The world has experienced its hottest day on record, according to meteorologists.
The average global temperature reached 17.01C (62.62F) on Monday, according to the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction.
The figure surpasses the previous record of 16.92C (62.46F) - set back in August 2016.
I used to think the more apparent and devastating outcomes of climate change were bound to hit long after I passed away, but now I’m not so sure. Local storms are becoming more and more serious with every passing year, each summer is less bearable than the last and the nearby forests are burning down for the 2nd summer in a row. We are definitely speedrunning this shit.
You constantly hear people say “oh, well we are in a warming cycle, so yeah, of course the Earth is going to get warmer”.
These are people on the Right who have moved past the point of denying the problem of Climate Change and shifted their argument to admitting it is happening, but not admitting that it is man-made.
In some ways, they are right - the Earth’s climate IS indeed shifting away from an Ice Age and moving toward a warming period, but what we humans have done is essentially thrown gasoline onto the already burning fire. We are accelerating the problem.
And it’s that acceleration that’s the real problem. If this sort of warming happened over twenty or thirty thousand years, the ecosystem would have a chance to adapt and maybe humanity along with it. A couple hundred years? Nah mate, ecological collapse is going to happen and it’ll probably take us with it.
I used to think the more apparent and devastating outcomes of climate change were bound to hit long after I passed away, but now I’m not so sure.
Too many people thinking like that is exactly why we are where we are today. And why it will continue to get worse.
Those of us who actually care about the world our children and grandchildren will have to live in have been trying to get some large scale action for decades, and we’re tired of beating our heads against a brick wall.
It’s the way we tend to think of things as black and white. Someone decided to set some disaster increase threshold for the climate crisis events and called it a day. When it has always been about an increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters and more, both of which we are already seeing.
If it doesn’t hit in my lifetime it will be soon after, which is one the reasons I choose to not have kids.
Most of the climate change predictions I’ve heard in my lifetime have talked about stuff that would happen by 2050 or 2100. It’s always been bullshit, just a way of pushing out the consequences beyond a timeframe we can actually conceive of effectively. In reality this shit is already hitting us and accelerating hard.
I’ve always thought those predictions were listed as “conservative” so the average is a lot closer but main media outlets pick the fastest out point in the bell curve so it’s not so doomed.
Yeah, it’s not bullshit to be conservative with climate models because they are incredibly complex. It’s good practice. However, because of the political climate around climate change, scientists probably er on the side of being extra-conservative, and the models are still dire! So, if the real world trends happen to go outside the bell curve, not in our favor, which keeps happening, we’re fucked.
2050 isn’t really that far away. if you remember the year 2000, that’s about how long.
It’s amazing how the human race realize the shit it put itself in only when it is a fraction of a second from hitting the wall at high speed. It’s like that every single time.
Except the impact of climate change isn’t at all like a car crash. In a car crash everything stays fine until it suddenly goes to shit. Which I think is one of the issues why people have such a hard time dealing with it.
Maybe we should think about it more like a sinking ship. We already got wet feet, which isn’t great but only the start and we really need to start shutting some bulk heads to keep the water from pouring in. And get some Wellies to deal with the water already in. But those won’t help if it keeps on rising.
On geological time scales, this is very much like your car crash analogy.
Unfortunately, most people don’t seem to be capable of understanding time at that scale.
The rich are on the top decks where the valve controls are, they don’t have wet feet, why should they close the valves?
