For the fourth day in a row, Earth has broken or equalled its hottest average temperature record

Sam BOT@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 1999 points – For the fourth day in a row, Earth has broken or equalled its hottest average temperature record
abc.net.au

The planet's average temperature hit 17.23 degrees Celsius on Thursday, surpassing the 17.18C record set on Tuesday and equalled on Wednesday.

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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.

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.

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.

Of course there is a limit. The question is how high it is. For instance, at high enough CO2 concentrations, the greenhouse effect doesn't get much stronger anymore. Also, the more CO2, the faster it dissapears by eroding rocks. That happens on a geological timescale, though.

If we did something to lower temperature, I'd be very worried about the CO2 concentration's other effect: feeling like suffocating all the time.

The problem is when the temps come back down, climate deniers will go “WhAt HaPpEnEd?”.

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: yesterday picked up 10 large kitchen trash bags

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.

Sure, but it's our fault too, at least in part - we're the one's buying the stuff that the corporations produce. Of course some of it is due to there not being any alternatives (for example decent public transport so you don't have to own a car) but some of it is also because we actively choose cheaper products, buy new things instead of second-hand and so on.

What we need (which we all seem to agree on) is more regulations so that corporations have to their part and then the individuals simply won't have the option to choose the more polluting product.

Corporate footprints are done on our behalf, in order to manufacture the goods and services we buy.

The real problem is that "vote with your dollars" fundamentally doesn't work because human nature is selfish and short-sighted, so regulation is necessary.

Amazing work! I would also like to note that the biggest contributors to the problem are corporations. Individuals couldn't out pollute corporations if they tried.

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.

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.

You’re on point. That’s why Reduce is the first of the three R’s. I was educated to the horrors of dairy farming a couple years ago and just stopped buying milk completely, switching to nut milk then finally oat milk. But I still eat cheese and yogurt. I stopped eating steak every other week but I still have one a few times a year. And since it’s so infrequent, I don’t mind buying the really nice cuts. So it became quality over quantity.

It doesn’t have to be a binary choice. You can still enjoy the tasty things. But a reduction in volume and frequency will still have a big impact if enough people do it.

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.

It’s like saying municipal water has shit in it if it is treated water.

Water? Awful stuff, don't drink it. Fish fuck in it.

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)

It doesn't. Unless you live in US. US food is full of shit no matter what you eat, lol.

btw note that the carbon footprint of one person’s lifetime is equiv to 1 second of worldwide factory emissions (source: kurzgesagt)

I love kurzgesagt but this comparison is.... it's like two abstractions multiplied.

"sooner than expected", "tipping point", "nonbinding resolution", "climate scientists warn"

Everything is fine...

I feel like one sad thing is you could go back ten or twenty years and it was the exact same and it not much has really changed. The same warnings that everybody has seen but nothing has really come of it. The same almost pointless resolutions that almost no country sticks to. We have more wind turbines and a few electric cars, but mostly it's the same non-action as before.

I remember reading a geography textbook at school twenty years ago and it was warning of climate change but here I am two decades later and everything is basically heading in the same terrifying direction as it was then.

A toast to everyone in this thread that decided to not have kids! 🥂

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.

Yeah, it's great to know we'll die off!

I mean, it’s also great that we’re not leaving behind offspring to have progressively poorer lives until it’s just Event Horizon: Earth.

If we all had this point of view, that’d be the end of us.

The consequences of inaction in the late 20th and early 21st centuries will be the end of us. 😀 To hope otherwise or lament over is just wasting time. Enjoy life before it gets worse!

That’s a rather pessimistic view. Yes, it will be hard as fuck. Yes, unfortunately it will be the end of some us. But I think we as a race will prevail and I don’t think simply giving up right now is an option.

I do agree the human race will prevail, but honestly I just wish we didn't. like wtf just look around us and all the shit we caused.

that's one of the biggest reasons for my decision not to

I'm never having kids. Had things been easier, maybe I would've had kids but it's hard enough to look out for myself as it is and having kids anyway like many people do is the worst move I could possibly make. Not having kids will have consequences against the absolute tyrants in charge of it all some day. Not having kids in protest to the system (or at least until things improve for the common person) is just doing your patriotic duty at this point.

As a side benefit, I also have all the money and free time to spend with furry children instead!

I want to have kids. But bringing them into a poisoned and dying world where they have to earn the right to exist? That just seems cruel

If we get past the next few decades, I'll bring them into a world worth living in

Ditto. Not that I'd have the opportunity, but decided I'd only adopt if I desired to raise a child.

That's a good call! If I ever get the hankering to have kids I'll just do that. We do that with dogs (rescue), why not humans?

Exponentially increasing heat is when toddlers amirite

(also you should still adopt kids)

This summer is the coolest summer you'll experience in the rest of your life.

Nah, that'll be 2026-2027 some time. The overall trend takes a decade or so to exceed the smaller scale ~3yr oscillations.

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Reminds me of a story I read about how if you had a can of food and bacteria got into it, and every day the bacteria doubled in size, and somehow this bacteria had conversations with itself with all of the other bacterias in the can about how long the food would last.

How long would it be before everything ran out?

At some point, the smart bacteria would stand up and say, "Hey, my fellow Amoebas, we've used 1/4 of all of the food in the can! If we're not careful and if we don't manage our resources we will run out of food!"

And the politician bacteria would say, "Don't worry, everyone, we have 3 times as much food as we've ever used in all the months of our existence still in the can!"

And the bacteria was fruitful, and multiplied.

And when they hit the halfway mark the next day, the smart bacteria would stand up and say, "Hey my fellow Amoebas, we've used half of all of the food in the can! If we're not careful and if we don't manage our resources we will run out of food!"

And the bacteria politicians would say, "Everyone! Don't worry! We still have as much food left as we have used in our entire existence to this point!"

And the bacteria was fruitful, and multiplied.

And then another day passed, and all of the bacteria died.

There's also a good example of exponential change described using a doubling drop of water in The Power of Compounding

Meh.

It's doubling each step.

If course it's at 1/(2^n) of the final volume at n steps before the final step.

  • At half of its final volume one step before the end
  • a quarter of its final volume two steps before the end
  • an eighth of its final volume three steps before the end
  • a sixteenth of it's final volume four steps before the end

Mathematically it's obvious and straightforward but the point is that it's not intuitive from a typical person's subjective perspective. It's easy to underestimate or dismiss the rate of change until a situation becomes unmanageable.

Graphic of ice cover for the Antarctic is truly terrifying

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Meanwhile China is building two new coal power plants per week.

...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.

https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electricity-review-2023/#chapter-6-country-and-region-deep-dives-china

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.

Stop whatabouting and fix your own shit.

Seems hard, no thanks.

China's also building a lot of nuclear plants and what they claim will be the biggest nuclear plant in the world.

Not that it negates building coal plants, but it's not a simple issue. They're growing faster than the energy industry can keep up with.

And like others have said, the rest of the world is at fault too. Germany shut down all of its nuclear plants, which forced them to go heavy into coal. And not just any coal, but lignite which is considered the dirtiest of all types of coal.

Germany in particular pisses me off so much. No country bought into the fear mongering about nuclear energy after Fukushima as much as Germany did. Shutting down nuclear power plants in the face of climate change is so incredibly irresponsible. For all of their faults, I give a lot of credit to the US and France for not shying away from using nuclear energy.

cough Italy cough

Ugh, I knew a lot of other European countries overreacted to Fukushima, but I hadn't heard much about Italy specifically. Sounds like they didn't have as much nuclear energy to start with (unlike Germany), but they had big plans to increase their usage of nuclear energy to around a quarter of their energy grid until they halted it all in response to Fukushima. The Wikipedia page about it is tragic.

And like others have said, the rest of the world is at fault too. Germany shut down all of its nuclear plants, which forced them to go heavy into coal. And not just any coal, but lignite which is considered the dirtiest of all types of coal.

That's a weird way of spelling wind and solar

https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=quarter&year=-1

Looks like coal has increased from 2021 to 2022 as nuclear decreased.

Nothing else happened at all in 2022 that could explain this, and it is definitely the trend. /s

How fucking stupid do you think people are?

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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.

China produces a lot of stuff. The whole capitalist consumer drive force is world wide. Not sure what you expect to be able to do though.

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.

But I wanna blame China.

Same same same. It’s all their fault for manufacturing all of our shit and still having half of the CO2 emissions per capita compared to the US.

A total of 106 GW of new coal power projects were permitted, the equivalent of two large coal power plants per week .

The size of coal-fired power generating units varies widely; the actual number of permitted units was 168 at 82 different plant sites.

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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.

Millennials had the honour to participate in wars for pil. The coming generations will have the pleasure to kill over fresh water

Also climate refugees will become a regular thing, people doing anything to pass borders as it’s life or death for particularly exposed nations. This is already happening but will no doubt get even worse, breeding even more extremism and nationalism that bring onto a whole other slew of issues as a package deal of extreme nationalism. Fun times.

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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.

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.

We are not that special. And if we were, it wouldn't matter anyway. We are just going to kill ourselves.

Until we find life on other worlds we can't reallt say that for sure

Except we can... it's an infinite universe with countless worlds just like our own. Life in the cosmos isn't a possibility, but a certainty.

What other species do you know that can potentially travel the universe and perhaps even bring life to other planets? How is that not special?

Keep an eye on congress 👀

I don't think it will render us extinct.

Oh, it probably will, though the memory of us may live on after that.

In fact, arguably it happened long ago, and we're currently in an echo of the past in a very immersive history lesson simultaneously teaching the grandeur and folly of humanity.

I mean, even if we went extinct tomorrow our mark on this planet is permanent because of all the damn plastic, much of which will probably fossilize. Even still, the extreme weather and extinction events on the way I don't think are enough to end us, there will probably be some stragglers that struggle by in the ashes of the old world if nothing else.

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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.

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).

metals dont disappear tho, they can be salvaged from the ruins of the previous civilization. but i agree coal/oil are a problem.

Good luck relying on the coin flip that civilisation gets to a point it can make use of those before they all oxidise, metals don't last forever, nor do they maintain the capacity for all applications due to quality.

Yep. I'm a mechanic, no expert of course but what I know from experience? Metals aren't eternal. They rust, they corrode, they oxidize (lol) they break in strenuous (or light) application and just in general aren't guaranteed. Nothing is. Wiring constantly fails. Batteries go dead. To top it off, we don't make things to last anymore. Everything seems to be made to last just until the warranty expires. Personally I consider every single product that isn't built to last as long as possible an utter waste of resources. I think it should be illegal to manufacture items that will only last a short time. Companies use up resources like we have an infinite supply so they can profit. Making vehicles that can hit 160-200 mph that will only ever travel on roads with a speed limit of 70-80 tops should be illegal. Hell, racing in general just shouldn't be legal, wasting all of these previous finite resources to go fast? All that time, all that technology for something useless? It's all so ridiculous.

I work on vehicles/equipment that are 30-50 years old that are much more reliable than the vehicles of the past 20 years. Simpler to work on too. If we ever do truly see Armageddon and lose the world as we know it, people are going to experience hell trying to get vehicles to run. Even the best mechanics I know can't fix many of the issues the new vehicles present without vehicle specific programs that the manufacturers won't release to the public. They're making vehicles/equipment that people won't be able to even use much less repair if society collapsed.

Yet an old truck from the 70's? Almost anyone can learn to work on them and you don't need any fancy tools to get them running. Can do damn near anything you need to with some vice grips, a flathead, a christen wrench and maybe a hammer.

It's getting bad. We would have had enough resources to sustain us for many, many years to come. Silver, gold, platinum? We mined and used most of it for what, jewelry?

Steel, iron etc? Building skyscrapers for millionaires to live in at overly expensive rates?

People are homeless, people are starving, people are living in poverty

And we had all the resources needed for a utopian civilization but traded it all so a small percentage of the population could live like Kings.

I work on vehicles/equipment that are 30-50 years old that are much more reliable than the vehicles of the past 20 years.

I think you're confusing durability for reliability here.

30-50 year old vehicles will go forever, but usually need small repairs fairly often. Modern vehicles will do 200k-300k km with no problems, and then everything bad starts happening, because it's not like anyone maintains them.

So the 30-50 year old ones are more durable, but the newer ones are more reliable. Until they've reached the end of their useful life, that is.

There's also survivorship bias. All the crapily designed cars from 30-50 years ago are long scraped while some of the well designed ones are still around. With "current" cars you see the whole spectrum.

Absolutely. There are entire marques you don't see anymore.

Human self-sufficiency in space--- what's needed for any real redundancy-- is for sure >50 and probably >250 years away.

Space settlements are going to need support from Earth for the conceivable future.

Even a destroyed planet from global warming or the middle of the ocean is infinitely more hospitable than the space environment.

On current course, the first planet we'll have to terraform is Terra.

Humans treat this planet like we've got someone else to go.

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.

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.

A little bit of carbon fiber, resin, and a $30 Logitech wireless controller, and you can explore the bottom of the ocean and see the Titanic up close.

Honestly, I kind of agree. I travelled a little bit here or there when I was younger, nothing too crazy, only been out of my continent once in my life. I'm definitely starting to get a bit more wanderlust, but it's so expensive to travel so far away lol

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.

It's not harsh, it's just illustrative of a view.

Feel happy for the thousands or millions of generations who will never have to suffer being born.

Nah, we have already exploited everything that can be easily exploited. Look at the effort we need to get new oil or metal deposits. Humans 2.0 will struggle to build basic machinery.

I've always thought the primary goal should be that of making this species a space fairing one.

What? Why??

Because ultimately if we don't leave this rock we go extinct. Guaranteed.

I dunno, man. A species using up all the resources available in its isolated home, only to develop the ability to use those stolen resources to go to other nearby bodies and use up their resources as well... Makes me think of a virus. If that's how our species survives, I'd rather we didn't.

Even if we were able to live in complete harmony with the planet and not exhaust our resources we'd undoubtedly go extinct for one reason or another. I'm not necessarily talking about resources.

But yeah, what you've described is how we're existing at present anyway.

I think that achieving space colonization will only happen if we bring this world to the brink of destruction and the 5 people with all the money at that time decide to spend it all to escape. If we do achieve harmony it'll be after those guys have already left to go destroy another world, and those left behind who survive the millennia of desolation as the world falls apart and puts itself back together again finally get the picture and treat their home with respect. And even then all it'll take is one self-centered, power-hungry person being born for the exploitation to come back again.

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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.

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Cool. Nothing to see here. Totally fine. It’s not like western Washington is needing AC in the summer every year now for the first time in literally ever.

Should we take a moment to recognise that battling climate change with air conditioning is not a long-term winning strategy??

So just broil to death in the name of 'climate religion'?

Oh no... people in the PNW might not have great weather all the time anymore.

Oh no...

All the time lol? I guess if you like 9 months of grey full sky’s then sure.

Doesn't matter, I'd be dead before the world ends. - some asshole probably.

Just about the entire ruling class who refuse to give up power and retire.

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?

Says who?

Carl Sagan said-

https://thetattyjournal.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/the-astonishing-evidence-that-made-carl-sagan-believe-reincarnation-deserves-serious-study/

Woopty doo. As if anyone should ever give a fuck about what some random thinks about reincarnation. He isn’t an authority on any subject.

Show me the science. If you can’t then that’s more then enough for me to say you’re all full of shit.

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 am one of these "assholes". Explain to me why I should care. Don't want kids, don't have much influence in what is gonna happen, just wanna enjoy the time I have on this planet. Don't think this population growth is sustainable in any scenario, and humankind would do better with a few billion fewer.

Fatalism is not gonna change a thing except making your experience on Earth less enjoyable. Turn off the news, live a good life, otherwise you will regret it.

You can have a healthy dose of both being informed and practicing self care. Being empathetic is also a good thing, actually.

Exactly this, because there is literally fuck all any of us can do to change this. Climate change is largely the result of a couple hundred mega corporations, not the masses choosing plastic drinking straws.

Downvoted but right. Average people did play a part of this though. The part we played was supporting the big businesses that were fucking us over. Oh, a new sports car even though my old one works fine? COOL. Give me that, I'll pay whatever you ask.

Excess. We live a life of excess. They provide it, we accept.

Unfortunately people are greedy and material oriented. Even the good people have so much excess. They don't think twice to see anything wrong with it. Everyone driving brand new cars to keep up with the "Joneses" played a big part. This never should have been a thing. Vehicles should've been for transport and nothing else, vanity should have never been a factor but.. people.

Same with fashion. Never should've been a thing. Clothes are for covering your body. Never should've mattered so much how we look. Again, vanity.

Makeup. Same story. People want to look a certain way so resources are obtained, money is spent, excess is gained. Vanity satiated.

Sports stadiums? Malls filled with bs no one needs?

Wants vs needs. People don't know how to separate the two anymore.

Even those that claim to. Often especially not those people.

Excess. So much excess.

My area used to be filled with farms. All you'd see is trees and farms.

They sustained themselves. Grew their own food, mowed their own grass, usually had a creek for water etc. Self sustainable and produced an abundance of food.

Now the entire fucking area is just.. businesses to provide the excess. No need to rely on ourselves anymore. The corporations got our back right? Bought up all the land and replaced farms that could feed hundreds with... A smoke shop. Grocery stores everywhere. People aren't growing their food anymore, they've got corporations to do that for them as long as they work for the corporations enough to earn the funds.

It's so fucked up. I miss the trees, miss nature. It amazes me that people aren't outraged and protesting this. They're turning my entire region into a massive strip mall and the people are...

Okay with it because it provides the excess.

Okay with it because they lost touch with nature long ago and can't fathom the value of it.

We've traded self sufficiency for reliance on corporations.

We've traded strength for dependency.

We've traded church for Twitter.

Clean water for fluoride laced tap water.

Roaming buffalo for cars.

It's fucked up. Everything is fucked up.

We just don't know it yet because our needs are met and then some

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All my fellow Aussies we're going to be in for a rough summer

I'm up in QLD, still waiting for winter.

Is it still called summer after you have 200 days of over 35 degrees? And in "winter" the max temperature drops to 25?

Would you move co in ntries I'd this occured?

I know it’s entirely coincidental, but we dealt with a heat-exhaustion-approaching-heat-stroke emergency this week, and it definitely made me pause. Summer heat is taking on a new meaning.

I'm a landscaper and I joked about dealing with wildfires becoming part of my job duties in ten years last year. This year, I was lucky enough to deal with both the Pine Barrens wildfires and the Canadian Wildfire smoke in NJ

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not surprising, I was hoping we'd not hit the tipping point but it's looking grim at this point.

I think it's safe to say we are certainly hitting the tipping point, and then some! Our governments are useless, and these people running these companies and their shareholders, and the politicians responsible for the VAST majority of this mess are devoid of all morals and should be on trial for crimes against humanity.

The “This is fine” meme has never been more appropriate

Well, time to capitulate to Big Energy

We've tried making the problem worse and now we're all out of ideas.

Personally I think we should redirect to individual energy.

I'm all for nuclear power and do believe more plants would obviously be better than continuing to use FF.

But I also don't see why we don't just use solar panels/turbines etc. On every home. They sustain my home just fine, just some solar panels and a few batteries. Expensive initial investment but people are paying out the ass for electric in my area anyway.

Knowing that if the power grid fails I've nothing to worry about feels great.

I just can't see why our governments don't band together and mass produce solar panels. Yes, it's going to be expensive but the way we've been obtaining power has been much more costly. The second the tech for solar panels became available the gov should've began attempting to mass produce and distribute them. Why they haven't? My guess is that it's because big corporations require more power than average people. Also, power itself is a big corporation. None of our power companies wanted to go out of business, they wanted to leech our $ instead even though it was a detriment to our future.

How is this not a bigger story? What the fuck?? This is cataclysmic. It should be all we're fucking hearing about. Fuck.

The planetary average temperature hit 17.23 degrees Celsius on Thursday, surpassing the 17.18C record set on Tuesday (...) A previous record of 17.01C was set on Monday.

Referring to dates by just weekdays sounds like there's not going to be any more Mondays...

Most of us municipal water contains forever chemicals and micro-plastics...

Generations before trash the planet and we will have suffer for it. Funny thing... we got another 30 years of this boomer degeneracy to go. Maybe not so funny.

It’s only early July. I’m not sure about the rest of y’all, but it starts getting real toasty where I am in mid Aug.

We ain’t even at the worst of it?

You could say we’re really on a hot streak.

What can we do as the little individual people that we are?

The best you can realistically do is vote for people who care about solving the problem, and against people who ignore the problem.

And if the only ones who don't accept bribes lobbying from oil, gas, and coal companies are independents and third parties who have no chance of winning anything because your country's voting system is first past the post? Then what? ~Strawberry

Going vegan would help for sure. Less animal products consumed means less animal products produced means waay less pollution.

A lot of change needs to happen on a government-level too, of course, but that is a very tangible, easy-to-achieve goal everyone can do.

Realistically, as an individual? Nothing. I hate doom posting but i genuinely don’t think there is a single tangible change any one regular person could make.

We can all do our part. That doesn't mean the problems will be solved, but we can all do our part to implement the solution.

Discussion is important. Conservation is important. The biggest issue here isn't really the individual; it's society. Change can't happen in a vacuum. The only way society will change is if, you know, it changes. i.e. people need to be willing to sacrifice short term gains for long term benefit.

If it was sexy to do less, these problems would be solved overnight.

As much as I hate to say it we're probably going to see more variations of this headline as this summer goes on.

yay.

I don't know why but this summer humidity levels goes down a bit.

If the temperature this summer has been warmer than normal for you, then the lower humidity could be caused by the additional heat.

Warm air will process more moisture than cooler air.

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.

Wtg! What’s the next record to crush?

Beginning of the end? Although, I hope not, but it feels like one..

At this rate there will only be one place to escape to that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism - SPACE.

How is this average calculated? Such numbers cannot be taken serious.

according to data from the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world's condition.

You can read up on that study and on the climate reanalyzer.

People who don't even click on the article or do any research before dismissing something cannot be taken seriously.

Just reading such a headline and about some calculated average global temperature record is enough for me to categorize it as fearmongering. Same as with covid infection statistics in the last three years. Now with climate. Screw that. On this issue I am perfectly happy with my heuristics.

Just reading such a headline and about some calculated average global temperature record is enough for me to categorize it as fearmongering.

Fearmongering what? Are you still denying the CO2 in the air is affecting climate? I think there are some flat earth subs on here, you'll feel right at home there.

What they don't want you to know is that the Earth's orbit changed and we're swinging in closer and closer to the Sun. The vaccine was actually nanites meant to help protect us from upcoming radiation and other atmosphere changes.

This comment was for fun. I’m currently reading the Silo books.