New record set for world's hottest day - as scientist warns milestone is a 'death sentence'
au.news.yahoo.com
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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These temperatures will kill people. They will cause crop failures. The death, hunger, and hardship will cause people to leave their homes to come to more habitable regions.
But there will still be habitable regions for generations still to come. A lot has been lost, and more will be before we fix what we broke, but plenty can still be saved as long as we don't just give up
So would you say morale is a really important factor in our global warming response?
Maybe these scientists should stop talking about hopelessness and death sentences and start talking about challenges and hardship.
Depending on who you ask it's the most important. Once people are educated they can make informed decisions themselves. Just do what you can and are willing to do and don't wait for the governing bodies to change their pace. The IPCC report actually contains solid Data on what individual behavior change is most effective, this article lists a few things https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-what-does-the-ipcc-mean-by-choice-architecture-and-can-it-change-our-behaviour-12582739
Now we watch in horror as corporate lobbyists and their lackeys prevent such measures from being implemented at any wide scale, especially in countries and regions that produce the most pollution and still choose to keep fracking and all that. ~Strawberry
They are unlikely to actually stop any individual from becoming vegan or at least making an effort to become one. The attitude that it is to öate and we can't do anything about the catastrophe is precisely the feeling they are hoping for so we continue to consume their products. You can however at any time just stop.
Isn't the article talking about systemic solutions rather than just heavily individualized ones? ~Strawberry
I disagree.
People need to be angry. We're being murdered and we must defend ourselves.
So you have all the moral justification of a person fighting for his life here? That's a pretty significant level of moral authority to wield.
Yes.
I won't die quietly.
I mean, pretty much anything goes then right? Like, if I crush a puppy's skull with my foot it's a horrible thing to do. But if that was the only way I could avoid dying people would understand.
So basically being in fear of your life means "I get to do anything to anyone and it's justifiable"
Well, no, I'm not that greedy for life. After a certain point it's not worth it and I'll just make it quick and painless. Life isn't always preferable to death, I'd need to be able to live with myself afterwards!
Damn I am. I’ll rip the belly out of a live kitten if it’s truly the only way to live. I’ve been afraid for my life before and I never blame anyone for doing what it takes to survive.
What I take issue with is the level of certainty that such an abstract, complex thing is the same class of threat as someone firing a gun at you or a lion charging you.
Elevating long chains of logical reasoning, and not applying a mitigating layer of uncertainty to each step to reflect the possibility of mistakes or misinterpretations, so that full-on motivation comes out the other end, strikes me as unwise.
You're treating the threat as something abstract, like there aren't specific people who are to blame for destroying the world. As if it's no one's fault, so violence falls on anyone in the name of survival. Even puppies and kittens lol
I think we have to treat climate change as the same class of threat as someone shooting at us, and that means identifying the shooters and .. "disarming" them.
But is abstracted away. That’s what abstract means. You think some specific person is out there endangering your life. If they are about to murder you, then I’d support you literally killing them. I’m for self defense. I just think it needs to be a clear and present danger to be justified.
There are specific people who are, together, responsible. The oil execs that chose to cover up the truth about global warming, the meat industry execs who did the same, the hucksters that sell the lie of carbon sequestration and ethanol fuel and hydrogen fuel as solutions, the investors that continue to pump money into oil exploration projects, and the politicians that have stopped any meaningful progress from happening. There are, in fact, individual people that we can point to and say "they are the problem" - it's not abstract.
We have enemies and they're killing us.
What about me? I drive a car, have a carbon footprint, etc.
How is my own (and your) responsibility for global warming different than theirs?
And don’t say “they profit off it”. You and I both profit off it too. We live in a veritable heaven compared to those in pre-industrial times. We inherited and enjoy enormous wealth that can be traced to the burning of fossil fuels.
And this is the sort of thinking someone comes to when they don't take power dynamics into account. ~Strawberry
Our contribution is miniscule compared to our enemies, and we only contribute what we have to because they sabotaged all alternatives! They killed public transportation, they made neighborhoods and cities unwalkable, they turned cyclists (like me!) into 2nd class citizens of the road, and more.
I'd sell my car if I could. I can't and it's their fuckin fault!
We are not the same as them. They are the enemy and they must be stopped before they kill us all.
So it’s inaccurate to say that it’s a death sentence?
I wonder if there’s any loss of trust that results from saying false things?
There are people alive today who will witness entire countries disappearing beneath the ocean, so it's not wrong to describe the climate crisis as a death sentence of sorts.
It's difficult to explain how dire things have already gotten and how much worse they will keep getting while still acknowledge that even worse outcomes can still be averted.
The death of some land I guess?
I mean, being able to articulate your argument is a key point of determining whether it's a position worth defending right?
I think you should get really concrete about what exactly's going wrong and how it weighs against other things happening in the world. Like with COVID we've got numbers. With obesity and crack we've got numbers. With tsunamis we have numbers. And they're pretty well-defined (despite some controversy in attributing deaths to covid).
What are the numbers with regard to climate change? I think it's much harder to define a climate change death, or a climate change life disruption, than it is to define a heart attack death, or a crack addiction.
I feel like that would be easier if we clearly defined it. Like "5 million people have lost their homes to rising sea levels, but if we slow it down we can prevent another 2 billion from losing theirs".
It's not that hard to conceive when you get it defined clearly.