Everyone who’s been listening knows we’re royally screwed. Things are not changing the way they should, so, rough times are ahead of us. It was nice while it lasted. Take care, people.
At least I’ll finally get to win the argument with my dad about if climate change is real or not.
Things are changing. It just takes time. We’re pretty much at peak carbon by all indications.
Nice attempt at distracting from the issue - the tail effects from the GHGs already emitted is enough to change life as we know it.
CO2 is also not the end-all-be-all of climate change - we have huge methane emissions coming from melting permafrost, oceans, and icebergs that are 80-87x as damaging (ton-for-ton) than CO2.
I don’t even know why they bother publishing the same fucking articles every week. At this point people are numb to the information.
Sure there’s a solid chunk of the population who doesn’t give a shit and doesn’t believe there’s a problem to begin with.
But a lot of people do give a shit but are realistically powerless to effect change. Turning all your lights off and walking to work isn’t going to change shit. It’s big business that is mainly at fault here. They’ve just spent years brainwashing everyone to think that if we don’t leave the water running while brushing our teeth it’s magically gonna solve all our problems.
So what are people who can’t make an actual dent in the problem to do with a weekly “ANOTHER TIPPING POINT HAS BEEN REACHED” sort of article? It’s basically noise now.
But a lot of people do give a shit but are realistically powerless to effect change.
They could’ve started by voting for parties and candidates that want to actually do something. But the matter of the fact is that all climate actions cost money and will affect us, and that’s not what voters want. And yes, swapping your car for alternatives and eating less or no meat & diary products is actually having a big impact. Same with where and what you buy as those large companies that everyone cries about are in the end still producing their shit for you and me.
The people in power don’t give a shit. I’m quite depressed by all of this.
You’re depressed but do you campaign for political candidates who support climate change action?
We know… but can anyone really do anything? We reguraly get scientific breakthroughs that may help, but are too new to meet the scale required. We regurally hear PSA like “Recycling helps” or “Only you can prevent forest fires” but once again, the scale of the issue is far larger than paper straws or other feel good wishcycling programs. We reguraly see that the ~100 companies directly responsible for the problems not suffering any concequences, investigations into wrong doings are met with armies of lawyers, lobbyists (see bribery), and limp-wristed regulations with fines that are considered “the cost of doing business” instead of a penalty to be avoided.
For me, the fear and panic of impending climate collapse has given way to apathy and resignation. We know its a problem, its just that the scale requires real global action, its a global prisoner’s dilemma, and im not confident people will get it right.
Change is happening. We’re reaching peak carbon this year or the next 2 years. China is widely forecast to emit less Carbon next year than this year.
We just need to keep chipping away. This problem was created over 100+ years and it takes time to turn the ship.
Unfortunately, even if we stopped using all petroleum products right this second, there’s still that nasty 50 year lag between emissions and atmospheric outcome. We’ll be seeing the Earth get hotter and hotter for many years to come before it changes, and by that time, the cascading system failures of Earth’s biomes may be well past the point of no return.
there’s still that nasty 50 year lag between emissions and atmospheric outcome
Are you sure about that?
Humans have caused major climate changes to happen already, and we have set in motion more changes still. However, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries. There is a time lag between what we do and when we feel it, but that lag is less than a decade.
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-climate-change/
Personally I’m of the opinion that tipping points should not be a focus. I think people have reached a level of fear saturation, and no more fear can influence the system, it just precipitates right back out. While you can replace one fear with another, this can be inoculated against with faith, which is fairly accessible and common.
I think we need to actually take a page from Biden here, and stop pumping fear and consequences, and start pumping hope. Our stick is so waved the thing is fraying, but our carrots are underutilized.
Guys like Elon Musk, of all fucking people, are beating us in the hope dept. How the fuck did that happen?
Because the truth has limits on how hopeful and how simple it can be. Whereas the lies of billionaires have no such limitations.
I agree with your point that the messaging isn’t working. But pushing hope without radical reform of our current systems is basically just trying to diffuse the reaction to the facts without actually changing the facts leading to the reaction.
Agreed. But I think we need to focus our attention away from actual solutions to major problems, and onto minor solutions to minor problems, that will give us a footing for actually being able to take steps forward again.
We need to fight the battle right in front of our faces, instead of focusing on our more standard long-term views. Otherwise we’re going to be strategically and tactically outmaneuvered by people that follow fewer rules than we do.
It’s a feasibility and priorities consideration.
The problem with that being that the “minor solutions” aren’t really solving the problem. We’ve been doing “minor solutions” for many years now, and we have only accelerated in our destruction of the environment.
We need drastic change. Failing some deus-ex-machina-esque invention that quickly and cheaply solves the issue with no sacrifice needed, then we have to be demanding radical change. If that isn’t possible, our other option is to just fail and die.
We need organization and action of the masses commensurate with the danger. That would give me some hope for once.
Are we supposed to be really excited about one of our apocalypse options?
You should check out the history of apocalypse forecasting. It’s almost as amusing as the long history of “kids these days” complaints.
Both are bullshit, however. People just like whining and fantasizing about things they don’t like being punished.
Did those apocalypse forecasts have a hundred years of scientific data backing it up?
If you want to pump out hope, then get the politicians and voters to actually do something. And by something I mean actual proper actions and not just some band aid solutions that barely get us below 3 degrees. So far I see absolutely fucking nothing.
Oh, it’s too late to stop it. What, you gonna propose we invade India and halt their emissions? Or ask Modi to be a nice guy?
It’s time for prevention of worsening+mitigation.
Why look towards developing countries?
Are you proposing that they shouldn’t reach the same living standards as us? Or should we lower our living standards to match theirs?
My realizations over the years:
Even if we make our cars less carbon-polluting by 25%, if we end up driving more, we could still end up polluting more.
Even if the western nations pollute less, developing nations will still pollute a lot more and will get us to tipping points anyway, albeit perhaps slightly slower.
Global warming effects are scary, but what’s worse is global cooling and Ice Age. Once the ocean’s balance is messed up by diluted salinity due to melted ice caps, who knows where this can go.
Developing nations need electricity and primary energy growth. They need it to pull people out of poverty, and guarantee basic human needs like food, water, shelter as well as basic human desires like education, employment, and transportation. Western countries should be using their immense economic power to make renewable sources of energy the more cost-effective solution. They’re not.
China is on track to hit peak oil (this year) and peak coal (next year). This is due to their EV adoption rate (~40% and growing fast) and their solar panel installation rate (this year, more than the entire sum of all US solar panels). China dominates the supply chain: they make up more than half of all battery exports and more than 80% of all solar panels exports worldwide. In less than a decade, China has drove down the cost of EVs to parity with ICE vehicles ($10000/car) and drove down the cost of solar to be less than that of traditional fossil fuels.
The West could have done the same. Instead, we kept jacking off our O&G producers and giving them billions of dollars in subsidies while solidifying the advantage of established car and solar companies rather than driving innovation from competition.
It’s not even a morality problem, it’s a question of growing your economy by developing emerging industries
It’s not that simple to electrify with renewable. We’d need to mine wayyyy more copper for wiring. We’d need to produce wayyy more rubber for insulated coatings of all those wires. We’d need wayyy more transformers. And if every garage in America has a car charging in it, then we’ll need wayyy more batteries and We’d have a lot more load on our electric infrastructure. In the end, we’d still need fossil fuel infrastructure to account for when the sun’s not shining and wind isn’t blowing.
And yet, China this year deployed more solar panels than the US in it’s entire history.
Even if the western nations pollute less, developing nations will still pollute a lot more and will get us to tipping points anyway, albeit perhaps slightly slower.
Ehh, it’s worth noting that developing nations tend to pollute a lot less per capita. And as they develop they can transition to cleaner forms of energy, as they gain the economic ability to do so.
Pointing at developing nations is a convenient excuse for developed nations to avoid taking the actions we need to take.
We should be subsidizing renewables in developing countries so that they never have a reason to use fossil fuels in the first place.
…but where will BP or Shell make their billions then?
Also: things like blue ammonia and blue hydrogen are far more polluting than oil even diesel fuel, yet those ghouls managed to greenwash it into appearing better.
Even if the western nations pollute less, developing nations will still pollute a lot more
But that’s still less bad than if the western nations don’t pollute less.
Plus the more advanced nations can develop the technologies and techniques that all countries can implement for the benefit of all of us.
If there is the political will.
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Giving up isn’t the answer, no matter how overwhelming the problem looks. Because the alternative is a very unpleasant march towards extinction.
March towards extinction
You’re being overdramatic, there won’t be total extinction… just the vast majority of the world population living in misery and slowly dying.
