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submitted 2 months ago by Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/news@lemmy.world

Temperatures above 50C used to be a rarity confined to two or three global hotspots, but the World Meteorological Organization noted that at least 10 countries have reported this level of searing heat in the past year: the US, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India and China.

In Iran, the heat index – a measure that also includes humidity – has come perilously close to 60C, far above the level considered safe for humans.

Heatwaves are now commonplace elsewhere, killing the most vulnerable, worsening inequality and threatening the wellbeing of future generations. Unicef calculates a quarter of the world’s children are already exposed to frequent heatwaves, and this will rise to almost 100% by mid-century.

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[-] TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 205 points 2 months ago

If the world was warming even faster than scientists thought it would, seemingly jumping years ahead of predictions, would that mean even more crucial decades of action had been lost?

Yes. Yes it would.

[-] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 106 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Rivers in Alaska have been running bronzish-orange... because the permafrost is melting.

The 'perma' frost, is melting.

That has huge amounts of methane locked up in at.

Which is 8 to 80x more effective at being a greenhouse gas than CO2.

And also ancient bacteria that could cause previously unknown kinds of diseases in wildlife and possibly humans, they now may or may not be seeping into the environment.

...

We have already had a consecutive 12 months at or above 1.5C global average temps, as of last month.

...

Shit's looking pretty bleak.

[-] FollyDolly@lemmy.world 50 points 2 months ago

Glaciers are reaching tipping points as well. Insane heat waves at both poles. It's over guys. Most poeple don't realize it yet but it's over. Those glaciers and poles took an entire iceage to form, and they are not going to come back.

[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 27 points 2 months ago

And yet people are having kids...

[-] superkret@feddit.org 14 points 2 months ago

The entire point of trying to save the climate and environment is to keep the world a nice place for our kids.

[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

In that case, that ship has long sailed.

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[-] DancingBear@midwest.social 24 points 2 months ago

No way man I only use paper straws

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[-] frezik@midwest.social 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I haven't seen anything from climate scientists that agrees with that level of doomerisim. They want to keep fighting against every 0.1C of warming we can, because that's a worthwhile fight. Succumbing to climate nihilism is unhelpful, unscientific, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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[-] littlewonder@lemmy.world 32 points 2 months ago

Definitely don't watch the Arctic Sinkhole documentary from PBS Nova if you like sleeping at night. It's all about the trapped methane in the permafrost and the trapped gasses under the permafrost. Shit is getting real scary. It wasn't even sensationalist.

[-] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

I can at least alleviate your worries of ancient bacteria.

Even our weakest antibiotics could wipe them out as they have evolved zero resistance to it. That's assuming they can even infect humans in the first place.

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[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 30 points 2 months ago

“Action”? I think they mean “dithering and superficial half measures”.

[-] aniki@lemmings.world 24 points 2 months ago

Just five more COPE conferences and then we can finally start!

[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

Time to start having ROPE conferences tbh

[-] b161@lemmy.blahaj.zone 86 points 2 months ago

Capitalism is a death cult.

[-] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Living and dying are the same process. You can't be born without dying. You could say biology condemns us all - very loosely - to a cult of death, as we must all participate.

Capitalism is worse than that. Capitalism is an ideology of exploitation. I'm fine with dying, it's my fault for being born. I don't see why I must submit to exploitation while I do, temporarily, exist.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 months ago

it’s my fault for being born.

is it? I don't recall ever asking to be born, i'm pretty sure that just kind of happened.

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[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 75 points 2 months ago

climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating

Could it be ... fossil fuel producers lying about their output of greenhouse gases? Nah.

[-] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 2 months ago

"Are you telling me that our valued wealth creators are capable of... lying???"

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

You don’t have to lie if you don’t measure …… for example, methane leaks from natural gas drilling, refining and distribution

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[-] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 73 points 2 months ago

There are also some comments about aircon not being a good answer if solely relied on, including:

One of the key effects of heatwaves, which send demand for electricity soaring and cause extreme storms that stress electrical grids, is to cause blackouts. Blackouts mean no more air-con. A recent study suggested a blackout lasting just two days could hospitalise more than half of Phoenix residents and kill 12,000, mostly in their own homes. This is why the author Jeff Goodell warns of a “heat Katrina”: you thought the hurricane in New Orleans was bad?

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 85 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Further, what happens when everyone knows the power isn't coming back and instead the roads out of Phoenix all get backed up and people die in the heat of their cars trying to escape the heat of Phoenix. Because heat can kill a lot of vehicles, and a lot of people have ill-maintained vehicles, meaning roads being completely blocked from escape can happen fast.

I really think Phoenix will become the first mass casualty event from climate change in the USA.

EDIT: Obligatory Peggy Hill. Peggy gets it.

[-] Rhaedas@fedia.io 34 points 2 months ago

That's one of those nightmare thoughts - when the power goes out, what do people usually do for a while? Wait for it to come back on. Someone is coming to fix it, right? Much of modern society is built upon such assumptions, and it mostly works. So I think you're right for some, but many would perish at home, trying to outlast the day (and what if the night doesn't cool?)

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 15 points 2 months ago

And then their food goes bad. Three days of starvation is all it takes to eat cake.

[-] Rhaedas@fedia.io 25 points 2 months ago

Water also disappears. At some point water is being pumped by a power source. I suppose that's more when people get driven out, by hunger and thirst than by just curiosity or a plan. So much easier to leave before things go bad, but like Katrina showed, mobility is a class thing, some people can't leave like that.

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[-] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Lots of cars > lots of traffic > stopped cars > radiators don't cool > cars break down > roads blocked

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[-] Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.world 33 points 2 months ago

Frankly, I am amazed it has not already happened in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or Austin. The power grid here in Texas is a disaster and the weather conditions are unforgiving. At least in the desert you can do evaporative cooling. That doesn't work where its hot and humid.

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[-] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 months ago

Air conditioners will soon be considered life support. In some places it will be a death sentence to have a power outrage. This isn't speculation. It's already happening.

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[-] icosahedron@ttrpg.network 68 points 2 months ago

wow have we procrastinated real climate action long enough yet?

[-] Commiunism@lemmy.wtf 21 points 2 months ago

Doubt procrastination will stop even after 60-70 becomes a new high in those countries and people start dying en masse

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[-] undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 53 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The reason nothing will be done is because the only realistic option we have to save our planets ability to sustain life is economic degrowth.

We don't have enough of the minerals we need to go fully nuclear or renewable and even getting close would use up vast amounts of the very same energy were looking to save in the first place.

As the record levels of equality directly after ww2 showed, economic degrowth due to nearly all the men being at war, only results in the loss of the super rich which is why they'll never allow economic degrowth.

We all work too much, produce too much and pollute too much. Worse, we're all forced to produce the very wealth thats used to force us into wage-slavery and kill our planet.

The answer is and will always be the strategic refusal of labour, above what we need to survive and have a good quality of life. This, by default, will result in economic degrowth.

Want to sit around and do nothing to save the planet? Well, now you can.

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[-] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 40 points 2 months ago

While some argue that the world will soon pass the lower Paris agreement guardrail of 1.5C of heating above the preindustrial average, Schmidt says

Unless 2022 - present turn out to be an anomaly, we already have.

[-] Rhaedas@fedia.io 34 points 2 months ago

It's okay. Remember the IPCC panel decided in 2018(?) that we'll just go over the limit a bit and then figure out how to pull back down. With magic or something.

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[-] Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net 38 points 2 months ago

Global warming is a test. We're failing the test, so the warming is going to start accelerating until we learn our lesson

[-] bashbeerbash@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago

I believe a mix of runaway elitism + ecological devastation is the Great Filter. We're at our great filter and definitely will not overcome considering the galactic evidence.

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[-] BattleGrown@lemmy.world 37 points 2 months ago

Late or not, we have to do all we can to stop runaway warming and ecological collapse. We know corporations and populations won't do anything voluntarily. That is why legislation is the only way. EU is taking the lead on this. I'm hoping world countries will follow.

[-] JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee 18 points 2 months ago

A lot of companies won't even allow remote work which would put a huge dent in commuter related pollution. Will that fix everything by itself? Nope, but it'd be a step in the right direction.

But they won't even do THAT. This one little thing that'd be better for a lot of people and reduce car dependence related pollution for people in areas with little to no public transit access.

I have a hard time believing the US will ever catch up to green initiatives since corporate lobbying pays corrupt assholes more...

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[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 33 points 2 months ago

This'll happen when the corporations causing this don't do anything about it.

[-] PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

First you have to stop capitalist government

lol yeah right

But really though humanity is doomed unless we figure out a way to actually reverse it, because we wont do anything to stop it until its too late to stop (decades ago), so then we wont do anything until it begins creating worldwide problems, which is soon, so by then we will have to have a solution to reverse it.

[-] NegativeInf@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

I think it's capitalist hunting season.

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[-] sudo_shinespark@lemmy.world 30 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

times like these, I feel pretty shitty about how the world and I have condemned my kids to suffer the water wars in a handful of years

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 15 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I feel the same. I was having a tough day already but reading this has made me particularly gloomy.

I feel as though we will look back at these days wistfully.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 28 points 2 months ago

I thought the consensus was that it was El Nino exacerbating things, but I guess that's not the only factor.

[-] girlfreddy@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 months ago

The new evidence that Greenland lived up to its verdant name in the not-so-distant past may represent an exciting scientific breakthrough, but it also heralds ominous possibilities for the future of humanity. Present-day atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than they’ve been in millions of years; evidence of an ice-free Greenland in the more recent past means that it could take even less warming than once expected to deplete the continent’s all-important ice sheet. The frozen stronghold that covers Greenland contains enough fresh water to raise sea levels by 23 feet — a staggering volume that would reshape coastlines around the world.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/08/14/news/climate-desk-new-fossils-reveal-ice-free-greenland-its-bad-news-sea-level-rise

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[-] SulaymanF@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Impossible. Michael Crichton and the experts in Superfreakonomics assured us that scientists would be able to quickly implement geoengineering projects to reduce CO2 and cool the earth. /s

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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
633 points (98.2% liked)

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