This has been a doozy of a year. And it’s the best year so far blah blah. So how are you all coping? Does it hit anyone else like a bolt of lightning that probably I - we - won’t die of old age?
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Same as always. Live my best life right up until the very end. Set a good example and understand my place in the universe.
Does it hit anyone else like a bolt of lightning that probably I - we - won’t die of old age?
Wait, do you actually believe this?
Yes. I am friends with ecological scientists, biologists, soil scientists, ornithologists, and other various environmental researchers. The rest of my natural life would be ~40-50 years. We probably have 10-20 at most. Remember, the heating is exponential and delayed, and we’ve also exceeded several other planetary boundaries. Our governments are decades too late. We are literally already in the middle of an extinction event.
Even if everyone TODAY stopped burning all fossil fuels, we’d still have to sequester millions of tons of carbon in 10-20 years with no infrastructure for it. To do this will release more greenhouse gases. Amd we still have to address the 9 other planetary boundaries we’ve crossed including ocean acidification, soil destruction, and pollution.
The absolute best shot we have is to deflect a percentage of the sun’s rays from ever reaching earth with some kind of space blanket or shield. Likely we will just inject sulfur into the atmosphere with unknown consequences.
That you don’t realize how bad it is, is the sadder thing. We have seriously failed in educating people about science. Chemical reactions need specific energy requirements to work, which means specific temperatures. It’s a big deal to our very cells themselves that the planet is getting hotter. And again, that is only 1 planetary boundary and we have crossed others.
You can literally see footage online of people’s housing falling into the ocean, and their property wasn’t oceanfront when they bought it. You can look u0 articles about billions of sea life boiling alive off the oregon coast and baby eagles flinging themselves from their nests to die due to heat. You can see the recent article about Dubai being beyond the wet bulb temp for humans to survive. That’s not normal, ya’ll. None of this is normal.
But whatever, it’s too late. Enjoy your remaining years as much as you can, and don’t forget you can always starve yourself to death for free if you don’t have a bullet. Good luck everyone.
This is doommongering nonsense.
I’m no climate change denier at all, but the idea that the planet is basically going to be unliveable in 10-20 years is ludicrous.
Even the most pessimistic of scientists don’t believe that.
AMOC collapse could happen as soon as 2025.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk1189
Scientists have been forced to give “optimistic” findings relating to climate change for decades because we were told not to scaremonger. We were told no one would believe us. Well, no one believed us anyway (see: you) and now our conservative estimates are turning out to be wildly too conservative. It is exponentially getting worse and we didn’t consider numerous cascading events like the methane bubbles in the arctic permafrost.
We are literally already in the middle of a sixth extinction event relating to passing 6-8 of 9-10 planetary boundaries. It’s not doomerism, it’s literally reality. Measurably and empirically happening.
Wikipedias page on AMOC is much less pessimistic:
High-quality Earth system models indicate a collapse is unlikely and would only become probable if high levels of warming (≥4 °C (7.2 °F))[14] are sustained long after 2100.[18][19][20] Some paleoceanographic research seems to support this idea.[21][22] Some researchers fear the complex models are too stable[23] and that lower-complexity projections pointing to an earlier collapse are more accurate.[24][25] One of those projections suggests AMOC collapse could happen around 2057[26] but many scientists are skeptical of the projection.[27]
I would very much doubt an actual collapse happens anytime soon.
That’s wikipedia though, not a scientific article, and it acknowledges that many think it will happen sooner.
Here’s an article from CNN that is hours old, based on a new study, which is confident AMOC collapse will happen by 2037-2050 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/08/02/climate/atlantic-circulation-collapse-timing
That’s pretty soon.
Likely we will just inject sulfur into the atmosphere with unknown consequences.
Kind of the only hope we have left at this point. One which I’m desperately holding onto.
Articles about insect populations being decimated by something like 70%… They are the ones most vulnerable to climate change, and they’re all dying. How people can see that and not understand is mind boggling.
The insect population part really is staggering, huh? I remember how disgusting my grandma’s station wagon got in the 90s traveling. Now I pretty much never really “need” to clean my windows off from bug guts. Usually dust.
I think we should put up a metal blanket in space. Tbh all the space junk and satellites are already doing that a little
Very very little, the planet is kinda big
What do you expect your manner of death will be in 10-20 years?
Hard to say. It could be from a power grid failure during a weather event. It could be from an earthquake (increased seismic activity due to climate change). It could be from a freak storm or mudslide. Could be from supply chain collapse and starvation. Could be from supply chain collapse/social collapse and lack of medical care. Could be bird flu or any number of novel diseases occurring due to climate change.
That’s why i suggested a magic 8 ball ;)
AMOC collapse could happen as soon as 2025 so my 20 years was extremely optimistic btw
I bike as much as possible instead of driving and lobby my local government for zoning reform.
Incredibly based, same here.
You’re a hero
I’m a silly goose with young kids and I’ve been head-in-the-sand trying to deal with my own survival. Once I had an iota of stability, I started to let the outside world in again and often wish I hadn’t.
I estimate I live in a place least likely to be dramatically affected by climate change, early on. It’s not like I’m in Florida and can’t afford to insure my home any longer because of hurricane risk. It’s not like I’m likely to be one of the 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.
So I try to take little steps to get prepared for something I never thought I’d need to be prepared for. We’re growing more and more of our own food, we’re expanding our water/food stores and storage. We plan to get a solar system soon (so we’re the 1/10 that makes it through an extended grid outage), while global supply chains still function.
I’ve started a little (20TB) apocalypse library, full of illustrated guides, youtube videos, books, and resources.
My biggest stumbling block is starting community. I generally don’t like people and as you’ve seen in this thread, most people don’t take climate change seriously.
And, as someone else said… weed and time in nature.
I joined a climate activism group in my local area, frankly it’s the best possible way to deal with it. You can make a difference, the messaging we get is often intended to make us feel powerless to keep people from protesting, but it’s actually one of the most empowering ways to deal with it. Being with a group of passionate people amplifies your ability to effect change, and given how broken many of our governments are, it’s necessary. The biggest thing stopping us from forcing big changes is our lack of numbers, solidarity is strength.
It certainly beats sitting around feeling angry and stressed.
I become a stauncher anti-capitalist every day, since capitalism and its unsustainable and literally impossible aim of infinite growth, and the greed and corruption it encourages, is why climate change is not only happening but also not being treated seriously, and abolishing it is the only hope we have of dealing with the damage climate change will bring and try and minimize it going forward (since its past the point of stopping it entirely).
The whole point of those responsible shifting blame on to individuals who have nothing to do with the decisions that got us here, nor the profits they make, is to get you to the point you’re at now - hopelessness which leads to inaction, or desperation that leads to futile action (like banning straws or paying to reduce your “carbon footprint” - a term they made up for this exact purpose, and so on, all of which are there to make sure you’re criticising your neighbour for their recycling habits instead of the companies that say they’re recycling and get paid to but really send the garbage directly to landfill, or to a developing nation already drowning in western trash).
What you actually need to be is angry and focused, to ensure your anger is aimed at the right people and the systems they uphold that got us here. Those systems are not natural or inevitable or immutable, they are artificially created by and for the benefit of a really small group of humans, a group we could easily be rid of if we actually united to do so.
This could have been written by me. I despise capitalism, capitalists, and if I could, would ensure that every company knowingly polluting or harming people or the planet would be dissolved and their boards put in jail, or worse. I have always hated capitalism, I’m realizing, the older I get, and learning how many of these companies KNEW the consequences of their greed makes me even more radicalized against it.
We glamorize wealth hoarding and that baffles me. I have a 4yo son. I see in him the same things I see in these capitalists. I give him what he wants, say a scoop of ice cream. I get some for myself, maybe a different flavor, and he asks for mine. He gets upset when I tell him to enjoy what he has and that I want to enjoy my ice cream too.
Recently, we got into LEGO and I will be building something, usually just fucking around, and I’ll start to make something cool. He’ll come up and want it. Even with other blocks, it’s what little I have that he wants. Sometimes, there is no amount of persuasion to allow me to continue what I’m doing.
I’m convinced that greed is just a regression/stopping of cognitive development to the level of a child. I would pity these capitalist fuckers if they weren’t destroying the planet and our lives for their greed.
Makes me think, sure, go ahead, build that bunker to escape the disaster you [capitalists] created. Nature may not be able to get in that easily, but people didn’t become the apex hunters of this planet from giving up. Persistence will reap what you have sowed.
I honestly believe that billionairism is a mental illness and should be treated as such. Involuntary confinement and treatment, because they’re a danger to others.
Right? But they have the power that comes from large amounts of capital so any attempt to label them what they are – hoarders, but with money, not cats or garbage – we’ll never see their ilk in the DSM. :(
What a sad existence they must live. They’ll never be truly happy in any meaningful way.
…instead of the companies that say they’re recycling and get paid to but really send the garbage directly to landfill, or to a developing nation already drowning in western trash).
More to the point, instead of the companies that say they’re recycling but haven’t done a damn thing to reduce how much trash they manufacture in the first place, and in fact are doing every single thing in their power to keep expanding to manufacture trash at ever faster rates.
Solar panels to run the aircon.
Just have to hope no storm blows the house down.
Would like an electric car but it’s out of my financial reach at this time, so keep the old car repaired and running.
Poorly. We basically didn’t have a winter here in Chicago and the summer has been marked by severe storms.
The biggest threat to your life from climate change is this kind of doomerism making you suicidal. I’ve been down that road myself.
Either get off your ass and do something about it or stop worrying about it. You’re not helping anyone by making yourself sad.
I’m not suicidal.
I’m not saying you are. You missed my point entirely.
I’m asking for coping methods or strategies. For example, I sing a lot because it doesn’t contribute anything to capitalism and more fossil fuels being released, and it releases oxytocin so it makes me feel good. I also read and spend time with others, smoke cannabis, take psilocybin.
That we don’t want to die, and don’t want the planet to die, shows that we are very much not suicidal so it’s just weird you brought that up at all lol.
I’m mostly just staying inside this time of year. I personally likely will not die of climate change as I’m privileged enough to be able to keep moving when I need, but I probably will die from micro plastic induced cancer.
Weed mostly
My girl 🫶
Got a vasectomy, because I live in the South and won’t risk bringing a kid into the world.
Is Australia that bad?
Where did you get the idea that you’re not going to die of old age?
Depends on the rapidity of the onset of the negative effects of climate change. If it’s slow, we’re gonna lose a lot of people, but we’ll be able to preserve some form of civilization. The worst affected will be the usual poorer people and those who can’t geographically escape the heat for whatever reason.
Worst scenario is rapid onset that disrupts the global network of food, energy, manufacturing, medicines, materials, etc. that literally keep everything working. If that goes tits up in an uncontrolled way just plan on losing a very significant chunk of the world’s population very fast. At a certain tipping point we also lose the people that know how to make things work. Modern society works because we have the ability to free some people from manual labor and subsistence existence to take on highly specialized learning. From fixing the grid, to doctors, to IT specialists, to the academics that teach these specialists. Lose enough of them and you lose the knowledge of how to do anything that makes modern civilization work.
So it all depends on your views if you think you’ll make it to old age. Do you think the world will collapse quickly or will it be a controlled descent? It certainly doesn’t look like we’re going to solve a damn thing regarding anthropogenic climate change, much less reverse anything, and we’re already stuck facing the damaging climate changes we started.
If it’s slow, we’re gonna lose a lot of people, but we’ll be able to preserve some form of civilization.
Assuming this is the best case scenario, are you willing to make a prediction about number of deaths by a certain year?
The reason I ask is because I think climate change alarmism is an unscientific, nonfalsifiable system of beliefs that don’t match reality.
And part of that is that people never make solid predictions. They resist it. Are you willing to make a solid prediction with an actual timeline on it, given this is your best case scenario?
It certainly doesn’t look like we’re going to solve a damn thing regarding anthropogenic climate change, much less reverse anything, and we’re already stuck facing the damaging climate changes we started.
Yeah we’re definitely not going to reverse climate change.
As far as I can tell, the main disrupting effects of climate change are going to be higher sea levels. So lots of people will have to move, or protect their cities with dikes.
There will be more farmland than before, given the effects of CO2 on plant growth.
I don’t see any scenario where it leads to a collapse of civilization.
Hah, you’re ridiculous.
We can’t even predict the weather yet you want me to give you timelines for climate change impact and entire geopolitical and worldwide logistical systems. Not even supercomputers can predict that.
Congrats on your manufactured, pseudo-intellectual “gotcha”. Why don’t you go learn about chaotic systems and the study of anthropogenic climate change and make your own predictions…
Oh, and for the record, if we’re all cheering about redrawn beachfront property being the worst of it in a century I’ll eat my hat. If I’m right, well…you’ll probably be hungry enough to eat yours.
Youre a certifiable idiot.
Warmer seas = more energy in the seas = bigger storms, bigger droughts etc. that’s what we’re seeing already and will be getting worse in the near term. Sea levels - we don’t know enough about the deep structure of Antarctica to put a timeline on. Recent discoveries have shortened thinking as there was liquid water in areas we didn’t expect.
Badly. Really, not much more that I can say about it. The future terrifies me.
At least you can acknowledge it’s real at some level 😭
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Whether they die first or last, really don’t think anyone is escaping this
Tell that to China.
Need any more proof that it’s just some sick fantasy?
