I’m surprised they didn’t mention a key tipping point I’ve been following: melting permafrost.
It’s dangerous because once all the permafrost in Alaska, Canada, and Russia starts melting, the gasses it releases are a self fulfilling prophecy. The warming caused by permafrost melt is enough to keep melting permafrost.
Good report on the dangers here:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/01/1110722
Current estimates are that an increase of just 1.5°C in global temperatures over average would be enough to hit this tipping point and we’re already at +0.8.
https://worldbusiness.org/permafrost-the-climates-tipping-time-bomb/
Continuing to increase at a rate of 0.08°C per decade means we’ll hit this in approximately 80 or 90 years? Except that, since 1980, we’ve been warming at a rate of +0.18°C per decade, so we should hit the tipping point by 2062, tops.
Eh, what do I care, I’ll be 93 years old, assuming I’m not already dead by then. :)
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
I mean…this is the same thing they’ve been saying for years. That’s the “point of no return,” because the warming is exponential. Decades, they’ve been saying this.
But, here comes the new fucking DIRECTOR OF THE U.N.’S CLIMATE EXPERTS saying, “1.5c warming is not the end of the world.”
He said that shit, like, last week. We really do need to put the workforce into building guillotines. The world needs some guillotin’ing.
He added: “Nevertheless, we should not despair and fall into a state of shock when the world exceeds 1.5 degrees.
“Every action we take to mitigate climate change helps. Climate protection is always cheaper and protects people from the dramatic consequences of global warming. This is all the more true if we have exceeded the Paris climate target.
“The world won’t end if it gets more than 1.5 degrees warmer. However, it will be a more dangerous world. Countries will struggle with many problems, there will be social tensions.
“And yet this is not an existential threat to humanity. Even with 1.5 degrees of warming, we will not die out.”
The context for this is that he thinks the “doom” coming from climate alarmists will paralyze people.
“Not an existential threat to humanity” is a pretty low bar. I’d prefer no increase at all to mortality rates.
But even the lowest bar he could set isn’t true. We need the air, the water, the plants, the animals, the not-forest fires, the not-monumental hurricanes and tornadoes, the lack of drought and the lack of torrential flooding…all of this is already ramping up, literal centuries before they predicted. THAT is how much we seem to have misjudged how desperate this situation is.
Like, ten years ago, he story was, “if we don’t stop, our children’s children will start to see some extreme weather events.” And then it was, “when this generation grows up, we will have a much harder time.” And now it’s, “holy shit, it’s already happening.”
And this fuckin turd comes out with some bullshit platitudes. Gross.
Oh, if you want to pee your pants, watch the Arctic Sinkhole episode of Nova that’s available on the PBS Nova YouTube right now. Terrifying examination of the current state of permafrost.
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No Republican I’ve talked to will admit this.
Good night. I started talking about this in like 2002 after facing the terrible heat in the middle east during my time in service. I came back and moved to New York and it was just like Chicago, you could see the haze of pollution above the city from miles away. I moved back down south and in bigger cities there, you can see it too. People didn’t want to hear it, some still don’t. I’ve had a personal moto for many years, “One person, one piston.” Everywhere I look, cars, trucks, and SUVs have gotten more ginormous. Why the hell does one man need to drive a v8 2500 to an office job? Why the hell does one girl without a family need to drive an Escalade to get coffee and donuts? We, the people, are going to have to be the ones to make the changes. Electric cars are really no better as so much fuel is used mining minerals for the batteries, and so many of the power grids run off coal fired power plants. You might not have a tailpipe, but it’s all coming from somewhere. I wish we could go back to the days a man had a good horse, but it seems too far gone now.
If everybody had a horse it wouldn’t be much different, though. There are way more people on earth now than when horses were still the main mode of transportation. Horses would cause similar problems as our other livestock for climate change.
People powered vehicles (bicycles, skateboards, etc.) are the only thing that we have that are truly zero impact forms of transportation. I guess we could count solar and wind powered vehicles, but those don’t really get the job done for our transportation needs.
We need to focus on public transportation, but so many people would refuse to ever vote for that stuff.
Well, I wouldn’t say TRULY zero impact. There are some things that would still contribute such as the need for more calories and also the work we would exert making pollution from ourselves, but it is still 10,000x more beneficial than what we have with cars or horses.
Honestly, horses may even be worse because you don’t really turn them off like cars. Depending on how often you drive, horses may wind up causing even more pollution than if you just drove.
Also, horses are really, REALLY expensive, not just in initial cost either, and their legs are like glass.
Not defending cars at all BTW, just supporting what you said on horses.
The ‘one person, one piston’, rule is amazing.
The car industry, and regulations around cars need to rewritten. Small 1 cylinder cars need to be sold legally.
Many families I know would be happy using a golf cart for 90% of their needs. Leaving the big car in the garage for the 1 time a month they drive somewhere far, or in very bad weather.
Good gracious, I saw this flying bathtub on Reddit years ago lol
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Well fuck… I guess one way or another our lifestyles will have to change. Either by severe action to mitigate climate change, or by the impending climate catastrophes things are going to be unpleasant.
We’re too stubborn. We’re gonna throw shit into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight.
We’re Corporations are too stubborn. We’re They are gonna throw shit into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight.
FTFY
I mean I think it’s cool as shit if it works. It’d be pretty lit if we managed to fuck up so badly and avoid murdering a bunch of poors to fix it.
I’ve been saying for two years now that you cannot convince me that there isn’t a ready made contingency plan somewhere in the White House that involves using modified nuclear weapons to facilitate a mini nuclear winter, to counteract greenhouse gas emissions.
