Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
Humans reach North America is listed at ~16k years ago. That's based on the Clovis First model that was still dominant then.
Now we know small populations of humans were already in the Americas when this chart begins, having traveled along the coast from around what is today Japan.
Archaeology is progressing so quickly these days that even XKCD is no longer an up-to-date source!
Damn, idk who to trust for information now if not wikixkcdia
What should I search for if I want to read up more on this? I hadn’t heard of these recent developments.
"Kelp Highway" is a common name for the theory, since it involves exploiting rich marine ecosystems while expanding down the coast relatively quickly.
"Pre Clovis Sites" should get you to the level of specific digs.
"Western stemmed points" are the most solid link back to the cultures in East Asia after the last glacial maximum. I believe the genetic data is not as clear on this yet but is coming together.
The Oregon Archaeological Society's YouTube channel has a number of professional lectures for amateur enthusiasts that touch on this - https://youtu.be/KPpgn-NVeLI?si=SCKpePUNp3pKyPSa i think this is the one with a lot of info on the evidence for links to cultures in Japan.
Rad, thank you!!
Earth has been iceless before of course, and I've heard people claim its not a problem for it to happen again.
But if only this heating had occured slowly over a period of ~45 million years, nobody would have panicked. We'd adapt. Fauna and flora would adapt. We'd not even notice the ice caps melting.
Reminds me of a scientist discussing an economics paper that said warming to +4°C would only cost 1% of GDP, so we should stop with all the warming alarmism.
The scientist remarked that if you entered -4°C in that calculation used in the paper you would also get 1% of GDP, but in reality -4°C would cover most of the major cities with a mile of ICE.
Because think of the the FREE ICE! The ice economy would boom! Think of all the new ice jobs!
"Selling ice to Eskimos," as the expression goes.
Holy fuck Lemmy needs a fuckin thumbnail system for shit like this.
Depends on your app then, because the browser does
Strictly a mobile user, but on Boost the thumbnails are better than browser.
I assume you use a card view instead of list view. In list view every picture is shown as thumbnail. Even if there were no pictures this long you have to scroll way more in card view than in list view.
I use card view because I'm mainly here for the memes. I don't want to have to click on every single picture just to see the full picture. But if the picture is over a certain size it should be cropped until opened manually.
This image never fails to depress. I wonder what an updated version would look like?
Not much different, we aren't very far ahead. The trajectory remains more or less the same. Global anomaly was 1.2°C in 2023.
Maybe this'll help drive it home? Probably not
It absolutely will not. It's become abundantly clear that any sort of actually meaningful climate action will simply not happen in the current system, which is focused on profit at all costs and run by literal psychopaths. We'll continue seeing cosmetic consumer-facing restrictions like the ban on plastic straws that ultimately are nearly pointless in the grand scheme of things – the real polluters are corporations and people that are much too rich (ie. powerful) for their contribution to this climate clusterfuck to be meaningfully regulated.
For actual change that's not just tiny incremental and ineffectual bullshit that mainly places the blame on consumers, we'd have to redo our entire economic system and that's not going to happen without a lot of bloodshed.
It did for me the first time I saw it (ages ago).
This image is wrong. 2016 was only 8 years ago. Yet our current temperature is well over +1C.
And I read somewhere that current ocean temps are more indicative of +3℃ of warming.
Like, most politicians are still f**king around like +1.5℃ is still decades off. We’ve already passed that point by most any reasonable, rational, and non-politically-farked standard.
Oh yeah. But what can you do? People prefer their comfort to the survival of their own children. Which is doubly worse because the boomer and X generation literally enslaved their own children, so, not only the newer generations will likely die out of famine, overheating, or violence from their own peers, but in the meanwhile they also have a terrible time.
It's convenient to blame the people at large for what's happening, and of course to some degree we all have a responsibility to do what we can, but it's also important to look at where the CO2 is coming from, who is making efforts to reduce it, and who is making efforts to prevent any limitations from being crafted. This is obviously something that ties heavily into capitalism, big business, and corrupt governments.
To put it another way, you can't recycle your way out of global warming. Systemic problems require systemic solutions.
It's convenient to blame the people at large for what's happening, and of course to some degree we all have a responsibility to do what we can, but it's also important to look at where the CO2 is coming from, who is making efforts to reduce it, and who is making efforts to prevent any limitations from being crafted.
Yeah, absolutely, but just like with major tragedies can be traced back to only a few meaningful people (holocaust, Cambodian genocide, Bangladesh genocide, Circassian genocide, Armenian genocide, Greek genocide, Rwandan genocide, Assyrian genocide, Chechen genocide, Hutus genocide, Isaaq genocide, Guatemalan genocide, Libyan genocide, the NKVD "Polish operation", the great Chinese famine, Soviet famine of the 1930s, ...; to only mention some from the past century), the participation of enough people is necessary to enact anything. And the inaction of most of the remainder.
As the famous unattributed adage says:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Point is: mass consumption is necessary to enable the abusers to such degree.
This is obviously something that ties heavily into capitalism, big business, and corrupt governments.
This ties into enabling any government to mindlessly mass-produce CO2. As it turns out, the current capitalist degeneration we call "the economeh" puts megacorporations in charge, and lets them "trade" their "pollution allowance". Such practice exacerbate the problem, and are completely insane.
But unfortunately the mass production of CO2 is not limited to capitalism and western societies. Any human development needs energy, that is how we transform what is around us. Using "fossil fuels" is several orders of magnitude more potent than not. Lemme rephrase that: generating this amount of CO2 is what enables our lifestyle.
The only viable alternative is using nuclear energy, and the vast majority of the population is terrified of it, so it realistically is not going to happen anytime soon.
Anyhow, such lifestyle (cars, new clothes twice a year, meat at every other meal, 20C in the house at all times, a constant internet connection on the go, comfort services, etc) is what the overwhelming majority of humans want, and that is the actual problem.
TL;DR: capitalism, or at least our inbred redneck version of it, makes matters a lot worse. But the problem is with uncontrolled human "development", and letting people consume mindlessly.
To put it another way, you can't recycle your way out of global warming. Systemic problems require systemic solutions.
You vote with your wallet, and humanity has voted for climate change.
This isn't about recycling. Recycling at the scale we are envisioning it is utter gaslighting. It barely works, and when it does, it produces CO2 as well. If we wanted to have an impact, we should only accept products that last several decades, reuse and repair.
No, the mass-pollution that is causing the 6th extinction event has been entirely, totally, completely, unequivocally, and unreservedly enabled by us.
Let's stop hiding behind those "big bad capitalist baddies". They are absolutely despicable assholes, but we enabled them.
And by "we" and "us" I mean "those of us, relatively to their buying power". Which brings me to the point I was making above: the older generations, that accumulated riches, and monopolized ownership, funneled all the money, and decided to invest (the part of this money that they didn't greedily accumulate or reuse to further their monopoly) into comfort and status consumption, which, in turn, are responsible for enabling the industrial actors to pollute as much.
I like the graph, but I was hoping that it was an updated version. :(
Well shit
The only thing is that this diagram makes it seem like the sea levels rising is caused by ice melting, while in reality it is because as water heats up, it expands.
Ice that was on land will raise the sea level if it melts.
Sure, but the amount of ice on land is but a small spec compared to the water in the ocean.
If all the ice in the world melted, it wouldn't affect the ocean level that much. Compared to thermal expansion of the water.
Ice melting is a symptom, not a cause.
You're right about sea level rise over the last century, but the big sea level rise at the end of the last ice age was in fact mainly a result of ice melting — big parts of North America and Europe had ice thousands of feet thick on them.
Melting all the ice in the world today would add almost 200 feet to sea levels.
Stop having kids. Doing away with most modem technology to save the planet, if that's what they really want to do, is in no way shape or form even remotely sustainable with this many people on the planet aka mouths to feed. In fact look at current costs of living vs wages. Climate issues aside things aren't even sustainable as it is and that's without extreme downsizing.
A largely organizational issue, we currently throw out at least 30% of all our food, not to mention we already consume way more than healthy by any metric and we still have much more on the planet to exploit. We live in an unprecedented time of access and yet all 3 super powers are hellbent on preserving poverty like it's their cultural heritage or something. There's absolutely no rational reason Africa shouldn't be among the most prosperous regions, just like there's no rational reason that at least 20% of Russians don't even have running water, let alone warm or drinking water or that America as the richest of em all, still can't provide the most basic needs for its citizens like almost every other country. Nearly all famines and insecurities with few exceptions around the world are 100% man made.
All I know is that life is hard but things could be a lot harder so I'm never having kids so I can focus on looking out for myself. Things could be a whole lot better too. The last thing any government deserves is for us to reward and enable them by birthing more babies.
