There have been record temperatures every day for more than a year. Scientists are investigating what’s behind the extraordinary measurements.
“There’s no ambiguity about the data,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “So really, it’s a question of attribution.”
Understanding what specific physical processes are behind these temperature records will help scientists improve their climate models and better predict temperatures in the future.
The majority of fairy tales (as told throughout human history) do not have happy endings. They were typically told to teach or reinforce hard social truths to prepare young people for the world. The "fairy-tale ending" is really an anachronism of modern, capitalistic story telling. Happy fantasy sells, and reinforces myths that benefit the elite, such as upward social and financial mobility (see Jane Austin, or every Disney movie), and the opportunity to become part of the landed gentry. The belief that everything always works out is itself a major piece of the capitalists propaganda machine, and because we fall for this, we keep making decisions against out best interests - We are all just one fateful encounter away from becoming rich or famous after all.
This has not always been the case, nor does it have to be now. I'm not what has to be done to get government officials on board, but if that doesn't change soon the future looks pretty bleak.
I just can’t imagine our current political systems being capable of passing enough laws and regulations to turn it around. We have to have nearly the entire planet to agree on something?! Fuck.
That's up to us. Get involved. Join an activist group, or a political campaign. Change policy. Show your neighbors how it's possible to cut fossil fuels out of your life.
History is a big teacher, this issue is coming from the big boys of industry. Without major industry change it aint gonna happen, and worldwide as well. Even if the USA goes to 0 other countries can keep it going and offset any good we do.
Im not being a downer, im being real, its bad. Real bad.
If the USA goes to 0 (which is the most hilarious notion I've read all day) while other countries continue per the status quo, that still makes a difference. It helps to slow the increase, buying more time to actually solidify the numbers.
The thing is, while the consensus is that we need to do something, and that something needs to be done a lot, and fast, we don't have any quantifiable numbers, just estimations that may be wildly underexaggerated.
Kinda sorta; they're responsible for more than 80% of scope 3 emissions, which counts what happens when fossil fuels they extract and sell are subsequently burned. Individually, what you do is tiny, but as you show people around you that it's possible to live without fossil fuels, it changes behavior in the aggregate.
The opposite is true. If you want to credibly assert that fossil fuel consumption at the point of extraction can be controlled by consumer behavior it is you who needs to bring evidence.
Even discounting that boycotts cannot work without accompanying violence.
When the plastics industry, an industry concerned with the mere byproducts of fossil fuel extraction, realized that public opinion was turning against their products, they created a multibillion dollar campaign to convince everyone that those plastics were fine and would be recycled even though the technology was never available or cost effective for large scale use and all that plastic waste was just getting dumped in landfills and shipped across the ocean to foreign landfills.
That misinformation was the accepted wisdom for thirty years.
That’s what the industry concerned with the unavoidable byproducts of extraction and refinement of fossil fuels did when everyone started to turn against them after literal decades of grassroots propaganda around litter.
They gaslit the world into believing that it was okay to use plastics for packaging because they could be recycled.
Even if you still believe that you and all your friends can change the course of the main event, the most powerful wealth extraction industry ever known in human history, and keep from being turned against each other, made into pariahs, expelled from society and keep the points of your own knives aimed away from yourselves simply by deciding not to buy fossil fuels, what do you think they’re gonna do?
They’ll just load em up in a tanker and send em over to a place where someone will.
And sell you plastic doodads that run on electricity that is still made by burning fossil fuels.
I don’t need to provide evidence that we can’t change the path of the extractive industries with boycotts, I’ve spent my whole life living in the outcome of that reality.
You made a claim, I said nuh uh, you said prove it, I said you ought to be proving your claim since the entirety of history about your claim in the broadest sense shows the opposite, in the specific sense you’re making it we have an example of your claim being wrong in our living memories and even if somehow your claim were actually true it wouldn’t lead to the result you try to show.
Put up or shut up. Explain how showing people around you that it’s possible to live without fossil fuels will change behavior in aggregate.
Like every scientific journal/report/study since back to 20 years ago? And since the current data is so much worse than original models, all of this below is understating the serverity.
Frankly I just think youre a troll, or head stuck in the ground not wanting to face reality.
When the vast majority of people are struggling just to survive on their ever weakening paychecks, where often even personal health becomes ignored, people dont have the economic, mental, or physical capability to do that. Or they may not even have the literally time available by working numerous jobs.
If it was going to happen, it would have already happened years/decades ago when scientists and environmentalists were already raising the alarms.
This is waiting until the entire kitchen in engulfed in flames before even considering turning off the oven. That option is long past. People are going to die. A lot of people. I cant stress how bad it is. A lot of fucking people are going to die, and many many more are going to suffer.
"I alone can't change anything" is a hastily spoken excuse to shift responsibility onto others. But you are responsible for your life and your actions.
8 billion people on the planet understanding our future and changing the way we live is possible. Be a good example, because you can.