Reminder that there's no "it's too late, its over" for climate change
Reminder that there's no "it's too late, its over" for climate change
(not my OC nor my OP, just helping spread the message around:-)
162 comments
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its to late, its over, to prevent catastrophe.
its not to late to ensure we have a minimal catastrophe instead of a maximal catastrophe.
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Actually, it's too late, because those in power are accelerating in the wrong direction and we are less and less able to prevent them to do so.
And even so, given the current state of the society, even the "best case scenario" will be enough to make it collapse.
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Well, global meat consumption per Capita is going down YOY so something is working.
Methane gas is basically our greatest enemy at this point
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There's an interesting graph that someone posted in https://aussie.zone/comment/14827931, but I am no expert so I have no idea personally, just sharing that, which seems to suggest that the highest areas are residential energy and road transportation. Whether that in turn traces to Methane I have no idea:-).
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Great but I already do as much as I personally can handle. Would be great if society at large, e.g. laws, regulations, and big corps, could get on the same level.
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Me: dusts off hands Installed solar on the roof, bicycling to work, updated the insulation on all my windows, and drastically reduced the amount of plastic in my life.
Tech Company Next Door: CONSUMES 70 MwH OF POWER FOR TWO YEARS STRAIGHT POWERING AN UNOPTIMIZED AI
Me: Begins flipping through a copy of How To Blow Up A Pipeline
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I agree, many of us have maxed out passive improvements. Now let's work on active.
Call your local oil company CEO. Get a job at Exxon and really half ass it. Visit your town government and demand better public transport and electric busses. Take a dump on the nearest gas pump.
Only some of those are jokes and I'm not sure which.
Don't poop on stuff you don't own.
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Don’t poop on stuff you don’t own.
Bad news for everyone who rents their home, and thus doesn’t technically own a toilet :(
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i saw a video on youtube, by someone named sabine said everyone gave up on climate action, yea they gave up like years ago, the only miracle was when lockdown happened, and global co2 fell very fast and nature quickly reclaimed certain areas. like they pretended to care, but never did anything to stop it. even in research i heard that you cant frame climate change was leaning towards caused by "people" or your research wont get funded, thats how bad funding grant sis for research for some universities.
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sabine also posted absolute horseshit about trans people so I don't trust anything she says about science anymore
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It’s just a question of how bad we’ll have it at this point.
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There are always best and worst case scenarios.
We are currently comprehensively losing the battle for 3C@2100 (which comes with increasingly harmful-to-devastating impacts in the intervening years and decades: future climate refugees will make the current not-far-off-a-London a decade seem like a picnic. A situation fascists will no doubt exploit).
It looks like the only way to prevent 4C plus and, a future Earth only described in science fiction, is mass civil disobedience.
But the UK government appears to be the worst in any civilised country in terms of squashing dissent, and most of the public appears to be more concerned with not being delayed on their commutes.
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I was going to argue that you only need wait for the US to surpass the UK in silencing dissent, but then you said civilized.. I’m not so sure that the US can compete based on that metric anymore.
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There’s a clear difference between being in big trouble and being completely screwed. If we can avoid the extinction of humanity and go with catastrophic disasters and famine that eradicates vast majority of the population, we should totally do it.
Ideally, we would avoid all that, and go back to the good old days. Every small step towards that goal is worth it, although taking longer steps is highly encouraged.
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Is climate change an extinction level threat? I've never heard that.
I think we're firmly in "catastrophic disasters and famine that eradicates vast majority of the population" territory.
It's a question, as you said, of how severe the disasters and famine will be.
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This is highly speculative, because climate science is fiendishly complex, and the error bars in these estimates are as wide as the solar system. However, there is a concept called the “runaway greenhouse effect”, in which the global average temperature spirals out of control, roasting the entire plant. Not exactly the kind of concept you want to think about too much.
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Actually, level of warming that could directly wipe humanity is technically possible, even the hopium dealers among climate scientists admit that (notably Michael E. Mann). But even if it doesn't kill all of us directly, it will likely generate a domino effect for other existential threats.
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A bit sad how pessimistic everyone is. Renewables are currently becoming the most economic way to produce electricity and even states that do not care about the environment are investing in it. EVs are making progress as well. And while it is true that a lot of damage has already been done and we will face the consequences, I also feel that decarbonization is inevitable even from a economic perspective at this point. The speed at which this happens is variable though and determines how many people will die, this is why it is important to not be pessimistic and hopeless but to try steering things in the right direction.
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A bit sad how pessimistic everyone is.
Americans are pessimistic because we don't have a functional democracy and our fascist oligarchs are too stupid to use their resources to fight climate change.... And the rest of the world is pessimistic because the world's most powerful economy and military has fallen to fascist oligarchy.
Nothing will change until we abolish the billionaires and replace our two party system with a modern multiparty parliamentary system with proportional representation
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Personally, the "renewable" energies aren't making me hopeful. Because they are absolutly not renewable, they can't be build without pollution because of the materials you need. And even so, climate change is not even the worst of our existential threats, there are many more, but strangely, people are only talking about climate.
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True. The Middle East is the fastest growing renewable market after China and the Middle East already has very low fossil fuels and electricity prices. Of course they don't have absurd tariffs on Chinese renewables.
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Seriously, if there's one thing I don't miss from reddit (I tell a lie, there's dozens of things I don't miss from Reddit) it's the "Actually we're too far gone, and everyone's going to die in seven days because none of you jokers will buy a Tesla!~" nonsense
Funfact: Conspiracy Bullshit in the other direction is still Conspiracy Bullshit
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Really? I knew it had gotten bad over there since the Rexodus but wow, it sounds rough. I'm so glad we are over here in The Good Place instead. Wait a minute...!? 🤡
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It's never too late if you seriously consider all your options Ie:
Full nuclear energy development with SMRs
Fusion reactors research
Full transition to electric/hydrogen vehicles
Economic sanctions to countries with grid power coming from carbon/ non renewable resources above a certain percentage
Full development of lunar/cis lunar infrastructure/space
Large scale deployment of solar mirror arrays designed to reflect incoming sunlight, built using lunar regolith as raw materials source
Blowing an 88 megatons hydrogen bomb under the sea, below 8 to 12 Km under the ocean floor surface to trigger about 30 years of carbon capture in a second
You know, easy stuff
And so on
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The US is fucked anyway, but if China and the EU worked together, greatness could be approved on potentially the most important front:
Economic sanctions to countries with grid power coming from carbon/ non renewable resources above a certain percentage
However, the one I'm most curious about is the following:
Blowing an 88 megatons hydrogen bomb under the sea, below 8 to 12 Km under the ocean floor surface to trigger about 30 years of carbon capture in a second
How would this work? I'm really interested in the mechanics of this, not so much the feasibility (which is non-existent anyway)
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Oh the biggest bomb one is actually extremely simple
. Create (an) hydrogen) atomic bomb(s) with yield equal to or similar to 88 megatons . Go to seabed , about 12 km down on Ocean floor
. Drill about 8 to 12 km into basalt ( basalt is a mineral that fixes to carbon )
. Detonate bomb
. Watch trillions of basalt mineral get pulverized instantly into the sea
. Allow sea currents to distribute this all over the world
. Watch how oceans start absorbing more CO2
. Watch as global temperatures drop a degree and a half (1.5)
Repeat as needed, remember not to overdo it. Thankfully the ocean is extremely good at absorbing any radiation if any dares to escape
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I'm a pessimist in that even in the best possible situation humans would still find a way to overpopulate the earth until no solution is viable. We are parasites
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Don't disagree that civilization is a parasite, but a lot of parasites evolve to not kill their host 🙂
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We are categorically not parasites. We don't live in/on another organism deriving nutritional value from the bodies as hosts
We and other animals eat plants/plan eaters directly. We are not hosted by plants or plant eaters.
If that were the case, other animals would also be parasites. At most, we are predators
There are many definitions of parasites tho and all hinge on the time the parasite spends in/on the host
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O...k...a...y... lemme just get right onto that now... You know what, I think I'll take a nap, and perhaps get back to it tomorrow? 👨🔬☢️💥
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Don't worry bro we've got people working on it as we speak
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I think this message has good and bad uses. As a way to stop people from being doomers and not taking any action? Great. But I’ve also seen this kind of argument be used to justify an incrementalist approach to an issue that we absolutely cannot afford to go slow on or half ass. “Something is better than nothing” isn’t good enough. If we take 1 step forward and 2 steps back we’re going to lose. And that’s if the problem was linear. The fact that feedback loops accelerate the problem means we lose more and more ground the longer we wait to rip the bandaid off.
If the best allowable solution is to keep electing liberals who take money from capitalists to promote symbolic progress or “market based solutions” while continuing to approve new fossil fuel projects, then we really are doomed.
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True, but also don't allow perfection to be the enemy of good.
I recall in Star Wars when the Jedi accused the Trade Federation of having invaded Naboo. Did it really? This needs to be verified, doesn't it? Oh but wait, it's the word of "Jedi", right, not just "some guys"? Yeah but can we really play at favoritism? Wait, how is that favoritism when they have an established mandate to help protect the Republic... and on and on.
Ironically, they could have sent an entire fleet, and if it turned out to be a simple misunderstanding, then oops, so well, now we know not to trust even "Jedi" in the future.
People are really bad at measuring the cost of NOT acting. Like yeah, vaccines can cause all kinds of things up to and including death... but then again, so too can a deadly disease?!
Anyway, the job of science is to figure stuff out and communicate what was found - not even - necessarily, at least usually - including translation to the general public, which is more of a reporting task. Politics doesn't even begin to enter into that. So I think it's awesome that this science post is pointing out some facts that may be relevant as people discuss the political ramifications and next steps. Ofc communication is a 2-way endeavor and if politicians don't understand what the scientist is saying, they can ask questions, but so far the OOP scientist here seems to have done her part, and quite well it looks to me (who admittedly knows next to nothing whatsoever about climate science, but at least this seems to have succeeded at the communicate clearly portion:-).
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True, but also don't allow perfection to be the enemy of good.
I think this logic fundamentally misses the point. This isn't me not starting a project because I don't think I could do it perfectly so why bother. It's someone else showing me their outline for the project and telling me that I don't need to do anything, they'll get it done on time. Then it doesn't get done because they never intended to do anything, they just didn't want anyone else completing anything.
If we were just doing small things because that's all we could feasibly do for now and we're working our way up to big things, that'd be fine. It might not be enough, but it'd be what we're working with. But the small actions being taken by capitalist governments aren't designed to chip away at the problem slowly. Their purpose is to give the appearance that the current system is capable of solving the problem and someone is working on it, so we don't need to think about more radical solutions. The goal is to block progress, not merely to work on it in some slow and responsible way. "Look, the government joined a non-binding agreement saying that we're working on climate change! We should totally keep voting for them because it's better than nothing!"
It's even worse than that though. They're not just doing things for show to dampen political will for greater change. These are the same people that keep giving the military, surveillance, and police state more and more money and power. We are allowing them to build the tools they need to keep us in our place. By continuing along this path we're making it harder and harder for us to eventually do what needs to be done.
The reality is that we're not going to be able to save ourselves while capitalists are in charge. Capitalism fundamentally demands endless growth and a concentration of wealth and power. Efforts to curtail that growth will be stopped and the costs of that growth is distributed to those with less power.
As for the science/science communication part of this: I think it should be pretty clear that that isn't the problem. The science is well known at this point. The problem is that the people who have the power to fix things don't care and are so invested in the status quo that they'd sooner ratchet up violent repression before they'd actually try to solve the problem.
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We couldn't get people to wear a mask or get a shot when a disease was killing millions in the open.
We definitely can't get people to change their behavior over climate change.
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That's because billionaires like Robert Murdock own all our media and they use their power to push disinformation to undermine class solidarity and democracy.
If we want to save the world then we have to get rid of the billionaires asap as they are the greatest threat to democracy.
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Then maybe don't leave it up to them. This OOP refers to a goal, not a process.
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I feel like in a way, it is too late. The human race decided it doesn't care to fight climate change. There is going to be significant disruptions, especially near the equator. But on the other hand, even if we overshoot our climate targets, there is always a chance for us to reverse the damage dealt using technology and by reclamation of ecosystems that have been destroyed. I think as long as our species survives we can fix things. But we need a massive, massive change in attitude to muster the political will to do something.
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A few billionaires and rich old assholes decided not to fight climate change. They have a disproportional amount of time behind the mic.
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Yeah, it kinda seems like humanity wants to ride that tiger
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Kind of feels like in 20-30 years time we'll be claiming its worth fighting for a climate that doesn't immediately kill us if we go outside for 20 minutes instead of 15.
Or to put it another way, do these scientists not see there's a difference between living and surviving?
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You're right, better just give up now.
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Ok
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God forbid someone tries to think past the next quarter.
If the future can't be livable and people just wants a quiet suicide for the human race I've got good news. There's a very easy solution for avoiding that discomfort that also happens to be the #1 way to reduce your carbon footprint.
But if you want to keep living and not just surviving, suck it up...
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Above a certain threshold there will be no discernible difference in the outcome to our civilisation.
The planet is fine. The people are fucked. G. Carlin was and is right.
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No offense, but this is exactly the kind of active pessimism that this post is trying to combat. The only mindset that creates positive change is active optimism. In other words, hope for better and taking action to try and get there.
Note that this is not to be confused with inactive optimism. "Everything will just work out on its own". That also doesn't work.
Active pessimism is the most damaging mindset, though, because it actively drains others of their will to make things better. Feeling hopeless is real and understandable, I've been feeling it, too. Spreading it around and shutting down those who are trying to do better isn't the way to process it, though.
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No offense, but this is exactly the kind of active pessimism that this post is trying to combat
I agree with you, but I'm not sure the post is really effective for that goal.
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Okay. But every minute we can delay reaching that threshold will be worth it.
To me it's the same as the US democracy right now. Yes it's far too late to see no ill effects and we are already facing the consequences, but every act of resistance to unlawful, immoral and unconstitutional orders slow them down, and with enough co-ordination may slow them down enough before Trump and the oligarchs become truly unstoppable.
For any issue that effects our world's existence, stand boldly and take action. Don't let the fear of the inevitability of it consume you.
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In fact, they are already unstoppable. History showed us many times that when autocrats are in full power, they keep it forever, unless they lose a war or die without having planified their succession. And don't talk me about the Biden example, his presidency did not prevented an unpreceded harm by the GOP.
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“The Earth will just shake us off like a bad case of fleas.”
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It'll at least determine how many species survive. And the threshold to total human extinction is very high, so every ton of co2 is part of a life saved.
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The post is right, but only on the paper, and not really in a world that is progressively taken over by ecocidal autocrats whose program is to kill every bit of efforts in climate fight, so even the smallest progress we made will soon be distant memories and fighting will be increasingly dangerous and difficult and, ultimately, virtually impossible. And the locked-in catastrophes are now sufficient to collapse our already fragilized geopolitical context.
People saying it's "not too late" are systematically downplaying the current political context, wich make their message pretty unconsistent.
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If anything the current political context makes what needs to be done pretty clear. There's a difference between downplaying the problem and realizing that if laying down and dieing isn't an option.
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So... It IS too late?
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Indeed, read the Exxon-Mobil report from the late 1970's and early 80's. They hit the nail on the head in regard to global warming. Somebody posted it on Lemmy.
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Wait a minute... TIL that Lemmy existed in the late 1970's!? 🤪🤡🤥🫠
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As individuals we can try, but the average population is too selfish and isn't going to stop until it's too late
Between the likes of pollution, deforestation, wars, extinction of species to name a few...the only thing that could save this planet is humanity somehow becoming infertile.
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I don't know if it's really selfish more people are a part of a system that is bigger than them that forces them into situations that have a negative impact on CO2 levels
Working a job that has low pay which probably force people to housing that is further from their work place, in America most cities don't have a great public transportation infrastructure nor do they have alternative commuting options like protected bike lanes. This forces people to have to drive more.
The Return to Office bullshit has forced more cars on the road that were not there 4 years ago which is impacting CO2 levels
These are just 2 of many different things that the system has created that have put people in situations that make slowing CO2 levels more difficult.
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Would that even matter? As in e.g. the timing and speed - like those still alive would keep going for quite awhile, perhaps all the more so given increasing technology, especially if the effects of aging were to be if not eliminated entirely then pushed back even a little bit more, or cancer, etc.
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The average population isn't too selfish, the 1% is.
They wouldn't have made it to the richest 1% if they weren't so selfish, and now they have great power over us all, especially regarding the climate.
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I think it's both
When I worked in an office, the amount of people who would demand that the heating was cranked up as they were sat there in a cotton t-shirt instead of layering up.
The amount of people I know who have every light turned on in their house, the heating on all day throughout the winter, don't bother with basically insulation, don't turn things off at night, drive to places that are easily in walking distance etc.
I could keep going on forever with a list of small and basic changes such as products purchased, recycling, waste etc but I'd be here forever.
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Reminder that there's no "it's too late, its over" for climate change
That can be totally misread.
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"oh good then we don't have to do anything right now"
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Where news
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I'm not sure this tweet counts as news?
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A fair concern. It's no peer reviewed research article that's for sure, but it was somewhat news to me and may be to others who likewise did not know and/or needed to hear it.
"News" here meaning from an authoritative source (though I did not confirm that this person even so much as exists, much less is actually a climate scientist) and bringing information that is not trivially already known to the audience.
A lot of the "news" focuses on the tipping point (to be able to reverse the effects of climate change), thus leaving a gap between that vs. what we are now desiring more to know: just how fucked are we all?
But if it needs to be removed, that's okay with me - I don't want to mess up the community's implementation of the rules.
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Umm, as I understand it, that's not the way the tipping point works
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You're confusing completely averting things, with mitigating how bad they are.
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Well, at this point, we're fucked. The only difference now is how fucked we are.
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It's the difference between "really bad" and "even worse".
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Ok, got it. No burning at the stake. We'll use guillotines.👍
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I was going to present a partial rebuttal invoking politics but then I saw that this is !upliftingnews@lemmy.world.
Another positive is that we humans are highly adaptive. We’re already making a lot of changes towards renewables and improving the efficiency and reliability of our electric grids and other large infrastructure. Climate change definitely brings a ton of challenges with it (and some of the changes have already taken place) but I think it also gives us new opportunities such as longer growing seasons up North.
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I don't think healthy skepticism is forbidden here, so feel free to write your rebuttal.
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She is right, but the thing thats missing is that this isnt co2 you will keep in a container in your garage. So if I dont use a petrol car, this doesnt remove the petrol. It just means someone else will burn it.
Unless there is supply-side constraints or CO2 capture this has 0 effect
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Some humans are more adaptive than others. The ones that have been sitting around with their heads in the sand aren't going to survive.
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Whether or not people survive is going to depend a lot on luck, unfortunately. People in low-lying third world countries are gonna be in the tightest spot.
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Hmm
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Remember that it can always be worse. Even if it's irreversible in our lifetimes, it can always be hotter and more extreme.
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Billion, with a "B".
And no. We could also discover how to travel into alternate realities instead, or perhaps wake up from The Matrix? :-P
There are also a variety to ways to live differently, like a biodome even if partial. Many solutions working together rather than one singular one "saving" the day.
And this is Uplifting News - which is what it's all about!:-)
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Humanity has to continue unshitting its pants.
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STOP TELLING MY POOR ASS THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS ON ME
every bit of conservation i do in my life is undone by a billionaire in a weekend. I am done being blamed for it and having the responsibility thrown at my feet. At this point the best way any one of us can do something meaningful is if we all pull a Luigi. But these memes and articles that put ask the climate change responsibility on the lower classes are nothing more than billionaire propaganda
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This Tweet isn't blaming you.
To me, this argument sounds like someone trying to justify their own littering because corporations don't dispose of their waste properly.
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This is a well established climate-change-laggard argument. It's the whataboutism logical fallacy.
Why should I take action, at great personal cost, when someone else is not taking action and will in fact benefit from my burden?
The Australian (and other) governments hide behind this same excuse. "Australia is just a small country, why should we take action when our CO2 production is just a small portion of that of other countries like China?".
I mean it's a good point, billionaires are worthy of great criticism, and Australia should be putting pressure on other countries, but at the same time we as individuals really do need to be taking action.
I do agree that polluting corporations use this narrative and I also find it infuriating. It's particularly palpable with plastic producers, as in plastic pollution is not their fault, but the fault of consumers failing to recycle. It's not the fault of consumers, it's the fault of regulators, who are elected by voters who are also consumers.
In summary, the whole thing is fucked and everyone sucks, but you still have to tidy up your own shit.
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GO TELL BILLIONAIRES ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE! I do not want to hear it anymore, it’s not my fault, it’s not my responsibility and I can do absolutely nothing to fix it. Stop telling poor people about climate change, that’s like yelling into a hole. Go after the ones doing it, and if you think telling you that billionaires and corporations are responsible for climate change is whataboutism, you’re brainwashed by the rich
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We are all drops of water that make up an ocean. Billionaires are important too but it's also the fault of lazy people who put old TVs on the sidewalk instead of ewasting them. Everyone's actions add up.
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You are downplaying scale. Drops of water can fall on a plant for years. Pour a one ton bucket on it and it's dead in 20 seconds. We are not all "drops" of water. I try to be environmentally conscious in my actions not because I believe it makes a real difference, but only to keep myself from being a hypocrite. The only thing different between a hypocrite and a billionaire is a pile of money.
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the two greatest things you can do for climate change: Live vegan, and not have children.
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Actual greatest thing you could do for climate change: destroy the US military industrial complex. Not only is it a massive polluter, it also enables the capitalists to maintain their ability to extract fossil fuels and other resources around the world.
Quit it with the anti-human shit. If we’re not saving the environment for us what’s the point?
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We're on course for our oceans to acidify and air to be unbreathable in many places before the end of the century.
It doesn't get a lot worse than that
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That's why we do what we can to reduce it just like the post said! Wow!!!
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I mean its a nice opinion but I woul disagree with the first part. The second I would agree with but more in the same way that if you are an army facing a far superior army that will not accept surrender but kill every one of you horribly you will want to fight to your last breath.
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I feel qualified neither to agree nor disagree, since I am not a climate scientist.
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