If you’re asking “why” at this point, you’re the reason they’re terrified
Askcomro on
this article talks about the depression of a scientist instead of the actual issue.
pwiegers on
All the while, politicians are concerned with the next election; nog with the next decade, let alone the one after that 🙁
DairyFarmerOnCrack on
>One relatively simple study examined the impact of a 2.7C rise, the average of the answers in the Guardian survey. It found 2 billion people pushed outside humanity’s “climate niche”, ie the benign conditions in which the whole of human civilisation arose over the last 10,000 years.
>The latest IPCC assessment devotes hundreds of pages to climate impacts, with irreversible losses to the Amazon rainforest, quadrupled flood damages and billions more people exposed to dengue fever. With 3C of global heating, cities including Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Miami and The Hague end up below sea level.
>“It is the biggest threat humanity has faced, with the potential to wreck our social fabric and way of life. It has the potential to kill millions, if not billions, through starvation, war over resources, displacement,” said James Renwick, at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. “None of us will be unaffected by the devastation.”
>Asked what individual action would be effective, he said: **“Civil disobedience.”**
DonManuel on
When looking at the trillions which humans can spend for war and arms, I am most depressed how we would have the means to fight global overheating but waste it for killing each other while continuing to exploit natural resources and to destroy the world for money.
bluhat55 on
Game theory predicted this outcome regardless of how we feel. Time to nut up
Bby69 on
Everyone pretends it’s important to them but no one really wants to change their life to change it. We all drive cars, live in houses,consume energy,eat food, none of that will change until we become extinct and the earth heals.
NyriasNeo on
Only if you fail to accept and make peace.
drazzolor on
I don’t care.
Dude_From_Poland on
I, too, am terrified.
ozymandiasjuice on
“How can we sleep when our beds are burnin?”
Tomek_xitrl on
The issue was always that reached actual net zero would mean a massive decrease in living standards, particularly luxuries like cars, meat, electronics, travel etc. Even EVs use a lot of energy to create as do the solar panels needed to charge them. An actual net zero world would be one where we don’t eat much meat, pretty much end leisure flying, and take the bus/train everywhere. Much fewer tech too. Now think of all the jobs lost. Covid barely caused a blip and look what happened.
Most, even those who downvote me, would not vote for a leader who would promise to do that. Especially since there’s a good chance many countries would not give a fuck and keep going BAU anyway. Why destroy your life to maybe save the future?
he world has cancer. The choice is the go through a hellish painful treatment that is almost certainly going to fail and kill you early, or keep smoking and partying for a few decades instead painfree and then die.
It’s a devastatingly hard game theory problem that I just don’t know if there’s a solution for. I think the biggest hope is probably peak oil which should become an issue by 2040. But even then there will still be heaps left, just much more expensive. Probably the only other radical way would be a for a nuclear nation to put a gun to the world’s head and say look, we’re going to zero now or the nukes fly. Because it really needs everyone on board to destroy the world economy. Voluntary mass sacrifice has never worked even for small stuff. Or fusion power.
Anyway, we’re barely even managing to flatline global emissions. To keep temps below 3C is a pipe dream. Mitigation is going the be the main hope but solar shields won’t stop ocean acidification which looks to wipe out the oceans in 30 years or so.
All this ignores the real potential that enough tipping points have already been triggered anyway so net 0 today might not even be enough to avoid a lot of the carnage. Mitigation will be expensive and I would propose confiscating all wealth of anyone ever who was found to deny climate change or fight effort to address it. From big oil lobbyists to twitter shitposts. Every traitor of the earth needs to be held accountable but this will only be obvious when we hit 2C plus I think.
Glass-Mess-6116 on
The climate change mission is depressing precisely because some parties will arguably benefit very well from it at the expense of most of the world. Which is where the money to fight against it comes from.
chrisni66 on
If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will leap out.
If you place a frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly bring it to the boil, it will just sit there and cook to death.
We are the frog.
incorrigible_and on
I’ll give them credit. They’ve remained a lot more optimistic than I could have ever pulled off.
UlteriorMotive66 on
I’d encourage everyone to watch a little less known tv series that came out quite recently called ‘Extrapolations’. Boy does it paint a very dire and grim picture of our near future. I wasn’t expecting to live through it this soon. Summers now, feel like every day you’re inside an oven. The other extreme weather events around the globe is also quite disheartening to look at. At this rate this planet will become uninhabitable within the next century unless everyone takes action in our everyday lives as well as more broadly on a global scale by governments around the world!
Edit: And now Im getting downvoted for suggesting to watch a tv series which is fictional yet close to our reality and then pointing out the obvious. Nice to see reddit is still being reddit! 🙂
makeitasadwarfer on
“In the UK, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) suggests that reaching net zero emissions by 2050 would cost less than 1% of GDP every year through to 2050[2]. For comparison, the UK’s military defence budget is currently about 2% of GDP each year[3]”
We are so utterly fucked. We can’t even commit to 1% of GDP right now. Capitalist democracy has completely failed as a system for the majority of citizens. The main issue is we have allowed the media to be gamed by corporate interests who are allowed to lie without consequence.
Kindly_Let_9091 on
Maybe we should hold celebrities accountable for the pollution they cause.
jkrfan7 on
At this point I’m just hoping I’ll be dead by the time shit hits the fan
nbrdonab1988 on
I wonder what chip malfunctioned in human being makeup to be totally okay with self destruction. Is this that we always think “that’ll never happen” ? Because I just don’t understand how we are okay with being the reason for the destruction of our own species. Let alone every species currently residing on this planet with us. What I hear now these days is it’s too late now guess we better learn how to live on Mars? Fuck that I will die with MY planet before trying to live on another one. Which honestly why would you even want to live on another one? We’ve got a Utopia here, I hate every single human who does not value it.
Mumbles_Stiltskin on
Am I the only one who just feels helpless and defeated by these types of articles. I get it. It’s too late, nothing will change and it will be the end of us. I just feel so beat down by these headlines.
xzyleth on
I’m tired of waiting. I’m joining the accelerationists. We cant have the Walton’s dying in comfort.
Druid_High_Priest on
Not surprising. Its fixing to be some real unfun for many people. Was starvation at the top of our list of things to try and avoid?
blackdvck on
I doubt we will be able to breathe the air within a decade already humidity across the globe is out of control.
But hey technology will save us all yeah.
pikkuhillo on
Humans are all cunts. Me included.
DriftMantis on
I think we are getting exactly what we deserve as intended. My issue is that its our children’s children who will pay the price. The greedy rich fucks and corpo scum that caused this to happen will all be dead by then.
You think the climate is bad now? Just wait. Also, the worlds economy will buckle when you have 100s of millions of climate refugees moving into the desirable areas that are left.
There is no solution and no cure, electric vehicles will come too late, the electricity is made from coal and natural gas anyway. Scandinavia is the only region that invested enough in hydro and renewable energy systems. Nuclear would have been the best option but its too late at this point and climate scientists know its too late as well.
The good news is that we wont have to kill each other so much because mother nature can do that for us.
Sunburys on
It’s may and its 32 degrees Celsius in São Paulo. I remember wearing a coat during this month years ago.
No-Blood296 on
Shouldn’t Ellis Island be underwater by now???
kazisukisuk on
Unfortunately, the business case behind ensuring humanity’s survival turned out to be negative.
Arbiter217 on
Calm down, you wimps will be fine, get over yourselves
qwop22 on
Wonder how much the war in Ukraine is adding to climate change?
Someone should go warn Putin!
Optimal-Mine9149 on
Yeah yeah, when can we start the end of the world party to be sure it all ends before the party ends?
Alexein91 on
You don’t need to be a top climate scientist to be hopeless and broken lol
charliej102 on
In economic news, the US is on track to pump more CO2 out of the ground than ever before – 12.93 million barrels DAILY. No amount of sequestration nor alternative energy can offset the impact of releasing this much into the atmosphere. The simplest (but political unpalatable) solution would be to dramatically cut production. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac)
This-Bug8771 on
Soylent Green will soon be treated as a historical documentary
cybercuzco on
Because they thought it would take another 50 years to see the temperature increase we’ve seen in one and we don’t know what has changed to make this jump?
kevinoukos on
If we die ,we die
SpiderKoD on
Cos world is not read to change, unless nuclear winter 🤷♂️
Optimal-Mine9149 on
So no more smelly dangerous cars, good public transport, apple gets fucked
And your assumptions only hold under capitalism
Nathaireag on
3 C increase in the average is more or less where we are headed now. Using unmodified market mechanisms to drive de-carbonization does lead to a temperature plateau. It’s just higher than likely to trigger some catastrophic impacts. Staying under 2 C would require more rapid changes in the global energy economy. I don’t see the broad political will to force those. I do see plenty of self-serving pushback by entities profiting from the status quo.
That is assuming we don’t trigger some poorly understood major feedback. For example, massive soil carbon release from boreal peatlands could readily push us past 3 C.
Strange to see so many climate scientists reaching a level of pessimism that’s long familiar to ecologists. Non-market values are mostly used to drive feel-good greenwashing. Nobody has the will to actually internalize costs that profiteering puts on the next generation. Short term thinking has only gotten worse in my lifetime.
surf_caster on
Blame joe
pretzelbender on
Funny I was thinking The Guardian is hopeless and broken.
grafknives on
If this year is NOT el nino effect, then we are done, finished, kaput.
tvcgrid on
The people actually doing something aren’t the hopeful ones, they’re the angry ones. Lose hope but get angry.
44 Comments
If you’re asking “why” at this point, you’re the reason they’re terrified
this article talks about the depression of a scientist instead of the actual issue.
All the while, politicians are concerned with the next election; nog with the next decade, let alone the one after that 🙁
>One relatively simple study examined the impact of a 2.7C rise, the average of the answers in the Guardian survey. It found 2 billion people pushed outside humanity’s “climate niche”, ie the benign conditions in which the whole of human civilisation arose over the last 10,000 years.
>The latest IPCC assessment devotes hundreds of pages to climate impacts, with irreversible losses to the Amazon rainforest, quadrupled flood damages and billions more people exposed to dengue fever. With 3C of global heating, cities including Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Miami and The Hague end up below sea level.
>“It is the biggest threat humanity has faced, with the potential to wreck our social fabric and way of life. It has the potential to kill millions, if not billions, through starvation, war over resources, displacement,” said James Renwick, at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. “None of us will be unaffected by the devastation.”
Remember that the [Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-1-account-for-more-carbon-emissions-than-poorest-66-report-says)
[Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/Just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016)
>Asked what individual action would be effective, he said: **“Civil disobedience.”**
When looking at the trillions which humans can spend for war and arms, I am most depressed how we would have the means to fight global overheating but waste it for killing each other while continuing to exploit natural resources and to destroy the world for money.
Game theory predicted this outcome regardless of how we feel. Time to nut up
Everyone pretends it’s important to them but no one really wants to change their life to change it. We all drive cars, live in houses,consume energy,eat food, none of that will change until we become extinct and the earth heals.
Only if you fail to accept and make peace.
I don’t care.
I, too, am terrified.
“How can we sleep when our beds are burnin?”
The issue was always that reached actual net zero would mean a massive decrease in living standards, particularly luxuries like cars, meat, electronics, travel etc. Even EVs use a lot of energy to create as do the solar panels needed to charge them. An actual net zero world would be one where we don’t eat much meat, pretty much end leisure flying, and take the bus/train everywhere. Much fewer tech too. Now think of all the jobs lost. Covid barely caused a blip and look what happened.
Most, even those who downvote me, would not vote for a leader who would promise to do that. Especially since there’s a good chance many countries would not give a fuck and keep going BAU anyway. Why destroy your life to maybe save the future?
he world has cancer. The choice is the go through a hellish painful treatment that is almost certainly going to fail and kill you early, or keep smoking and partying for a few decades instead painfree and then die.
It’s a devastatingly hard game theory problem that I just don’t know if there’s a solution for. I think the biggest hope is probably peak oil which should become an issue by 2040. But even then there will still be heaps left, just much more expensive. Probably the only other radical way would be a for a nuclear nation to put a gun to the world’s head and say look, we’re going to zero now or the nukes fly. Because it really needs everyone on board to destroy the world economy. Voluntary mass sacrifice has never worked even for small stuff. Or fusion power.
Anyway, we’re barely even managing to flatline global emissions. To keep temps below 3C is a pipe dream. Mitigation is going the be the main hope but solar shields won’t stop ocean acidification which looks to wipe out the oceans in 30 years or so.
All this ignores the real potential that enough tipping points have already been triggered anyway so net 0 today might not even be enough to avoid a lot of the carnage. Mitigation will be expensive and I would propose confiscating all wealth of anyone ever who was found to deny climate change or fight effort to address it. From big oil lobbyists to twitter shitposts. Every traitor of the earth needs to be held accountable but this will only be obvious when we hit 2C plus I think.
The climate change mission is depressing precisely because some parties will arguably benefit very well from it at the expense of most of the world. Which is where the money to fight against it comes from.
If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will leap out.
If you place a frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly bring it to the boil, it will just sit there and cook to death.
We are the frog.
I’ll give them credit. They’ve remained a lot more optimistic than I could have ever pulled off.
I’d encourage everyone to watch a little less known tv series that came out quite recently called ‘Extrapolations’. Boy does it paint a very dire and grim picture of our near future. I wasn’t expecting to live through it this soon. Summers now, feel like every day you’re inside an oven. The other extreme weather events around the globe is also quite disheartening to look at. At this rate this planet will become uninhabitable within the next century unless everyone takes action in our everyday lives as well as more broadly on a global scale by governments around the world!
Edit: And now Im getting downvoted for suggesting to watch a tv series which is fictional yet close to our reality and then pointing out the obvious. Nice to see reddit is still being reddit! 🙂
“In the UK, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) suggests that reaching net zero emissions by 2050 would cost less than 1% of GDP every year through to 2050[2]. For comparison, the UK’s military defence budget is currently about 2% of GDP each year[3]”
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/publications/climate-change-faqs/how-will-acting-on-climate-change-affect-the-economy/
We are so utterly fucked. We can’t even commit to 1% of GDP right now. Capitalist democracy has completely failed as a system for the majority of citizens. The main issue is we have allowed the media to be gamed by corporate interests who are allowed to lie without consequence.
Maybe we should hold celebrities accountable for the pollution they cause.
At this point I’m just hoping I’ll be dead by the time shit hits the fan
I wonder what chip malfunctioned in human being makeup to be totally okay with self destruction. Is this that we always think “that’ll never happen” ? Because I just don’t understand how we are okay with being the reason for the destruction of our own species. Let alone every species currently residing on this planet with us. What I hear now these days is it’s too late now guess we better learn how to live on Mars? Fuck that I will die with MY planet before trying to live on another one. Which honestly why would you even want to live on another one? We’ve got a Utopia here, I hate every single human who does not value it.
Am I the only one who just feels helpless and defeated by these types of articles. I get it. It’s too late, nothing will change and it will be the end of us. I just feel so beat down by these headlines.
I’m tired of waiting. I’m joining the accelerationists. We cant have the Walton’s dying in comfort.
Not surprising. Its fixing to be some real unfun for many people. Was starvation at the top of our list of things to try and avoid?
I doubt we will be able to breathe the air within a decade already humidity across the globe is out of control.
But hey technology will save us all yeah.
Humans are all cunts. Me included.
I think we are getting exactly what we deserve as intended. My issue is that its our children’s children who will pay the price. The greedy rich fucks and corpo scum that caused this to happen will all be dead by then.
You think the climate is bad now? Just wait. Also, the worlds economy will buckle when you have 100s of millions of climate refugees moving into the desirable areas that are left.
There is no solution and no cure, electric vehicles will come too late, the electricity is made from coal and natural gas anyway. Scandinavia is the only region that invested enough in hydro and renewable energy systems. Nuclear would have been the best option but its too late at this point and climate scientists know its too late as well.
The good news is that we wont have to kill each other so much because mother nature can do that for us.
It’s may and its 32 degrees Celsius in São Paulo. I remember wearing a coat during this month years ago.
Shouldn’t Ellis Island be underwater by now???
Unfortunately, the business case behind ensuring humanity’s survival turned out to be negative.
Calm down, you wimps will be fine, get over yourselves
Wonder how much the war in Ukraine is adding to climate change?
Someone should go warn Putin!
Yeah yeah, when can we start the end of the world party to be sure it all ends before the party ends?
You don’t need to be a top climate scientist to be hopeless and broken lol
In economic news, the US is on track to pump more CO2 out of the ground than ever before – 12.93 million barrels DAILY. No amount of sequestration nor alternative energy can offset the impact of releasing this much into the atmosphere. The simplest (but political unpalatable) solution would be to dramatically cut production. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac)
Soylent Green will soon be treated as a historical documentary
Because they thought it would take another 50 years to see the temperature increase we’ve seen in one and we don’t know what has changed to make this jump?
If we die ,we die
Cos world is not read to change, unless nuclear winter 🤷♂️
So no more smelly dangerous cars, good public transport, apple gets fucked
And your assumptions only hold under capitalism
3 C increase in the average is more or less where we are headed now. Using unmodified market mechanisms to drive de-carbonization does lead to a temperature plateau. It’s just higher than likely to trigger some catastrophic impacts. Staying under 2 C would require more rapid changes in the global energy economy. I don’t see the broad political will to force those. I do see plenty of self-serving pushback by entities profiting from the status quo.
That is assuming we don’t trigger some poorly understood major feedback. For example, massive soil carbon release from boreal peatlands could readily push us past 3 C.
Strange to see so many climate scientists reaching a level of pessimism that’s long familiar to ecologists. Non-market values are mostly used to drive feel-good greenwashing. Nobody has the will to actually internalize costs that profiteering puts on the next generation. Short term thinking has only gotten worse in my lifetime.
Blame joe
Funny I was thinking The Guardian is hopeless and broken.
If this year is NOT el nino effect, then we are done, finished, kaput.
The people actually doing something aren’t the hopeful ones, they’re the angry ones. Lose hope but get angry.