Data released from Copernicus, a branch of the European Union Space Programme, shows August was 1.59C warmer than 1850–1900 levels, following a 1.6C increase in July.
A decade ago, It was predicted that we would hit 1.5°C between 2050-2060, and even as recently as 2 years ago the prediction had moved forward to between 2030-2040.
The next decade or two are going to be very... interesting
The IPCC calculations were always criticized for being overly optimistic. Anyone following this debate knew that we would hit 1.5 C sooner rather than later.
We are definitely going to hit 3 degrees in our lifetime, once the melting tundras release their methane store.
Melting tundra releases methane, accelerating the increase in temperature. Rising temperature reduces polar ice, making oceans absorb more heat, accelerating heating. Climate pattern changes cause more frequent and larger wildfires, accelerating heating.
There are probably processes that work to reduce heating as it increases that I'm not aware of, but there are a lot of positive feedback processes which is concerning.
I believe the IPCC 1.5C was criticized because it included effects of a carbon sequestering process that hasn't been invented yet. That's pretty optimistic.
It's 16 minutes so as a TL;DW: Not "extinction event" but extremely bad. Areas of the globe will simply become unlivable - and these areas tend to be highly populated. The resulting mass migrations and shortages of water/food will lead to conflict, often between nuclear powers. End result: humanity will keep on living, but it will be a significantly more deadly environment and a significantly more conflict-prone political environment. Economic collapse will hit major metropolitan centers.
If watching the video bums you out try to focus on the absolutely bonkers cool sideburns the climate scientist has. Cheered me up a little. Like a handsome person telling you that you have a bad disease.
Anyway, vote for climate-positive outcomes wherever possible and consider joining a climate lobbyist group. I'm a member of this one but I'm sure there are others.
Data released last week from Copernicus, a branch of the European Union Space Programme, shows August was 1.59C warmer than 1850–1900 levels, following a 1.6C increase in July.
Yes but only for a couple of months, averaged over the whole year it's significantly lower than that. Probably still on track to hit the annual average of 1.5 sometime in the next 10-20 years. Still definitely a dire situation but not entirely out of left field based on the recent estimates.
The recent records have now lifted the year-to-date global temperature to the end of August to 1.35C above pre-industrial levels, just 0.01C behind 2016 — the current record holder
Yeah, it’s honestly horrifying to see the lack of reaction around the world. If you live anywhere near the coast, you better get the fuck out or tell your kids to.
Supposedly the new stringent heavy shipping emissions controls are having an impact on the greenhouse effect. Reduction of sulfur dioxide which had a reverse greenhouse effect is warming the oceans up more.
"Carbon Brief analysis shows that the likely side-effect of the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050. This is equivalent to approximately two additional years of emissions."
It proves that creating cloud cover will impact ocean temperature. There are methods of doing this without creating acid rain. Just spray ocean water as a fine mist into the air and you should get some nice fluffy clouds. We have the capability to cover entire oceans in cloud cover to mitigate global warming.
Obviously this would have some unpredictable impacts on weather patterns, but we're already dealing with that no matter what we do. We're at a point where we're desperate enough to try some crazy schemes like this.
I have kids. I am fucking livid that the assholes who pretend climate change isn't happening have decided to sacrifice their kids and mine on the altar of making a quick buck.
You can't eat money, assholes. And you can't bring it with you when you die. If the future is nothing but more and more severe weather to the point that civilization collapses under the strain, then I hope you live long enough to see it and are unable to hide from reality anymore.
They think they do. No amount of money will protect a person from the collapse of a civilization. Never has, never will. Their plans are very much predicated on the assumption that markets will somehow magically continue to function after the general populace has lost all faith in them
Why did you choose to have kids knowing what kind of future they would have? This is the reason I didn't, and also to reduce my footprint in the world. I mean even 20 years ago, it was obvious nothing was going to change. So I don't know why somebody would willingly have children these days.
Don't worry about climate change, the US is hell bent on starting global thermonuclear war very soon. We can go fast and crispy instead of slowly choking.
We had a good run. Good luck to the next species to dominate the earth. May you avoid religious dogma, find an economic system that respects your natural environment, and a political system that respects the right to live a clean and healthy world.
we probably taste like shit.. they sit around the campfire and remember the good old days of fresh, free range Dino blood as far as the proboscis could poke.. not this Walmart meat they get now..
There were a couple of hundred thousand years of humans managing not to fuck up the entire planet, before the two centuries of doing so for the sake of money.
Realistically, extinction would be sweet relief compared to what is actually in store for humans with climate change. More likely that we hang around in smaller communities and death / suffering is even more widespread.
I mean realistically it's all going to hell sooner or later. You'll start with millions of climate refugees, closed borders, violence. Then climate wars (a wall with machine guns isn't going to stop people who have no other way to survive). And if a country with nukes (like India) finds itself uninhabitable then things are really going south. Next up you have a possible nuclear war and the end of humanity as we know it.
Sure, a small amount of humans might survive, but civilization will go down in chaos. Even areas that are inhabitable and have plenty of water will break down, because the local infrastructure can't support hundreds of thousands of refugees forcing their way in.
Nah - it'll just pivot to "Well it's too late now - no reason to hold back".
I genuinely wonder why eco-terrorism isn't already a meaningful "problem" - I don't mean "some protestors blocked a road for a couple of hours or flinged some paint and soup around" - I mean "You're working to kill all known life in the universe, and we're doing whatever it takes to stop you."
There's no one funding it. If some of the billionaires can direct their money to make renewables adopted in the mainstream we can be in a much better place now. But, you know to have that amount of money the switch that also governs your care for the environment gets switched off too.
You joke, but I've seen those kinds of arguments, especially online.
Some time back, someone argued that global warming was a self-solving problem because the oceans reflect light and heat energy back out into space, so as the earth warms and the oceans rise, the ability to reflect that heat will increase and we could even go back into an ice age because of it.
That is, of course, not really how it's going to go. Massive ecological collapse and possible human extinction would occur due to the initial warming, first off, even before you get to the arguments about... Everything else at the crux of that.
For a long time, one of the talking points of climate change denial wasn't that it wasn't happening but that it was normal for us to go through heating and cooling cycles, so just deal with it and wait it out, we survived the last ice age so we can survive this heat wave, right? But again, that's mostly bullshit.
I think snow and ice would be better at reflecting but we seem to get rid of those ice caps..
But when the ice melts, it cools down the ocean so of course, problem solved!
I am so glad that garbage uses homeopathic rather than holistic these days. You want a doctor that takes a holistic approach, they're looking at your whole body not just their specialty. Homeopathic =/= holistic.
Apart from the voting which is above all else, if you REALLY want to do something on an individual basis, you should reduce your meat or become a vegetarian. It seems that's what experts claim has the biggest impact. Apart from that, don't have children, or 2 at most.
Going vegetarian doesn't seem to be the most impactful when you look at the numbers, as per this video. Vegan diets still have the lowest GHG footprint and GWP of all diets.
That being said, I went vegetarian first before going vegan. So your point is entirely valid.
i'm dubious about this. don't get me wrong: i try to make sure at least half my calories come from soylent. i'm saying i have looked at the methodology, and it doesn't seem sound. HAVING READ THE RELEVANT STUDIES it's not clear to me that the researchers are even drawing correct conclusions.
here's an example that i think can be extrapolated across many data points: cotton seed. first, cotton is grown for textiles. like, exclusively. like, the only reason to grow cotton is for textiles. BUT you can increase the profits from your cotton harvest if you sell the seed to cattle operations. so cattle are fed cottonseed. then the water and land-use costs of cotton get rolled into the costs of raising cattle. but that's nonsensical. cottonseed is purely waste product, and giving it to cattle CONSERVES resources.
soybeans are another thing altogether, and the complexity of the whole agricultural system implies, to me at least, that maybe it's not so simple as "reduce your meat intake".
Depends on your definition of peaceful. Industrial sabotage that specifically targets unmanned equipment would still be peaceful by my definition, for example.
This, it's the only thing that really counts, we all need to pull together, the only way to do that, is to vote in politicians that actually give a shit.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure the deficit we could create on an individual basis will just be used by companies instead, so I'm just gonna agree with the others on voting being the most effective method of making a difference.
Some changes people (in the US or elsewhere) might want to check into:
See if your local electric utility has Green Power programs where you can elect to have your power come from renewables (via credits) for 2-5% of your bill/month extra
If you own a home, consider making switches to more electrified stuff like: induction cookstoves v. natural gas, heat pumps v. AC units, power tools that have batteries and/or cables v. gasoline or diesel, adding solar panels to your roof or property (only costs ~$20k these days), etc.
Start moving your pensions or stocks into greener index funds, or even consider adopting banks and credit unions that publicly disclose which projects and companies they invest your dollar in
Consider buying your groceries from local farmer's markets or farms that have mail-to-your-door programs (aka CSAs or Community Supported Agriculture programs); this is a good resource to learn more about the farms near you
Switch to non-red meat diets, and then after that switch to a vegetarian diet, and then after that switch to a vegan diet (all while consulting health professionals); this is a good resource on vegan diets if anyone is curious
Consider choosing a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV; 100% electric) or a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV; 50/50 electric/gas) as your new car; this resource can steer you in the right direction
Vote in primary elections where candidates prioritize climate action, then vote for them again in general elections when the time comes; this is a good resource to stay up on current civic events
Buy clothing/shoes used, or if you need to buy new, look for the GOTS and OEKO-TEX labels to make sure what you're buying is organic, is ethical, and doesn't pollute local environments of where your clothes/shoes are made
Tremendous, very smart people are saying it's the biggest change we've ever seen. Nobody has ever seen the numbers this high before. The best people are saying we have the highest numbers. Isn't that something?
Again, I'm not going to read that. It will just make me sad and angry a d nothing will change.
Politicians don't give a shit, even of they'd understand what is going on, they're mostly too dumb...
Things are going to get a LOT worse and nobody seems to understand that there is no quick fix here. "Yeah but CO2 scrubbers can..." no they cannot. Building those generates tonnes of CO2, then run ing them effectively generates CO2 as well. Think about it. Even if you put them on a solar grid (which too will initially cost CO2, not hugely important but just to keep in mind), the electricity that that grid generates to pull 100 tonnes of CO2 out of the air will NOT be available to other systems which will generate 150 tonnes of CO2 for their electricity.
Untill ALL electricity is solar, wind or nuclear, it literally is just throwing away energy. It's actually more efficient to just connect those solar cells for your CO2 scrubbers to the electrical grid. You won't pull 100 out, but now at least somewhere else won't put in 150 into the system.
And even if they work. Do you have any idea how much CO2 we currently generate, and worse, how much we have generated that is in the atmosphere that we need to pull out for things to get better?
The current state of CO2 scrubbers is close to carrying water out of the ocean with buckets.
You wanna pull the extra CO2 out of the air? We've been adding extra on an industrial scale for near 2 centuries. RHAT amount of CO2 is what we need to pull out to get back to what it should be.
You always have losses with conversions, but taking that the earth has beeb pulling more CO2 you can more or less say that getting all the extra CO2 out of the atmosphere will take at least the same amount of energy that we've been generating with burning fossil fuels for the past 2 centuries. Think about it, were talking spending energy to pull air through a system, spending energy to filter the CO2, spending energy to store it, spending the same amount of energy we got from bur ing fuels to split the c from the O2 (same process in reverse), then spend energy to process and store all that carbon. Mayke Plastics out of it, maybe? Storing co2 is a problem as the amounts are astronomical. Where do youbstire cubic kilometers of CO2 , every year? If it escapes your back to square one.
Yes, that is a shit load of energy that we can't produce all at once. For the next decades we'll have to dedicate 25-50% of our energy output to cleanit the atmosphere, there is no way around that, there are no free lunches here.
Electrical cars are NOT the solution. For a small part, maybe, but mostly not. Electrical cars require roughly the same amiunt of energy as a gas car, that still needs to be generated. We need to use less energy. Wasting tonnes on energy on transporting 2 tonnes just to move a 70kgs person for a few kms is just insane. Use bikes. Walk. Use public transportation.
You wanna solve the climate change crisis?
make sure all central electrical power generation is solar /wind /water /nuclear within 10 years. Until we are at that point, the rest doesn't even matter.
1a) in parallel, start redesigning all our cities to become walkable. This doesn't mean the conspiracy bullshit that American criminally lying politicians are saying, this means that stored and stuff we want is close by. Cities will be primarily for people, not cars. You can walk to stores because they're close by. You can use bicycles to go everywhere we want. Public transportation can take care of the rest and with that we can get rid of 90+% of cars. Not because it's forbidden, hit because we'll designed cities don't NEED cars.
There are loads of things that can't go electrical, like airplanes. Reminds me: BUILD TRAINS. FFS America get your shit together and start building good railroads. Then you can get rid of half your airplane flights. Most flights are short enough that a high speed train is faster than flying anyway. The longer flights s yous still need cannot go electrical. You'll need to build and run scrubbers spending the same amount of energy as those airplanes (and other systems that can't go electrical) just to make sure their CO2 doesn't add to the problem.
increase our energy capacity by a factor of two. We need to generate twice the amount of energy (all green) so that 50% can go to scrubbing our atmosphere for the next, say, century.
think about how to store all the captured CO2 or convert it to plastics or something.(double the energy required)
get ready to pay 2-3 times more for our energy. We've been the party generation who have enjoyed cheap energy from burning crap. The next 3-4 generations at least will be paying the bill, that is if they get to live to do so.
THIS IS IMPORTANT, I CANNOT CLARIFY THIS ENOUGH:
None of us will see this problem solved. Even if we actually seriously start working on fixing this shit today, we will be long dead and gone before this is done. THERE IS NO QUICK FIX. It took centuries to get here, it will take at least a century to get back where we started
Anyone claiming that this is easy to solve, sorry, is lying.
This is the biggest threat mankind has faced and people somehow just don't give a shit and it is fucking depressing
Everything you said tracks except 5. Renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels, and that's with the subsidies for fossil fuels.
From a purely economic perspective fossil fuels don't make sense anymore, they're being kept around because fossil fuel companies are using immense amounts of money to fight against renewables.
People seem to forget renewable energy is essentially free. Sure there's maintenance and upfront cost but that's true for all energy generation. Fossil fuels simply can't compete and it's only going to get worse as we get better at collecting renewable energy.
We're going to be paying 2-3 times more because we need to create enormous amounts of extra energy to clean the atmosphere.
That, and renewable energy isn't free either. Solar panels require regular replacement as they (still) degrade quite a bit (too much) over time. If I'm not mistaken, they still require replacement every 10 or so years.
Windmills require regular maintenance. The power grid requires maintenance.
Wind and solar requires enormous batteries that degree and require regukar replacements.
Renewables are only so so renewable, don't expect to pay anything less for the same amount of energy. Then now we will have to generate these enormous amounts of extra energy to take the CO2 out, who is going to pay for that? We all are.
So yeah, do expect to pay 2-3 times more for energy when this all starts, ideally tomorrow but likely 20 years from now as we're still not done partying.
Price doesn't matter if it's cloudy like most winters with barely any sun and the wind is not blowing. Solar also won't work at night and energy storage is crap, batteries are very much not renewable. Of course there is reversible hydro plants but these can't be used everywhere and are a disaster for local ecosystems.
Everyone is acting like renewables will fix everything.. They won't. The only thing that can replace fossil fuels right now is nuclear, which is also not renewable, but at least we have plenty of fuel for it.
This year is now almost certain to become Earth's warmest on record after a hot July and August saw global temperatures reach the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time.
Data released last week from Copernicus, a branch of the European Union Space Programme, shows August was 1.59C warmer than 1850–1900 levels, following a 1.6C increase in July.
This upward swing should ensure 2023 becomes the new warmest year on record, an assessment shared by the Bureau of Meteorology's Senior Climatologist Blair Trewin.
"If current 2023 temperature anomalies are maintained, or increase, over the last four months of the year that would be sufficient for an annual record to be set," he said.
Major global climatological records have fallen at a rapid rate across the Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere, including:
"A large part of it is the removal of the cooling influence of La Niña which has been suppressing global temperatures over the last two to three years," Mr Trewin said.
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Ha I've never seen the full comic before - only the first 2 panels. And I even own a "this is fine" plushie that I bought from the artist's Kickstarter some years back
Since I read that this isn't an existential threat I'm feeling much more at ease, much less open to catastrophic outcomes and the narrative that we should throw our hands in the air and give up.
there is no hightech stuff. The idea that some miracolous savior technology will come around is peddled to prevent the transformation away from fossil fuels and our current economy of working too much to consume too much and stay in the hamster-wheel.
We already have the technologies and the sooner we scale them up the better. But we also need social and economic reforms, where we stop measureing society in terms of GDP and stop providing the means for uber rich individuals to get even more rich. We cannot afford the billionaires any longer and that is why they fight so much to ruin mankind as a whole, instead of providing a good lufe to everybody.
Which is exactly what you'd expect given what the blue represents? Does that mean you ignore the rest of the planet? Do you understand that we're talking about the temperature of the entire earth, right?
They're separate problems, linked mostly in terms of humans being a cause of both. With CFCs/HCFCs now phased out, the ozone layer is slowly repairing itself and should be back to pre-1980 levels in the next 30-40 years or so. This will be good for helping to prevent skin cancer, and it will marginally affect the climate (e.g. lower ozone is associated with lower humidity), but it's not going to do much to mitigate global warming.