(not my OC nor my OP, just helping spread the message around:-)
its to late, its over, to prevent catastrophe.
its not to late to ensure we have a minimal catastrophe instead of a maximal catastrophe.
NOT Uplifting
I strongly believe that there’s a regression of global society that will prevent humanity from surviving the next k/t level impact. I weakly believe that the climate catastrophe that we are headed toward currently will cause such a regression. I weakly believe that if we don’t take global action in the next 4-5 years, we will be unable to avoid a catastrophe of that scale.
I don’t think the current global leadership can be convinced through lobbying. Non-violent opportunities to replace the global leadership are dwindling. When/if only violent means remain, I will simply enjoy what wealth I have until I am extinguished by the Glorious Revolution as the Bourgeoisie scum I will have become.
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.
Yes, thats exactly the kind of useless, defeatest post and sentiment that the Op was talking about.
At some point, defeatism is just realism, no matter the amout of hopium people try to sell to you.
Then do us all a favour and remove yourself, if you’re going to go full nihilist and hopelessness. If all you are willing to do is be inactive and continue to consume then we’d rather not have you around doing nothing but contributing to the problem.
OR
Join the rest of us and DO SOMETHING! Fight for something you want, do you remember that feeling? Have you ever known it or have you always been this pathetic? And if you truly believe that there is no hope then why not end it all by taking out some of these polluting fuckers with you?! Don’t get depressed, get radicalised!!!
That’s the ticket! It’s always great when a random
idiotstranger on the internet agrees with you… (no, really:-P).
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.
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
Don’t blow up the pipeline, that’ll pollute the environment! Go for the pumping infrastructure, if you can knock out a pump you can decrease or even completely stop the flow of oil.
id guess pumps are more expensive to fix too. but also probably better guarded.
eh, I don’t think that’s gonna make much of a difference:
most of the cost is probably lost revenue from the stopped flow, not the pump itself!
that said you’re almost at the ideal target already!
it’s best to sabotage the nexus point nearest the pipeline source: that way you knock out the largest part of the network resulting in the most damage by disabling most of the network!
tl;dr: knock out infrastructure as close to the source as possible, that isn’t actually the source!
(because sabotaging the source is a really, really bad idea, see: every oil spill ever)
(and for fucks sake, don’t do any of this in winter…people might freeze, if there’s no time to come up with alternative energy sources…which is why late spring is the best time to blow up a pipeline! :D )
“guarded” is usually a fence and some cameras, maybe a locked door. Honestly an easier target than any buried pipeline. Kind of surprising we don’t see more ELF action on this front, except for the whole ‘get sent to jail forever to make an example of you’ thing.
That’s what this post is saying. Do YOUR part. That’s all you can do.
That’s all you can do.
It’s not “all” you can do, though. At what point does “eco-terrorism” turn into “justified self-defense?”
If eco-terrorism is what YOU can do, then that’s what you can do. I can’t do that, so I’ll do my part as best as I can. I can’t save the world alone, so I’ll just do my best.
If everyone, including corporations, did their best, we’d be in a better place.
Tuesday.
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.
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 :(
Well, global meat consumption per Capita is going down YOY so something is working.
Methane gas is basically our greatest enemy at this point
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:-).
I mean from the cow farts but yeah. If we can do that one at the same time as carbon much better
The nice thing is that if we could work on either, then we could work on both at the same time. Caveat: we cannot work on either, for the most part, bc people are selfish and short-sighted:-(.
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.
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.
Is climate change an extinction level threat? I’ve never heard that.
I read somewhere before that the release of methane from the melting ice caps (?) could create a knock on effect of global warming turning the Earth into another Venus
How much of that is actually true I never looked further into.
The planet has previously been 15C above current levels due to flood volcanism so earth turning into a Venus just straight up isn’t happening. It is potentially mechanically possible but we’re talking conditions so extreme that we couldn’t make it happen even if we wanted too with our current level of technology.
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.
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.
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.
A few billionaires and rich old assholes decided not to fight climate change. They have a disproportional amount of time behind the mic.
Yeah, it kinda seems like humanity wants to ride that tiger
It’s just a question of how bad we’ll have it at this point.
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.
I don’t believe in the possibility of mass civil disobediance, especially in a context where most of people are either depolitized, either are voting massively for (wannabe) autocrats.
I’m not holding my breath either.
Maybe the way various entities have encouraged the US to embrace its worse impulses might offer a clue as to how global climate activists might be able to try and deal with the seemingly invincible fossil fuel empire.
To elaborate: the second election of Trump, and his and Musk’s actions only a month in have already severely harmed if not destroyed the trust the US needs for the world to continue to use the dollar as global reserve currency.
I don’t think Musk or Trump have the capacity for strategic thinking, or enough of an understanding of geopolitics or economics to understand what harm they have and are causing the US’s prospects over the mid to long term.
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.
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?
You’re right, better just give up now.
Ok
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…
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.
I didn’t get that at all from the OP, what I saw was “every bit matters so keep fighting.”
Yes, until the political situation make it unfeasible without being treated like a dangerous terrorist. The OP didn’t said it either, but she should have.
OP says “I am a climate scientist and thus is correct⬇️”, thus leading me to believe that it was the climate science under discussion, not politics.
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.
So… It IS too late?
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.
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
USAmericans have a religious attachment to fossil fuels that I can’t understand. “Drill baby drill” isn’t even economically viable and yet has become a call to prayer for many US politicians.
It’s rich people who want to keep being rich without risking going into a different thing.
Please stop attributing it to everyone, it’s really annoying
Who is voting for them and why do they win elections if there isn’t a substantial of people who support the idea? “Drill baby drill” isn’t a secret, it is what Republicans have been running on for over a decade.
Just slightly more people (who bother to vote) than who don’t. Doesn’t make it 100%, it’s not rocket science.
Many USAmericans are pessimistic because we were finally taking a medium sized step in the right direction, and somehow half the country thinks that’s a bad thing
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.
Human history consists of us solving problems which then create more, bigger problems.
Agriculture was a trap.
Some might say also… The Internet?
Mind elaborating on the other threats?
Soil depletion, (micro)plastics in the water, biodiversity collapse, political instability, economical crisis, nuclear menace that is not a thing of the past anymore, sanitary crisis that will likely be worse than COVID, to name a few.
Soil depletion is solved by climate change by freeing up frozen arable land of countries that are basically under a blanket of ice for the whole year
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.
The Middle East would rather sell their product to other people than use it themselves.
“Never get high on your own supply”
OPEC members have excess capacity. Saudi Arabia for example can produce an additional 3 million barrels per day without having to do anything or spend anything. So no, your assessment is wrong.
Umm, as I understand it, that’s not the way the tipping point works
You’re confusing completely averting things, with mitigating how bad they are.
Well, at this point, we’re fucked. The only difference now is how fucked we are.
It’s the difference between “really bad” and “even worse”.
the two greatest things you can do for climate change: Live vegan, and not have children.
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?
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.
sabine also posted absolute horseshit about trans people so I don’t trust anything she says about science anymore
She posted a nuanced video about hormones and surgery on trans-identified minors, that considered both sides of the issue. If you find that “absolute horseshit” then you are not interested in science but in religion.
get out of here. there’s no both sides to the issue and she used faulty evidence to push bullshit that’s been debunked over and over.
I heard she made another dumbass video about autism but couldn’t stomach to go through it.
she’s full of shit.
So religion then
if you don’t understand what words mean, then yeah sure
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
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…!? 🤡
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.
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.
Then maybe don’t leave it up to them. This OOP refers to a goal, not a process.
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
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
Don’t disagree that civilization is a parasite, but a lot of parasites evolve to not kill their host 🙂
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
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)
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
Hmm something tells me this might cause unforeseen consequences for aquatic life… But we won’t know until we try!
Well you wouldn’t explode it just anywhere, there are tons of deserted seabed places about.
The best is that the explosion would be mitigated greatly by the teratons of basalt and water over the explosion
Well, the alternative is very foreseeable consequences for aquatic life. I’m sure they’d be on board
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? 👨🔬☢️💥
Don’t worry bro we’ve got people working on it as we speak