you’re a sinner and exploiting sinners isn’t to be punished, but praised. Exploit your fellow sinners, make them toil in suffering and you too shall redeem salvation in the form of stock options and tax evasion.
That’s the spirit! We must sacrifice the newborns to harvest better stock options.
If you’re fine with dying, Tepco is still looking for guys to clean up under Fukushima. They ran out of old gambling addicts who had big debts with the Yakuza.
And yet its the least worst functional economic system we currently have…
“Wow this cancer sure is good at growing and staying alive!”
“it’s the least worst way to spiral into definite hell on earth” doesn’t really sound that positive.
It doesn’t matter how “safe” capitalism is, it’s not solving our problems and we need something different.
Capitalism has a historical tendency of imperializing all over the place and sabotaging other systems. It did not earn its spot as “best”, despite what capitalistic propaganda would have you believe.
Can’t believe people are saying this meme.
If the world was warming even faster than scientists thought it would, seemingly jumping years ahead of predictions, would that mean even more crucial decades of action had been lost?
Yes. Yes it would.
Rivers in Alaska have been running bronzish-orange… because the permafrost is melting.
The ‘perma’ frost, is melting.
That has huge amounts of methane locked up in at.
Which is 8 to 80x more effective at being a greenhouse gas than CO2.
And also ancient bacteria that could cause previously unknown kinds of diseases in wildlife and possibly humans, they now may or may not be seeping into the environment.
…
We have already had a consecutive 12 months at or above 1.5C global average temps, as of last month.
…
Shit’s looking pretty bleak.
Glaciers are reaching tipping points as well. Insane heat waves at both poles. It’s over guys. Most poeple don’t realize it yet but it’s over. Those glaciers and poles took an entire iceage to form, and they are not going to come back.
I haven’t seen anything from climate scientists that agrees with that level of doomerisim. They want to keep fighting against every 0.1C of warming we can, because that’s a worthwhile fight. Succumbing to climate nihilism is unhelpful, unscientific, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.
With the release of this much methane this fast, we might as well be out of equation at this piont. And by this fast, I mean on a earth’s climate timescale, not a human one. How could we possibly stop what is already snowballing? We HAD our chance to stop this and we did nothing. It is too late now to do anything but survive the new world we have made.
What climate scientist agrees that we should give up because of unleashing permafrost methane?
And yet people are having kids…
The entire point of trying to save the climate and environment is to keep the world a nice place for our kids.
In that case, that ship has long sailed.
It can always get worse. There is no rock bottom.
Eh I’d say the last human going in the dirt is probably rock bottom.
Fucking baffles me.
Fucking baffles me.
Nothing baffling about it. It’s just two (or more) people having consensual fun.
Or so I’ve been told…
No way man I only use paper straws
I hated that goddamn news cycle. Conservatives poisoned the well so much that you couldn’t argue against that dumb, pointless policy without being labeled a Heritage Foundation shill.
Definitely don’t watch the Arctic Sinkhole documentary from PBS Nova if you like sleeping at night. It’s all about the trapped methane in the permafrost and the trapped gasses under the permafrost. Shit is getting real scary. It wasn’t even sensationalist.
I can at least alleviate your worries of ancient bacteria.
Even our weakest antibiotics could wipe them out as they have evolved zero resistance to it. That’s assuming they can even infect humans in the first place.
I’m no microbiologist but couldn’t the ancient bacteria hybridize with modern bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance similar to a wolf and dog hybrid having a tolerance to humans?
That’s not how bacteria multiply. There is horizontal gene-transfer, but that would be a very slim chance.
No ancient bacteria aren’t the problem, multi-resistant strains that have already evolved and are evolving in our clinics are the real problem, some bacteria that haven’t been an issue for quite some time, because our antibiotics simply killed them, have now developed resistances and are suddenly becoming deadly again.
E. Coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella, some of the most prevalent bacteria in humans are rapidly becoming multi-drug-resistant and resistant to desinfectants like chlorine. These superbugs already account for a shockingly high number of deaths in healthcare facilities and the situation is only getting worse as more and more countries use increasing amounts of antimicrobials, kickstarting microbial evolution into overdrive.
Have you ever looked up how long it takes for bacteria to evolve resistance after exposure to an antibiotic?
2-3 years… Yeah…
More concerning is a virus in my opinion. Jumping species is common and it’s the novelty to the immune system thats the danger. How much damage would an influenza strain from 3-4000 years combining with modern strains cause?
If that was all there was to it, no bacteria would be affected by antibiotics anymore. And yes, they’re less effective, but it’s far from an obsolete tool. We just have to be smarter about using them.
“Action”? I think they mean “dithering and superficial half measures”.
Just five more COPE conferences and then we can finally start!
Time to start having ROPE conferences tbh
climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating
Could it be … fossil fuel producers lying about their output of greenhouse gases? Nah.
You don’t have to lie if you don’t measure …… for example, methane leaks from natural gas drilling, refining and distribution
Aren’t climate scientists also measuring atmospheric composition levels around the world to track this, usivg satellites and whatnot? I.e., do they really rely that much on self reported data?
The fossil fuel companies would fund like 9 studies for every independant one.
“Are you telling me that our valued wealth creators are capable of… lying???”
oh it’s much worse than that. not that it isn’t also that and them doing that isn’t the reason we didn’t get started mitigating this shit seventy years ago when we wouldn’t have needed substantial sacrifices.
see, climate scientists are scientists. that means they can only announce what they KNOW, what they can be very confident in, what IS in the data.
the thing about climate change is; it’s full of unknowns, most of them bad. so they can’t say “we have had this many unknown unknowns pop up and fuck our shit up, and expect (range of numbers) more”, because that’s predictive, and it’s useful, but its not SCIENCE, because science is inherently a very conservative bedrock-of-knowledge try-not-to-give-permission-to-fuck-up paradigm of knowledge. that’s not a flaw generally, it’s why we can trust it and why it’s hard to compromise, but generals and combat sports athletes do not choose their actions scientifically-it’s too fucking slow, and they would all fucking die/get punched in the face and lose literally every single time.
so while they have calculated the known dangers of the path we’re tumbling down, they can’t really include the assumption that there was a military base here during a civil war 20 years ago, and both sides in that conflict really liked land mines. they can only point to specific mine fields they know about, even if that’s way less than any other site that was involved in that conflict.
so however bad a climate scientist says it’s going to be, dude, holy shit, it’s going to be so much fucking worse. however much time they say we have, we have less than that. how much worse? how much less? no fucking clue.
no way to know unless we sit on our asses and let it happen, at which point everyone dies.
Yes, can’t emphasize this enough. It worse than predicted. And it’s all exponentially getting worse.
its fine though. our masters are aware of it now, so we don’t need to do anything about it. everything fine.
Don’t forget countries, especially China.
If these companies and countries could just show their real numbers, we could be at least be helping each other better.
Impossible. Michael Crichton and the experts in Superfreakonomics assured us that scientists would be able to quickly implement geoengineering projects to reduce CO2 and cool the earth. /s
Technology is great! Let’s incite hatred through social media.
The reason nothing will be done is because the only realistic option we have to save our planets ability to sustain life is economic degrowth.
We don’t have enough of the minerals we need to go fully nuclear or renewable and even getting close would use up vast amounts of the very same energy were looking to save in the first place.
As the record levels of equality directly after ww2 showed, economic degrowth due to nearly all the men being at war, only results in the loss of the super rich which is why they’ll never allow economic degrowth.
We all work too much, produce too much and pollute too much. Worse, we’re all forced to produce the very wealth thats used to force us into wage-slavery and kill our planet.
The answer is and will always be the strategic refusal of labour, above what we need to survive and have a good quality of life. This, by default, will result in economic degrowth.
Want to sit around and do nothing to save the planet? Well, now you can.
One point I have to disagree on is the point you made about nuclear energy. Its untrue. If we switched to primarily using nuclear energy we would be able to successfully power the majority of the species using that technology. Its fear that stops us. Everyone is worried about another Chernobyl or Fukushima. When the logical course of action would be to find tectonically stable sites for any nuclear facilities. That’d be number one to solving a lot of meltdown concerns. The other would be to use well researched and planned designs. Chernobyl was a faulty design for a reactor that should never have been allowed to be produced.
Lookup Thorium reactors. Those are the true future of nuclear technology. Thorium is also abundant when compared to Uranium or Plutonium. It does not have the same weaponization issues. It does not produce the same high levels of radiation. It is also safer to handle and store once depleted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Thorium-fueled_reactors "Using breeder reactors, known thorium and uranium resources can both generate world-scale energy for thousands of years. "
Literally with nuclear power we can power the whole world for the next 2,000 to 3,000 years. Possibly longer. It’s fear that holds us back on this.
Yes and majority of time and expense that goes into building nuclear reactors is due to regulations, espeically NIMBY/fear based regulations. They have to hire teams of special lawyers for these and cases last years. That’s why when you see people describing the cost and time of building these, they always start at the planning stage which can include years of legal battles.
And these lawyers are usually nuclear engineers who went to law school afterwards, so they are pretty expensive to staff.
nuclear energy we would be able to successfully power the majority of the species using that technology
But that energy will be used for what? To mine for more minerals, create more waste, destroy more land, and make more species extinct? Our problem is not a shortage of energy nor is it even a problem of the efficiency or cleanliness of the energy. It’s a problem of our species living far beyond the sustainable bounds of the planet.
For carbon sequestration, which also needs to happen. Not only do we need to not put out more carbon into the atmosphere, but we also need to sequester atmospheric carbon. A LOT of it.
We are living beyond several planetary bounds but if we made our energy not release carbon, it would be a huge start. Harm reduction is valid.
For carbon sequestration, which also needs to happen.
Agree, but I think virtually all methods typically talked about are nonsense. Using massive fossil resources to design, build, and maintain giant machines or many smaller machines will ultimately do little to slow ecological collapse even if it does reduce carbon somewhat after some years needed to break even on production. The only sequestration method I’ve ever heard about that makes any sense to me is neighborhood scale production and use of biochar (and avoiding buying any sort of purpose made biochar device that required fossil resources to produce and ship to you). I make biochar in my backyard fire pit (which is a low smoke design) with used coffee tins (i.e. trash) and use the resulting biochar and ash in my compost.
Harm reduction is valid.
Agree, Any and all scientifically backed methods to allow us time for degrowth should be considered. I’m not convinced nuclear energy should be a significant part of this though, too many downsides and risks.
Biggest thing against nuclear power is the cost associated with it. Other, sustainable sources of energy like wind and solar, combined with hydrogen and batteries, are way cheaper due to their simplicity. Thorium reactors are a nice idea but need so much development (costs) that they will take a while to become a reality, if ever at all. Probably nuclear fusion will be available sooner than thorium fission for power generation, which also needs decades of development. And then there’s still the problem of nuclear waste. Maybe not a huge problem, but still one without a viable solution.
the reason nothing will be done
nothing will be done peacefully. plenty could be done.
see, the ultra rich die either way. either they kill everyone, including themselves, and end all life, or someone kills them. those are the only two outcomes here.
I mean, i guess they could just fuck off and stop being super rich. fuckerberg could be a creepy robot man who lives above his kinda cringe MMA dojo or something, but they’re not going to do that. I don’t think they’re psychologically capable of it.
Remember the Titanic sub? How those rich guys thought they knew more than scientists and engineers? When they died, I realized that was exactly what they were doing with our planet. They will kill us all for their ego and hubris. Quite clearly. That’s why they are building their bunkers and super cities and not allowing governments to actually address this issue - they think they’ll come out on top. And there’s evidence they’ve thought this since at least the 70s, so this implies a couple generations of them plotting to kill us.
then governments can;t be trusted with the future of humanity. which I think I agree with.
but it’s not just their ego and hubris; it’s also their paranoia and addiction.
What? What do you think a government is?
a monopoly on the use of violence, for the purpose of entrenching inequality. also sometimes they build infrastructure so we don’t kill them, because actually controlling people with violence is profoundly inefficient.
It’s not so much Zuck and Elon, it’s the people above them. If the oil companies, banks, or military industrial complex wanted Elon gone he would be erased in less than 24 hours. They are the ones controlling the strings, and all they want is more power.
Have you seen this person’s posts on Reddit?
https://www.reddit.com/user/backcountrydrifter/
They have some interesting sources and connections for how Elon maybe plays a part in all this. I don’t buy everything they say, but they do have good interviews and articles explaining Epstein, Trump, Putin, and MBS, and even Elon and how they relate. It’s worth perusing if you have time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon is a little untouchable because of his Saudi connections (and yes I do think MBS would order a hit on him no problem, but he’s doing a service for them rn). And Zuck owns Meta which has the most users on its social sites worldwide iirc. Modern day currency isn’t always in capital- these days attention and clout are worth a LOT. Ad revenue is worth a lot. Less and less people are watching TV, so propaganda has to get in front of viewers in unique ways now.
just using them as examples because we know their names and a bit of their character. they COULD abandon their shit, stop fucking people over, stop trying to have control, and just be on the shitty side of normal people, and nobody who didn’t have to interact with their sleazy asses would fucking care.
except my argument is that they genuinely can’t. not because we wouldn’t let them, nto because it wouldn’t work, but because their brains are broken and they are incapable of letting go, and the only future we will ever get must be taken from their cold dead hands.
Uranium is extremely common on Earth. What minerals are we lacking to go nuclear? If you were arguing that we need to switch the type of reactors we use, I could see that. A lack of fissile material isn’t an issue.
Uranium is extremely common on Earth.
I wouldn’t be so uncritical about this. Depending on rate of consumption (and data source) the world’s Uranium supplies will last for about 50 to 200 years. (The latter a low demand scenario based on current consumption rates.)
Technological advancements may push these limits. Possibly even into 10.000 to 60.000 years, when filtering active substances from seawater, which is currently quite a timeframe to consider it long-term sustainable even for a limited resource. However, we’re not there yet.
We also use thorium which is much more abundant than uranium.
Thats WAY too expensive and takes way to long to build. Renewables are the answer. Sun, wind.
Not enough rhodium and rubidium on earth to achieve that.
Since when do you need either of those to build a wind turbine? We are talking about very simple machines here, plenty of ways to build one.
Need those for solar. They specified sun and wind.
You don’t need photovoltaics to use solar power. Never heard of the solar power tower? Or the ones using molten salt for heat storage?
The earth receives just over 1 billion watts of raw energy from the sun daily. Using that energy to boil steam to turn tubines caps that energy generation ability to 105,566,992 watts of power if we capture all the solar radiation that hits earth.
Humanity currently uses 17.5 terrawatts of power daily. How do you make up the 99% shortfall? Little hint, wind and hydroelectric isn’t enough to make up that gap. Nuclear is currently our only option outside of asteroid mining.
Edited: I read the number wrong.
If I remember correctly, we don’t have enough of it to go fully nuclear with our current energy demands. More so, we’ve mined nearly all of the soil thats anything above 0.02% uranium. As such, not only do we not have enough on the planet, getting it and refining it would almost defeat the whole point of doing so in the first place.
It is a problem in that there might be plenty of it but that doesn’t mean there’s enough.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying we have to go back to the stone ages. Its just that we can’t afford the super rich anymore.
Pretty sure there’s enough weapons grade plutonium to run the US for 100 years in decommissioned nuclear weapons alone.
I think 100 years is enough time to build pumped hydro storage and renewables like solar/wind.
The problem is that there a major, major shortage of one of the isotopes needed to re-enrich weapons grade uranium (pu 238). Thats before you get to the vast energy inefficiency of doing it which isn’t a problem, if you’re just decommissioning them anyway and you don’t care about energy consumption. However, in this instance, you would need to worry about energy consumption as well as the isotope there won’t be enough of to convert even a fraction of it.
Again, even if you had 100 years, there aren’t enough of the specialist minerals needed for hydro storage and renewables.
Essentially theres" a hole in our bucket."
The only answer is degrowth.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power-the-us-for-100-years.html
specialist minerals needed for hydro storage and renewables
What specialist materials are we talking about? Wind, solar, and pumped hydro use primarily copper, silicon, carbon, and concrete.
I’m not saying it can’t be converted or that the amount couldn’t, if refined, potentially fuel America for a number of years. So, I’m not sure what the link was for. I said its not feasible, due to the inefficiency of doing it on mass.
What about the energy transition materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt? We don’t have enough of those. All the windmills in the world won’t help, if you can’t convert motion into electricity.
Even then, copper looks to be facing an impending shortage. More still, refining enough silicone to supply the world with and keep up with increased demand of energy would have a colossal carbon footprint, almost big enough to cancel out the benefit. You’ll have to start refining soil thats 0.000000000001% silicone before you got even halfway through. Yeah, we have loads of these things but getting enough of it, in a pure enough form, to power the whole world simply isn’t realistic.
We can’t keep up with the speed that we increase our energy usage with the resources we have on the planet. Its a circular problem with only one solution. I’m not saying we have to go back to the primitive. We just have the treat the planet as though its resources are finite.
They’ll sell us any flavour of distraction other than “work less, do less, slow down and enjoy life more.” Whatever way you cut it, its the only answer.
What about the energy transition materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt? We don’t have enough of those. All the windmills in the world won’t help, if you can’t convert motion into electricity.
We literally don’t need any of those. Grid scale storage I don’t think has used Nickel and Cobalt for some time, as the best way is to use Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries which need fewer replacements (longer cycle life) and are less volatile (explosive). Sodium batteries remove the need for even Lithium. Sodium is many times more abundant btw. As bad as they are Lead Acid batteries are also an option, as well as many other battery technologies made with less rare earth materials. Heck you could just do pumped hydro and not worry about batteries at all.
You also don’t need any of those materials to make electricity from motion. A generator is a fairly simple device needing only coils of wire and a few moving parts. Some need permanent magnets but even that isn’t hard really. Storing power was always the problem, not making it.
Likewise current reactors are a joke in terms of fuel efficiency. Basing any estimate on current reactor technology being used is kind of silly, as we already know we can do so much better. The majority of earth’s nuclear fuel is in fertile materials, not fissile materials. We have known this for a long time by the way. Decades ago countries like the USA and Japan were doing research into reactors using U-238, more than 100 times as abundant as U-235. It has been demonstrated that breeder reactors for Plutonium from U-238 are feasible even 50 or 60 years ago. The reason we don’t do this is because U-235 reactors were determined to be cheaper, and probably safer. I think sacrificing some safety and cost is necessary when up against something like climate change. With modern technology I am sure safety issues could be reduced or eliminated. Likewise Thorium is a thing, but that’s more experimental than U-238 to Plutonium technology.
If we are talking about solar panels: just don’t. Solar panels are mostly glass and silicon. I believe some rarer materials are needed to make them as efficient as they are now, but that doesn’t mean they are actually needed. In fact why bother with solar panels at all? They aren’t even the most efficient way of turning solar power into useful energy. Solar systems that work using mirrors to heat molten salt have their own energy storage built-in, and don’t require exotic materials, and are more efficient anyway. They might require more investment, or be more complex to deploy, but overall they are a great option.
Degrowth might be necessary in the short term. Long term wise though humanity very much has room to grow further. We haven’t even talked about mining the moon yet, and if we can’t do that we are very much screwed anyway. Being dependant on one planet is horrifically bad for long term survivability. You think climate change is an extinction level event? Try a gamma ray blast from a pulsar.
All you’ve really demonstrated is that you don’t understand technology specifically renewables and nuclear. There is a real concern with lack of rare materials, but not for renewables. The real issue is computers. Modern computers and especially smartphones need a lot of rare things. So constantly replacing your smartphone might not be practical anymore, and things like battery life and processing speed might actually get worse for a while as we are forced to use alternative materials. Not really a huge deal in the scheme of things though.
Also thinking the rich elite are the only people consuming things at an unsustainable rate is hilarious. They use more resources per person obviously, but the number of them is also really small. If you actually looked into it you would probably find that lost of the consuming of resources is to support the lower and middle classes. Don’t get me wrong oil executives are a real issue because of how they effect government policy and the behaviour of the rest of society. They do deserve a significant share of the blame. Not every rich person is an oil executive though. Having ultra rich people around is bad but this isn’t the reason why.
You seem to be trying to push a narrative that I don’t oppose as if I do. I support degrowth but your reasons are flawed.
Pumped Hydro, solar, and wind don’t really use lithium, nickel, or cobalt. Those are mostly used in NCM Liion cells that none of these use. Permanent magnets would probably be the biggest headache tbh.
Idk why we’d need silicone, we’re not making sex toys here. /s silicon is most common in sand and rocks, something there is plenty of basically everywhere.
I don’t care what you’re saying for this circular problem. I’ve literally not addressed it once because I agree with you, I just don’t agree with your reasoning.
They’ll sell us any flavour of distraction other than “work less, do less, slow down and enjoy life more.” Whatever way you cut it, its the only answer.
It’s really telling that this is regarded as such a terrible thing by almost everyone.
we need to get rid of them anyway, but do we have enough nuclear fuel, when combined with renewables+batteries, for base load?
Sure, I’m all for getting rid of them but it really seems to be the only option. It really won’t be that bad. It’ll just mean we can’t all take the piss with energy, lose the super rich, eat less meat and do a lot less work.
Its that we’ve all been made to see the idea of degrowth as something terrible because the rich would be the first thing to go. You just can’t have the rich without a vast amounts of excess production.
Please think about this: why shouldnt working less and polluting less be the first thing we should try, if we really wanted to save the planet etc.?
I completely agree, but I also think we should be pursuing every avenue of possible solution simultaneously, some of which might be energy intensive. I have the feeling we are far more climate-fucked than is immediately apparent.
I kind of hate this kind of narrative here.
Yeah, capitalism is shit etc… but let’s get to the real root cause: we’re all still animals, and want our pack to be the best. The root issue isn’t money, it’s power. Many societies wouldn’t mind degrowth if it didn’t mean all the others would bury them & dance on their grave.
If one single country would actually degrow, all the others would dominate it financially, loot it for all its worth, and unless it can completely 100% sustain itself without outside trade (pretty much impossible in our globalized society), it would mostly collapse. And even if it could sustain itself, the power imbalance would be so huge we’d run in all other kinds of issues soon (hey, why not just conquer that country that is pretty much powerless now?)
Imo we’re all just animals knowing we’re headed for extinction, but at the same time it’s a big game of chicken on the road, the first to stray from this path will get fucked in so many ways by all the others who see their chance to improve their situation… And imo capitalism isn’t the cause of that, but one of the results of this. It’s just another way for us to compete and try to fuck eachother over like the animals we still are.
So either we get to some near global agreement on how to get out of this situation, or we just keep doing far too little since… what’s the point of trying to improve things if it just means you get annihilated by those that don’t, and things will remain the same despite your best efforts…
So either we get to some near global agreement on how to get out of this situation, or we just keep doing far too little since… what’s the point of trying to improve things if it just means you get annihilated by those that don’t, and things will remain the same despite your best efforts…
I feel like the way out is global and cultural in nature, and I think it’s in progress now, in fact we’re doing it now, talking about this on Lemmy. This wasn’t practical, wasn’t being done outside of “elite circles” before a decade or so ago. This global conversation is going to take some time and have bumps, but it’s happening, this is novel on this planet.
What I hope comes of this, and seems to be happening, perhaps slower than I’d like, is a paradigm shift in the way we think about ourselves, others, our communities, our situation, and our goals. We need a new “mythology” that allows us to live on this planet sustainably, and it only needs to be true enough and could even be done transparently and with purpose.
I feel like our species is in a existential battle and almost nobody (at least on the left-ish) is talking strategy. As if any valid strategy (e.g. “capitalism”, “communism”, “competition”, “religion”, “growth” “zero sum” etc) has been identified by the 1960s and we’re all just battling amongst 20th century ideas for domination.
I’m thinkiing stuff like this (sorry for the poor organization of my thoughts, to lazy to cleanup)
Define some axioms/statements that are mostly true and fairly agreeable, not based in faith, not limited by materialism.
- Most people would be happy to just live and thrive and don’t feel a need to dominate others or hoard resources
- There is a tiny number of people who do feel a need to dominate and/or hoard
- We are all vulnerable to propaganda
- Nobody is inherently better or more deserving than anyone else
- Nobody is entitled to the time or labor of anyone (except a child being entitled to their parents)
- Nobody actually knows the meaning of life or the nature of reality (not even materialists).
- Our own conscious experience is all we can be certain of, nobody knows any absolute truths
- The most logical assumption is that others’ experience is similar to my own
- I don’t want to suffer or be coerced, I don’t feel others are entitled to cause me to suffer or coerce my behavior
- It’s ok to defend myself against those trying to harm or coerce my behavior, dominate or hoard at my or my community’s expense
- If I cause another to suffer or coerce their behavior I should expect a response
–> The goal of these axioms is not to get everyone to agree to them, it’s to blaze a new path that can evolve into the way, to plant a seed that can inspire moving in new directions.
A set of explicit stated axioms allows taking the next steps and figure out how to evolve into a sustainable culture. Clear eyed strategy and goals are why the Heritage Foundation is making progress and the left is not.
Strategy like this could allow a better understanding of who and what the actual threats are and identify appropriate responses to them.
–> The “global agreement” will not be a formal inter-governmental thing, it will be loosely coupled set of cultural evolutions spurred by global conversations happening now.
I feel like the way out is global and cultural in nature,
I agree that it starts with a sense of a global community. Instead of people considering themselves a citizen of their homecountry, they need to switch to the mindset of being a citizen of Earth.
We now have the technology to get past the language barrier, so it is more possible to get people together, talking about our future as a species more than anytime in our history.
One thing that could help is some sort of globally available social media, or forum that automatically translate to the language of the reader. Imagine if a Chinese person could post something in Chinese, but English speakers could read and respond in English, and vice versa.
The answer is and will always be the strategic refusal of labour, above what we need to survive and have some quality of life. This, by default, will result in economic degrowth.
It’s at the point where I don’t accept the label of being human. Humans lack the logic and morality I identify with.
What are you then? A primate? A posthuman?
I’m a living being who does not want to associate with humans.
Autistic people are more likely to be Therian (identify as partly non-human and non-humanoid animal): Therianthropy: Wellbeing, Schizotypy, and Autism in Individuals Who Self-Identify as Non-Human, Clegg et al., Society & Animals 2019.
Looking at some brief descriptions of the terms (I’m only mildly aware of them) there is also the related group of Otherkin, who identify as not fully human, but do identify full with human-like sapience. The personal experiences of a ‘Machinekin’ (identifying as part sapient robot) are presented in _ Exploring Other-Than-Human Identity: Religious Experiences in the Life-Story of a Machinekin _, Shea, S.C, 2020, published in Religions. Neve discusses the relationship between autism and feeling othered in terms of gender and non-human Machinekin identity first hand.
Searching for autistic and otherkin, I find regular discussions in autistic spaces about how people believe their otherkin and autistic identities and experiences overlap. Much of this is in Autism / Neurodivergence discords, which can’t be searched. However, these discords provide a managed group of fellow travellers with information that doesn’t leak out to search engines. Nevertheless, some discussion about this is searchable. Here’s one comment:
Alienkin. So much wrong planet syndrome. Hi, yes. Not alien, definitely relate to alienness though.
So much of my life spent asking “Why do neurotypicals do X thing?” only to later find out that they do it because it’s done, it’s their social identity. If their social identity mows the lawn, they mow the lawn. It doesn’t matter that there’s a cost of noise pollution and ecological destruction. They do it because their social identity does it. If their social identity revolved around jumping off of cliffs, they’d do that too. It’s why there’s so much “acceptable” ritual sacrifice, war, and other such horrific acts of atrocity throughout human history.
So I definitely relate to alienness. To do something “because it is done, the done thing” is the most utterly bizarre and strange concept to me. I understand to do something if it might be ethical, or kind, or clever, with an accompanying reason. But because “it is done?” It’s bizarre.
Another discussion is titled “Does being autistic feel like being a robot who is trying to learn how to be human?” Top responses agree to this, giving various explanations of why it occurs, or how it feels, including:
I feel more like I’m missing a sense. It’s like in every interaction in a group there is a second conversation only I can’t hear that tells people when It’s their turn to speak and elaborates on what the person means. I’m watching everything and analyzing everything to try to figure out what everyone else is getting that I’m not.
and
Yea kinda, or like an alien, who forgot his human handbook on scp147, if you have seen the show resident alien, I related a sadly large amount to the alien.
and
That’s why folks called me Dr. Spock growing up. I come from Vulcan, live long and prosper
There are questions about this on sites like Quora, with responses like “I’ve known since I was a kid that I had autism, so this might not relate to me. However, as a kid, I called myself an alien in this world. It’s probably common when it comes to robots, but I was an alien to this world.”
Unless you are legitimately an alien or a cat or something that somehow got on Lemmy (and I apologize if this is the case), then you are a human. You can’t identify your way out of being a member of this species.
The fact my fellow autistic people are disidentifying from humanity is extremely concerning. Even worse I can understand why given the behaviour of so many humans being what it is. Plus constantly being marginalized in human societies doesn’t help.
The solution though isn’t to stop identifying as being human and pretend to be something else. The solution is to re-evaluate what being human is. Too much emphasis in popular culture is placed on humanity or being human as some positive thing where someone who is truly human couldn’t be the villain or the mass murderer. The reality is the human race is broad and doing a genocide is just as human as inventing the vaccine for TB. Those things we can do because we are human, with human capabilities. Another animal wouldn’t think to make a vaccine, or to do a genocide, they do what they because of instincts, learned behavior, and survival.
Unless you are legitimately
I’m legitimately someone who has no emotional connection to humans as a group.
The solution though isn’t to stop identifying as being human and pretend to be something else.
Fun fact: a lot about what it means to be humans is also pretending to be human. Apart from the observable biological / genetic / genealogical classification differences, everything else about humanity is entirely created by humans, and they can disagree about many features of it.
I have no interest in that pretence. I do not identify with humans. If you want to change that, endorse society / the majority to attempt to feed all children. That’s my moral benchmark for when I will feel like I align with human principles.
Another animal wouldn’t think to make a vaccine
I am absolutely and completely sure that time and space are both infinite, and therefore the chance of us being the only intelligent life is zero.
I am also absolutely and completely sure that, given that time and space is infinite, and cosmological time involves the destruction and rebirth of the existence of matter itself in a cyclical process, that humans are - given an objective view of cosmological time - no more important than any other animal. We, and all our works, are just as transient.Fun fact: a lot about what it means to be humans is also pretending to be human. Apart from the observable biological / genetic / genealogical classification differences, everything else about humanity is entirely created by humans, and they can disagree about many features of it.
Humanity is a species. Homo sapiens. Anyone claiming otherwise has fallen into the trap set by movies and popular culture about inhumane actions, dehumanizing the other, and every other time people who are homo sapiens are not teated as humans.
I have no interest in that pretence. I do not identify with humans. If you want to change that, endorse society / the majority to attempt to feed all children. That’s my moral benchmark for when I will feel like I align with human principles.
There is no single moral standard for our entire species. In fact while I am here I will say there is no proof for any kind of morality even existing in the objective universe. It’s an entirely made up concept. If we ever encounter aliens of what have you there is a good chance they have radically different behavioral standards for their species than ours.
I am absolutely and completely sure that time and space are both infinite, and therefore the chance of us being the only intelligent life is zero.
I am also absolutely and completely sure that, given that time and space is infinite, and cosmological time involves the destruction and rebirth of the existence of matter itself in a cyclical process, that humans are - given an objective view of cosmological time - no more important than any other animal. We, and all our works, are just as transient.Well that escalated quickly. You went from plausible science to making up bullshit very quickly.
destruction and rebirth of the existence of matter itself in a cyclical process
Yeah you apparently don’t know much about modern physics.
Weather or not aliens do exist changes nothing about the fact you are human. You can’t escape that incontrovertible biological fact. Don’t even try. Stop listening to society cry “oh the humanity” and actually look at the facts. Humanity is just an intelligent species, not a moral standard to cling to or something to turn around and reject.
Thank you for telling me you don’t respect my Buddhist beliefs, it’s been very interesting.
Very good job at making me want to identify with humans more, as well.
Is this the start of a furry fic
Autistic people identify as non-, or other-than- human in other ways than furry, e.g. Machinekin or Alienkin.
Me? I just don’t want the label of human, because I don’t respect human society.
You don’t have to be autistic for any of this. Also, never said the only other option besides human was furry. I merely ASKED if this was the start of a furry fic due to the romantic tension and pacing of the comments
Global warming is a test. We’re failing the test, so the warming is going to start accelerating until we learn our lesson
I believe a mix of runaway elitism + ecological devastation is the Great Filter. We’re at our great filter and definitely will not overcome considering the galactic evidence.
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This is certainly a credible assertion, but it’s very broad.
As in, runaway elitism is probably relevant to almost all civilisation-ending catastrophes.
I don’t know exactly what to call it and I don’t want to sound like my agenda is just anti-capitalism. For a brief, 250yr period, humanity (not all, but enough of) valued science and reasoned law as the highest, most advanced expressions of our civilization. The enlightenment age brought about modernity as we know it based on science and liberal law (no kings above the law). Now we’ve devolved back to every nation basically establishing new oligarchich aristocracies no law can touch (the historic normal), and it’s definitely too late to correct course. No untouchable nobilities or kings will save this realm. So yeah, the great filter in my view is about letting elites be accountable to no one, with no interest other than accretion, rule things into the ground. And yeah that’s the broad gist of my point about a pretty broad theory. Most think the great filter as an asteroid or nuke. For me it’s runaway elitism that probably ends most civilizations which is why there’s no one out there.
And I’d be ok with this. I see that humans are failing the test. I think it would be totally fair for us to take some really huge losses as a consequence of our collective hubris. But the thing that makes me sad and angry is that we’re taking down everything else with us.
There’s such a huge diversity of life, basically just minding its own business in a totally sustainable way. It’s been like that for billions of years. More than 1,000,000,000 years. But then humans work out that burning stuff is an easy way to do mass-production, and in less then 1000 years things start turning to shit - for everyone. That’s so unfair. If it was just our own house we were burning down, I’d say its fair. But we’re burning down the whole world. We’re already causing mass extinction, and by all predictions it is going to get much much worse.
it’ll all return in due time, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was a major extinction event in the same caliber as global warming is likely to be.
If we continue on like this, it’ll be more like the Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago, which was also due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere and which killed 90 percent of all life.
gotta love extinction science
Oh ffs We are literally the most likely species to survive any of that.
Bacteria, viruses, insects all way more likely to survive.
The bigger and more complex generally means more likely to run out of something.
Patience, mostly.
“Ignorance” is not “patience”, you have the former, not the latter.
No, we aren’t
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity.
The planetary boundaries framework (1, 2) draws upon Earth system science (3). It identifies nine processes that are critical for maintaining the stability and resilience of Earth system as a whole. All are presently heavily perturbed by human activities. The framework aims to delineate and quantify levels of anthropogenic perturbation that, if respected, would allow Earth to remain in a “Holocene-like” interglacial state. In such a state, global environmental functions and life-support systems remain similar to those experienced over the past ~10,000 years rather than changing into a state without analog in human history. This Holocene period, which began with the end of the last ice age and during which agriculture and modern civilizations evolved, was characterized by relatively stable and warm planetary conditions. Human activities have now brought Earth outside of the Holocene’s window of environmental variability, giving rise to the proposed Anthropocene epoch.
Check the post history of the person you’re replying to, they’re pretty blatantly ridiculous.
My general operating principle is that even if this person is engaging in bad faith, there may be other people lurking who want this info or who have similar questions who would be too nervous to comment or ask. So I give info anyway for others.
That’s a very good point! I found your post interesting, myself, so thank you.
well its probably cockroaches and bacterium, or some weird bullshit species that exists.
Humans are famously good at surviving in the desert. That’s why so much of human civilization exists at the center of large land masses in arid climates.
I hope humans are not very survivable, because then we wouldn’t have humans like you around.
Other organisms and natural disasters do that, too. Ice ages, meteors, waves of diseases. The difference seems to be we have the consciousness to predict consequences, then decide whether to embark upon a path of behavior, or continue it when latent consequences emerge. I guess the question ends up being whether the course chosen is “natural,” and how can we know, since plenty of organisms kill the host, while also surviving and even propagating? Then observation also changes the behavior of things. And we don’t kill everything. Just whatever life is left continues to evolve in expected and unexpected ways.
Maybe ten thousand years. That last ice age ending literally changed everything but yeah, ok, let’s pretend its hundreds of millions of years the same.
Or until the test is complete and humanity has failed.
Like will the bacteria survive the self cleaning cycle?
Probably some extremophiles, tardigrades at least. Depends on how the planetary boundaries get crossed. Hope horseshoe crabs and lichens and some birds make it through. Those guys have been around so long for us to mess it up for them.
Algae are having an amazing time right now.
It’s one of their biggest moments since multicellular life evolved
LikeLife on earth has survived more extreme environments before. Not only microbes but multicellular life should be fine.Source for this prediction? What are you basing this on?
Great question, I glad you asked. When I said both multicellular and microbial life would be fine, what I meant is it’s unlikely either would be wiped totally out.
As highlighted in the article you linked, only about 90% of [multicellular] species died out during the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, specifically the “things have been worse before” situation I was thinking about. Also noted in the article is that the conditions we’re experiencing now are not to the same degree although we’re observing events similar to what we understand may have happened during the Permian-Triassic Extinction, again to a much lesser degree.
Keep in mind atmospheric CO2 levels were estimated to be around 2500 ppm, about 6 times greater than our current levels of around 420 ppm. Preindustrial CO2 levels were 270 ppm, so we’ve added about 150 ppm. It’s not all that much but it’s enough to start changing things for the worse for many of the planet’s current inhabitants.
As to microbial life, I’m a microbiologist so I know my microbes. They as a whole are far more resilient and will outlast all multicellular life. Some thrive in conditions where no multicellular life on Earth could survive. Even if conditions were so hostile than no microbes could survive, some form endospores. These are incredibly resilient little escape pods that can remain viable for millions of years, then reactivate when conditions are better, reconstituting back to bacteria.
While extinctions are frankly depressing, they do open ecological niches into which other species with suitable traits can expand and, given time and selective pressure, differentiate. For example, all we’d need is mice and a suitable food source to survive and, a few million years later, the earth will be covered with various species decended from both of them.
When you said life would be fine, what you meant was it may MOSTLY all die and may take millions of years to evolve again. That’s not “fine.”
Second, we really don’t know that it will ever evolve again or that other conditions won’t deteriorate. Bacteria can’t live in molten lava. Biology has a general upper and lower limit before things start denaturizing. Our moon is further away and the earth isn’t as young as it once was. The conditions that gave rise to life so long ago might not be replicable enough in the future.
I agree that it’s likely extremophiles at least will survive. I don’t take for granted that it definitely will happen and I don’t call it “fine.”
I pretty distinctly defined when I meant by saying “fine” in my follow-up comment. If you want to pretend I meant something different so you can “prove me wrong”, that’s “fine” (define that however suits you.).
That, along with the rest of your comment, suggests you’re just more interested in feeling you’re right at all costs instead of actually discussing the topic, so I’m out.
Edit: I had to look - of course you downvoted me. LOL.
Yes, you moved the goalposts to have “fine” include what I do not consider “fine.” This is part ofntthe disagreement we have here. Agree to disagree ig.
I mean go ahead, be out. Have a good day. You don’t have to believe as I do, and your last comment also made it seem you were “happy I asked.”
A test for what? From where? I don’t get it
A test of long-term sustainable viability, conducted by the limitations within the forces of nature that we audaciously call our home.
What if humanity was created to cause climate change for the next phase of Earth’s biological evolution? Is no-one considering a grander plan than what happens to humans?
Mother Nature, Earth, or Gaia, is an organism. In my loose perspective, I like to think that this is it’s “fever” attempt at eliminating the virus.
And thereby eliminating a whole bunch of other species than just humans as well.
Although I’m totally in for the occasional misanthropy, I don’t like seeing it as “just a fever” anymore as too many species will go down. Life will probably persevere in the end, but so will probably a bunch of rich shitpieces, who are significantly responsible for this fever in the first place.
Our world has gone through many life cycles in the past. At the beginning, was darkness, at the end, probably the same (unless it’s a Futurama time cycle).
The earth will continue on and life will find a way. At this time, we, as humans, have screwed the pooch and now the pooch will screw us. We used the earth and culled it’s resources. We are taking no consideration to the world around us, and instead focus on ourselves alone.
All of the movies about aliens are true. Humans are selfish, greedy, parasites.
What are you basing this on? Like what scientific knowledge exactly? That life will find a way? You realize the “scientist” in Jurassic Park who said that wasn’t a real scientist???
Look at every other planet. Do any of them have life? What makes you so blindingly confident this planet won’t join them? We are in a mass extinction right now due to unprecedented rapid climate change. The only life left might just be extremophiles and they may never be able to evolve to be multicellular. And not even extremopjiles can survive everything.
That people are so casual about this shows a profound lack of scientific knowledge.
And we have evidence for at least 6 other major mass extinction events. Yet life on this planet found a way to survive and re-evolve. Quit being so fucking pedantic about something so silly.
I’m not being pedantic, I’m openly disagreeing with the idea that life “must” or absolutely will carry on. There’s no such guarantee. That you hold onto that is a cope but not reality. That’s fine if you need to do that ig but I disagree.
Calm down there, sport. I don’t have to cite sources or be factually correct to have a conversation about my perspective and pop culture references.
Um but you’re talking about a scientific phenomenon so if you want people to value your thoughts, it’s good to support them with evidence
You don’t have to do anything ofc. It just bothers me to see people say that George Carlin quote “the planet will be fine,” the Jurassic Park quote “life will find a way,” or the idea that the planet is alive and will kill us off like a fever. Because all of those things are downplaying the seriousness of what’s actually happening. From my PoV, what you’re doing is very close to climate change denialism and it stops people from realizing how serious things are right now. Literally right now.
I’m posting on the internet on a place that is not super populated. I have no followers and want to gain nothing from these aside from conversation, learning, and my version of social interaction. Climate change is real. It’s a very real threat to all life. I do what I can, donate to places I agree with, and advocate for groups that need to be heard. I do believe that life will find a way, because we came from nothing to begin with. Species have been destroyed, life was reborn. Civilization have been destroyed and rebuilt.
If life does not find a way, then it’s the end of the road for our relative area. We succumb to silence like the rest.
Humans aren’t selfish, greedy, parasites. We just get brainwashed into being that way by our culture
Hard to disagree with a famous lemur.
Our carcasses could end up being petrochemicals of the emerging life forms.
The earth, by any definition, is not alive. Sure there are ecological systems that interact with each other, but there’s absolutely no guarantee they are able.to address issues together in an environment. I highly recommend Half Earth by EO Wilson explaining about species diversity loss and ecology.
It’s important that we realize that life is the exception. None of the other planets have conditions needed to support life. Our planet would be fine to join them. It doesn’t care about fevers or anything. It isn’t alive.
i feel like you could describe a human body that way also :)
No, by definition of what’s alive, which is already scientifically described. That’s my entire point, is that the people commenting on this are laypeople without scientific understanding or basis. I’m trying to correct that because our scientific ignorance is literally killing us.
A rock is not alive. A volcano is not alive. This is grade school science. This is what “biology” is.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/intro-to-biology/what-is-biology/a/what-is-life
Properties of life
Biologists have identified various traits common to all the living organisms we know of. Although nonliving things may show some of these characteristic traits, only living things show all of them.
- Organization Living things are highly organized, meaning they contain specialized, coordinated parts. All living organisms are made up of one or more cells, which are considered the fundamental units of life.
- Metabolism Life depends on an enormous number of interlocking chemical reactions. These reactions make it possible for organisms to do work—such as moving around or catching prey—as well as growing, reproducing, and maintaining the structure of their bodies. Living things must use energy and consume nutrients to carry out the chemical reactions that sustain life. The sum total of the biochemical reactions occurring in an organism is called its metabolism.
- Homeostasis Living organisms regulate their internal environment to maintain the relatively narrow range of conditions needed for cell function. For instance, your body temperature needs to be kept relatively close to 98.6 [^\circ]F (37 [^\circ]C). This maintenance of a stable internal environment, even in the face of a changing external environment, is known as homeostasis.
- Growth Living organisms undergo regulated growth. Individual cells become larger in size, and multicellular organisms accumulate many cells through cell division. You yourself started out as a single cell and now have tens of trillions of cells in your body [^1]! Growth depends on anabolic pathways that build large, complex molecules such as proteins and DNA, the genetic material.
- Reproduction Living organisms can reproduce themselves to create new organisms. Reproduction can be either asexual, involving a single parent organism, or sexual, requiring two parents. Single-celled organisms, like the dividing bacterium shown in the left panel of the image at right, can reproduce themselves simply by splitting in two!
- Response Living organisms show “irritability,” meaning that they respond to stimuli or changes in their environment. For instance, people pull their hand away—fast!—from a flame; many plants turn toward the sun; and unicellular organisms may migrate toward a source of nutrients or away from a noxious chemical.
- Evolution Populations of living organisms can undergo evolution, meaning that the genetic makeup of a population may change over time. In some cases, evolution involves natural selection, in which a heritable trait, such as darker fur color or narrower beak shape, lets organisms survive and reproduce better in a particular environment. Over generations, a heritable trait that provides a fitness advantage may become more and more common in a population, making the population better suited to its environment. This process is called adaptation.
We can see how earth as a planet doesn’t qualify as a living organism based on these 7 parameters. Metaphorically calling earth “living” to describe the various interacting systems and ecologies is common but not in this context with climate change and insisting the earth will actually repair itself like a living organism.
I’m all for philosophically wondering about stuff, but we need to have an agreement on terms and what they mean. And in this case, these terms are already defined amd we know the planet isn’t able to heal itself to address climate change. That’s just a cope.
Its cause none of these systems are static or by themselves in a vacuum. There are feedback loops in all parts of our environment. Its not a coincidence that the temperature started to accelerate after the recent series of MAJOR volcanic eruptions in the many parts of the worlds oceans. Throw in the absolute monstrosity that is human industry and well the feedback there is more heat from industry combined with greenhouse gases means the the heat in those areas rises. What does heat do? It rises and moves outwards until it reaches equilibrium. Where is it cold? The arctic and antarctic. What’s happening in those places recently? Oh yeah huge spikes in temperature that are causing shifts by over 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit or about 8-10 degrees celsius. Sure it’s technically still freezing over the arctic and antarctic for portions of the year. However the arctic has, for the last several years during summer, been almost entirely ice free. The North fucking Pole is ice free during the summer time. That’s fucking insane. Everything feeds into everything else with our environment and climate.
Until more people in power actually understand these facts, we are all going to suffer needlessly.
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
Plenty of powerful people know these things. The profit motive makes these things hard to care about. We will continue like this until options are gone.
There are also some comments about aircon not being a good answer if solely relied on, including:
One of the key effects of heatwaves, which send demand for electricity soaring and cause extreme storms that stress electrical grids, is to cause blackouts. Blackouts mean no more air-con. A recent study suggested a blackout lasting just two days could hospitalise more than half of Phoenix residents and kill 12,000, mostly in their own homes. This is why the author Jeff Goodell warns of a “heat Katrina”: you thought the hurricane in New Orleans was bad?
Further, what happens when everyone knows the power isn’t coming back and instead the roads out of Phoenix all get backed up and people die in the heat of their cars trying to escape the heat of Phoenix. Because heat can kill a lot of vehicles, and a lot of people have ill-maintained vehicles, meaning roads being completely blocked from escape can happen fast.
I really think Phoenix will become the first mass casualty event from climate change in the USA.
EDIT: Obligatory Peggy Hill. Peggy gets it.
That’s one of those nightmare thoughts - when the power goes out, what do people usually do for a while? Wait for it to come back on. Someone is coming to fix it, right? Much of modern society is built upon such assumptions, and it mostly works. So I think you’re right for some, but many would perish at home, trying to outlast the day (and what if the night doesn’t cool?)
And then their food goes bad. Three days of starvation is all it takes to eat cake.
Water also disappears. At some point water is being pumped by a power source. I suppose that’s more when people get driven out, by hunger and thirst than by just curiosity or a plan. So much easier to leave before things go bad, but like Katrina showed, mobility is a class thing, some people can’t leave like that.
EDIT: Obligatory Peggy Hill. Peggy gets it.
And considering how rarely she “got” things, that’s saying a lot!
Lots of cars > lots of traffic > stopped cars > radiators don’t cool > cars break down > roads blocked
Car radiators have fans. They can idle indefinitely. You’re more likely to eventually run out of gas.
Edit: oh you mean because of the heat. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue, ambient temp is still going to be far below the roughly 200°F of an engine.
This assumes a car with a working cooling system. How many people have old cars with bad head gaskets or a radiator leak and “just fill it with water” and not fix the problem, only to find that pure water isn’t enough, as modern cars will walk up and down from 185-235F, which will blow steam before the fans kick on. They never noticed because they only drove a few miles a day, not long or hard enough to find out there is a real problem and not a nuisance.
That’s when it becomes Rita as opposed to “heat Katrina”.
For folks who don’t remember/know about Rita because they didn’t live through it, less than a month after Katrina a record-breaking cat 5 hurricane was heading for Texas. Everyone still had Katrina on their minds and panicked. Millions of people (literally estimated as 2.5–3.7 million) evacuated, or tried.
The highways out of Houston came to a total standstill. About 100 people died before the storm even hit land because of the evacuation. And then the hurricane itself was nbd; the evacuation was literally the worst part.
A significant amount of greenhouse gasses are emitted because of air conditioning. It’s a feedback loop.
Wait really? Do you mean by the electricity generation or by a refrigerant process?
I know those processes are inefficient and create overall heat in the system as they can’t create cool but only push heat, there should be no green house emission, just heat generation.
Are you saying extra heat will stay in the atmosphere? That’s not good but it’s not the same as carbon which allows heat to build up.
The power used by AC is responsible for ~3% of global emissions. I can’t find data about the impact of refrigerants ATM, but I assume it’s significant because of their extremely high “global-warming-potential.” I’m guessing a significant amount of emissions come from the manufacture of refrigerants, and a significant amount of refrigerants leak out of systems when they fail (or are improperly disposed of).
Air conditioners will soon be considered life support. In some places it will be a death sentence to have a power outrage. This isn’t speculation. It’s already happening.
I keep an old evaporative unit in the shed just in case. It only needs 70 watts and can thus run for quite a long time off a car battery or similar. Add a basic camping solar panel and you’re more or less set for the day as long as you have water and don’t live in a really high humidity place.
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Frankly, I am amazed it has not already happened in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or Austin. The power grid here in Texas is a disaster and the weather conditions are unforgiving. At least in the desert you can do evaporative cooling. That doesn’t work where its hot and humid.
It has. Some weak ass cat-1 hurricane killed like a dozen people in TX earlier this year. The winds didn’t harm anyone directly but it knocked out power for a few days in places. That’s all it takes when temps are well above 100F.
wow have we procrastinated real climate action long enough yet?
Doubt procrastination will stop even after 60-70 becomes a new high in those countries and people start dying en masse
“But mah profits!!!”
Yes we have ages ago. So might as well relax and keep posting
we are way past that point, its just that it takes a while to heat up.
times like these, I feel pretty shitty about how the world and I have condemned my kids to suffer the water wars in a handful of years
Yeah, I feel the same. I was having a tough day already but reading this has made me particularly gloomy.
I feel as though we will look back at these days wistfully.
Here are some sites to remind you that not everything in the world is bad, friend:
Here are some sites to remind you that not everything in the world is bad, friend:
Late or not, we have to do all we can to stop runaway warming and ecological collapse. We know corporations and populations won’t do anything voluntarily. That is why legislation is the only way. EU is taking the lead on this. I’m hoping world countries will follow.
A lot of companies won’t even allow remote work which would put a huge dent in commuter related pollution. Will that fix everything by itself? Nope, but it’d be a step in the right direction.
But they won’t even do THAT. This one little thing that’d be better for a lot of people and reduce car dependence related pollution for people in areas with little to no public transit access.
I have a hard time believing the US will ever catch up to green initiatives since corporate lobbying pays corrupt assholes more…
This one little thing that’d be better for a lot of people and reduce car dependence related pollution for people in areas with little to no public transit access.
It’s better for everything, cheaper, and notably has exactly zero impact on productivity, but God damnit Johnson, how can I force the interns to get me my coffee without everyone being back in the office?!
While some argue that the world will soon pass the lower Paris agreement guardrail of 1.5C of heating above the preindustrial average, Schmidt says
Unless 2022 - present turn out to be an anomaly, we already have.
It’s okay. Remember the IPCC panel decided in 2018(?) that we’ll just go over the limit a bit and then figure out how to pull back down. With magic or something.
Giant ice cube in the ocean?
Anyone who is “baffled” is either lying or hasn’t been paying attention.
I like to link this video when the subject comes up.
This isn’t just climate deniers though - even those that were expecting significant climate shifts are still seeing higher than expected. This isn’t “huh, things are getting hotter, who would’ve thought?” This is “we knew it would get hotter, but we predicted it would take longer.” We thought we were fucked, but we’re actually double fucked.
The issue here is that leading climate scientists are saying our current models aren’t accounting for the actual reported climate, and they’re not sure why it’s off. They’re hoping the new NASA climate program will provide more data for the causes. Currently it’s not explainable by CO2 emissions, sulfur from boats, volcanoes, etc, all of which when factored in still don’t account for more than 90% of how much warmer it is getting.
Yes, human caused global warming is real and happening. The big concern right now is it’s happening much faster than expected and we have no good, proven theory as to why. That’s a problem.
By definition, ideology is based on fantasy ideal. And the concept that ‘human economic growth is primarily good’ is a fantasy that can’t tolerate the reality of that economic growth harming our world.
This’ll happen when the corporations causing this don’t do anything about it.
First you have to stop capitalist government
lol yeah right
But really though humanity is doomed unless we figure out a way to actually reverse it, because we wont do anything to stop it until its too late to stop (decades ago), so then we wont do anything until it begins creating worldwide problems, which is soon, so by then we will have to have a solution to reverse it.
I think it’s capitalist hunting season.
Nonlilnearity has begun
Thanks for using the term ‘nonlinearity’, I’m now reading about nonlinear dynamic climate systems.
I’d say “thanks, now I’m scared,” but I fully expect humans to be a self-limiting species, anyway, so I’m just ‘oh, okay’ about it all.
