World NewsThat's a stupid headline.
Every fraction of a degree matters. Binary thinking like that is fucking dumb. I haven't read the report yet, but I guarantee it doesn't back that head line.
The point of no return refers to the 1.5C threshold that the Paris climate conference agreed that exceeding would have catastrophic consequences. We are now guaranteed to reach that threshold.
It’s not a stupid headline. Yes, every tenth of a degree matters, but the headline is correct, we will now have unavoidably catastrophic consequences.
"We tried nothing and nothing worked, so i guess theres nothing to do now but wait."
I mean, I guess that's a message that's really beneficial if you're owned by someone who owns a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure...
CO2 emissions are still going up every year. I haven't seen any significant effort to stop global warming. When I look around me, I'm not surprised.
People just don't care enough.
They're not immediately affected.
The whole thing about global warming that almost never gets said;
Whole parts of the world that are inhabited now will become uninhabitable.
Or in other words: we're heading towards a giant economic crisis never seen before.
We'll see starvation and overpopulation and disease and of course=> more war!
The part you missed is that increased CO2 levels also increase aggression, and you can already see it in densely populated areas. I get to see people run red lights and even running red lights making left turns... in front of PD while they pulled someone over. Or taking a hard right in front of someone running parallel from the left lane (think two lane road). I haven't see that before.
Greed and self serving is our religion and law. We can only act atomized to advance or hinder our own accumulation of wealth and power.
So globally we're not an intelligent, rational species. Anthropogenic or not, it never even mattered.
I disagree on one thing: It's not that people don't care. It's that they care too much. They care in precisely packaged and calibrated dosages as is fed to them, for what the powerful want them to care about. This or that. Taiwanese independence? Not yet.
So do not blame the people. It's just that we simply... lost the fight. They had way more money and thus power, utilizing the newest and best psychological manipulation technology to divert, manipulate, control. The big lie is that we are a sentient, rational people and that a good idea or speech could convince people to do the rational thing. But if you have money, swaying hearts and minds is just something you can buy and trade like everything else.
They’re also in denial and believing a lot of industry propaganda — because the alternative is to admit they were wrong and are partly to blame. It’s much easier to say “climate change isn’t real” as the coastline rises, and summers get hotter and glaciers melt, and cities and farms run out of fresh water. Just keep electing the deregulators who tell you “Everything is fine! We’re making money! It’s morning in America! Drill baby drill!”
They’re also in denial and believing a lot of industry propaganda
The deniers I know are just in denial in general. Every hot summer I hear them saying "Wow, it's so hot again! What gives?!?!" Like it's the first time.
And they say this as Norfolk, Virginia has to combat flooding when there's a nasty storm during high tide, Tangier Island will have to be evacuated within 25 years, and Rodanthe, North Carolina has had to demolish about 10 houses to keep them from being swept out into the ocean in the last year.
China has done amazingly
So when do we start eating the rich flying private jets to protect the planet?
I remember reading somewhere that what we're experiencing now is a result of our actions from several years ago. (From the time pollution is released to the time it fully affects the weather system takes a few years and up to like a decade.) So even if we could stop everything 100% today, it would take several decades to stop progressing and start reversing the damage we've done.
So we're probably gonna have a bumpy ride the next few decades best case scenario. It also makes it that more important that we do what we can asap to stop it, even if we don't see any returns on our efforts right away.
The main problem at this point isn't us anymore. What we did was a catalyst to set off the rest of the environment, so you're right, stopping right now won't flatline the effects. The feedback loops we've started in the weather system, in the Arctic and Antarctic, the permafrost melting, the acidification of the oceans... they won't stop. The pushed boulder may be an overused metaphor, but it's accurate. How do you stop the rolling?
The words to look for in any serious discussion now are mitigation and adaptation. Anyone talking about net zero or carbon capture or all the other money making terms isn't trying to prepare.
We still must reach net zero, and that will probably involve carbon capture. We'll also have to adapt in many ways, but that's a different topic.
Look up the best we've done in CCS and DAC amounts. They like to brag on the websites how many millions of tons they've done (usually total, not per year). Then look up the annual increase of emissions each year. The units are completely different scales. The best DAC we have is a percent of a percent, and that's taking energy to run. Then there's the cost in energy and resources to sequester the carbon, because if you don't do that, it's for nothing (but $$$).
I've had my years of thinking maybe we can do this or do that and finally realizing physics doesn't get fooled. Can't run this in reverse. I'm over it. We aren't slowing down the demand and the output. We won't.
I was told that it can take a fast, fully loaded (and presumably pretty damn long) freight train about a mile to stop. So, even after the conductor decides to hit the brakes, the train will still be moving for a while.
I like to use this example for visualization of “stop now, but continue paying for a time” situations like this one.
At 50 mph, it takes a fully loaded 150 car freight train over a mile to stop.
To further build on this, the train doesn't stop all at once either. The engine brakes and then every car starts braking from the front to the back of the train. That's why the train has to be organized so the heaviest cars are at the front and lightest are at the back. Otherwise the momentum of the still moving cars at the back will send a shockwave through all the couplings of the cars ahead to the stopped engine and shove them all forward.
The problem here, beyond the fact that there is a 0% chance of doing what we can asap as opposed to the 100% chance of increasing emmissions, is the feedback loops involved. The largest being perhaps the permafrost melting, which holds 2x the co2 as is in the atmosphere just in siberia, and huge methane sinks, frozen swamps, that will flood the zone.
From climate change to geopolitics to late stage capitalism and everything in between... We are so fucked.
It was beyond recovery in truth in 2000 if not before. Not the least considering the social situation that left a 0% chance we would do what was needed to stop it.
Yeah, but nobody could have predicted that
