Our masters prefer profit much much much more than planetary survival.
That period between 1990 and 1995 where there seems to be 3 consecutive years where it slowed to a relative crawl… Imagine if we did that. What if we plateaued there for a few years - decades even - and then started dropping. A wonderful thought.
I think that’s partly due to the fall of the soviet union, which caused a noticeable drop in carbon emissions.
So you’re saying… /j
On a more serious note, I don’t consider myself to be entirely out of the loop on historical events, but I had just never made the connection that the soviet union fell quite that recently. That’s only a handful of years before I came into the world.
Except dude is talking out of his ass completely, as it takes multiple DECADES for changes in emissions levels to be reflected in atmospheric concentrations… But, ya know, reality is just like a matter of opinion now, apparently, so… It’s fun to pretend tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t see a dent…
The dent is atleast it’s stopped following an exponential growth curve
Ok. So we can start the next year with some optimism.
Things are going to get a lot worse unfortunately.
You can’t say that without plotting in log scale
No, it didn’t. Do a linear semilog plot.
Even if there was, there is something like a 15 to 20 year lag time anyway before it would start to show up in data.
And that assumes we haven’t hit a tipping point into a runaway feedback loop.
And what’s even worse is that there is a masking effect from increased particulates in the air. Basically a physical cooling effect that is reducing the observable impact of climate change
You won’t. We’re combatting near-exponential growth. Each year we need to increase our efforts just to prevent worsening, let alone reversal.
This is because the largest accelerant is completely out of our control now. As the ice caps melt, desalinating our oceans, rich black soil is exposed. This soil absorbs and retains heat far more readily than the white ice, accelerating the warming of nearby ground ice. As bacteria begins to break down the newly thawed decaying organisms, large amounts of methane is released into the atmosphere. Methane traps 28x more heat than CO2, then it breaks down into CO2 and water after a decade where it continues to retain heat for centuries.
Not quite correct on methane’s half life. The 28x number is based on normal effect and breakdown over a century’s time. Over 20 years it’s around 84x more than CO2. Over the first few years it can be far over 100x. The caveat of using these numbers now is that they were based on a stable cycle of methane and its fixed-rate reducers in the atmosphere, something that has obviously changed.
The IPCC still sticks to the 28x number though, because it looks better on the spreadsheets. When they even include methane feedback loops, which to my knowledge they still haven’t really worked into the hard numbers. Why? Because we’re not very sure on how much is being released from year to year, as it’s hard to measure. So since the IPCC only works with known variables, they just leave it out of the equation. Makes sense, right? :clown face:
You’re right on the rest though. The best result is the methane breaks down quickly, into more CO2 and water vapor. Both GHGs, and the additional water adding to the water content in the atmosphere. Yet another feedback loop.
Wow. Thank you for the detailed correction!
Perhaps we should start actually trying
First step to prove you actually mean it:
No more fucking meat on your plate!
We put like 6 fossil kalories in and get 1 animal tissue kalorie out. This is insane! Our species is about to commit suicide and we love to point fingers at greedy, selfish billionaires. Yet at the same time, every single one of us westerners keeps devouring our biosphere because we’re accustomed to a taste.
I know this alone won’t save us, but no solution will be enough if we don’t agree on this simple thing:
Next time, I will no longer knowingly chose exploitation, misery and annihilation.
Buy cheap legumes or expensive meat alternatives, I don’t care. But stop paying for this madness! Then go for CEOs, billionaires and politicians. But start with the most simple, obvious realization first.The irony that someone downvoted you because actually doing anything about it is a step too far for most people.
They just love to explain to me how their actions doesn’t matter and more rich and powerful people should change first. Comfortably waiting for a revolution. The corporations they buy their stuff from. Those evil billionaires with their private jets!
But we are all the same.
You can afford a plane? Of course you fly to visit your friends party in Ibiza. You can afford meat? A car? Holidays in Asia, weekly packages from Amazon? Why say no to a good life, right? We’re just as greedy, shortsighted and selfish, but with less resources.
So if you understand the horror that lurks in our near future, if you take responsibility for you actions and your life on this planet, then you change, one step at a time. And this really is a no brainer: Go buy some fucking beans.
Buy cheap legumes or expensive meat alternatives, I don’t care. But stop paying for this madness! Then go for CEOs, billionaires and politicians.
The idea of only demanding change from the people in power when the change already happened in the masses seems so weird to me. They have the power (or at least had the power, it might be too late now) of stopping this crisis. Each and every one of us can only contribute a little, and failing every once in a while is only human, considering the amount of ads and the sometimes overhelming disparity between availability of plant/animal based foods. (Edit: both obviously controlled by the aforementioned parties, because it benefits them directly).
We need to make it easy to go as vegan as possible. And we can only do that if the CEOs, Billionaires and politicians do it. Because they are the ones that are making it hard right now.
I demand change from every single capable human on earth, including the 1% and you. And if the elite isn’t willing then we show them we are better than them. Aren’t we? Or do we watch them do nothing while doing nothing as well?
What I’m challenging is the idea that the responsibilities are equally distributed. With great power comes even greater responsibility. The relationship between the two isn’t even linear, that’s why we tax bigger income and bigger wealth higher than lower incomes and the same applies to this.
Their potential to change is so much higher that it is fair to demand change more heavily from them than from the average Joe.
Edit: showing we are “better” is not the goal here and won’t achieve any change in the 1% btw
I agree again. I want them to be held accountable for everything they do.
But what to do when the powerful won’t move, because they live even more comfortable and save then us? It’s classic prisoner’s dilemma and I argue in favor of doing what is right, not what others should do first. And it’s not even a sacrifice:
If you dare to look at each of the animal industries production chains it’s plain evil from start to finish. It needs to be shut down fast. And it takes very little effort to change your diet. Quitting meat, going plant-based, is nothing more than a slight inconvenience. Again, I know this alone won’t save us, but it would have a huge impact on our planet AND our health. It’s the easiest Fuck You! you can send, no need to get off of the sofa, no need to protest, no need to riot. You just vote with your receipt at the supermarket, capitalism-style. It’s an easy step to live up to your convictions and switch off one part of this global suicide machine we’re running.And it’s not even a sacrifice: If you dare to look at each of the animal industries production chains it’s plain evil from start to finish. It needs to be shut down fast. And it takes very little effort to change your diet. Quitting meat, going plant-based, is nothing more than a slight inconvenience.
I think this is not true. It is for you, because you see the animal industries as inherently evil. You have to acknowledge that for many people food is a big part of what defines their culture and for many cultures that includes meat. You don’t have to like that fact, I certainly dont like it. And I agree that this has to change. But I don’t think that any moral argument about cruelty against animals is going to bring that change.
I think it is fair for me to demand people change their habits and culture because the status quo is hurting me. I want to make clear what I mean with a thought experiment. Let’s assume we bioengineered a cow that doesn’t produce methan, and does photosynthesis so no food is required. The climate impact of mass-breeding this type of cow would be neglectable.
I wouldn’t go out and tell people they should stop eating this type of cow. Not being a part of the cruel animal industry chain as a consumer is a choice anyone can make that doesn’t affect anyone else and vice versa it’s still true. You are hurting the cows and we should talk about that and make it public but I’d be in favor of people still being able to choose to eat that.
Mixing the altruistic arguments against animal abuse with climate protection doesn’t help convince anyone to do this. The debate about becoming vegetarian/vegan for moral reasons is way older than the one because of climate change. The ones who where conviced by it already stopped eating animal products and the rest wont suddenly stop now because of those reasons. It might even be counterproductive, because it ties climate protection to an altruistic motivation where that isn’t necessary. People can and should be interested in preventing climate change for very selfish reasons, which in my experience, is a way stronger motivator.
I’m gonna make a second comment here because I think it helps to keep separate discussions in separate threads.
It’s classic prisoner’s dilemma and I argue in favor of doing what is right, not what others should do first.
This is not the situation we are in, and it’s not what you are doing. You are arguing what everyone else should do first before the powerful can be demanded to change too. You aren’t even arguing for both changing at the same time, you are saying “before you aren’t holy you can’t demand betterment from anyone else”. Which is just illogical to me. A chainsmoker can tell me that smoking is bad and I should stop and they would be right. No need for them to stop smoking first.
If this feels insurmountable, find one vegetarian dish you like and put that into your rotation, and you’ve already improved.
My best tip is to go for something that’s by nature vegetarian like an indian dal or some of the great lebanese stuff like hummus, muhammara, baba-ganoush etc, rather than “I can’t believe it’s not meat!” products.
Repeat untill you’re on a mostly vegetarian diet you like. If you get close to full vegetarian, start easting vitamin-b supplements.
But we’re out of ideas!
Fine. I’ll finally give up plastic straws.
Breaking news, global warming stopped.
Plastic straws are not the problem. If we use petroleum to make plastic that carbon is effectively captured in that straw. It can create pollution for sure but it’s not adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Nothing individually is “the” problem. We have a wide variety of problems to choose from.
That’s not how anything works!?!?! It was 100% captured in the petroleum, even if the process of petroleum->plastic straw is 99% efficient you’re adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.
And it’s nowhere near that efficient! Cracking alone is 65-86% efficient with probably a minimum of 2 other processing steps of similar efficiency (SWAG of 27-64% final efficiency). The waste isn’t all greenhouse gasses, but a good amount is…
The production process for paper straws also produces greenhouse gases. Making paper also used up a tree somewhere. So this notion that switching from plastic straws solves the problem is false. Its impact is negligible.
It’s virtue signalling by fast food companies who should be focusing on switching to using green energy and using electric transport rather than making us all suffer with soggy straws.
I’m just replying to the original comment sarcastically joking that giving up plastic straws is the solution when we all know it isn’t.
Also the complete irony of the plastic (coated) containers still often used for beverages, but serving with a paper straw… I always hate it if I am too slow to just refuse the straw. Keep that damn thing. I’d rather just drink from the cup.
So how do we have readings going so far back, like even in the late 1800s? Is this just an assumed average for back then?
Lots of different independent methods and sources that correlate, along with some approximations. Actual measured readings aren’t as accurate or match up in the early periods, which is why the IPCC decided to use 1980 as a baseline to start from for consistent and abundant data to compare with. This continues to be a side argument about if we’re really past 1.5C or not, since the graphs start differently. The “good” news is that as time goes on, that argument becomes less relevant because the differences shrink and catastrophic converges.
Usually measurements in ice core drillings.
Oh yea…didnt think of that. But i have heard of that method for lots of things!
Here is the Mauna Loa data line from 1958, matching the top figure.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Mauna_Loa_CO2_monthly_mean_concentration.svg
The rest has been matched and synchronized to it using other sources. I’m not a climate scientist, but I would guess the best sources are ice samples from polar regions where it accumulates from top and melts from bottom. CO2 dissolves in water and when snow falls and turns into permanent ice in such places, it captures a snapshot of that period’s atmospheric gas content, among that the CO2 level.
Tree rings are another used source for historical estimates
old trapped air
I always want to reply with that chart on every post about some magical new climate technology. Nothing really matters until we stop pulling carbon-based fuels out of the ground and lighting them on fire. That’s it. That’s the only thing that matters. Wind and solar are great but we’re still approving gas/coal/oil projects, at least globally.
It’s like with the water crisis in the American West. They guilt trip individuals into feeling bad about taking showers but it’s like 80% agriculture. And the majority of that is for animal feed. (I’m not saying everyone go vegan. That’s about as unrealistic as asking everyone to stop fucking to keep the population from growing. I’m saying don’t grow alfalfa in the fucking desert and then blame people who bathe.)
Seeing those alfalfa farms all over my desert state turns me into an extremist.
you mean this?
Some rich fuck: That looks like a sick place to build a VAC’d Golf course!
where did you get this data? it can’t possibly be right
edit: it’s robbed of context. it’s only illustrating water use in the Colorado River basin, and even at that is being misleading: for instance, corn silage is a byproduct of grain corn. that water doesn’t magically re-enter the water table if we don’t feed it to cattle, but by feeding it to cattle, we are able to reclaim some of that water use.
They said water in the American west then showed an image of water use. Critical thinking gooooooo
The NY Times. Here’s a gift link:
Edit: they cite this study in Nature Sustainability: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0483-z
I found the nature article that is the source.
It’s kinda bizarre how people are brainwashed to think that this isn’t a thing…
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/devastating-water-footprint-animal-agriculture/163485/
I skimmed this and clicked a few of the references. it does use poore-nemecek 2018, so I’m skeptical of all of the other data that’s included. of course going through a piece the size that you linked to evaluate it for its scientific integrity is a project all onto itself and I’m at work at the moment. I encourage you to look at the methodology for each of the claims made in your link.
This is an excellent point. The energy transition is more accurately an energy addition. Some renewables on top of a still-increasing pile of burning fossil fuels.
Same with EVs. More are being sold every year but more ICE cars are being sold, too.
Until the fossil fuel industry actually shrinks, things are hopeless.
Nothing really matters until we stop pulling carbon-based fuels out of the ground and lighting them on fire.
I say it all the time. The only possible way to keep carbon from outside the carbon cycle from entering the carbon cycle is to stop taking carbon from outside the carbon cycle and putting it into the carbon cycle. No amount of coal plant filtration or growing trees or building wind farms will take carbon from inside the carbon cycle out of the carbon cycle.
400 ppm is too much, and the mechanisms for putting that carbon in the ground is gone and never coming back. The best we can possibly do is stop making it worse, and we won’t, because everyone wants to have a whole chicken in their fridge that’ll end up rotting because the availability of goods, whether we’ll actually consume them or not, is the most important thing in the world.
You’re not wrong.
…but on the chicken part. Do people really routinely overstock on perishable items? Like, you can misjudge, but if you keep throwing food out because it’s gone bad, surely you’d adjust your purchasing habits?
You would think, but yes, a lot of people really do routinely buy more perishables than they need.
I owe my perspective on it to this essay. It doesn’t talk about money wasted when food goes bad, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I read it—I didn’t just pay $1.86 for those green onions, it also cost me $1.86 worth of green onions when I threw them away.
People don’t even notice how much money they waste on food they never ate because once that 2 lbs of bacon is in their fridge, they no longer assign a dollar value to it. When that bacon goes bad without even being opened, they didn’t lose $10, they lost 2 lbs of bacon, and the thought that enters their head is “I should get more bacon”
or building wind farms will take carbon from inside the carbon cycle out of the carbon cycle.
renewables does replace carbon cycle addition energy. We need energy. We don’t need nationalist or national oligarch energy.
There are huge vegetarian populations though (think about India), app it’s not completely against human nature…
It’s not, but it takes something akin to a religious conversion to move large populations off meat.
I’m “hopefully” that the upcoming food/water wars might do the trick. But not too hopeful…
People get really defensive about it. Like it’s kind of shocking. If you told me I had to stop eating almonds, and gave a good argument, I’d listen.
Now show us the same graph, but going back to first hominidae.
Now the carbon dioxide concentration has naturally oscillated between 200 and 280 ppm in hominidae history. This is because of ice ages. Massive layers of ice covering large areas of the planet. So the change in atmospheric carbon due to human activity is more than 1½ times the change from an ice age.
Where the current day curve, you may ask. At this scale, it’s that line on the right going straight up.
So what. We live and then we die.
Not really a big fan of children, I take it?
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It must be very satisfying for you to read the daily news
In a sick “I told you so” kind of way, yes.
Why would you say it’s a “sick” satisfaction if it’s exactly the outcome you want?
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Can you actually make one good argument for having children that isnt selfish?
Are you happy to have been born? If no, I’m sorry. If yes, the same would possibly apply to your children.
Would it be less selfish in your estimation if they had the opportunity to inherit a survivable world?
Survivable? No. Thrivable? Maybe.
No, we had precisely zero measurable impact on the Keeling curve.
And for what?
For that.
Lines must go up.
society lacks a plan. wealth inequality has been going up since before 2000. but somehow, society just carried on. “if we work hard, i’m sure it will turn out alright.”
the current social divide (poor/rich, not dem/rep) was predictable long ago. what do you expect? 10 or 20 years ago would have been the perfect time to question the fundamentals of society and decide where society really wants to go - to develop in the long term.
now we’re here. now’s the 3rd best time to figure out how society should develop in the long term. think about it.
If only you would’ve been here 10 - 20 years ago to impart upon us savages this great wisdom, oh master… We were but too simple then to think such BOLD, OBVIOUSLY COMPLETELY NOVEL thoughts on our own! Alack, what woe! 🙄
Not to burst your bubble there, junior, but class (read: socioeconomic) warfare didn’t just magically appear within the past couple of decades… Or centuries…
Do me a favor: Google the phrase “let them eat cake” or “proletariat” or “bourgeoisie” or… actually it might just be quicker for you to look up “world history prior to 2000” and at least skim a bit or something
If only you would’ve been here 10 - 20 years ago to impart upon us savages this great wisdom, oh master… We were but too simple then to think such BOLD, OBVIOUSLY COMPLETELY NOVEL thoughts on our own! Alack, what woe! 🙄
LOL thank you for that.
Anyways, I’m well aware it wasn’t easy, just saying.
WTF?
Sweet username.
ʘ‿ʘ
society lacks a plan.
This is the plan. Society just has no say.
The chart indicates another way to fix global warming. We could add to the atmosphere. It would take a massive amount… Maybe have boil the ocean?
Steal jupiter
Great outside the box thinking!
I think humanity might own it…
Somebody get elmo to do some
research onhype for this amazing investment opportunity.
For sure, I mean we could reduce our emissions and try to reuse and recycle. But that doesn’t sound half as fun as “boil the oceans”.
Also think of the seafood boil we could create. Add a little creole seasoning and we also manage to solve world hunger
just be careful not to kill off all the fish
That won’t be a problem for much longer…
water gas is a particularly intense greenhouse gas :p
Exactly! You only have to boil so much before it starts a feedback loop and boils itself off. It’s efficiency is genius! Say it with me: “the solution to pollution is dilution.”
I think nuclear war is maybe a better option. If we nuke the usa several imbalances are corrected:
- turnabout is fair play
- nuclear winter buys us time
- radiation might help new live forms that can handle living in an irradiated, heat blasted, wasteland evolve
That way we can keep the oceans.
The car runs on water, man!
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And yet you can see the small dent the collapse of USSR made.
The solution is simple: we just need to collapse another 100 USSRs and drop that to two USSRs per year. We did it guise, we solved the climate crisis!
Why don’t you post more than that? Earth exists much longer than this. There are data about Earth temperature for hundreds of milions of years, but it probably doesn’t fit your theory, eg: https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_620_original_image/public/graph-from-scott-wing-620px.png?itok=Jgi659bn
I think the point isn’t so much that Earth will heat up but that it will do so at a tremendous pace (in geological timescales). Nature can’t adapt so quickly. Basically it will lead to a mass extinction simply because of how quickly it is happening. Nature takes a longer time to genetically adapt to a changing environment than humans have even existed. That’s the problem.
Who are you?
Take the rate of change by time of that curve and plot it, you’ll see a massive spike during today, And a line that bounces around zero for the rest of timeframe.
do you have the CO2 data for that period as well
Humans came into existence during the ice caps phase.
The earth may have seen higher temperatures but we as a species or any of our humanoid ancestors have certainly not.
It’s disingenuous to frame the issue as just another hot period on earth
Has there ever been a period in Earth’s history where CO2 concentration in the atmosphere changed this quickly without being accompanied by mass extinctions?
The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum is actually a great analogue for what we’re currently experiencing. Huge increase in global temperature over a relatively short period of time, probably due to runaway methane release. It went back to normal within a few hundred thousand years because of increased planktonic CO2 sequestration in the expanded tropical zone.
Boy, got awful quiet all of a sudden, huh? 🤣😂 Bro is over there desperately trying to convince himself that nah, he could totally live on Venus as long as he only measures the surface temperature as an average over 40 billion years, give or take
Whatever dent we make today will be visible in decades. This is Moses in the desert, people, if we do what’s right, we won’t see the promised land, but our descendants will
It’s hard not to feel nihilistic. Especially because even in the worst case scenario, it’s extremely unlikely that humans will become extinct. No, the worst case scenario is worse than that: the people who are most responsible for exacerbating the climate crisis will also be the ones with the resources available to shield themselves from the devastation. Even if society as we know it completely collapses, people will survive, and on our current trajectory, those people will be the worst of us.
For me, it’s less about saving the planet from the climate crisis, more about doing what little I can to maximise the likelihood that the people who inherit the earth aren’t the assholes who are willfully profiting from human misery — the ones who see themselves as the greater good.
Sometimes when I feel hopeless about humanity’s chance to liberate ourselves before climate catastrophe truly rolls in, I wonder whether it’d be better if humans were gone entirely. Maybe I’d rather see the world burn completely than for it to go to the disgusting people who make me ashamed to be human. Ultimately, I don’t believe this — I’d be dead already if I did. I don’t think my life matters all that much, but I’m not one of the people who would be deemed worth saving by the billionaires and autocrats, so I might as well stick around and fight for, and with all the other forsaken people to build things that are worth preserving; I figure that communities and solidarity will be even more crucial in the future than now.
A few years ago, my best friend was in a coma and on a ventilator for a few months, before eventually dying. The hardest part of that period was when we didn’t know whether he would survive or not, because I had to go about my life despite his absence, and yet I couldn’t grieve yet. That feels sort of like how climate change feels now. I want to grieve, but I can’t, because there’s still work to do. The earth isn’t dead yet, and unlike when my friend was in hospital, my actions do have an impact on the end outcome. The analogy breaks down though, because I did get the chance to grieve my friend’s death, there won’t be a checkpoint like that for me, because the world won’t end, per se. The only thing that’ll be ending is my ability to impact the world, when I’m too dead to grieve for anything.
I imagine my desire to see the world burn rather than hand it over to the undeserving probably stems from a desperate desire to grieve what has already been lost, and what has not yet been lost, but will be. I wish I could allow myself the chance to despair, because that can be healing, eventually, but there simply isn’t time to do that precisely because this isn’t about me and my grief. There’s still work to do, and I can’t let myself collapse now, lest even more of our descendants future is eroded. I feel hopeful for the future because I have to in order to survive long enough to give the people who come after me a better shot at building something I never could. It’s a tremendous amount of pressure though.
That would’ve been true in the 1970s,but we’ve hit too many run away effects. We could entirely stop all fossil fuels use tomorrow and we wouldn’t see a drop in co2ppm for longer than it would take for all things built by humans to decay.
But it wouldn’t increase by 3+ppm per year. It wouldn’t stop temperatures from rising for another 10-20 years, but at a slower pace that makes sub +2C possible.
It would still increase, just not as much… And no, it wouldn’t make sub 2c possible. we have a lot of methane currently suspended from the carbon cycle that is releasing more and more each year at current temperatures. On top of this the wildfires frequent at current temps release more carbon than the natural world sequesters each year.
This is without addressing anything with the ocean.
Bible stories aren’t real either.
But these kinds of myths, like those of other religious traditions, have some very important truths about humanity. In this case, it’s that it’s worth struggling for future generations. Early abolitionists might have not lived to see emancipation, but it was still worth it to fight the good fight.
This is impossible to fix with capitalism. Capitalism demands infinite growth. We’re going to have to start working on antigravity now to escape this dead planet (the plot to interstellar).
Technically capitalism will probably have a maximum co2 level, probably far after we see how harmful it is and it starts negatively impacting it.
