You must log in or register to comment.
The scary thing is, this graph is probably far too conservative.
Evidence is now emerging that indicates that warming has accelerated dramatically in the last 2-3 years. As in, we may see more warming in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 50, with +3℃ happening just after 2035, and +4℃ happening by some time around 2040 to 2050.
You know what happens around +4℃? The extinction of all megafauna - animals larger than 45kg. Like humans. The entire ⅓ of the planet between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn will experience lethally high wet bulb temperatures across all regions for at least several weeks out of every year, rendering it permanently uninhabitable for the 4+ Billion people that currently live there. India is currently flirting with that reality.
And with that heating inertia, 2100 may see +8℃ temps, which essentially means ice-free poles year round (once things calm down), with palm trees and alligators at the North Pole. Of course, by that time chaotic weather and resource exhaustion will have killed off all remaining humans.
And the lovely thing about “moving parts” is that they all have this little thing called inertia… the faster they move, the further they go. And +8℃ is very close to the +12-15℃ that a Venus Scenario would be triggered by.
Past warming events have been “similar” in that they have gotten just as warm, but they took hundreds of thousands of years to get to the same place, allowing entire continent-wide ecosystems to quite literally migrate across thousands of kilometers to adapt. Our changes are happening in less than 0.01% of that time scale, giving ecosystems no time at all in which to react. So our biosphere will get slaughtered along with us, and will be unable to compensate in time.
And with the biosphere becoming overwhelmed by rapid changes, there goes the “friction” that could do something about that “inertia”.
And the worst part is, we still haven’t moved off of the worst-case-possible “business as usual” path. We are swan-diving into the worst possible future. Thanks to billionaires addicted to fat profit margins and who control all of the processes, we are utterly failing to generate the change needed to save ourselves, with CO2e production - purely human sources, excluding the feedback loops in nature!! - CONTINUING TO ACCELERATE.
Fun times. I just might live long enough to see humanity go extinct.
Can you back up these claims? Not doubting, just curious/terrified to learn more.
Here, feel free to simultaneously urinate and defecate into your pants:
All of this is evidence-based. All of this relies on facts.
Yeah, we’re f**king hosed as a species. Our legacy at this point should be in preventing a Venus Scenario, so at least life can continue to go on in some fashion
Fucking sucks. Thanks.
Not that renaming problems ever helps, but this is why I’m trying to push “anthropogenic runaway global heating” as a replacement for the weak formulation of “global warming” and the even weaker “climate change”. It has the handy acronym of ARGH.
It has the handy acronym of ARGH.
Okay, that is hilarious.
I’m just going to call it “the climate shitshow” at this point, with how cooked we seem to be.
Love it.
I just finished reading The Deluge by Stephen Markley and I’m at the acceptance phase of greif.
Tardigrades will probably survive, and at least plastic pollution will be halted.
The planet is fine it’s the people who are fucked
We don’t exactly know where the tipping point towards a Venus Scenario is. We just know it’s somewhere past +12℃, and before +16℃.
And the problem isn’t so much that we will reach that temp - we will go extinct long before that point - but rather the warming process - with all of the feedback loops that it kicks off - will push the planet into a Venus Scenario.
So no. The planet is not fine. The “friction” of prior warming events that would slow its “inertia” - the slowly-migrating, slowly-adapting biospheres that continue to draw down CO2e - won’t have that capability this time around. It’s just all happening far too fast for them to migrate or adapt.
We have literally “cut the brakes” with the speed and inertia of the current warming we have created. And one very real consequence may be a dead planet with a superheated atmosphere.
Maybe we kick off a nuclear winter before we go out
Honestly, if we’re talking about mostly or completely surface blasts, and not atmospheric detonations, that might be what saves the planet.
Nuclear winter is very much a thing by how the thrown-up dust reflects most incoming light, and with most detonations being in cities, the kicked-up dust would contain plenty of iron… which is the major limiting factor of phytoplankton, the largest single converter of CO2 to O2. All it has to do is fall out of the atmosphere and into the oceans during the spring to summer. So we need a late winter or early spring nuclear war.
So I suppose I just have 15 more years to live huh?
Yes there are some upsides
I would say 10 of relative comfort, another 5-10 of increasing disasters (political, social, environmental, etc.) that tear apart civilization, and a final 5-10 of complete collapse where only small isolated communities still exist, and every day is a real struggle for survival against exceptionally hostile conditions.
Honestly, most scientific projections of resource exhaustion and environmental degradation point to 2050 as the point beyond which “civilization” really ceases to exist.
And honestly, I would be shocked if humanity still existed as any kind of a high-tech going concern much past that.
Yet “you have to have a car to work” like ok no for one fuck you for two we have several modes of transport AND energy sources now you actually do choose actively to diarrhea out carbon on purpose and I fucking see you
Depends a lot on where you are from. Not everyone has the means to uproot and move to a walkable city or a city with public transport.
Our governments have fundamentally failed us
Astroturfing and lobbying and bribery has. It’s actually easy to not participate in burning or planet though.
deleted by creator
People of every generation were told it doesn’t matter and that it won’t be a problem. With the advent of social media and associated algorithms, the village idiots are loud, organised and getting others to bark at the moon with them.
And people think I’m crazy for starting an algae farm… There is no quick fix. “Science will figure something out”
I am part of that science, and I can barely afford to scale beyond what I consider my carbon footprint.
narcimalgae on YouTube, although the algorithm killed it (500 to 6 views on my last video)so I may move to peertube soon.
Can you give a quick elevator pitch for algae farms?
Water holds 8 times the gasous CO2 as the atmosphere it is exposed to at a given pressure(altitude). The algae, being carbon-based, pulls the carbon from the water to grow, and releases the oxygen as a biproduct. The algae biomass can then be condensed and stored, or used as a raw agriculture material. Water, sunlight, and a small amount of fertilizer all fed by an air pump.
Share a link here
You dont understand. The poor billionairs need their money nowwww!
Younger generations are ignoring it as well. They’re busy blaming past generations, while they themselves are some of the biggest contributors to our current climate crisis.
So bezos and his guests flying dozens of individual private jets to Venice are the “younger generations”? It doesn’t have a lot to do with age but seems to correlate with wealth. The wealthier you are (as a nation and an individual) the more you typically (on average) contribute to climate change.
So bezos and his guests flying dozens of individual private jets to Venice are the “younger generations”?
As wasteful as that may seem, it’s doesn’t make much of a difference in the bigger picture. What does make a big impact is using all the services Bezos is providing. And not just his. Every cloud service uses an insane amount of energy. Youtube, TikTok, streaming services, online games, iCloud, Dropbox, video calls, crypto valuta, A.I. They can’t build data centers fast enough to supply the demand.
They are not ignoring it, you silly Billy. They are treating it like everyone else is.
They are the some of the biggest consumers of electronics and technology. What do you think powers that. Fairy dust?
Two things.
-
Your original statement was that they were ignoring it, not that they were contributing to it. They are definitely not ignoring it. They have less ability to ignore it that any previous generation.
-
Their consumption of electronics is the result of how they were brought up. Not that they have some kind of suicidal death wish. If you were in their generation you would be doing the same thing. As would I.
And if they where in an older generation, they would have done the same thing as that generation. That’s exactly my point. Every generation follows the trends and do what they have to to get by. What gets my piss boiling is their whining that the climate crisis is the fault of older generations, while they themselves aren’t any better.
That’s a valid point.
-
AI is going to fix this by increasing the scale of the Y axis.
Just hallucinate better data
Love this one. It’s one of the best illustrations of the “hockey stick effect” and a perfect way to explain why the excuse that “were just coming out of an ice age” is dead wrong.
At what point on this graph is ecoterrorism justified?
It isn’t too late now. Apparently AI is a good target - eating a world’s supply of electricity to further enrich the billionaires while continuing to muddy the science of climate change. Wish people were as upset about that as they are about their porn being restricted.
You’re selling AI short. It also guzzles water at a rate that could make a golf course blush.
Like 1995
Any point other than blue
Right now it is
Remember the weather underground? About then
but but but somebody was late for work!!! /s
Yes
I don’t think this is gonna be a very popular response but here’s my 2 cents after reading a lot of comments.
We are all products of out time. I’m not gonna blame ordinary people for believing what they were told when it was the general consensus at the time.
That doesn’t excuse that behavior today. Today we know better.
But when my parents grew up, burning your garbage in the fire pit was considered recycling. It was the norm.
Today my parents and grandparents don’t burn plastic in a fire pit. Because today we know better. But I don’t think they ignored it 40 years ago. They just didn’t know better.
Good thing we educate people on how to do what we can. Unfortunately, what individuals do doesn’t matter much.
In school I did a project on climate change and in that research, I found that 1 single coal PowerPlant in Germany, released more co2, sulfur, monoxide and what not, in 1 month. Than every single registered vehicle in Sweden combined, does in a whole year.
So being a good citizen and taking my bike to the store and work instead of car (even during winter). Feels like a fart in the wind knowing that. Not to mention cargo-ships and what they use on international waters.
We did manage to change some things for the better - acid rain, ozone depletion, lead in everything. However with conflicting information and some corporations doing everything they can to muddy the consensus, it is hard to do the right thing. It is especially difficult if for years you think you’ve been doing the right thing and find out it was all fake - recycling.
And yet, I still recycle because what the hell else can I do? Just give up and send to landfill? Or hope in the dark that it’s going to recycling.
We already reuse and reduce, I have some clothing from over 20 years ago.
I understand your feeling regarding our small action being useless, I feel the same.
What I try to tell myself to keep doing it is: If most of everyone would do it, that fart in the wind would be loud enough to make politician realise they have to take it into account and pass legislation aligned with that.
Deep down though, I know we’ll never be enough to do it for it to have an impact
If we all fart in the wind, maybe it’d be enough to actually smell it.
Wait, that can’t be right.
Negative farts
Yeah. It just feel really pissy, that we’re guilted into not taking the car to work. While coal plants are just spewing out all day.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do what we can. That’s what the individual can do. I’m just really pissed on all the shit talk from politicians.
There’s 256 coal power plants in Europe. Until politicians have made sure they’ve all closed down, THEN they can start talking about raising tax on fuel for ordinary people, on an environmental basis.
Until such time. They have not done enough themselves. It feels like I’m scooping out water from a boat, and instead of fixing the leak, I’m told I’m not scooping out enough water.
Exactly this. I tried to recycle paper in the 90s in my country and could not for the life of me find out where to go. I had come home from living in a country that did have recycling bins on every corner but even driving around, I could find zero paper recycling.
Even when aware and trying our best, we are quite powerless in general.
Phew, looks like the industrial revolution just saved us from falling below the safe climate zone! /s
This is my boomer dad whenever he complains about it being extremely hot in the summer, cold in the winter, too much rain, etc. Always responds well it won’t last too long and that’s just nature, nothing we can do about it because it has a mind of its own.
I was just thinking about the poor air quality today and yesterday here in the Midwest, and then I see this. I want to be hopeful we can change this in my lifetime, but I am also not optimistic.
Depends how old you are. I’m 47. It’s gonna far worse. The question is will my kids be the ones to say it’s bad enough? I don’t know. Maybe theirs.
Also it’s hilariously optimistic that this chart only thinks a 4 degree rise by 2100. Seems very conservative.
Personally speaking I’m investigating moving my family further north here in Canada to get ahead of the madness to come.
I am optimistic. I will get downvoted to oblivion, but I want to share what I honestly observe:
1. AI demand is driving huge investment in production of carbon-free energy at scale.
Yes, AI is sucking up all the immediate term cheap fossil-fuel energy while it can. But it needs more, so it’s driving carbon-free investment.
Immediate term with Small Modular fission Reactors (SMRs)
… and immediate term, multiple commercial fusion energy plants are being built.
2. Commercially viable carbon-free energy at scale is coming online in < 10 years
SMR is real, exists today, and just needs economies of scale … and stable regulation. AI datacenters are driving the orders now and even if MAGA cultists keep USA out a few more years, science-accepting countries will be investing in clusters of those, rather than coal plants, when they see working examples and so less risk.
The Fusion plants this decade will not be just prototypes, but plants that produce more energy as a whole than they take in, multiple times over, and ofc don’t produce nuclear waste. This is largely made possible by high temperature superconductors (which didn’t exist commercially when ITER was built) and a demo plant fully online in 2027
EDIT: ofc we should reduce excess CO2 emissions immediate term, don’t misconstrue long term optimism for polyannish denial of imemdiate term emergency
Yes, AI is sucking up all the immediate term cheap fossil-fuel energy while it can. But it needs more, so it’s driving carbon-free investment.
Nah, this is the same nonsense lie cryptobros tried to peddle. Any energy used by AI is energy which could have been used for something more worthwhile, carbon-free or not. And most of it is far from carbon-free.
AI as it now stands gives me quite the opposite of hope. It’s only intended to enslave the working class and further transfer wealth to the top 0.01%, as is fusion.
Solarpunk gives me hope.
Well, maybe you aren’t aware of how it’s being used to design proteins to create therapies for pretty much… everything, from cancer to Crohn’s. Another 2-3 years before you see products in human trials.
Or how it’s revolutionized climate science and weather forecasting.
If all you see is the hype Grok images and SEO slop, it’s reasonable to reject the technology. But that would be deeply misguided.
I’m aware of the promises of AI, yes. LLMs are trash. Folding proteins is awesome. Nonetheless, it’s all controlled by the ultrawealthy, and that is THE problem today, which AI ain’t solving for us.
AI demand is driving huge investment in production of carbon-free energy at scale
I feel like AI companies are creating a large demand for energy no matter where it comes from, and feel like having some minor investments in potential carbon free energy is mainly a marketing ploy or something to point at if they ever get sued.
Immediate term with Small Modular fission Reactors (SMRs)
Tbh, the big problem with nuclear in america is that we don’t really have the federal power needed to actually coordinate and mandate the needed infrastructure for it. The US is so obsessed with state rights that we’re susceptible to nimby attacks and disputes at the local and State level governments.
To actually cut through the red tape, we’d have to empower federal agencies for a good reason for once, and I’m not very optimistic about our current political climate.
and immediate term, multiple commercial fusion energy plants are being built.
Yeah… I think it would be more accurate to say that fusion experimental sites are being built. Most nuclear engineers I’ve heard talk about fusion are still skeptical about fusion being viable in the next 20 years.
No you don’t understand.
Jesus.
That’s all, any questions will be met with a holy sword to the clavicle. Jesus!
My parents believe we’re in the end times and god will return any day now. They were mentally ill from the get go. They are pure evil and don’t see the evil they are.
Go figure they’re also extremely obese and mostly immobile. They are sloths and glutens. They never took care of themselves and believe bullshit snake oil salesmen over their own children’s advice.
You can’t reason with the evil that is these fundamental cultists.
We might very well be in the end times and maybe AI will wipe us from the planet to prevent earth from becoming Venus.
And what were they supposed to do other than go out and vote in their own best interest?
In retrospect they’ll probably feel violence was justified. How many time machine scenarios will amount to ecoterrorism in the same way that we imagine we’d kill Hitler today
Considering they failed at that too not much.
