• Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    I’m surprised they didn’t mention a key tipping point I’ve been following: melting permafrost.

    It’s dangerous because once all the permafrost in Alaska, Canada, and Russia starts melting, the gasses it releases are a self fulfilling prophecy. The warming caused by permafrost melt is enough to keep melting permafrost.

    Good report on the dangers here:

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/01/1110722

    Current estimates are that an increase of just 1.5°C in global temperatures over average would be enough to hit this tipping point and we’re already at +0.8.

    https://worldbusiness.org/permafrost-the-climates-tipping-time-bomb/

    Continuing to increase at a rate of 0.08°C per decade means we’ll hit this in approximately 80 or 90 years? Except that, since 1980, we’ve been warming at a rate of +0.18°C per decade, so we should hit the tipping point by 2062, tops.

    Eh, what do I care, I’ll be 93 years old, assuming I’m not already dead by then. :)

    https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

    • Polydextrous@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean…this is the same thing they’ve been saying for years. That’s the “point of no return,” because the warming is exponential. Decades, they’ve been saying this.

      But, here comes the new fucking DIRECTOR OF THE U.N.’S CLIMATE EXPERTS saying, “1.5c warming is not the end of the world.”

      He said that shit, like, last week. We really do need to put the workforce into building guillotines. The world needs some guillotin’ing.

      He added: “Nevertheless, we should not despair and fall into a state of shock when the world exceeds 1.5 degrees.

      “Every action we take to mitigate climate change helps. Climate protection is always cheaper and protects people from the dramatic consequences of global warming. This is all the more true if we have exceeded the Paris climate target.

      “The world won’t end if it gets more than 1.5 degrees warmer. However, it will be a more dangerous world. Countries will struggle with many problems, there will be social tensions.

      “And yet this is not an existential threat to humanity. Even with 1.5 degrees of warming, we will not die out.”

      The context for this is that he thinks the “doom” coming from climate alarmists will paralyze people.

      • shastaxc@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “Not an existential threat to humanity” is a pretty low bar. I’d prefer no increase at all to mortality rates.

        • Polydextrous@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          But even the lowest bar he could set isn’t true. We need the air, the water, the plants, the animals, the not-forest fires, the not-monumental hurricanes and tornadoes, the lack of drought and the lack of torrential flooding…all of this is already ramping up, literal centuries before they predicted. THAT is how much we seem to have misjudged how desperate this situation is.

          Like, ten years ago, he story was, “if we don’t stop, our children’s children will start to see some extreme weather events.” And then it was, “when this generation grows up, we will have a much harder time.” And now it’s, “holy shit, it’s already happening.”

          And this fuckin turd comes out with some bullshit platitudes. Gross.

    • littlewonder@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Oh, if you want to pee your pants, watch the Arctic Sinkhole episode of Nova that’s available on the PBS Nova YouTube right now. Terrifying examination of the current state of permafrost.

      • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that they choose to believe oil barons over scientists.

        These people believe whoever has the most money is the smartest, or at least they act like that is what they believe.

  • happilybitchycowboy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Good night. I started talking about this in like 2002 after facing the terrible heat in the middle east during my time in service. I came back and moved to New York and it was just like Chicago, you could see the haze of pollution above the city from miles away. I moved back down south and in bigger cities there, you can see it too. People didn’t want to hear it, some still don’t. I’ve had a personal moto for many years, “One person, one piston.” Everywhere I look, cars, trucks, and SUVs have gotten more ginormous. Why the hell does one man need to drive a v8 2500 to an office job? Why the hell does one girl without a family need to drive an Escalade to get coffee and donuts? We, the people, are going to have to be the ones to make the changes. Electric cars are really no better as so much fuel is used mining minerals for the batteries, and so many of the power grids run off coal fired power plants. You might not have a tailpipe, but it’s all coming from somewhere. I wish we could go back to the days a man had a good horse, but it seems too far gone now.

    • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      If everybody had a horse it wouldn’t be much different, though. There are way more people on earth now than when horses were still the main mode of transportation. Horses would cause similar problems as our other livestock for climate change.

      People powered vehicles (bicycles, skateboards, etc.) are the only thing that we have that are truly zero impact forms of transportation. I guess we could count solar and wind powered vehicles, but those don’t really get the job done for our transportation needs.

      We need to focus on public transportation, but so many people would refuse to ever vote for that stuff.

      • havokdj@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, I wouldn’t say TRULY zero impact. There are some things that would still contribute such as the need for more calories and also the work we would exert making pollution from ourselves, but it is still 10,000x more beneficial than what we have with cars or horses.

        Honestly, horses may even be worse because you don’t really turn them off like cars. Depending on how often you drive, horses may wind up causing even more pollution than if you just drove.

        Also, horses are really, REALLY expensive, not just in initial cost either, and their legs are like glass.

        Not defending cars at all BTW, just supporting what you said on horses.

    • thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The ‘one person, one piston’, rule is amazing.

      The car industry, and regulations around cars need to rewritten. Small 1 cylinder cars need to be sold legally.

      Many families I know would be happy using a golf cart for 90% of their needs. Leaving the big car in the garage for the 1 time a month they drive somewhere far, or in very bad weather.

    • 5in1k@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      In horse times the streets of cities were littered with dead horses and piles of shit everywhere. You can read about it in old newspapers. They were heading into a crisis right before cars because of it.

  • stephan262@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Well fuck… I guess one way or another our lifestyles will have to change. Either by severe action to mitigate climate change, or by the impending climate catastrophes things are going to be unpleasant.

      • PaulDevonUK@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We’re Corporations are too stubborn. We’re They are gonna throw shit into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight.

        FTFY

        • PsychedSy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean I think it’s cool as shit if it works. It’d be pretty lit if we managed to fuck up so badly and avoid murdering a bunch of poors to fix it.

          • Polydextrous@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Just wait: they’ll declare it an emergency and then authorize space slaves, working ‘round the clock to build it. Yes, they’ll be the poors, and their bodies will probably be deemed “too dangerous to remove” from the dome, so we’ll basically end up shielding the earth with the bodies of those poor people.

            Mark my words. I honestly don’t believe this is at all far from being possible, if such technology ended up existing.

            And that’s when the farm workers will suddenly be paid well and protected somewhat, because it’ll turn into a bunch of private university educated white kids taking “gap years.”

            • evatronic@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              “We engineered the space suits our workers will use out of a UV-reflective material, so we don’t even need to recovery the bodies!”

      • Chreutz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been saying for two years now that you cannot convince me that there isn’t a ready made contingency plan somewhere in the White House that involves using modified nuclear weapons to facilitate a mini nuclear winter, to counteract greenhouse gas emissions.

        • PsychedSy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m saving my bottlecaps.

          Really we just need a relatively cheap (and relatively non-toxic) chemical that’s more reflective than our atmosphere.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      yeah either by sever action years ago or by things being unpleasant. With sever action now making things less unpleasant than they otherwise could be.

    • taco_ballerina@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’d think so. On another completely unrelated note, isn’t it unusual that every unarmed minority who gets killed by the police in an egregious enough way to garner public outcry totally deserved it for committing various offences that bear no relation to the killing?

    • PsychedSy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean most of them are, but does it matter? Heat waves and drought create conditions that make the fires as critical as they have been.

    • the_q@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Um… You might want to go read up on the subject. It very much is as dire as the post suggests.

    • Seasoned_Greetings@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It was already hot in the south. An average of 54°F hotter in the most humid section of the country turns it into an unlivable 130°F death pit where electric grids fail and heat stroke is imminent from just a few minutes outside.

      Yeah, the south is hot. I know, we’ve seen 115°F heat where I am for weeks now. But hot here is like, 100°F. It’s becoming deadly.