Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are surging "faster than ever" to beyond anything humans ever experienced, officials say
One of the major drivers of the exceptional heat building within Earth's atmosphere has reached levels beyond anything humans have ever experienced, officials announced on Thursday. Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found.
"Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever."
Luckily, the fossil fuel companies told us it isn’t anthropogenic and not to worry about this so we will be okay. /s
They’re also gunning for precedent of immunity from repercussions of wrongdoing through SCOTUS as we speak.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/09/fossil-fuel-allies-pressuring-supreme-court
Won't save them from the mobs and pitchforks.
I mean, that’s great and all, but you can’t reappropriate corporate funds with pitchforks.
We need punitive rulings and legislation.
BBQs would kill two birds with one stone: get rid of the stupid and feed the hungry masses.
That still doesn’t address the need for funds to be redistributed from oil companies to the alternative energy industry or carbon mitigation projects.
It’s not about revenge. We need to address the climate crisis, and they need to pay the fuck up.
So in other words, less Hannibal Lecter and more Robin Hood/Hackers/Mr. Robot?
That’ll work. A scoche of Superman 2/Office Space wouldn’t hurt either.
If you were mathmatically certain we were all going to die as a result of their actions, would your opinion still be the same?
I suppose I am more pessimistic when I look at graphs. It's not even about the most blatant damage, a lot of my concerns is based on the damage we aren't measuring. I think the game is over and we lost.
The pessimism is fair. I think the difference isn’t simply if we’re going to succumb to extinction, but also when and how. I’m going to die one day, regardless of climate change. If I have more money, I can extend that time and reduce suffering. The same can be said for humanity.
For example, we’re very likely to face food supply constrains first. Since most food corporations turn their profits into shareholder value, they won’t have the means necessary to combat the inevitable climate obstacles, and will immediately turn to governments for assistance. The same can be said for insurance corporations and coastal residents or those in wildfire zones.
you're writing, on the one hand, "it's not about revenge"
and i'm writing, on the other, that these oil-executives could make "moloch happy with a feast"
(i am not advocating for that specifically, but i am saying others could advocate for that)
in a way, I think we are actually saying the same thing, only you're saying it in terms of civil judgments and i'm saying it in terms of large hot statues of moloch filled with oil executives.
what if it's not 300 years until human extinction? what if it's 30?
Would you still be so civil?
Perhaps the scientists lighting themselves on fire to try to get us to notice the problem weren't protesting in a calm civil nice manner because it's really that bad.
What if we aren't saying the same thing? What if you are part of the problem with your civility?
My civility can successfully reappropriate funds. Your oil boiling will only pass the funds to their beneficiaries and land you in prison.
Beneficiaries? Reappropriation?
Although I appreciate all these big words, I am trying to point out that collapse could occur much sooner than we all realize.
I am not actually suggesting "oil boiling," I was using the idea of a hot statue of moloch filled with oil executives as a allagorical simile and metaphor for people being upset.
My point is, civility may become more blatantly meaningless when the biosphere becomes more visibly in a state of complete collapse, and then all the buddhism and jesusism and sitting under a tree or behind desks and calmly talking about words isn't going to undo a collapsed biosphere.
I get how jesusism and civil complaints and erudishun have a place in society, but many people may care about those things less when the biosphere reaches a tipping point and the collapse becomes undeniable.
You are saying the normal liberal socially acceptable thing, let's have civil respectable accountability and change the future. But in the future, with a biosphere collapse, it may not be the normal thing to say. I'm sure when the new tropes come, you'll be ready.
(Which is exactly when someone.... not me... rolls in a giant metal hollow statue of moloch, conveniently on a pair of wheels... ready as a symbol... of accepting the future)
based on the math, it's likely too late and we're all going to die. so given that, are you saying emotional catharsis of holding accountable the greedy religious idiots who have fucked the world is somehow bad?
some would disagree and say let's bring back moloch for all the religious flat-earth global-warming-isn't-real-bibletard-oil-avaricious-fucktwads who destroyed us all and start our own warming
some would say, if we're all going to die, shouldn't the global warming deniers at least make moloch happy with a feast?
i wouldn't say that, but some would
I agree, I don't think vigilante mob justice is the way to go. If the rule of law stops working for the people, they'll find another way, that's all I'm saying. The SCOTUS should do the right thing, appropriate assets should be seized for damages and distributed to those affected.
if the mob is big enough, and things are written down and symbols added to paperwork and ceremonial clothing added into the mix, is it really vigilantism still?
You can reappropriate board members' internal organs, though.
I think that's a nice idea of a statement like Jesus loving you unconditionally.
Not helpful really and probably not exactly true.
For that to be true you kinda need to get people to form a mob
I've also been told that despite emitting close to a third of the world's over all emissions, China produces less per capita than some developed countries so climate change is giving them a pass.
So that's a third taken care of right there!
That’s the scapegoat argument from US industry and politicians. The only reason the US is second to China in carbon emissions is because of the excessive outsourcing of US manufacturing to China.
The US is responsible for the most carbon emissions worldwide.
Who controls the manufacturing processes in China? Who accepts the manufacturing contracts? Who controls their energy grid?
Gotta keep that finger pointed, huh? I’m American, and I’m fully aware of our massive contribution to carbon emissions, and the responsibility that puts on our industry and consumers to reduce and mitigate. Pointing fingers at China gives American industry a false benchmark for comparison.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/
Implying that the US needs to not only retrofit their own grid but also China's is nonsensical...
China has benefitted economically from their emissions, they are the second largest economy in the world. They're not some backwater third-world country at this point, they can afford to take responsibility for getting their own emissions under control. They in fact must, because no one can afford to fix their problems for them.
Perhaps they could save on emissions by closing down some of their concentration camps.
Manufacturing creates emissions. Period. The US outsources over 84% of its manufacturing to China, so the emissions generated by said manufacturing are effectively US emissions. Climate scientists agree. Politicians and US industry deny responsibility.
https://www.scmr.com/wp_content/e2open_wp_outsourcing_mfg_011316.pdf
And not just the US. The whole western world effectively runs on Chinese coal.
And when China get around to outsourcing it all to Africa which is already on the way to being China's China, we'll still be running it all on fossil fuels.
You can try taxing everything based on its ecological footprint, sanctions on non-complying countries, etc, but all that will mean in the long term is prices will go up, people will feel poorer, and you'll be voted out in favour of somebody who doesn't give a shit.
That’s true. I’m only saying that when you add the carbon emitted by US industry in China to the total of domestic emissions, the US is the world’s leading contributor.
It’s time we stop allowing US industry to point the finger at China by parroting that falsity. The US could produce domestically and responsibly, or outsource to a climate responsible nation, while consumers become more mindful of offending products. That won’t happen as long as we continue to blame the nation making our products for making our products.
No...the manufacturing is occurring in China, it's literally coming out of chinese facilities that are controlled by the Chinese state and industry management. One could just as easily say it's China's responsibility to turn down manufacturing contracts based on their inability to take those contracts without delivering huge amounts of CO2.
It's entirely unrealistic to think the US can or should fix China's grid and industrial processes. It's literally a non-starter and is essentially just saying China is "owed" the right to pollute because other countries did in the past.
And even if you actually believed what you're claiming, what is the solution here? The US scales back manufacturing and craters the world economy (including for China's)? Or are they suppose to pay their own GDP out to China so the Chinese government doesn't have to scale back their imperial ambitions and focus on solving domestic issues that are destroying the planet? Where do you realistically think China is going to put that hypothetical payday if they're already unwilling to scale back their own wasteful, ancillary domestic programs?
You're trying to pretend China isn't the second largest economy in the world, it's just not convincing. It's way more efficient for countries that can afford to fix their own emissions, like China and the US, to do so and then help poor, developing countries that actually need financial and material support meet their climate goals.
Pretending the US can fund the entire world's transition is, frankly, idiotic because your same backwards-looking logical gymnastics can be applied to almost every country that is smaller than the US. It's an unserious solution.
All I’m saying is that climate scientists confirm that US manufacturing demands are creating a large portion of the CO2 from China, so the US should stop using them as a scapegoat, and accept responsibility as the world’s largest contributor to climate change.
It doesn’t need a wall of text to combat.
There is no "scapegoat", it's politically and financially impossible for the US to "take responsibility" for China's grid emissions, even tankie's should be able to understand that hard reality.
It's the Chinese energy production that's driving climate change, what they are choosing to do with that energy is irrelevant, whether it's manufacturing for other countries or running a billion surveillance cameras, it's their unsustainable grid that creates the emissions. The US cannot force China upgrade their power grid.
We could produce domestically and responsibly, outsource to a climate responsible nation, or reduce consumption of offending products. It’s on us, and pointing the finger at China for making our Walmart plastic junk doesn’t address anything. It further obfuscates the problem and justifies our current emissions as “2nd largest” contributor when we in fact lead the world in emissions.
Yup, you're almost there, now what does that make China then? What makes producing Walmart plastic junk more acceptable in a climate responsible nation?
What puts the actual CO2 into the atmosphere? The product itself or the process and grid powering the creation of that product?
To solve the climate crisis the ~1 billion people in global north will absolutely need to significantly bail out the global South. There is no clear development path that doesn't go through heavy fossil fuel usage, and it should go without saying we probably can't even improve the living standard of another billion people, let alone seven billion without basically just giving them money and technology to skip the fossil fuel step. Countries in the global north have actually agreed to this framework, it's just that noone has actually made good on the promise yet. So... not only is it not nonsense... it's an active dispute between developed countries and developing countries.
China is not the global south, the hell are you on?
So you're essentially saying exactly what I was criticizing at the very beginning, that China gets a free pass for their emissions and are entitled to pollute, that the climate will forgive them and the US will somehow magically save the day and bail out the second largest economy on the planet while China ramps up their own unsustainable consumer culture.
What are you knuckleheads going to be saying as China continues to shift from manufacturing useless shit for other countries and is instead producing the same shit for their own population? It's literally already happening right this very moment. Is the climate going to give them a pass for those emissions too because "US bad"?
Your politics have made your conception of climate change completely incoherent. The climate simply does not care if China really really wants to be an empire and feels that they're entitled to unsustainable growth. The gas they are producing in their country, both in manufacturing and in their other sectors, is the single largest concrete thing fucking the planet up. The US could finish switching their manufacturing chains away from China tomorrow and China would still be producing massive amounts of emissions.
When do we eat the rich and begin sabotaging these assholes private jets?
Sorry best we can do is misunderstand the root causes and misdirect our rage to marginalized people and turn to full blown fascism
Which in turn leads to war, which destroys the environment tenfold, making sure even the slim chance of humanity coming through this as anything resembling civilisation even slimmer. We're thoroughly fucked. But hey, we created sooo much value for shareholders!
And they're banning tracking private jets.
There's gotta be people who have nothing to lose who are willing to start doing crazy fucked up shit, even if dying in the process.
I wonder how many there are, and what the spark would be for them to start going nuts.
But maybe also, there just aren't that many willing or rock bottom yet. Maybe we're mostly still comfortable, albeit unhappy. Might take a few more decades of business as usual.
Bread and circuses.
Most of those people are on the right fighting the valiant fight against 15 minute cities.
You can start now.
Fun fact: Teton County, Wyoming has the most billionaires per capita. Their jets are parked at the airport.
Do with this information what you will.
I like the cut of your jib.
Wait... we aren't supposed to eat them yet?
...uh oh
And stop dredging the ocean
Because although likely immensely satisfying, it will not actually accomplish that much on it's own.
Uh-oh
The source:
https://research.noaa.gov/2024/04/05/no-sign-of-greenhouse-gases-increases-slowing-in-2023/
7 degrees Fahrenheit would only cost like $20 a month more than what I already pay, if that.
Until someone finds a way to combat climate change that also grows the GDP and makes all of the lines go up then what's the point of taking any action? Profit is the only thing that matters above the lives of any human or animal. If it's not profitable to fight climate change how can that be a good decision? Lol imagine making a decision that's not profitable. Imagine doing something that doesn't make the line go up! This is why nobody takes scientists and liberals and leftists seriously. Do you even realize the profit impact of what you're suggesting? GDP must only go up. UP UP UP
It seems like our only hope is a breakthrough in carbon capture.
Carbon capture is a fools errand.
It takes just as much energy to get the carbon out of the air as it did to put it there in the first place. You can’t fight thermodynamics.
So unless we discover cheap, plentiful fusion in the next few years, or dedicate half a continent to solar and wind farms, we aren’t getting back any more carbon than we burn already.
Nuclear and solar would like a word. My entire life we've been told we can't have nuclear because NIMBY and "decade to build."
We'd be swimming in available power without fossil fuel level carbon release if we had just done it.
Deku tree
You expect me to pay for that with MY taxes when I can already barely afford anything because capitalist business owners are sucking the wealth generated by my productivity into their own bank accounts?
Facetiousness aside you can maybe tell I have some other ideas about economic changes which might help :)
Yeah but any economic changes you suggest will be called the new world order and they'll never go through
Like planting trees? And stopping chopping down the rainforests?
100% this. Corporate incentives need to change. Money is the only primary corporate incentive right now, everything else is secondary and works towards that primary goal. Without a change that puts that goal in check, it will increasingly bring ruin on a global scale.
Devalue money.
Climate scientists should have lit themselves on fire in public places to warn us.
It's their fault!
If only they'd have said something. Repeatedly. For the last 50 years or so.
Oh well, too late now. Better burn a bit more so oil execs can finish the game with a high score.
Multiply that by 3 and you're nearly correct. The first "quantitative prediction of global warming due to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide" was published in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, building on research from John Tyndall as far back as 1859. Source: Wikipedia, but with appropriate citations to the works in question.
Y’all are all forgetting something really important, a lot of people really wanted to make a lot of money. So it’s totally cool, they’ll definitely figure that problem out in the future
It's Svante Arrhenius and John Tyndall's fault for not lighting themselves on fire publicly 150 years ago to warn everyone.
it's so true. i love your "high score" comment. we're all fucked right now because of this and there's no going back.
i wish i knew you in real life
I get that it's a bit inappropriate to be flippant and make jokes but if I worried about this every time I saw a headline about it I'd die from my adrenal glands exploding and melting a hole through the back of my computer chair.
I think the only thing that's going to save us from climate change is another ice age.
And we and our children, and all of our grandchildren, and great great grandchildren, will be long dead by then.
But an ice age would be a considerable change in climate.
That's true.
I mean more like, the only way I suspect we'll get back to pre industrial levels of co2 is with another ice age. Because I doubt civilization as we know it is going to survive long enough to fix it.
This one is a much better explanation and unfortunately i tend to agree with you here that humanity will not solve this in time.
... unless, maybe, we apply drastic geo - engineering methods that would solve only part of the problem.
And so, i expect a sharp decrease in humanity's population over the next few decades.
And unfortunately most of that population reduction is going to be people that were not even hooked on fossil fuels to begin with.
As well as all of the other innocent life on this planet that is suffering right now and will continue to suffer.
i don't know if it works like that. if you take a petri dish and put bacteria in it with an unlimited amount of glucose (a proxy for oil), colony collapse happens because of pollution
but the pollution doesn't go away later and the population doesn't come back to pre-collapse levels ever
Bold of you to assume we aren't largely sterile as a species by the time the current generation has great grandchildren.
I'm actually not assuming but forgetting.
Because the only thing that scares me more than climate change is microplastics. And I don't often have the spoons to let myself think about it.
Understandable, spoon shortage sucks. 🫤
My first guess on the title was : "this should be caused by a positive feedback with forest fires in the loop".
...so, I went and read this Wikipedia article :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedbacks
... and it says :
But it also says that this one is not the most important feedback loop.
What do you want from me?
I already gave up everything, life is just work eat(if lucky i get to eat enough) sleep.
You ate up the value of my income and keep making everything more expensive while not adjusting my wage AND telling me to work harder. Fuck no.
You fix it, i don't have the means.
I feel like this was always the plan. Put the plebian frog in the pot of 9-5 corporate hellscape and slowly boil it. We're all too exhausted to fight.
this is exactly why we should have a worldwide 4 day work week
because no one has the energy to be a decent person or improve the world when you struggle 5 days, are exhausted and recovering 1 day, and spend 1 day doing errands and bills and getting ready for the next 5 miserable days
We are all going to die!
Not all of us. Realistically not me (46) or my kids (13, 11, 11) because we are Canadian but in the next 59 years? A lot of poor and brown ppl are going to die and we are going to collectively shrug. I'm genuinely curious what is going to be the event to push rich white countries to act.
Long story short, enjoy the ride. We don't know what the fuck we're doing.
I hate to break this to you, but you’re not immortal. You will die.
Didn't you read their comment? They're Canadian.
TIL that being Canadian has granted me immortality. Although I am part First Nations, so maybe that cancelled it out?
Luckily I live in Scotland now so instead of everyone being able to see I'm part native, I'm just another white guy. Was a real shock when I had the "you fuckin white people" line thrown at me though.
It is said that after a long life, Canadians yearn for the Earthly Paradise of Valinor. I assume that's somewhere in Scotland.
Moving is what got you.
The boy with psychic powers (of whom we are all very fond) that rules Canada is the source of immortality. You've moved from his sphere of influence.
Only Canadians with Geese ancestry have immortality, their genes are just too angry to die
If you're FN you're fucked. Can I interest you in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Lol
Edit: oh shit wait what are residential schools? Almost like we done fucked up!
Ok so how does this play with the fact that if you die in Canada you die in real life?
That's only if you're not Canadian, as soon as you get PR status the immortality kicks in.
Don't need to be immortal. Just need to outlive the rest of you fuckers. Then I might be able to finally have some peace and quiet. Lol
sings Descending...unrelenting...beauty of annihilation...
In all fairness, it is beautiful.
All those bombs and planes and tanks and drones and machinery of death emit CO2 - also the burning rubble and bodies
Look around, we're killing ourselves at every possible opportunity
It's the factories in china, dude. Just like it has always been.
At least lower your phone if you are going to bring china into this. China is producing for us all.
We seriously need to lower consumption and sacrifice our way of life
It's not regular people that are polluting it's the big ass companies. Regular people can't stop that.
that's not true
you could start a "no new cell phone" movement to decrease consumption aimed at only purchasing old technology
you could start the movement
if you have the western lifestyle, with cobalt mining for phone parts and wars for gasoline, you are part of this, as easy as it is to claim otherwise
the problem is that it's likely mathematically and ecologically not possible to stop the trends at this point. literally, the only way to save the plan would be if something like bird flu started spreading with a 99 percent death rate, killing over half the population and bringing the economy of demanding energy no matter the environmental cost to a halt
but they are already making vaccines for bird flu
so, it's pointless to fight now, just try to act surprised when we all die of environmental catastrophe
perhaps as the older religious generations die off, newer generations will elect a global leader that will destroy all religious beliefs at any cost, resulting a purge on non-scientific thinking
Yeah cause only china has factories.
Who does the vast majority of all manufacturing? Who does the vast majority of coal burning?
Check this out https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
Spain has begun the planning for 100 human arcs (salvavidas as they call them). Each arc is a complex built into one of several mountain sides and each will hold 1000 people with room for hydroponics etc. The plan is that construction begins by 2030 and the lottery is held near 2037 when they’re nearing completion. But if you’re not a citizen or resident of Spain you’re not eligible for the lottery. Everyone else will fry unless your country is planning something similar.
That's hilarious. They could put a large dent in the climate problem for the same investment. Instead they're going full dystopian sci fi.
The reason that climate efforts are being largely ignored at the top levels is because most world leaders have had it made known to them that climate is now beyond repair and we are in a death spiral. We are more or less in a countdown to collapse as each year climate worsens. The “efforts” being humored are largely pacification strategies for the masses. The masses are also self-soothing by embracing right-wing fascism.
The best gift you could bequeath your children at this point is a plot of land in a secluded cool forested place with a well and some cleared area for growing food.
On that id rather die with everyone living outside than the callous fuckers in their mountains. Ain't no I in team.
This fills me with anxiety and dread.
"It's fine"
...it is not the fall that hurts after all /s
Oopsie poopsie.
I am so fucking glad I don't have kids.
Burn baby burn it’s the disco inferno
https://youtu.be/u5lSeYd_riw?si=oOKOcSwpFt6H9Lcm
Americans gonna drag the whole world into hell with them.
Really? Just America? Ok.
Yep. China's leaving us so far behind in green investment that America's banning theyre EVs because theyre so affordable they put our ICE SUV sales at risk.
Moving to EVs is great, all countries are following similar trends and it is a good step in the right direction, but China has a long way to go before becoming a bastion of ecological absolution. Shanghai's fog of pollution is something everyone should experience.
Remember china has the second largest population on the planet, cumulative metrics are useful but miss the bigger per capita picture. Check out the wikipedia article on ev usage and note the per capita numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country