The planet’s average temperature hit 17.23 degrees Celsius on Thursday, surpassing the 17.18C record set on Tuesday and equalled on Wednesday.
A toast to everyone in this thread that decided to not have kids! 🥂
a toast to everyone in this thread that will be burnt to toast because unchecked greed and capitalism.
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 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.
As a side benefit, I also have all the money and free time to spend with furry children instead!
Exponentially increasing heat is when toddlers amirite
(also you should still adopt kids)
that’s one of the biggest reasons for my decision not to
Ditto. Not that I’d have the opportunity, but decided I’d only adopt if I desired to raise a child.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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)
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.
Wtg! What’s the next record to crush?
This is the coolest summer you’ll have for the rest of your life
What can we do as the little individual people that we are?
How is this not a bigger story? What the fuck?? This is cataclysmic. It should be all we’re fucking hearing about. Fuck.
“sooner than expected”, “tipping point”, “nonbinding resolution”, “climate scientists warn”
Everything is fine…
It’s getting hot in here
So take off all your clothes
I am, getting, so hot. I want fresh water and socialized healthcare.
I live in the UK, so I have them both yea
I am gettin so hot I wanna take my clothes off
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.
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.
We are not that special. And if we were, it wouldn’t matter anyway. We are just going to kill ourselves.
Ah, the cynics are truly everywhere.
Or realists?
Definitely sounds like something a cynic would say.
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.
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.
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.
Just, don’t eat the brain. Should be fine.
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.
All my fellow Aussies we’re going to be in for a rough summer
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?
…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.
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.
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.
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.
This summer is the coolest summer you’ll experience in the rest of your life.
I don’t know why but this summer humidity levels goes down a bit.
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.
