The planet’s average temperature hit 17.23 degrees Celsius on Thursday, surpassing the 17.18C record set on Tuesday and equalled on Wednesday.
A toast to everyone in this thread that decided to not have kids! 🥂
a toast to everyone in this thread that will be burnt to toast because unchecked greed and capitalism.
I will never create and subject a human being to the world our negligence has created.
About 15 years ago I was going somewhere with my family. Stepmom and I were talking about Climate Change then, how if things didn’t change that massive starvation was likely, that crazed weather would be irreversible, etc. and she noticed that my 10 year old niece’s eyes were getting huge. She was genuinely disturbed by the conversation and began to say is this really going to happen? Before I could plainly reply my stepmom reassured her that no, things were going to be fine, and we changed the subject.
Niece is in mid twenties now and subject to the reality of the situation as it slowly unfolds, like an asteroid headed toward the earth at 5 mph. The future is dreadful to her.
Exponentially increasing heat is when toddlers amirite
(also you should still adopt kids)
I think it’s important to note that this also coincides with the start of what’s predicted to be a super El Nino (we’ve had a couple of those already). If the model holds true then 2024 will be even hotter than this year, and (again, if the model predictions are right) will shatter all previous records. Then come 2025 or 2026 average temperatures will settle down a bit.
The issue isn’t the seasonal or even the yearly hottest temps. It’s the overall trend that’s a concern (which is what the article is talking about), which are trending up.
Not sure if any of that made sense.
right so considering we’ve been seeing alarming loss of ice mass over the last couple of years and we know that has an exponential effect on climate change. We already hit the tipping point just most people didn’t realize it.
Ya probably. I’m still hoping that there’s some global mechanism that we don’t understand yet that will limit or reign in the effects. But that’s just wishful thinking.
Makes sense, but the idea of a “super” El Nino is a symptom of the same problem. Super implies unusual or abnormal, and it’s only getting worse.
Well yes, the super El Nino’s are part of climate change. They are getting worse each time. All I was saying is that it’s not a straight year over year increase. It comes in waves or heaves in a periodic manner.
I used to worry about this a lot, I still do but I used to too.
Joking aside, it’s a shit show that us plebians can’t really do anything about but I still try. I’ve driven a hybrid for the last 6 years, I have a smart thermostat to try to save energy, I try to eat less meat more often. I recycle a lot more than most. I even make my own bread and nut milks and many other things which is not only cheaper and healthier (and WAY more delicious) but requires less transport related greenhouse gas emissions than buying premade breads and nut milks. Nut milk is especially better than dairy milk in that matter.
Oh yeah! And yesterday I picked up 10 large trash bags of litter:
Bro you’re doing more than most of us, thank you.
But yeah, our carbon footprint is minuscule in comparison to corporate footprints. We need them to fucking play ball.
What’s more profitable: Exceptional profits for 30 years until civilization collapses, or sustainable profits forever?
All I could think about when reading this post is corporate footprints. It’s great for us to all do our part, but sadly the corporations not doing their part is screwing everybody. We need more regulations on them, idc what product they’re making or how much profit they’d like or even how many people whine about not receiving that product it needs to stop.
Honestly, corporate footprints is all that needs to be thought about when thinking about climate change.
The shifting of blame to the individual or even putting it on the individual to “help” is avoiding the real issue. And even if individuals are contributing, which I acknowledge they are but at a much lower rate of impact, then probably the best way to change individual consumption/waste is once again by abolishing capitalism which guides the production of the material reality utilized to create such individual waste in the first place.
btw note that the carbon footprint of one person’s lifetime is equiv to 1 second of worldwide factory emissions (source: kurzgesagt), so it’s not a necessity to do some of the things you’re doing, but i would recommend that everyone in the world do some farming, even if it’s a small garden of radishes or smth, or tomatoes on a windowsill
also this is only tangentially related, but i still drink cow milk, because: -A it tastes good
-B I am allergic to all nut milks
-C soy milk sounds like crap, soy is already in basically everything (rip the few people who are allergic to it), so i wouldn’t want to consume more of it
A: if we know cow milk is bad for the planet and bad for the animal, and we use “but I prefer it!” as an excuse, couldn’t we apply that to everything? Sexual assault? “It feels good!”. Theft? “I like having stuff!”
B: (in order of ease and taste) Oat milk, rice milk, flax milk, hemp milk
C: Soy milk… “sounds like crap”? We might be at the end of carnivore arguments. You know cow milk literally has faeces in it, right? The fact “soy is in everything” being used to not have it is also not logical. Water is in everything.
Cow milk has faeces in it?
No it does not.
It’s like saying municipal water has shit in it if it is treated water. Yeah it did once…. That’s why we have filtering and sterilizing technologies.
If milk had cow shit in it people would constantly be getting sick from it it.
That said, dairy farming is pretty horrific in many ways. It’s good to cut down on dairy consumption as much as is tolerable for each person.
The poop in cow milk is referring to the bacteria in unpasteurized milk if I’m interpreting it correctly (or it could be waste from cells in the cow’s blood, since cow milk starts out as cow blood iirc)
I’m not going to go point by point because I think it’s not productive to act as if this kind of argument has only two sides. When we talk about subjects in a persuasive fashion, where we’re trying to win someone over to our side, it frequently has the opposite effect, entrenching is into our already polarized views.
We need to concern ourselves with moral relativism to make appropriate decisions. In an ethical sense, I believe sexual assault of a human is at least an order of magnitude worse than milking a cow. But that opinion comes largely from the fact that I’m a human and I’m not a cow.
If we want to sway someone’s opinion, I think we should focus less on absolutes and more on quantities. We should meet people where they are. Maybe instead of driving home all the disturbingly true reasons we should never milk or even breed cattle, we should use those same arguments to highlight the absurdly destructive impact of doing those things at the scale which we are.
If half of society has a burger and a milkshake once a month, there is a significant environmental impact on milking those cows and raising those cattle to be slaughtered, as well as a very real moral cost. There is also some emotional benefit to the human of consuming fats and proteins from those sources. And both positive and negative nutritional effects as well.
It’s already difficult to compare costs and benefits from such wildly different categories when it’s just one burger a month. Humans are emotional beings and even a well-reasoned argument may not trump the emotional feeling one gets from a hamburger and a shake.
But consider the changing of factors if those same people go from one beef product and one dairy product a month to one every other day. Or even more frequent. How much more land it takes, how much more suffering the livestock go through in conditions designed for maximum profit and minimum concern for moral costs. The additional methane production, the deforestation, the added risk of heart attacks. All the bad parts multiplied wholesale, while the good parts all experience diminishing returns.
If you take one of those semi-daily beef and dairy consumers, and give them a hard line, where any consumption of beef or dairy is unacceptable, is that going to generate a positive or a negative effect on the system as a whole? Some may be convinced to quit consuming, but I feel their difference will be swallowed by those who feel called out in such a way that they would rather consume even more out of principle than face the hard truth that their lifestyle is wrong. It’s easy for humans to build walls of cognitive dissonance, where we know what we’re doing is harmful, but we make excuses for ourselves to avoid facing that reality.
If you want the masses to face their collective reality, we need to meet people where they are. Maybe burgers and milkshakes will always be part of your life. But there are alternatives that can be a different part of a life rich in variety. If someone currently eats a burger every other day, maybe they can strive for once a week. And if that goes well, once a month. And then, once they have a greater familiarity with the culinary variety that’s possible, they may start to forget to eat that meal entirely.
We should remember that we’re all just people. We don’t need to be on different sides. You don’t need to be wrong and neither do I. We’re just earthly passengers connecting electronically in a wide cosmos. Our lives are all so different and yet uncannily familiar. So we’ll get more mileage out of sharing our experiences than prescribing them to others. Because if we feel we’re being talked down to, we’ll decide we’ve already picked a side. But if we’re just sharing, then we’re all on the same endless side. In that spirit, none of what I’m saying is meant to invalidate anything you’ve said. Only add to it.
And just to add, I don’t mind if there’s a bit of feces in my milk. It looks perfectly white, so I imagine it’s in low enough quantity that it’s not a health risk after pasteurization, and as far as I know, the quantity is also low enough that it doesn’t effect taste. But I think cows should have good lives even at the expense of productivity, and milking should be a voluntary behavior, perhaps in exchange for appropriate compensation, rather than something that’s forced on them. Just my two cents (plus about a buck fifty).
I’m not going to argue against anything you’ve said, I’m not going to try to fact check it, & I believe to be largely correct.
I also think its irrelevant.
In the next few years (couple of decades) we are going to see increased wildfire burning of the boreal forests in the global north which is going to release (what I believe is technically called) “a catastrophe fuck-ton” of gasses into the atmosphere. We’ve tipped over the tipping point.
About the wildfires, they aren’t just caused by heatwaves, but also indiscriminate firefighting. If you stop fires in a forest over and over, the amount of flammable material keeps increasing due to new plants growing, and if there’s a lot of flammable material, and the same amount of water as before, things are overall drier, and would also create a bigger fire should one ignite.
And no, I don’t have a peer-reviewed study/source concerning this; I just used reasoning to construct this argument.
What can we do as the little individual people that we are?
This is the coolest summer you’ll have for the rest of your life
Wtg! What’s the next record to crush?
“sooner than expected”, “tipping point”, “nonbinding resolution”, “climate scientists warn”
Everything is fine…
It’s getting hot in here
So take off all your clothes
I am gettin so hot I wanna take my clothes off
I am, getting, so hot. I want fresh water and socialized healthcare.
I live in the UK, so I have them both yea
Maybe I’ve consumed too much sci-fi over the years. I’ve always thought the primary goal should be that of making this species a space fairing one. Secondary, they to extend the life of this planet as much as possible. It will die one day, that’s unavoidable.
At the present, it looks like neither are being achieved. It’s all just going to collapse on itself. Maybe the human population 2.0 can resurface and try again after the planet kills almost everyone.
I feel sorry for the younger generation and my peers with children.
Humans treat this planet like we’ve got someone else to go.
I’ve always thought the primary goal should be that of making this species a space fairing one.
What? Why??
Not who you replied to but I agree with their sentiment and will tell you why.
1: At the rate at which we’re destroying it, our planet won’t sustain us forever so unless we’re going to change our ways which most, especially big corps that do the most damage for profit, won’t we need to focus on an exit strategy for the inevitable.
2: The sun will also die eventually of course. Won’t be for a long time (hopefully) but that alone means earth isn’t a forever solution for us and if we live long enough, eventually we will have to leave.
Nope, see the problem is that our civilisation has used all the most readily accessible natural resources, oil, copper, tin, iron, coal, gold, silver, etc. The problem now is that if our civilisation collapses and there’s a significant loss of technological capacity, any emergent civilisation may never develop the capacity to reach or process adequate amounts to enable a technological rediscovery. Yay.
I disagree, if you’ve looked at all the advances in technology made over the last 1,2,300 years. If there was to be a great extinction event with some survivors - they’d bounce back relatively quickly.
I disagree, what’s different from previous civilizations is our usage of energy. We found fossil fuels which are basically conveniently stored sunlight and we have used this abundance to help ourself to do more while using less stored energy in our bodies.
There isn’t that much oil left which especially behaves like miraculous liquid, kind of like magic. Without it our society would collapse and majority of people would be required to go back to fields to grow food.
Any survivors wouldn’t have all the currently existing technology as most easily accessible recourses are already gathered. All while current inventions continue to decay and require replacement eventually, leaving behind only mountains of trash.
Yeah you’re taking sense. Although in the situation of the population dropping drastically to a core survivor population, you might find there to be less of a limit on resources.
I think that some of those resources would probably continue to dwindle, even if we all just dissapeared today. That’s a big part of what’s so scary about this. Climate change is progressing beyond what we can “undo”. Now, they’re also seeing greenhouse gases being released from melting ice and soil. The heating won’t suddenly stop if we all died today.
Many living organisms require certain living conditions. Who’s to say that this heat won’t eventually start to destroy the chances of growing most crops? What if these massive forest fires become a lot more common? How many animal species will die? More floods, droughts, storms, and severe heat events are all on our horizon.
I would like to believe what you suggest, but it might be optimistic at this point. We all need to help eachother to survive this, as an entire species (including the rich people ofc).
I’ve known for decades that we humans are failed species that will eventually go extinct. Tbf, everyone are and new species come and go. It has been quite interesting and often sad watching our overshoot while many people have lived in hubris and thought we’d conquer the space one day.
The Earth is one special place in space where life has been born. I have no clue why that has happened but I’m thankful for having been alive and been able to witness larger life cycle in this planet.
I doubt any species will ever conquer the galaxies. It seems that life consumes energy and uses it to grow until it one day collapses.
What is a “failed species?” Do you believe there is a win condition on the universe?
I’m sorry if that sounded too harsh.
I consider finding econiche and surviving in it a win condition. When scaling it to whole universe, it would be being able to exist without consuming and decaying their environment they need for their existence.
Unfortunately, or not, I don’t think there is a single species that can live forever. I think all life is based on consumption, one eating something else and growing until it exceeds its limits in environment, after which it decays to meet its carrying capasity.
Eventually sun no longer provides sunlight and plants stop growing. Chemosynthetic bacteria and some fungi may still use some compounds as their energy source, but they have limits as well and eventually all life simply perishes.
So do I believe or think there is something to win? To me simply being alive is a win. The space seems very empty and deadly to me. It’s miraculous that we exist, although sad that we are causing extinction event.
Unfortunately, or not, I don’t think there is a single species that can live forever. I think all life is based on consumption, one eating something else and growing until it exceeds its limits in environment, after which it decays to meet its carrying capasity.
Just recently I saw a very interesting veritasium video about entropy. He explains that life acts to increase entropy. Before entropy, nothing exciting happens. After entropy, nothing exciting will ever happen again. But as life causes entropy, that’s when the excitement and magic happens.
It’s an extremely profound video, and may give you comfort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxL2HoqLbyA&t=0
I think it’s cool that life is technically a natural geological phenomenon, the building blocks of RNA are naturally occurring amino acids that hitch rides on space debris that after interacting with the right combination of other inorganic material creates a recursive entropy system that develops the capacity to comsume other materials to continue the natural chemical reactions that extract the necessary building blocks to sustain itself thus becoming an “organism”, basically an organic black hole of entropy, and this chain of chemical reactions eventually resulted in consciousness, then cognizance, and now we’re here, a natural geological product of the universe with the capacity to observe and understand itself.
Yeah. I was born too late to explore earth, born too early to explore space, but born just in time for dank memes. I’m honestly very grateful for that. We live in a pretty exciting time, as sad as it is that we’ll eventually all go extinct.
That “born too late to explore earth” bit hits my heart big time. I’ve always been sad that we can’t do that anymore like we used to be able to. People a thousand years ago could just leave and explore if they wanted, then pitch a tent somewhere beautiful and live there if they chose. If you wanted you could live at the top of a mountain, or inside of a cave covered by a waterfall. Such beauty and freedom. It’s sad that a thousand years later, all of our “progress” has essentially taken away nearly all of our freedom in that regard. You never had to be hungry back then, you could hunt or plant food nearly anywhere you pleased. Never had to be homeless, you could fell some trees and build a cabin somewhere beautiful. Now? Most people are fortunate if they can afford a vacation a few hours away once every year or so, if that. There’s no peace of mind, we all work work work and scramble to fulfill as many of our endless obligations as possible. Then we retire, if fortunate enough and hopefully don’t have to work as hard for a little bit and die. I’ve always had dreams of sailing the sea and exploring, almost like memories in my mind. Maybe it’s a past life, maybe it’s memory passed down through my DNA, maybe it’s fantasy. I don’t know what it is, but I know that it’s what feels right to me. Planting down and living in our homes/work almost our entire lives then dying feels so wrong. I care almost nothing about material wishes or monetary gain, but I’d like to be rich in order to travel and feel free.
Some serious rose tinted glasses looking back on history there! At what point in time are you thinking about? For most of history I’d have had fealty to some land owner. I’d say we have more freedom and opertunity to experience the world now than before.
You can still explore the planet for yourself, just because something has been experienced by someone before you shouldn’t take too much away from your joy if experiencing it.
…and decreasing the utilisation of their coal fleet to the point where their coal consumption for electricity is flat and set to start decreasing next year.
And their renewable energy share is higher than the US (and most of the world) and increasing faster.
Stop whatabouting and fix your own shit.
Does Chinese inaction absolve all responsibility of the West?
…of course it doesn’t? Like what kinda point is that?
Unless you’re Chinese, there’s very little you can do to stop that, as opposed to encouraging your country’s politicians who have proven commitment to curb climate change.
So “China builds 5 coal plants every day before breakfast” is the whataboutism here.
The point is that this poster is a WuMao and will say anything to try and support the Chinese government. Sad that they have wormed their way in here already.
I am not WuMao. I simply don’t appreciate useless finger pointing and implied righteousness to justify doing nothing just because some other country isn’t doing what they can either.
We’re all watching the world burn and this finger pointing is doing little else but assure a very painful future.
But this user isn’t diverting attention from an American policy or whatever. The original post was on how we have the hottest days so far and they rightly pointed out that a government was building lots of coal plants in that context. Others have chimed in and said that the government also is investigating in renewable, though I question if that makes building coal plants okay.
None of this is whataboutism. No one is above criticism or scrutiny.
What I see is directing attention at China as a polluter and placing effectively sole blame on them.
I feel like my point stands and it’s a perfect example of strongly implied whataboutism.
What I see is directing attention at China as a polluter and placing effectively sole blame on them.
Sounds like a “you” problem then. No nation should be expanding coal burning.
This summer is the coolest summer you’ll experience in the rest of your life.
I don’t know why but this summer humidity levels goes down a bit.
I’ve left windows open all year and no humidity issues. I almost always have them during the Spring and Summer other years. I’ll take it, I hate humidity.
This is going to be painful for us as a species. I don’t think it will render us extinct, but the weather will get significantly worse and we will probably see widespread coastal flooding in this century, which will lead to hundreds of millions of refugees. We still have plenty of time to prepare and to change course, but I fear that we will wait until a global crisis is on our doorstep before we make serious changes.
Any corrections we make won’t take major effect until well after we are fucked. It’s why having kids is kind of insane to me because they are going to have a fucked future.
On the other hand, there is no one else, probably in the whole universe, who can preserve life as we know it. And I am not just talking about humans.
Think about philosophical questions like: “What is the reason life exists?”. Potentially, the answer is there is no reason. But what if there is something else out there which could give life a reason to exist?
Perhaps somewhere down a million years some lifeform could make the universe continue to exist. When we die now this is quite literally the end. No one else will preserve life beyond the existence of the earth or our solar system when someday the sun burns out. I highly doubt octopuses or cockroaches will evolve to build space ships and protect life any time soon. It’s just us.
In agreement with your broader point but a different approach: to say that we should die out as a species due to climate change is over-simplifying, imo. Yes, there are hardships ahead and we truly need to look at ourselves as a species and ask what needs to change for the sake of ethics and others. However, we have been in dire situations before, albeit with less foreknowledge. Would someone living in, say, 1840 have wished that humanity had died out in the bronze age collapse, when the near-entirety of known civilization collapsed due to climate change?
When considering the entire species we can’t take such a short term view. Yes, hard times are ahead. Yes, we will get through it. I say if one is inclined not to have kids, he should not have kids. But if one is inclined to do so, he should do so
I’d strongly recommend the book “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch for a wider perspective on what you’ve stated. Humanity has always had problems and been in some ways on the verge of extinction perpetually, but we as a species find ways to solve these problems.
It’s weird how many users resort to instant doom and gloom (like not having kids?) when its another problem that will take hard work to solve. Just a quote from his book -
“It is inevitable that we face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable. We survive, and thrive, by solving each problem as it comes up. And, since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics, none of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impassable barrier. So a complementary and equally important truth about people and the physical world is that problems are soluble. By ‘soluble’ I mean that the right knowledge would solve them.”
Yes,but…
The problem as I see it, is we’d need to revert to what’s little better than subsistence farming (in a village model) in order to weather the storm that’s coming. That’s fundamentally at odds with people’s day to day interest and our greed…
Carbon sequestering helps, but we still need to drastically downsize our daily conveniences (oh, and fuck cars!), which our brain is basically wired against doing (in terms of a short term pain with an eye on the long term benefit).
I agree we likely need to downsize a lot of our daily conveniences (yeah fuck cars!) But I’d urge against trying to envision the solution before working on solving the problem. Saying we need to resort to subsistence farming in communities - why? We create food on a massive scale currently, and tons of it go to waste. Additionally so much of agriculture is lost to inefficiency through the meat industry.
Surely it would make more sense to focus on those two levers first before resorting to what sounds like feudal society.
Not looking to debate details, just urging a rational and realistic approach through steps that are achievable.
We are not that special. And if we were, it wouldn’t matter anyway. We are just going to kill ourselves.
Ah, the cynics are truly everywhere.
Or realists?
Definitely sounds like something a cynic would say.
Oh that’s an easy one, life exists to further the entropy of the universe. That’s the only reason. Entropy cannot be reversed, and it’s extreme is inevitable.
Doesn’t matter, I’d be dead before the world ends. - some asshole probably.
FYI reincarnation exists. We’re all fucked.
At least we can live in the real life set of Mad Max, which may be pretty cool for 5 min
Carl Sagan on reincarnation - https://thetattyjournal.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/the-astonishing-evidence-that-made-carl-sagan-believe-reincarnation-deserves-serious-study/
“FYI reincarnation exists”
Says who?
Many spiritual movements.
For a more modern assessment, have a look at Mark Viber’s audio series “Where is my mind”
There is evidence that NDEs are real, the conclusion being that one’s clnsdio9can leave the body.
Past live experiences have strong evidence.
Have a listen to the podcast and make up your own mind.
Hell no. Show me the science. Prove it.
Problem is you can’t. Your pod cast isn’t proof. It’s just someone giving you some janky opinion and you gobble it up.
You haven’t heard it yet you judge.
I don’t care whether you, an anonymous person ?though you may be a bot) believes in it or not.
As a medical doctor I was a total akeptic until I looked at the evidence with an open mind.
Good luck with your closed minded attitude in life.
Thanks. Good luck with your religion. It’s always worked out so well for you folks.
The podcast I referenced gave evidence.
If you’re to closed minded to listen to it that’s your loss.
And, no, it’s not a religion lol
I was planning on dying one day anyway. Whether it’s from cancer or needing to eat my own neighbor for survival, it’s all the same at this point.
Just, don’t eat the brain. Should be fine.
Deep down, it’s wild to know that humanity’s peak was ultimately undone by less than 1% of the population convincing everyone else that greed is good.
Humans have always been greedy
Not at all. We’ve averted crisis’before. We’ve even created a middle class with heavy taxes on the wealthy for a better society. The greedy have been working the powerful and are sabotaging everything for short term gain.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Don’t “Eat the Rich”. Use them for fertilizer, and solve two problems at once
But we can solve three problems at once if we eat the rich then use our own excrement as fertilizer.
