The world has experienced its hottest day on record, according to meteorologists.
The average global temperature reached 17.01C (62.62F) on Monday, according to the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction.
The figure surpasses the previous record of 16.92C (62.46F) - set back in August 2016.
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I used to think the more apparent and devastating outcomes of climate change were bound to hit long after I passed away, but now I’m not so sure. Local storms are becoming more and more serious with every passing year, each summer is less bearable than the last and the nearby forests are burning down for the 2nd summer in a row. We are definitely speedrunning this shit.
Most of the climate change predictions I’ve heard in my lifetime have talked about stuff that would happen by 2050 or 2100. It’s always been bullshit, just a way of pushing out the consequences beyond a timeframe we can actually conceive of effectively. In reality this shit is already hitting us and accelerating hard.
2050 isn’t really that far away. if you remember the year 2000, that’s about how long.
I’ve always thought those predictions were listed as “conservative” so the average is a lot closer but main media outlets pick the fastest out point in the bell curve so it’s not so doomed.
I used to think the more apparent and devastating outcomes of climate change were bound to hit long after I passed away, but now I’m not so sure.
Too many people thinking like that is exactly why we are where we are today. And why it will continue to get worse.
Those of us who actually care about the world our children and grandchildren will have to live in have been trying to get some large scale action for decades, and we’re tired of beating our heads against a brick wall.
You constantly hear people say “oh, well we are in a warming cycle, so yeah, of course the Earth is going to get warmer”.
These are people on the Right who have moved past the point of denying the problem of Climate Change and shifted their argument to admitting it is happening, but not admitting that it is man-made.
In some ways, they are right - the Earth’s climate IS indeed shifting away from an Ice Age and moving toward a warming period, but what we humans have done is essentially thrown gasoline onto the already burning fire. We are accelerating the problem.Yah and we were actually headed to a 100,000 year cooling cycle. So even their supposed science is wrong lol.
Lets build a giant air conditioner to keep the global warming out
Or, this will sound crazy but hear me out, we put a giant ice cube in the ocean.
That’s a great idea. We could get them from a local comet, I’m sure it would never run out.
Heat index of 112F where I am at. FML.
We’re gonna blow right past it.
Billions will die.
It’s not even all about the climate though; it is human greed and cruelty that will kill the most: the haves butchering and purging the have-nots.
You are not a “have”.
For all intents and purposes, NONE of us who would actually be here, on Lemmy, in this comment thread, able to be reading this, are a “have”.
Unless your personal assistant’s butler’s niece’s boyfriend is sharing this with you, you’re probably just as fucked as he, she, and they are.
I just try to enjoy each year as the coldest year I’ll get for the rest of my life.
Im just glad it’s shaping up to be so apocalyptic that there’ll be no safe haven for the owner class that caused it. Let them burn with the peasants they decimated for profit.
The COVID pandemic makes me their plan is to turn New Zealand into a bunker nation and leave us all to die.
Like, just the billionaires on an island? Who will do all the labor required to maintain their lifestyle? Because they sure as he’ll aren’t. To paraphrase Pratchett, it takes a hundred people standing in the mud to keep one person with their head in the clouds.
Who is this Pratchett character? Sounds like a righteous bloke lol
Terry Pratchett, author best known for the Discworld series of novels.
And that’s why the billionaires are investing in spaceships… Seriously though, they are really buying “doomsday” properties to ride it out.
It seems pathetic to me that people are so obsessed with self-centered “survival” at any cost. I don’t want to live in a bunker or a ruined world, and I couldn’t possibly care less about “my lineage” or genetic material or whatever.
So you care about human survival but not about your own survival?!
well, that’s not precisely what I meant, but sure. I would much rather not see humanity reduced to apocalyptic conditions at all. But if that was to happen, I’d not want to live in a bunker or in space and I’d feel bad for people who did. I also mean that I’m not concerned with “I and my offspring must survive into the future” the way some people are. I don’t have any kids… that might change things.
It’s hard to be optimistic, or at least determined, about the future when the prospect is bleak. Climate change is getting worse and here we are just pretending it is business as always.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I’d want to bring a child into this kind of future. I’m not even sure how long I’ll last in this future.
You know how they talk about the Fermi Paradox, and the Great Filter? This might be it. We made it past nukes (for now), we may or may not make it past misaligned AI… but I’m not sure we can survive this.
It makes it difficult to get in the mindset of planning for one’s financial future. Retirement savings? Will I even live long enough to see those?
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That’s a false dichotomy. There are more power sources than coal and nuclear.
Also electricity generation is not the only source of emissions. Car traffic, cruise ships, aiplanes, all need to be reduced and can’t just be replaced by nuclear power.In theory, yes. In practice, nuclear plants that are shut off are almost always replaced with fossils, with the specific fossil fuel of choice often being coal.
Energy is not something where you can just pick one solution and run with it (at least, non-fossils, anyway). Nuclear is slow to ramp, so it usually takes care of baseline load. Renewables like wind and solar are situational, they mostly work throughout the day (yes, wind too, differential heating of earth’s surface by the sun is what causes surface-level winds) and depend greatly on weather. Hydro is quite reliable but it’s rarely available in the quantities needed. The cleanest grids on the planet use all of these, and throw in some fossils for load balancing, phasing them out with energy storage solutions as they become available.
You can’t just shoot one of the pillars of this system of clean energy and then say you never tried to topple the system, just wanted to prop up the other pillars. Discussing shutting off nuclear plants without considering the alternative is pure lunacy, driven by fearmongering, and propped up by no small amounts of oil money for a reason.
Replacing nuclear with renewables is simply not the reality of the situation. Nuclear and renewables work together to replace fossils, and fill different roles. It’s not one or the other, it’s both and even together they’re not yet enough.
So when you do consider the alternatives, moving from nuclear to the inevitable replacement, fossils, is still lunacy, just for other reasons: even if you care about nothing more than atmospheric radiation, coal puts more of it out per kWh generated, solely because of C-14 isotopes. Nuclear is shockingly clean, mostly due to its energy density, but also because it’s not producing barrels of green goo, just small pills of spicy ceramics. And if your point is accidents, just how many oil spills have we had to endure? How many times was the frickin ocean set on fire? How many bloody and brutal wars were motivated by oil? Is that really what a safer energy source sounds like to you, just because there are two nuclear accidents the world knows about, and a thousand fossil accidents, of which the world lost count already?
And deflecting to other industries is also quite disingenuous. Especially if your scapegoat is transportation, since that’s an industry that’s increasingly getting electrified in an effort to make it cleaner at the same logistical capacity, and therefore will depend more and more on the very same electrical grid which you’re trying to detract from.
nuclear plants that are shut off are almost always replaced with fossils, with the specific fossil fuel of choice often being coal.
Being from Germany, I have often read such arguments and at least here that is simply not true.
The decrease in nuclear power was accompanied by a decrease in fossil fuel.
Could that decrease have been larger if nuclear had been kept around longer? Possibly.
But if we are talking about building new power plants, the money is typically better invested in renewables. They’re faster to build and produce cheaper energy.Germany, specifically, was one of the worst offenders in this category. They do renewables at maximum capacity (like everyone else) but there’s still a massive gap to fill, and with issues of strategic dependence around hydrocarbons, the obvious answer to fill in the missing capacity was coal. Most of the time you get a mix of coal and natural gas, whichever is easier, but in Germany’s case that mix was almost entirely on the side of coal.
And without abundant hydro power, or an energy storage solution that could store a full night’s worth of energy even if the current deployment of renewables was able to generate that (which it’s pretty far from), there aren’t a lot more options. Germany’s strategy to shut off its nuclear plants out of fearmongering has been a heinous crime against the environment.
When oil companies love your green party you know you fucked up.
there’s still a massive gap to fill
in Germany’s case that mix was almost entirely on the side of coal
I’m assuming the ‘gap’ refers to the reduced nuclear capacity.
So you’re saying that Germany replaced the power previously generated by nuclear power almost entirely with coal power?Do you have ANY statistics to support that?
The only actual increase in coal energy I know of was an unplanned short time rise due to the war in Ukraine and the loss of gas imports.
Edit: Also the original argument was that coal and nuclear is a false dichotomy. Your own comment mentions a mix of coal and gas, mentions renewables, so clearly there are more than those two options, right?
There was a link in this very same thread (right here) that compares France to Germany. It’s a very simple case study: a country that does use nuclear pollutes 10x less per kWh than a country that actively destroyed its nuclear capability. It doesn’t get any more simple than that.
Unless your argument is that if Germany didn’t shut down nuclear it wouldn’t have deployed renewables, which I hope it isn’t because it would be a completely lunatic point to make, the situation is the same no matter how you twist the mental gymnastics. Germany’s grid is one of the dirtiest in Europe largely because of the lack of nuclear baseline, which, if it was kept, would make it one of the cleanest.
If your argument is that the renewables deployed in Germany should be counted towards replacing nuclear, then you must also accept that Germany failed to significantly cut into its fossil plants with renewables, which other countries managed to do in the same timeframe, because its entire renewable capacity had to go towards filling a gap the shutdown of nuclear left. It’s the same difference either way, and it suffers from the same fallacy that you’re pretty clearly intentionally making at this point: that you are unwilling to consider nuclear in the context of its alternatives, and are only willing to talk about it either in a vacuum, or in an idealistic situation where renewable capacity and energy storage are high enough that shutting off nuclear will not lead to an increased demand for fossils.
I’ve addressed that idealistic future in this very same comment section by the way: as soon as we reach a point where we can eliminate fossils and any renewables deployed cuts into nuclear’s share, as opposed to that of fossil plants, I’m against nuclear. But that’s not the reality of the situation yet. The decommissioning of nuclear plants in Germany was extremely premature, and harmed the environment, both with increased radiation and with gargantuan amounts of CO2 output.
Renewables > Nuclear > Fossils. It’s literally that simple. As long as we have fossils, replacing them with nuclear would be beneficial, and any decrease to nuclear capacity is a negative. If you can offset something with renewables, it should be fossils, not nuclear.
I’m saying that coal or nuclear is a false dichotomy, meaning there are other possible choices.
Comparing the carbon intensity of France to Germany does nothing to address this argument.Your last comment then stated that Germany has replaced coal with nuclear.
Comparing the carbon intensity of France to Germany does not address this argument either.If you want to show that Germany replaced nuclear with coal then you need to show the development of the energy mix in Germany and show where nuclear capacity decreases and coal increases.
Comparing Germany to France does not show the development in Germany.
And since both countries have a power mix with more than two energy sources, it certainly disproves that there are only two options.Here is a map of carbon intensity of electricity generation:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricityFrance has 85g/kWh, Iceland has 29g without nuclear.
Does every country have the same potential as Iceland? No.
Is nuclear the only alternative to coal? No.
Thank the good old Green Party of Germany! Restarting all those coal plants and shutting down nuclear reactors!
God, that’s so depressing. I genuinely don’t understand how we - any of us, in any country - are supposed to be okay with these political mechanisms filled with incompetent, out-of-touch, self-interested codgers. I’m not willing to take action, but when our entire world is being picked apart by the public sector and sold for parts by the private sector, what are we to do?
Lobbies. The German “green” party if fully funded by Russia, which has a vested interest in keeping coal, but especially nat gas (which despite the CO2 emission is still labelled as “green”) being the primary source of energy.
While lobbies are extremely powerful, I don’t understand how I, personally, am supposed to support the lobbies that represent my interests. Donating to PACs? I’m just not wealthy enough to make it make sense.
I think its a bit too late for that. 40% of wealth is owned by the top 1%, and even if the remaining 99% own 60, most of that wealth is not available, but used for everyday necessities. So no, you cant outbid our out PAC billionaires anymore. Too much trickle up economy has been going on for too many years
At least companies created incredible profits for a small number of shareholders for a short period of time. Totally worth it
Love that 2 days later the headline is still true 😂, but also it’s sad
Every person living in a democracy can make a difference with their VOTE. Only vote for people who have plans and intentions of bringing change. Vote at all levels, and vote whenever you get an opportunity. Ask what candidates in municipal elections think about the climate emergency. Organize. Talk to doubters. We can do this.
Sadly no, show me a political party that the us, china or India could realistically vote for that would substantially reduce emissions in the next 10 years
Now let’s see them actually do it, and hold the fascist scumbags trying to do a coup and commit genocide against trans people accountable in a court of law for that matter. ~Strawberry
It can and will. We need to get a bigger majority of political reps to really get everything rolling.
And how do we do that? And didn’t the dems already have a majority in congress before the mid-terms? I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but if they did, why didn’t they shut down the anti-trans bills then? ~Strawberry
There’s a LOT of fascists, so it’s going to be a battle. I don’t know how anyone can stop the RW from trying to push through bigot legislation other than keeping enough good people in a position to block and building on it. No giving up!
I just wish we could actually get good things to happen, rather than just stop bad things from happening at best, and even then often only temporarily or partially. ~Strawberry
Honestly voting now is to little too late. The Overton window isn’t anywhere near the point of allowing actually meaningful change and the 4-5 year cycle of voting is too slow. If we really want to solve anything, the change should be systemic. Still, voting is important.
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But what about the feelings of the rich people? They might not like that!
Dude the lockdowns started WW3. This narrative that only the rich people benefit from the economy is nonsense.
WFH is available to those who work at desks. Thinking that’s the whole economy is blind.
So many logical jumps here.
“WW3” ? wtf…
“narrative” that wasn’t mentioned.
The “whole economy” that also was not mentioned.
Try responding to the comment as written, not the voices in your head and it might appear more coherent to others.
- WW3: Russia has invaded Ukraine. Multiple countries are providing arms to the two sides.
- narrative: The comment before mine contained that narrative. If you can’t see it there I can’t help you see it.
- whole economy: what the poster referred to as “working from home” was actually “lockdown”. It was lockdown that cleared the pollution from the air. For some people it was working from home; for others it was being forcibly removed from their job
Your echo chamber is showing in how much you read into things. Wow.
Life Pro Tip for ya: Try engaging with the words on the screen as written not the voices in your head and your feed.
If voting worked, we would have solved this issue decades ago. You can vote for whomever you want, but at the end, no matter what they promise, they always end up doing nothing at all, because they are elected by using big oil donations.
Only a self-organized revolution can stop this madness, people in some nations are already blocking oil tankers and oil rigs. We can’t win by only voting, you can vote for a day every few years, but we need to fight this everyday. Take turns blocking streets so no oil driven trucks and cars pass, only this will make an effect.
Both. We need both. Voting matters. Grassroots organization matters. Now is absolutely not the time to give up on democracy. It is also absolutely not the time to give up on mass organizing at the grassroots. Both, we need both.
We need direct democracy. What we live in is no democracy at all, they choose for us and then we just pick the worst of two evils.
How the heck do you organize that as quickly and at as large of a scale as is needed for it to have a good chance of working out? ~Strawberry
By starting early enough and being persistent. It will take time, but we had this issues for decades and we will have it for decades more. Best time to start a revolution is yesterday, second best is today.
I don’t mean to be a doomer but we can’t. We’re passed the point of no return. The best we can do is organize so that we can reduce the amount of death from here on out.
I mean working out as in making sure it doesn’t get a significant degree worse than it already is? I know we’ve already passed the point where we can avoid any damage. ~Strawberry
I think it would require some extreme changes to the oil, industry amongst other things. We’d also have to be vigilant that those changes don’t disproportionately affect the global south.
Any idea what changes would be needed and what would be required to actually get those implemented? ~Strawberry
I don’t know everything we need to do, and/or by what means. I would like to think it can be all done peacefully but we have seen how oil executives will fight tooth and nail to keep their quarterly profit report line going up; so that may not be a viable way. We could all practice consuming less and reevaluating our lifestyles. Putting more thought into whether we really need to consume as much as we do is a good example.
The idea that nonviolent protest works has been the most harmful idea in history
Oh yeah? Tell that to Gandhi
Gandhi was a UK agent and delayed Indian independence by decades. Also he was a pedophile.
Thanks for those insights even if they’re not really relevant to what was being discussed
Yup, the only real revolution is a violent revolution.
And how the heck do we know that it have any reasonable chance of working out well and that it won’t be brutally suppressed or co-opted by reactionaries? And how would anyone even organize such a thing? ~Strawberry
We don’t have any idea if it will work out or if it’ll be snuffed out.
However, the lack of purposeful revolution will result in an aimless one, carried on not with thought and intent, but instead as a reaction to the immseration of the world’s people as we bake in and are flooded from our homes and cities.
The only option is to try as the current hegemony will not solve the problems we face for the problems are a direct result of their desired politics in action.
As for organizing one, that’s way too long of a conversation to occur here.
So we have no idea if it’s even remotely a good idea or if it’s likely to leave us in a similar position to before or worse, or how to do it? Great plan. ~Strawberry
I mean nonviolent protests DO work.
Non-disruptive DOES NOT work though.
MLK Jr didn’t peacefully sit in a park. They ran boycotts, sit ins, shut down streets, trespassed into white only areas, and drove businesses insane.
If MLK Jr was your enemy you were going to have a miserable time when he rolled into town.
Ghandi had people illegally burn documents and basically smuggled salt against all regulations.
MLK had the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam as looming threats. Gandhi is also the one who said “pacifism without violence is not pacifism, it is helplessness.” A violent counterpart to a non-violent movement helps by being the stick to the non-violent carrot.
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I can assure you the US Government is not quaking in their boots at the thought of Billy Bob’s basement arsenal.
Especially since those guys are pretty much all lard-asses. There’s a reason why every competent military on the planet emphasizes physical fitness before anything else; it’s because real combat --as opposed to playing paintball with your fatbody friends-- is one of the most physically and psychologically punishing activities known to man.
funny how 50 years ago everyone was worried we were plunging back into an ice age…
This is a phony bullshit talking point. The possibility of a cooling climate was briefly raised and entertained in mainstream media for about a year in the 1970s. It was never even remotely a scientific consensus view. Contrast that with human caused warming which has been settled science for decades. There is no comparison. As I said, it’s a bullshit talking point.
in other news my ultra conservative parents installed solar panels on their house, and for over a month now, they’ve been generating more electricity than they can use, feeding back into the system their surplus. when real world results are such, we can start using these incidents as examples of why it’s not only the morally correct thing to do (combat climate change and save our species), but also the economically savvy thing to do.
who knows what will be the final straw that breaks their stubbornness.
Shit my ultra conservative parents literally left Arizona because it just kept getting hotter every season. Yet they continue to deny climate change is manmade and a real threat to the global ecology.
Gotta love the pentecostals “it’s all just the end times!” Oh yeah, like it was when Paul wrote his letters, and like it was in the 1840’s when the millerites did their “math,” and like in the other dozen predictions since then that have all not come to pass.
I don’t know how many thousands of years can be the “last days” but something tells me it’s just whenever an individual who believes in it is currently living.
You mean they had a financial incentive to partake?
Your example just shows how economics incentives are designed to work, but that money does come from somewhere.
I’d love to get solar but it’s not economically viable to encur 20k expenses that will need over twenty years to pay off when that money can be used elsewhere
If someone gave me a Tesla I’d love it but I really don’t have the cash to get a car right now and even if I did the price of teslas and most electrics are so high it’s just not an option.
People think he solution here is to remove cheaper options but that won’t work it will just keep people holding on to beaters far longer.
If the economics make sense to change people will change but trying to shake people or force people to make economically disadvantage choices will never work long term
My wife got a used Prius for 13K or 17k a couple years ago, it’ll be more expensive now I believe, but the thing is most people don’t have 13k or 17k to spend on a car. If people can’t scrape together 500 dollars from their savings in an emergency, they aren’t going to be able to get a hybrid or electric car for a very long time, and all legislation that tries to push people in that direction benefits the rich, and penalizes the poor when they remove options the poor can afford.
Liberals talk shit while “ultra conservatives” quietly solve the problem using their own resources? What world is this?
