Earth is becoming ‘increasingly uninhabitable,’ scientists warn
Earth is becoming ‘increasingly uninhabitable,’ scientists warn
Extreme climate events and rising temperatures are threatening Earth’s inhabitants, ecosystems, and infrastructure with severe consequences
but what about the economy and its growth 😰
The environment looks fine when you look at it through the lens of a fiscal quarter!
It won’t fare well for most of us once habitable regions are flooded with climate refugees whose entire life savings and livelihoods have been wiped out.
But that doesn’t matter as long as profits are up in the short term, and it especially doesn’t matter to the handful of people who have hoarded enough resources to last them the next thousand years. They have bunkers and yachts and stuff. They’ll be fine, and they’re the ones deciding policy for the rest of us. Maybe they can make reality television where the rest of us fight hunger games style.
On a totally unrelated note, I’ve heard humans taste like pork.
The economy is expected to stall, shrink and be wiped out the warmer it gets. Insurances disappear, and with that loans and other financial instruments. Production and supply chain issues make things increasingly unviable. Basics like food take an the money. With business as usual, that's within decades as far as I could find. They're playing only short term.
Uninhabitable........for humans!
We only know of one rock in all existence that's habitable to humans or literally anything else. Relative to humans, yeah life finds a way cuz it's a lot more resilient than us; relative to the kinds of extremes the universe of capable of producing, life is SUPER fragile.
So... yes, humans are fucked, but so are a lot of other critters, and who knows where all the feedback loops we've unleashed will end after we're gone. Shit isn't going to just magically get better once we're gone.
Hopefully it'll stabilize, but there comes a point that even the most hardy of extremophiles can't survive, and if we cross that line, Earth becomes indistinguishable from every other lifeless rock in space.
The living Earth will be fine, and has recovered from worse than us, even other runaway mutations from within that wreaked havoc, see the carboniferous period and the trees that couldn't yet effectively decompose and release their carbon, doing the opposite of us, creating an ice age.
The Earth recovers, It just won't recover on a timescale we can perceive.
There's life that's evolved to survive in acid pools, at depths we can't touch, in crevices we can't reach. We arrogantly fashion ourselves Gods of this world, but we couldn't sterilize it if we wanted to.
We will be gone, sooner rather than later because of our actions, but the 3.8 billion year old living Earth will be fine with a negligible few million years of cleanup, and to paraphrase George Carlin, it will be like we never even existed at all, thank goodness for that.
Meanwhile Hyundai over there is like: "LOOK AT OUR HYDROGEN POWERED TANK, GAIS! :D COOL SHINY THING!"
Do rich people really sit and think about the day the world will truly be uninhabitable? There's no where else to go and all of their money combined cannot accelerate technological progression enough to not only try to explore space, but to colonize the exoplanets that's out there and funnel resources to and from as well as from and to.
This is all we got and they're happily ruining it because the 'growth' they're thinking of is profitable growth.
The super rich all have bunkers with enough supplies to last them and their friends a lifetime. It's not a coincidence Elon owns a tunneling company.
Their wealth will easily carry them through whatever hardships that happen in their lifetime. After their lifetime, they don't give a flying fuck what happens.
Rich people are old and are accustomed to only looking at the upcoming quarter. The environment is perfectly fine for the upcoming quarter, and probably their remaining lives.
I was talking to a (not wealthy) friend about his move to a southern coastal area for retirement with respect to climate change, who said similar. It should be fine for his remaining life. He also admitted that since he didn’t have kids, he has no reason to plan for the future beyond his own existence. He doesn’t care that his home will be underwater in a few decades as long as it is not until after he’s gone
I rewatched The Day After Tomorrow, and while none of that is happening (and likely can't happen), I kinda wish it did. But it won't, and the lack of drastic impacts will continue to create more slow burning action from disaffected parties.
The Atlantic current is going to collapse soon though. Which will drop temperatures in Northern Europe. Everything from about Germany up on that coastline is going to to get colder.
So while it certainly isn't going to be like the movie, it is going to create a colder area.
with urgent, decisive action, we still can avoid unmanageable outcomes
But not just any urgent, decisive action, it must be the right action. The wrong action could be insufficient at best, and actively harmful at worst.
To meet the Paris climate agreement, we must reduce global GHG emissions by 45% to 50%, from current levels, by 2030. To achieve that, we must begin decommissioning all existing fossil fuel powered machinery, from power plants, to manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural equipment, and replace them with net zero emission alternatives, as quickly as possible. I don't think anyone really knows how best to do that, at least not on a global scale. It's not something we've ever done before.
To achieve that, we must decommission all existing fossil fuel powered machinery, from power plants, to manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural equipment, and replace them with net zero emission alternatives.
By 2030? Not going to happen, then.
That means we need to come up with a different "right" action in the meantime. We shouldn't be relying on a dream scenario that has basically no chance of actually coming to pass.
By 2030? Not going to happen, then.
You're right, that would be virtually impossible. I should have said that we need to decommission the fossil fuel powered machines as quickly as possible, to have the best chance of reducing global GHG emissions by >45% by 2030. But, we do need to have all fossil fuel powered machines that have GHG emissions that can't be offset by things like carbon capture and sequestration, decommissioned by 2050, to meet the Paris climate agreement goals. That gives us a couple more decades, but even that will be extraordinarily difficult.
Its more inhabitable now than any other time in history...
October 30th, yesterday, was 70° where I live. In practically Canada. Concerningly warm for this time of year.
F I hope? C is extremely hot, K is extremely cold.
K
That.is disconcerting