Post source: https://mas.to/@advisorybriefs/110769955083302457
Data source: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
The hottest 21 days so far!
Seriously! I give it pretty good odds this runs for a full month, then we’ll probably get some relief with days that are only near record-breaking 🥵
Not true. Fake news. Everyone knows that for the first few hundred million years after Earth first formed the average surface temperature was 80C (176F).
“ever recorded” - there was nobody around to record the formation of the earth.
Yes, the planet was destroyed in the name of insatiable capitalist greed.
But for one shining moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders!
(and just to be crystal clear, not you)
For the love of christ, stop saying that. Every single time someone makes this comment. We. Get. It.
Do we? Because the absolutely astonishing sense of self-importance humans have would indicate otherwise.
Other beings live here, and while humans fuck humans over in the name of greed and power, we bulldoze entire ecosystems without any consideration for the other creatures that lived here whatsoever.
No, you’re wrong. Most humans live, act, and speak as if the entire world, hell the entire universe, should be bent to better serve our naive, entitled species exclusively.
I’ll stop saying it the minute people stop saying we’re destroying the planet.
in the name of insatiable capitalist greed
The communist and socialist countries aren’t using any less oil either. We can’t fix a problem if we are blaming random things.
The path forward is nuclear and renewables for the next decades while we wait for grid-scale energy storage problems to be solved.
There are no actual socialist countries, but if you’re referring to, for example, the Scandinavian countries, they use far less oil per capita than the United States.
No, Scandinavian countries just have a healthy government. Countries like China have awful, awful climate impacts, much worse off than most other countries. Though, them and France at least have started a nuclear build-out, which is needed to 100% de-carbonize the grid.
The communist and socialist countries aren’t using any less oil either. We can’t fix a problem if we are blaming random things.
I’ve come to accept that there isn’t hope to stop the runaway train of unchecked capitalist greed, at least not without the hard lesson of collapse and rebuild, and that means there will be apologists like you screaming that the ship (Our habitable world) isn’t sinking as you’re waist deep in ocean(city destroying weather events, crop failures, heat deaths, fresh water crises, etc).
That used to bother me, but I’ve come to appreciate you as the comedy relief you are in this tragedy. So by all means, keep crowing about how competition between humans in matters of life and death are “healthy” and how the capital markets will save us from the capital markets that don’t care about any future that is more than a fiscal quarter out, and will do anything they can get away with against the species for an extra nickel for shareholders.
I’m sure the benevolence of the sliver of the population that came to own almost everything through Extensive, merciless exploitation and sociopathy “rational self-interest” will swoop in to save you and your loved ones for your devotion.
Nobody is willing to tolerate a drop in quality of life for the climate. Third worlders like the Chinese have finally gotten a taste for a little meat with supper and they aren’t going to give it up so easily.
I don’t even think this is inherently capitalist. It’s a human issue. Obviously capitalism messes up incentives - so companies like ExxonMobil will deliberately lie about emissions or what have you and create PR campaigns to influence people into more carbon emissions.
So capitalism definitely makes it worse in that regard - but the ultimate cause of this is 8 trillion humans who want access to smartphones, cars, globalized consumer products, laptops, A/C, etc
The only real way to reduce carbon emissions to a point it won’t inevitably fuck up the planet is not to have humans exist in a large scale industrial society. Go ahead and campaign on that as a politician. It ain’t happening. We’re burning this bitch to the ground.
For what it’s worth, it’ll take a couple of centuries before we really start to feel the effects in full. Sure, a few unusual heatwaves here and there seem serious but it’s nothing like what’s coming.
Moving past tipping points. With permafrost melting, sea ice melting and not reforming, and fires in the boreal forest, the feedback loop is developing. We are going to blow past 2 degrees C way faster than anyone predicted.
Honestly, anyone paying attention saw this coming since 2010.
We had twenty years to avoid this: by massively switching to nuclear power in the 90s and 00s.
We missed that exit ramp. By 2010 it was clear that 2 degrees was unavoidable.
The choice now is, do we limit it to 2-3 degrees warming, or do we go straight to 4-5 degrees?
It will take at least two decades to transform our industrial world economy.
They were being conservative because they didn’t want to be accused of being alarmists.
“Nuclear power scares me”
Welcome to the result. It’s sad, because nuclear power was the way, but instead we propegandized against it and continued to use it as a boogie man.
Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily, ignoring there’s over 400 nuclear power reactors that are still active, 93 in America… But no… “Chernobyl” and the discussion ends.
Also Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors … nah can’t consider things have changed since then.
Now we have people using another nuclear plant in Ukraine as an example, and again the fear rises. They’re trying to weaponize the plant, but somehow it’s “Nuclear power” and not the fact some fuckheads are planning to destroy it in a destructive fashion that’s the problem.
Somehow dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.
Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors … nah can’t consider things have changed since then.
Things have indeed changed, now construction regulations are far tighter. This is good because the risk of a Chernobyl event is far lower, but at the price of extreme cost overruns and project delays
Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily
So is it better to start a nuclear project and hope it can start reducing coal & NG emissions 10 years from now? Or is it better to add solar and wind capacity constantly and at a fraction of the price per MWh?
There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems
Somehow Dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.
I think you’re forgetting that once the waters from a dam break dry up you can rebuild…a nuclear accident has the potential to poison the land for generations
Switching >50% of the power to wind could have happened any time in the last 80 years for far less than any one of the various failed nuclear transitions.
Hell, the first commercial solar thermal installation was over a century ago and the first attempt to bring PV to market was george cove in 1906. One abandoned nuclear reactor worth of investment could have moved either down the economic learning curve to replace coal.
The answer has been clear. The wealthy that cause this will continue to rape the planet for short term profit to feed their insatiable greed machine, the peasants who will suffer the most who could destroy the global oligarch class in a day will continue to labor for them in exchange for minimal subsistence until we die of climate change induced natural disasters, heat stroke, or starvation, and the global oligarchs will flee to the luxury bunker complexes they’ve been building to continue to live like modern Pharoahs, protected from the destruction they wrought.
Humanity chose greed and greed worship, because humans would rather daydream about becoming the greedy fuckers and living in the decadence and gluttony of their masters, than of breaking the wheel, rejecting the owners and stripping them of their wealth/power, and working together sustainably for the future of the species.
A great many of us peasants actually resent our tax dollars going to the underpaid teachers that try to foster society’s future in the face of apathy and greed. I think you’d have to be blind to have any hope for humanity getting wise without the painful, clearly needed education of civilization’s collapse. In an age where humanity’s technology can literally destroy the world, we need to learn the hard way that actions and inaction have consequences for the species.
We can’t learn that until we’re hungry and can no longer delude ourselves into believing everything is fine by staring into a screen.
Sadly the inflation of the 70s followed by high interest rates froze nuclear plant building, and when it could have picked back up, Chernobyl put a final mail in the coffin.
Honestly I think the only thing that will stop it is mass death and destruction of the industrial economy.
Right now my biggest hope is a volcanic winter to give us a little reprieve.
The question on my mind is at what temp will global economy and our current civilization start to implode, as at that point we will probably stop emmiting as people, cities and possibly states literally die off…and than will probably be the new norm…
Looks like it’s happening already. Natural disasters are on the rise, costing billions, insurance companies start bailing out of some area. I was also wondering if international help would come back every year to address a fraction of the wildfire in Canada, Spain, Italy, Greece, and soon pretty much everywhere.
Pretty sure the cost of the disaster is soon going to be unbearable and we’ll start abandoning places and infrastructures instead of rebuilding (not officially, of course, we’ll just “push back until conditions allow to rebuild” and forget about it as more disasters will occur).
It will be a slow death, though.
We’re going to need to make all the changes now. Energy production, energy usage, energy storage, transportation, manufacturing, carbon capture and so on. We’re going to need to do all of it, and we’re still in big trouble. My guess is that within the next 100 years the human population might take a dive because of climate change.
In torn between following my dreams and dedicating my life to attempting to help the climate crisis by going to school and inventing some tech to help
and giving up entirely, coasting through life with my stable government job, and drinking to forget until the day I hang myself…
This world is fucked, should I even try? Or should I just hope in reincarnation?
Well if no one does anything it won’t be better should reincarnation come around.
I think Dr. Seuss has some pertinent wisdom here.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
Its not really a matter of if I care. I cannot sway billionaires, the ones who put us into this situation. I cannot make them stop destroying the planet. They do not care what I think, and they are solely motivated by profits. Nothing else. They have no morality, no sensibilities, no sympathy, and they have absolutely no desire to do literally anything about the unfolding climate crisis. They don’t care. They’d double emissions in a heartbeat if they’d make a few cents off of it. God knows they’ve done it before, and they’ve done much worse for much less money.
Until the money billionaires have stolen from us is rightfully given back to us, we have no means of intervening directly ourselves. The only other option is insurrectionary revolution. Those in the ruling class have shown us consistently over the last 150 years that they have callous disregard for the environment and for the future of humanity. They have shown time and again they will ignore all warnings, they will dismiss all concerns, they are apathetic to human life, and are solely focused on the accumulation of stolen wealth. There’s no middle ground here. If we want to do something meaningful to mitigate this crisis, the billionaires and the ruling class have to go.
If it gets too hot, they’ll just buy a bigger AC unit. Then a bigger one. Then they’ll move underground. Until that gets too hot as well.
There was a meme floating around a while back with a quote from some native american fellow saying something along the lines of ‘only when the last bison has been killed,[…] the last tree has been felled, will they realized they can’t eat money’.
Their power of the rich only exists as long as the rest of the people are giving it to them. We as a collective are not able to break away though. At the end of it all apathy goes both ways. They are apathetic to human life, the rest of humanity is apathetic to human life. It’s a self perpetuating system. The ‘fuck you, got mine’ mentality is the one to blame here and perhaps it’s one of the traits that brought us so far.
And, for all the good and bad it’s brought us, we conquered the planet (grey connotation intended there) because it was ‘never enough’. For instance, some creatures could fly. We couldn’t. So we fixed that by keeping birds in cages as pets and by inventing powered flight.
Undeniably, we’ve gotten ourselves in quite a pickle with this mentality, but I propose here that they are the inevitable result of humanity. Hoarders have been around since humanity started killing each other for resources (see monarchies as an example). They are probably not fecking off too soon. And I don’t believe eat the rich is a solution because people will just eat the closest rich person and change the definition of rich to ‘has a bit more than me’ to justify it.
Are they going to go just because you say they have to, or will action be required?
Assuming it’s action does that happen with apathy or do you have to care?
Caring a “whole awful lot” does not start and stop with green initiatives by the people.
The “do you care” flow chart boils down to two directions:
- No > then it doesn’t matter
- Yes > then what are we going to do about it
Which branch gets to what you’re talking about?
The Lorax which is really the most applicable one here.
If you haven’t read it I’ll also suggest The Butter Battle Book if you’re interested in morality that boomers retroactively want to have not taught their children
The problem isn’t tech to help the environment, as far as I can tell. It’s more getting the people in charge to actually do something about it.
I think the French once invented a device for that, I forget what it was called.
Seeing how we’ve known about it for decades and this is the amount of progress we’ve made towards slowing/fixing it… idk maybe I’m just being cynical, then again Covid really showed us just how much the general public doesn’t care about their well-being and other’s wellbeing
IMO, it’s always better to try. Worst case scenario is that nothing changes, so no worse than if you didn’t. The only sane choice in that kind of situation is to pick the one with a chance for improvement.
In my experience, giving a shit about what you’re doing has a bunch of positing knock-on affects as well. You just end up feeling better about yourself. In your specific scenario it sounds like trying would also afford you the opportunity to live a happier life, and that’s worth chasing. The world is fucked, but scientists keep saying they if we act soon it’s not so fucked they we’re past the inflection point to un-fuck it.
Would you really want to be reincarnated onto this sweat box of a planet?
Lots of planets out there, maybe another has life, and you can be snail-like creature on beta-kapsilon 114-3b
It’s looking more and more depressing on that front too…
Apparently we’re discovering that our type of star system with its long periods of stability and lack of local disruptive bodies is incredibly, incredibly, rare… There are a (literal) astronomical amount of systems out there so there’s no way we’re the only one with life, but it’s really looking like there could only be a “handful” of others out there :/
If you have the energy to try I’d say do so, but be careful not to overexert yourself. When it comes to doing good or altruistic things that don’t have a lot of direct value to us, we all have different amounts of energy. If that energy runs out, people burn out and stop doing anything. With that in mind, try to do small things here and there. For following your dreams, I’d say to my knowledge we only live once and you should do something you enjoy, and it’s possible at any age to change careers, but it’s important to be realistic and build a plan before making the jump.
One could argue that we (humans) are doing exactly what we are meant to do and that the climate change isn’t a ‘problem’ on the grander scale.
Change is only ‘bad’ based on perspective. Climate Change could also be the pressure catalyst that drives evolutionary change. The pressure exerted on coal underground could be considered ‘bad’ for the coal but it also drives the transformation of coal into diamond.
Mate believe me i’m thorn between the exact same feelings…
It’s hard to find a balance in an unbalanced world, a world that is demanding us to work hard to fix important problems and to create new and different possibilities.
At the same time a lot of us are just needing social interactions to the point they are starving: a lot of people of my generation grew up with technology ( the specific capitalist kind of technology that wanna keep you glued to the screen even if it’s hurting you) and are really in the need of some real human contact.
Finding a balance is incredibily hard, there’s this will of finding truth: true actions, true relationships, true help.
But at the same time the actions required to find solutions could take us a lot of time, mental and phisical resources…
But from as i see it now, i feel good if i can live one good day with the people i love even if rarely, than living with the consciousness i’ve never even tried to do something to change the world and create a better future for me and for them.
Welcome to the British Petroleum summer heat wave. Next up is the Exxon Mobile Hurricane season.
Fun fact about the Exxon Mobile Hurricane Season, oil and gas platforms can get insurance against a storm in the Exxon Mobile Hurricane Season, but homeowners in Louisiana can’t get any homeowners insurance due to the expected severity of the named storms in the Exxon Mobile Hurricane Season.