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People of every generation were told it doesn’t matter and that it won’t be a problem. With the advent of social media and associated algorithms, the village idiots are loud, organised and getting others to bark at the moon with them.
Younger generations are ignoring it as well. They’re busy blaming past generations, while they themselves are some of the biggest contributors to our current climate crisis.
So bezos and his guests flying dozens of individual private jets to Venice are the “younger generations”? It doesn’t have a lot to do with age but seems to correlate with wealth. The wealthier you are (as a nation and an individual) the more you typically (on average) contribute to climate change.
So bezos and his guests flying dozens of individual private jets to Venice are the “younger generations”?
As wasteful as that may seem, it’s doesn’t make much of a difference in the bigger picture. What does make a big impact is using all the services Bezos is providing. And not just his. Every cloud service uses an insane amount of energy. Youtube, TikTok, streaming services, online games, iCloud, Dropbox, video calls, crypto valuta, A.I. They can’t build data centers fast enough to supply the demand.
They are not ignoring it, you silly Billy. They are treating it like everyone else is.
They are the some of the biggest consumers of electronics and technology. What do you think powers that. Fairy dust?
Two things.
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Your original statement was that they were ignoring it, not that they were contributing to it. They are definitely not ignoring it. They have less ability to ignore it that any previous generation.
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Their consumption of electronics is the result of how they were brought up. Not that they have some kind of suicidal death wish. If you were in their generation you would be doing the same thing. As would I.
And if they where in an older generation, they would have done the same thing as that generation. That’s exactly my point. Every generation follows the trends and do what they have to to get by. What gets my piss boiling is their whining that the climate crisis is the fault of older generations, while they themselves aren’t any better.
That’s a valid point.
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And people think I’m crazy for starting an algae farm… There is no quick fix. “Science will figure something out”
I am part of that science, and I can barely afford to scale beyond what I consider my carbon footprint.
narcimalgae on YouTube, although the algorithm killed it (500 to 6 views on my last video)so I may move to peertube soon.
Can you give a quick elevator pitch for algae farms?
Water holds 8 times the gasous CO2 as the atmosphere it is exposed to at a given pressure(altitude). The algae, being carbon-based, pulls the carbon from the water to grow, and releases the oxygen as a biproduct. The algae biomass can then be condensed and stored, or used as a raw agriculture material. Water, sunlight, and a small amount of fertilizer all fed by an air pump.
Share a link here
You dont understand. The poor billionairs need their money nowwww!
Phew, looks like the industrial revolution just saved us from falling below the safe climate zone! /s
My parents believe we’re in the end times and god will return any day now. They were mentally ill from the get go. They are pure evil and don’t see the evil they are.
Go figure they’re also extremely obese and mostly immobile. They are sloths and glutens. They never took care of themselves and believe bullshit snake oil salesmen over their own children’s advice.
You can’t reason with the evil that is these fundamental cultists.
We might very well be in the end times and maybe AI will wipe us from the planet to prevent earth from becoming Venus.
This is my boomer dad whenever he complains about it being extremely hot in the summer, cold in the winter, too much rain, etc. Always responds well it won’t last too long and that’s just nature, nothing we can do about it because it has a mind of its own.
The scary thing is, this graph is probably far too conservative.
Evidence is now emerging that indicates that warming has accelerated dramatically in the last 2-3 years. As in, we may see more warming in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 50, with +3℃ happening just after 2035, and +4℃ happening by some time around 2040 to 2050.
You know what happens around +4℃? The extinction of all megafauna - animals larger than 45kg. Like humans. The entire ⅓ of the planet between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn will experience lethally high wet bulb temperatures across all regions for at least several weeks out of every year, rendering it permanently uninhabitable for the 4+ Billion people that currently live there. India is currently flirting with that reality.
And with that heating inertia, 2100 may see +8℃ temps, which essentially means ice-free poles year round (once things calm down), with palm trees and alligators at the North Pole. Of course, by that time chaotic weather and resource exhaustion will have killed off all remaining humans.
And the lovely thing about “moving parts” is that they all have this little thing called inertia… the faster they move, the further they go. And +8℃ is very close to the +12-15℃ that a Venus Scenario would be triggered by.
Past warming events have been “similar” in that they have gotten just as warm, but they took hundreds of thousands of years to get to the same place, allowing entire continent-wide ecosystems to quite literally migrate across thousands of kilometers to adapt. Our changes are happening in less than 0.01% of that time scale, giving ecosystems no time at all in which to react. So our biosphere will get slaughtered along with us, and will be unable to compensate in time.
And with the biosphere becoming overwhelmed by rapid changes, there goes the “friction” that could do something about that “inertia”.
And the worst part is, we still haven’t moved off of the worst-case-possible “business as usual” path. We are swan-diving into the worst possible future. Thanks to billionaires addicted to fat profit margins and who control all of the processes, we are utterly failing to generate the change needed to save ourselves, with CO2e production - purely human sources, excluding the feedback loops in nature!! - CONTINUING TO ACCELERATE.
Fun times. I just might live long enough to see humanity go extinct.
Not that renaming problems ever helps, but this is why I’m trying to push “anthropogenic runaway global heating” as a replacement for the weak formulation of “global warming” and the even weaker “climate change”. It has the handy acronym of ARGH.
It has the handy acronym of ARGH.
Okay, that is hilarious.
I’m just going to call it “the climate shitshow” at this point, with how cooked we seem to be.
Love it.
Can you back up these claims? Not doubting, just curious/terrified to learn more.
Here, feel free to simultaneously urinate and defecate into your pants:
All of this is evidence-based. All of this relies on facts.
Yeah, we’re f**king hosed as a species. Our legacy at this point should be in preventing a Venus Scenario, so at least life can continue to go on in some fashion
Fucking sucks. Thanks.
The planet is fine it’s the people who are fucked
We don’t exactly know where the tipping point towards a Venus Scenario is. We just know it’s somewhere past +12℃, and before +16℃.
And the problem isn’t so much that we will reach that temp - we will go extinct long before that point - but rather the warming process - with all of the feedback loops that it kicks off - will push the planet into a Venus Scenario.
So no. The planet is not fine. The “friction” of prior warming events that would slow its “inertia” - the slowly-migrating, slowly-adapting biospheres that continue to draw down CO2e - won’t have that capability this time around. It’s just all happening far too fast for them to migrate or adapt.
We have literally “cut the brakes” with the speed and inertia of the current warming we have created. And one very real consequence may be a dead planet with a superheated atmosphere.
Maybe we kick off a nuclear winter before we go out
Honestly, if we’re talking about mostly or completely surface blasts, and not atmospheric detonations, that might be what saves the planet.
Nuclear winter is very much a thing by how the thrown-up dust reflects most incoming light, and with most detonations being in cities, the kicked-up dust would contain plenty of iron… which is the major limiting factor of phytoplankton, the largest single converter of CO2 to O2. All it has to do is fall out of the atmosphere and into the oceans during the spring to summer. So we need a late winter or early spring nuclear war.
I just finished reading The Deluge by Stephen Markley and I’m at the acceptance phase of greif.
Tardigrades will probably survive, and at least plastic pollution will be halted.
So I suppose I just have 15 more years to live huh?
I would say 10 of relative comfort, another 5-10 of increasing disasters (political, social, environmental, etc.) that tear apart civilization, and a final 5-10 of complete collapse where only small isolated communities still exist, and every day is a real struggle for survival against exceptionally hostile conditions.
Honestly, most scientific projections of resource exhaustion and environmental degradation point to 2050 as the point beyond which “civilization” really ceases to exist.
And honestly, I would be shocked if humanity still existed as any kind of a high-tech going concern much past that.
Yes there are some upsides
Yet “you have to have a car to work” like ok no for one fuck you for two we have several modes of transport AND energy sources now you actually do choose actively to diarrhea out carbon on purpose and I fucking see you
Depends a lot on where you are from. Not everyone has the means to uproot and move to a walkable city or a city with public transport.
Our governments have fundamentally failed us
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I was just thinking about the poor air quality today and yesterday here in the Midwest, and then I see this. I want to be hopeful we can change this in my lifetime, but I am also not optimistic.
Depends how old you are. I’m 47. It’s gonna far worse. The question is will my kids be the ones to say it’s bad enough? I don’t know. Maybe theirs.
Also it’s hilariously optimistic that this chart only thinks a 4 degree rise by 2100. Seems very conservative.
Personally speaking I’m investigating moving my family further north here in Canada to get ahead of the madness to come.
I am optimistic. I will get downvoted to oblivion, but I want to share what I honestly observe:
1. AI demand is driving huge investment in production of carbon-free energy at scale.
Yes, AI is sucking up all the immediate term cheap fossil-fuel energy while it can. But it needs more, so it’s driving carbon-free investment.
Immediate term with Small Modular fission Reactors (SMRs)
… and immediate term, multiple commercial fusion energy plants are being built.
2. Commercially viable carbon-free energy at scale is coming online in < 10 years
SMR is real, exists today, and just needs economies of scale … and stable regulation. AI datacenters are driving the orders now and even if MAGA cultists keep USA out a few more years, science-accepting countries will be investing in clusters of those, rather than coal plants, when they see working examples and so less risk.
The Fusion plants this decade will not be just prototypes, but plants that produce more energy as a whole than they take in, multiple times over, and ofc don’t produce nuclear waste. This is largely made possible by high temperature superconductors (which didn’t exist commercially when ITER was built) and a demo plant fully online in 2027
EDIT: ofc we should reduce excess CO2 emissions immediate term, don’t misconstrue long term optimism for polyannish denial of imemdiate term emergency
Yes, AI is sucking up all the immediate term cheap fossil-fuel energy while it can. But it needs more, so it’s driving carbon-free investment.
Nah, this is the same nonsense lie cryptobros tried to peddle. Any energy used by AI is energy which could have been used for something more worthwhile, carbon-free or not. And most of it is far from carbon-free.
AI as it now stands gives me quite the opposite of hope. It’s only intended to enslave the working class and further transfer wealth to the top 0.01%, as is fusion.
Solarpunk gives me hope.
Well, maybe you aren’t aware of how it’s being used to design proteins to create therapies for pretty much… everything, from cancer to Crohn’s. Another 2-3 years before you see products in human trials.
Or how it’s revolutionized climate science and weather forecasting.
If all you see is the hype Grok images and SEO slop, it’s reasonable to reject the technology. But that would be deeply misguided.
I’m aware of the promises of AI, yes. LLMs are trash. Folding proteins is awesome. Nonetheless, it’s all controlled by the ultrawealthy, and that is THE problem today, which AI ain’t solving for us.
AI demand is driving huge investment in production of carbon-free energy at scale
I feel like AI companies are creating a large demand for energy no matter where it comes from, and feel like having some minor investments in potential carbon free energy is mainly a marketing ploy or something to point at if they ever get sued.
Immediate term with Small Modular fission Reactors (SMRs)
Tbh, the big problem with nuclear in america is that we don’t really have the federal power needed to actually coordinate and mandate the needed infrastructure for it. The US is so obsessed with state rights that we’re susceptible to nimby attacks and disputes at the local and State level governments.
To actually cut through the red tape, we’d have to empower federal agencies for a good reason for once, and I’m not very optimistic about our current political climate.
and immediate term, multiple commercial fusion energy plants are being built.
Yeah… I think it would be more accurate to say that fusion experimental sites are being built. Most nuclear engineers I’ve heard talk about fusion are still skeptical about fusion being viable in the next 20 years.
Love this one. It’s one of the best illustrations of the “hockey stick effect” and a perfect way to explain why the excuse that “were just coming out of an ice age” is dead wrong.
Your parents ignored this
I’ve been hearing about climate change consistently since the 1980s. Multiple iterations of liberal (and moderate conservative) politician have campaigned on a variety of (free market) mechanisms for capping or curbing carbon emissions. We even had a huge surge in R&D for green energy alternatives and electrification - first in the 70s and then again during the gas cost explosion of the 00s - that is (thank fucking god) finally paying off.
So I won’t say they “ignored this”. I will say that we had a very wealthy, very influential minority entrenched within the political class that profited enormously from fossil fuel extraction and deliberately suppressed decades of prior efforts to reduce emissions, both domestically and globally.
The Boomers weren’t blind to climate change. They weren’t even apathetic. They were outmatched, outplayed, and outspent. Much like with slavery in the 1800s and women’s liberation in the 1900s and human rights in the 2000s, this is a fight that liberals have spent a lot of time losing. What wins they achieved felt significant in the moment, but remained dwarfed by the stubborn intractability of their wealthy, reactionary opposition.
Yep, what is everyone reading this thread doing about all of the beverage companies, data centers and fracking taking our fresh water? My guess, the same as everyone who isn’t one of the above mentioned companies, nothing. One can only take care of their community.
Also a degree of survivorship bias.
The folks that are “doing something” end up assaulted by police, arrested, jailed, and periodically maimed or killed while engaged in active resistance. These incidents of industry-coordinated state oppression go under-reported or propagandized into “eco-terrorism” in such a way that any kind of opposition to the industry is painted as extremist and counter-productive.
When your only legal options are “try to recycle harder and maybe buy more Greenwashed merch” and “Go full denialist, embrace fossil fuel propaganda, and roll some coal on a Prius”, the outside observer is going to assume nothing is being done. Instead, real material efforts are simply being thwarted.
Yep it just is a class war always with humans.
No, I won’t give them the out. This isn’t them simply being outgunned on messaging or outmaneuvered by corporate interests.
Theirs is a story of objective dereliction of duty.
Previous generations leveraged the future of their descendants to improve their wealth and economic growth. Those same generations and wealthy twats are now vying for global control as right-wing governments take power.
Yeah, there was corporate propaganda at play. That does not negate the duty of the electorate to stay informed. They could have looked into it, but they didn’t because it was an inconvenient truth.
We’ve had strong indication that CO2 was going to fuck us since 1896 from research by Svante Arrhenius. And if you want to go waaaaayyy back, the idea that a small percentage of atmospheric gases could absorb infrared radiation was 1859 by John Tyndall. Oh, or maybe we can start the clock at 1824 when Joseph Fourier (yes that Fourier) first proposed the idea of greenhouse gases.
So after 200 fucking years of knowing about this, we’ve still done fuck all.
So yes. Many of our parents were willfully ignorant and didn’t prioritize this issue because … The Mexicans are coming across the border and we can’t have that even if we’d really like to kick off a green energy revolution. AREGGHHHH! IF ONLY IT WEREN’T FOR THOSE DAMN ILLEGALS THEY WOULD’VE SOLVED THIS!
Previous generations leveraged the future of their descendants to improve their wealth and economic growth
Previous generations developed the industrial infrastructure that granted historic consumer surpluses (and waste), but vanishingly few of them reaped the full benefits.
This isn’t a problem of generation, its a problem of economic planning (or lack there of). The post-WW2 dedication to a fossil fuel economy was a military decision more than a civilian one. Capturing and holding large sources of fossil fuel made up the bedrock of the Cold War.
Blaming this decision on Meema and Pepe is ahistorical.
We’ve had strong indication that CO2 was going to fuck us since 1896 from research by Svante Arrhenius.
We’ve had evidence of anthropogenic climate change, but also ample evidence of sizeable economic benefit to petroleum products - plastics and fertilizers not being the least of it.
We had the opportunity to engage in long term moderate and sustainable use, but squandered it in the name of short term consumer-driven profits.
But, again, this wasn’t a decision made by a mass of proles, democratically. It was dictated from corporate boards and corrupt Congressional legislatures and Pentagon war rooms.
The knowing didn’t matter, because the public was never given a real choice.
Many of our parents were willfully ignorant and didn’t prioritize this issue
Efforts to prioritize the issue was repeatedly thwarted through elaborate and labor intensive lobbying campaigns, gerrymanders, bribes, blackmail, and direct physical violence.
FFS, you had the national guard deployed to brutalize pipeline protesters just a few years ago. And that’s a drop in the bucket besides the sacks and pillaging of native reservations, the toppling of foreign governments, and the endless FUD broadcast globally to defame ecologists and activists.
We had the opportunity to engage in long term moderate and sustainable use, but squandered it in the name of short term consumer-driven profits.
But, again, this wasn’t a decision made by a mass of proles, democratically. It was dictated from corporate boards and corrupt Congressional legislatures and Pentagon war rooms.
I think, ultimately, we agree. The main difference is I don’t think “but, but, they were lied to” is an effective excuse to remove blame. In a democracy, however dysfunctional, the people share responsibility for the government the people elect.
Voter participation since the 70s is garbage. We’re just now breaking the high water mark of the 60’s - 65% presidential ; 50% midterm.
I am not saying it is their fault. Just that they are at fault. I’m at fault. I could have protested, but I believed too strongly that we’d get there. I never conceived we’d go backwards. I just thought if I kept voting right, we’d get there - slowly.
That is my shame and blame to carry. And I won’t give others a pass for their inaction or choices.
The main difference is I don’t think “but, but, they were lied to” is an effective excuse
If you’re sighting data collected in 1894 but discounting the education and media necessary to propagate that information to the general public, I’m not sure how the information is expected to disseminate.
Yeah, people were absolutely lied to - insidiously and exhaustively. That necessarily shapes their world views.
In a democracy, however dysfunctional, the people share responsibility for the government the people elect.
Liberal democracy is barely worthy of the term. Congress has had a single digit approval rating for decades. The president regularly is underwater in public support. The parties are privately owned and operated, periodically selecting their nominees without any democratic input. Voters are systematically gerrymandered and disenfranchised. Popular candidates are smeared, removed from ballots, denied access to debates, and outright prosecuted.
What do you say to the 60-80% of the population with no material representation in government?
I’m at fault
Unless I’m talking to a CEO of an energy company or a sitting Senator, I’m not clear what you are supposed to have done differently.
The modern moment is historically overdetermined. It’s hubristic to pretend you have any control over it.
Yeah, people were absolutely lied to - insidiously and exhaustively. That necessarily shapes their world views.
Yes, but people also see the truth. The information is there. Some people choose to believe the lies because it’s convenient. They don’t want to look into it. They don’t want to listen to scientists, and instead choose to listen to politicians and companies.
Voters are systematically gerrymandered and disenfranchised. Popular candidates are smeared, removed from ballots, denied access to debates, and outright prosecuted.
Where are the riots? Where were the protests as Republicans red mapped? Why did they stop? Where was the blowback when Florida didn’t give felons their right to vote back? Where are the riots when Republicans vote to remove the ability of citizens to add initiatives to the ballot?
What do you say to the 60-80% of the population with no material representation in government?
You don’t need a vote to effect meaningful political change. Women couldn’t vote. Until they could - through collective action.
Everyone chooses how to react and interface with the world. All the distortions in American democracy didn’t materialize overnight.
People formed unions despite being murdered by pinkertons. Just because the system is fighting against us, doesn’t absolve us of our responsibilities.
The modern moment is historically overdetermined. It’s hubristic to pretend you have any control over it.
Correct my misunderstanding, but this tells me you have given up and think that nothing could have been done unless those with real power suddenly became altruistic in the past 3 decades.
And on that point, we may fundamentally disagree. I have to believe that citizens can effect change individually or collectively despite everything stacked against them. If I admit that the power differential is intractable and hopeless, then our only hope is a sudden wave of noblesse oblige to overcome people’s greed, and we are truly fucked. Hubristic or not, I have to believe we have agency.
Yes, but people also see the truth.
People see information weighted by quality of presentation and volume of utterances. “The Truth” is not self-revelatory nor is it self-reinforcing, particularly for a lay person. There are whole philosophical treaties that break this down.
Where are the riots? Where were the protests as Republicans red mapped? Why did they stop? Where was the blowback when Florida didn’t give felons their right to vote back? Where are the riots when Republicans vote to remove the ability of citizens to add initiatives to the ballot?
You have to ask, you haven’t bothered to look. We had a Jacksonville man arrested after he tried to run over a pack of protesters in his neighborhood in June. We had a Texas congressional candidate tackled by police in the middle of a legislative session just last week. Over 3,200 students had been arrested on campus in the spring of 2024. The riots in LA have been happening for months.
But the fact that you seem to be willing to deny the existence of ongoing domestic protests - flare ups that have been stretching back decades in this country - sort of illustrates the problem of “the truth of climate change”. You’ve blinded yourself to crowds of people who may well be marching through your own neighborhoods. These are massive crowds of people who get regular news coverage, not obscure 19th century climatologists who go unmentioned save in the fine print of Wikipedia articles.
Correct my misunderstanding, but this tells me you have given up
If I had given up, I wouldn’t be blaming random Boomers on the current state of affairs. I don’t believe an entire generational cohort is irredeemably stupid.
“The Truth” is not self-revelatory nor is it self-reinforcing, particularly for a lay person.
It is not self-revelatory, but there are objective truths. If a lay person lacks the expertise to understand, they should defer to experts - not politicians or pundits.
Falling for propaganda is a reason, but it is not an excuse. The electorate has a responsibility to be informed.
You have to ask, you haven’t bothered to look.
I’m incredibly proud of what has been happening in my home city of LA. That’s what we fucking need everywhere. Burn cities down until things change.
But fair point! I was being more rhetorical and less literal. But that’s my miscommunication error. My question wasn’t to say they don’t exist or haven’t happened. I asked it to highlight that it isn’t enough. That for the magnitude of what is happening and its importance, the response is impotent and not proportional.
The world is increasingly on fire (almost literally). I’m living in a downtown metropolitan area minutes from city hall and protests are not daily.
I don’t believe an entire generational cohort is irredeemably stupid.
Nor do I. I never said that. I said I blame them for their willful ignorance and their decision not to prioritize climate change politically.
My position is simple. More could have been done, and because of that, we share blame and responsibility - however small. This is why I also blame myself.
Anyway, I think we’ve kind of hit a natural end. I appreciated our conversation, and it’s given me some things to mull over.
Thank you❤️
You’re committing a worse sin. You’re fighting the culture war for the powers that be.
Well pick up your gun and go do something I guess
AI is going to fix this by increasing the scale of the Y axis.
Just hallucinate better data
And what were they supposed to do other than go out and vote in their own best interest?
In retrospect they’ll probably feel violence was justified. How many time machine scenarios will amount to ecoterrorism in the same way that we imagine we’d kill Hitler today
Considering they failed at that too not much.
Finally, this is the first time I saw this graph that DIDN’T use logarithmic scale for time - which makes this sharp spike look “natural”.
Did they ignore it? Yes but the only reason they ignored it was because…
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The oil industry (and other adjacent industries) did their best to make sure everybody doubted the science of climate change
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Governments (the U.S gov’t in particular) took the oil industry’s side and subsidized their ventures
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Libertarian think tanks (like the Heritage Foundation and ALEC) took money from Big Oil to misinform the public about climate change and its connection to fossil fuel burning.
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