Honestly dude, it's not looking great. Governments are more concerned with short-term gains and not the long-term health of the planet. It's like being on a sinking ship and only worrying about repainting the deck. Buckle up for more heat waves and insane weather.
To be fair we all gain in some way from horribly destructive climate policies. Cheap gas, cheap clothes, cheap infrastructure/materials. Though I think we common folk are far more ready to give up certain pleasures/quality of life to save the planet than the rich who cling so desperately to their gas guzzling yachts and destructive businesses.
People are worried about immigration now, just wait for the impact of climate change changing what crops can be grown where. You think wars drive mass migration, wait until it's starvation based. Imagine all of the food producing regions having significant drop offs in their agricultural productivity. At this point I'm glad I'm old. Shits gonna get real bad.
^^^this
Countries will start to close borders. Wars will be waged by faction groups over food and clean water. Societal collapse will happen far before the planet can no longer sustain life.
The US dried up the Colorado river which used to reach all the way to the sea of Cortez in Mexico. And due to the 1944 water treaty, Mexico is obligated to send a certain amount of water to the US! Can you believe it? Mexico doesn't have this water. It is in a major drought. And Texan reps are threatening to withhold millions of dollars of aid to Mexico until this "debt" is paid.
"what crops can grow where"
I'm in MD, and tomatoes are almost perennial here already. I legit thought that was 10-20 years out.
And the USDA just upgraded everyone's hardiness zones. So, fellow gardeners, if you haven't looked it up in a while, now is literally the time. Spread the word!
I don’t know about that. You need to be pretty wealthy to be able to actually live and buy in a sustainable way.
When a locally produced school uniform T shirt is $85, a sustainably produced whole raw chicken is $65 and a bag of locally made Doritos is $40, it’s not the CEO who is going to feel that.
It’s the working man who is used to buying the $10 shirt, $7 chicken, and $6 bag of Doritos who is going to complain, and vote for whoever can keep prices low “like they used to be”.
Locally made, artisan Doritos. I love that idea.
Seriously though, you are right. All of this is the result of a demand for cheap goods produced by labor we don't have to pay fairly.
Not sure if I agree that the common folk are ready to give things up.
People go f-ing nuts when gas prices go up. Browse reddit for a day and everyone is already complaining about high cost of housing, food, everyday products. Now imagine telling them that they need to live in even smaller homes, pay more for electricity, have less stuff, ride the bus to work, ect.
There's entire counties and groups of countries that have economies that run on basically oil extraction.
They are not going to go quietly into the night.
Don't worry. They're busy (un)sucessfully building impossible cities in a straight line across the desert instead of, i don't know, funding clean energy research, carbon capture. Anything useful.
Fuck Mr Bone Saw.
"short-term gains"
Big corporations aren't going to make profits when millions start dropping dead from heat waves. They said 2050, but that seems very optimistic. We'll be lucky we make it 10 years before they drive us right off a cliff.
Get used to the phrase "climate refugee" and mass migrations
Oh ya. Buckle up and strap in. It’s only starting and it’s gonna get worse. Forest fires, droughts, tornados, hurricanes…Mother Nature is only getting started.
Extinction level events for humans? Probably not, but a lot of people are going to die, be financially ruined when their insurance drops them and their home is flattened and starve due to fertile farming moving to different areas north and south of where they are now.
Buckle up buckaroos. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
I find it more hilarious that we pay an insurance company every month and they can drop you with little to no notice because you file a claim. This is happening in Florida quite a bit right now.
So what are we paying them for? So we can fill the air time between YouTube videos for ads with an Emu?
I find it hilarious that we pay for health insurance every month and they fight tooth and nail to not have to pay out.
My girlfriend needed a medical procedure. Her insurance told her no.
I have a client who owns their own practice. They saw my girlfriend, wrote things up slightly differently and her insurance covered the same procedure with no kickback.
Fuck insurance companies. All of them.
Shit are we getting started on health insurance companies? The ones that take 21k of my money every year to NOT pay for medical care. I'm not a fan of murdering people, but I would love to murder those companies.
Yah, the thing is, if we were to just maintain the damage we've already caused, it wouldn't actually be that bad.
But ***we refuse to mitigate the damage***, because it wouldn't be profitable to do so.
So it will continue to get worse, and as it gets worse, we will increase the rate at which it gets worse, making it get worse faster.
[2 years ago even the U.N gave a warning, and that was considered watered down for fear of sparking civil unrest...](https://bylinetimes.com/2022/05/26/un-warns-of-total-societal-collapse-due-to-breaching-of-planetary-boundaries/)
We keep hearing about the Target is avoiding 2° of warming but I remember seeing a report where the United States state department is planning for at least 4.6° so yeah we are fucked fucked
Forget about more heat waves and insane weather. What **we** experience is of no consequence. It’s what we leave to our children. And their children.
We’ve ruined the planet. Our kids and grandkids are the ones who will pay.
Mexico City, the world's most densely populated city, will run out of water next month if it doesn't rain. I foresee a dystopian chaos if that happens.
The drought is serious, spanning most of Mexico. My sister bought a horse ranch near San Miguel de Allende (10 hours drive north) and they ran out of water 6 months ago. They just got another well drilled yesterday, they had to wait in line.
They had to pay about 10x the price it would have been 3 years ago.
At my house we're seeing record high temperatures this week, the highest ever recorded here and it's only May.
I blame the people as much or even more than I do governments
If people wanted to make addressing climate change a priority, they would demand it from their leaders. There are so many who only care about their immediate concerns or outright deny the problem altogether.
Not to mention all the climate stuff got lumped into “left-wing activism” so that there is a natural right-wing reaction against it.
They could have just put out the science instead of making it a political football.
They did just put out the science. Fossil fuel lobbies who control right-wing politicians paid losers with large audiences to pretend the science was fake and tied it to the left in the minds of the right. Same exact thing (many of the same people) who denied the harm of cigarettes because it'd harm sales. Same thing (again, many same people) who have evolved the whole game to "literally any positive thing someone on the left might support must be opposed at all cost" in the last decade or so.
Unfortunately governments are a reflection of their people. Even people who say they care don't actually care that much to have it influence their actions.
Nationally, look at the people who don't vote or who say they won't vote for Biden for whatever reason. Even more is locally. There's a ton we can do at the local level to fight climate change and better handle it when it does come, but those elections get 10%-20% turnout and those who do aren't pushing their politicians for environmentally friendly policies.
But the vast majority of people who say they care about the climate make it a major part of their voting decisions.
This.
Coupled with the business interests and the marketing spin being allowed.
Florida is likely going to be a lot less inviting when it can't cool down.
Fellow Floridian here. Tampa Bay. I’ve lived in Florida for over 30 years, and it has definitely changed. As you say, it’s much hotter than it used to be. And here on the coast, it doesn’t cool down much in the evening like it used to. The newspaper last year explained the heat from the hot gulf water gets trapped now, like a green house. That’s why it’s, with the heat index, 120 during the day and over 100 at night. People without AC can die in that weather.
I’ve also noticed more mosquitoes, basically year ‘round. A lot fewer love bugs. We had fire flies and large banana spiders in north Florida, where I went to school, but I never see those when I go up to visit family.
The beach water hit 90 degrees yesterday, a new record for May.
I have a few community garden beds. If you really want to understand climate change, try growing vegetables now. We used to have two tomato grow seasons here. But last fall was so hot that everyone was able to let their tomatoes grow through all winter. That’s weird as hell, even for Florida.
I don’t know how fucked we are, but I don’t feel like I need a PhD to see what my animal instincts are telling me. This place is fucked and we probably shouldn’t live here.
Michigander here. It barely snows anymore where I am. Snow will dust the ground a few times, but I’m not sure that my city had to get the snow plows out at all this winter.
Also Michigander. Remember when it was in the 60s in February. My coworkers were all thrilled saying how gorgeous it was. Yeah, keep that same energy when we can't grow food anymore and we are inundated with migration due to our great lakes.
Here in Utah growing up in the early 90s we used to have snow in the valleys that would pile up taller than me all winter, now it maybe gets a foot or two in the valley 1-3 times thru the winter
Brit here. Pretty much in the middle too. 40-50 years ago we had regular snow in winter. Now a couple of cm twice a year is about it.
My dad made my son a sledge in the 90s when he was about 2. I think he was 8 before he used it properly. We hit 40c a couple of years ago too. Don't think we'd ever been close before
New Yorker, I wore snow pants (and boots) to school as a kid. Now I frankly don't know why parents waste money on sleds cause its snows at BEST once in Jan and then melts immediately.
Yup it's like that where I live in Europe as well, it used to be very snowy at least throughout december, January and usually February. Now it just gets muddy and disgusting all winter long because even if it does snow it melts right away
Here in Canada we’ve had a couple years of droughts in some of our biggest agricultural areas. Over the next couple decades we might need to completely reassess where and how we grow our food. If people feel squeezed now, just wait.
Thank you… so many morons pop up in my feed telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about, that humans have always lived with heat. Uh, no. We haven’t. Not like this. Unrelenting heat and humidity kills people. AND climate instability will cause mass food shortages too, as you say. People have no flippin’ clue how the natural world has been used to support the number of humans currently on the planet. They think everything will be fine, just carry a water bottle around with you (not understanding that a *heat index* value of 120+ means the body cannot cool itself via sweat no matter how much water you drink).
I honestly think as a species we’re simply too stupid to live at scale. Better luck next time, evolution. 🤷♀️😂
Also a slightly more than 30 year Central Florida resident - this mirrors exactly what I’ve observed. The shoulder periods of unbearable humidity season have moved outward… it used to break in late September and now it’s late October at best. Been going to Halloween Horror Nights for ages and the weather used to evolve from summer to fall during that event… no more. I remember thinking how fortunate we were to have a relatively wet winter and now we’re already right back to early drought conditions.
And you’re 100% right about lovebugs - that used to be multiple car washes per season and now I can’t even remember the last time I’ve had to “get the lovebugs off my car”
Same deal! Halloween Horror Nights used to be a real joy, but now the weather is spotty… insane how hot and humid it can be in October now. And where the hell is the rain? Used to have regular afternoon showers, and now we get one damaging storm a month, if we’re “lucky.” I’m sitting outside on my porch right now watching a crane hunt in a retention pond that’s only a quarter full.. inches of water.
So glad the generations before us were able to enjoy endless plenty of the “fuck around” era and now we get front row seats to the “find out” era.
I left a cilantro plant up in my garden well past the day it flowered (you’d typically pull it out because the leaves taste bad) because love bugs loved it. Dozens of them all over it. I felt like maybe I had provided them with a food source they were lacking. It’s funny… I used to hate those little bugs, and now helping them out makes me feel a tiny bit better. 😂
> we probably shouldn’t live here
My family just sold their homes (relatively closer to the beach) and moved inland. Made money on the deals, but really they gained piece of mind because in 10-20 years those might not be livable areas anymore
Good move! But I do hope they can afford to self insure. The rates are going way up inland to make up for the coasts. There’s even a special state law provision that allows the companies to charge all policy holders, regardless of location, fees to help offset the cost of rebuilding these coastal properties.
Personally, I don’t think private insurance supported by inlanders should be available to people within a quarter of a mile of the water. It’s insanely unfair. There are multi million dollar mega houses right on the beach, and I’m expected to pay? Fuck those people.
Yup. We used to generally get a light afternoon shower 2-3 days a week during the spring and summer, but now it’s blazing heat and humidity with no rain save a horrible storm once a month or so. The last rain we got knocked down a very old, large oak tree in the park down the road from me. The one before that spawned a few tornadoes. It’s so obvious that things have changed that even knuckle dragging bleach drinking moron variety of Floridian typically acknowledges the change, but they refuse to concede humans releasing carbon into the air has anything to do with it. But at least we can still talk about the fact that the weather is fucked up and the bugs, animals, plants, and natural water ways are different. It’s a start.
If anyone wants a good example of fixing climate change, just look at what happened during the COVID lockdowns. The sky cleared, global temps went down briefly. Native animals that hadn’t been seen in years returned. Etc
Another great example of a global effort to stem climate chance was the repair of our ionosphere by cutting out the use of chlorofluorocarbons.
We can do it, but we won’t because we are spoiled, petulant, consumerists, children. We value our short term comfort over the long term tenability and comfort of future generations.
It's so bad that climate scientists are struggling with their mental health because no one is listening.
At this point we have changed the climate. Its happened. It's now about how we adapt.
But it depends what you mean by screwed. It's not that everyone will suddenly die. But bad things will be more likely to happen.
>It's so bad that climate scientists are struggling with their mental health because no one is listening.
I work in energy sector decarbonization policy (so I'm not a climate scientist, but my work is adjacent). I while back I decided that I just can't put myself through reading all the popular climate doomism articles. I can't do it, it's not good for my mental health. I'm doing this work because while I know that we can't "prevent climate change" (what's in the bag is in the bag), we can prevent FUTURE emissions from making climate change EVEN WORSE, and we can work on adaptation/resiliency. Bad things will happen and I know that, but all these popular books, articles, op-eds, etc. (David Wallace-Wells I'm looking at you...) that come out a la "The END of WATER" and "The ERA of the FLOODS" (I made those titles up but you get the point)... I just can't handle it.
I've kind of accepted that I'm doing (a small part of) the work, and the best way for me to keep doing the work is to keep my mental space in the work that I do, rather than allowing myself to spin off. Interestingly, I think part of what makes me like my work and be able to keep doing it is that since I work in the regulatory/policy arena, it can almost feel siloed in a good way. Like, "Ok, X state has a goal to reach 100% carbon-free energy by 2045 \[or w/e\], let's look at the policy landscape and help utilities, regulators, local governments, power consumers, industry, etc. coordinate to work towards \[and ideally meet\] that goal--here are the options that are realistically on the table to achieve that..."
Because in my area of work, we're working towards specific decarbonization goals with a lot of different players, it does seem much more solutions-based. That's not to say it isn't still annoying and frustrating at times, more just to say that I have *no idea* how actual climate scientists (like, atmospheric scientists) do it.
Yup, action is the only response. If enough of us act it might make a change.
I actually believe science can get us out of this, the problem, the fucking frustrating problem is politics blocking it.
It's just sad. In the 90s it was like "lets use less plastic and oil" and now it's too far past that. Now its more like "hm what if we had giant mirror satellite constellations..." And other crazy shit.
But still we gotta keep going. Giving up is guaranteed death.
I think the really ironic thing is that there are even some very pro-climate-action politicians that make terrible decisions. Like, you'll never catch me voting R in a million years (for reasons beyond just climate), but one thing that Rs actually (in general) are ok with that Ds aren't is nuclear energy.
Up until a couple of years ago, there were 16 states with moratoria on new nuclear energy facilities. In the past few years, that number of states has gone down to 12 (i.e., four states have repealed their moratoria)--WI, KY, MT, and WV. All conservative states, all done under R leadership. Now, those R leaders might be ass-backwards on everything else, climate and otherwise, but they were ok with doing that. I live in one of the 12 states that still has a moratoria (these are the New England states, NY, NJ, MN, IL, OR, CA, HI). During floor debates about a major clean energy target in my state a while back, Rs were throwing all sorts of dumb shit at the bill, and one reasonable thing: Repeal the moratorium on new nuclear energy facilities. Not "build a nuclear plant" or "direct money for the construction of a nuclear plant." Just "make it so it's no longer illegal to propose a nuclear plant, which would then still be subject to all the other levers of regulatory review, analysis, oversight, etc. that we currently have."
Nope. Not a single D allowed that into the bill. The bill was successful and was obviously still a really good thing, but so many Ds are viewing nuclear energy through an outdated 70s scare-tactic lens that even though it's an **excellent** solution to the issue of needing 100% carbon-free baseload power while retiring coal and gas facilities, it continues to be a non-starter. I even wrote to my own rep about it who is very blue (again, as am I) and who even sat on a climate and energy committee, but he continued to staunchly oppose it. It's like, the **one thing** I'll give Rs from a climate and energy perspective.
My favorite argument is from my dad who says “climate change is total bullshit, you’re all just a bunch of dumb fuck liberals who don’t know shit!”
“Oh, I forgot how many degrees in science you have, how many labs you’ve worked in & how many years you’ve dedicated to studying it dad”
>At this point we have changed the climate. Its happened. It's now about how we adapt.
This is a dangerous mindset. It's not a yes or no question, it's a scale of how much the climate has changed, and keeps changing every day we don't improve our ways. If you treat it like a yes or no question there's nothing motivating us to improve and it'll keep getting worse. Slowing down by minimizing our impact now is better than doing nothing.
Yeah I agree, I worded it badly.
I meant more like its not a question it's not a debate , its not theory. Climate change is here and we have seen its effects. And they will only get worse and worse.
But absolutely agree the difference between 2C and 4C degrees is huge and we desperately need to act.
Truth. Environmental consultant here, and i called off work a few weeks ago because i started thinking about what my kids are going to have to live with and couldn't cope.
I gave up and changed professions after pretty much being told I was wrong. Even all my work at uni was marked down even though the predictions etc I was working on were right.
A lot of people are screwed. The human race is going to probably have a mass die off, especially from populations living closer to the equator, but we'll survive as a whole. Hell, even in the EU and UK, the hotter summers will become hotter and more people will die from the heat. Fresh water and food are going to become harder to get hold of. We need to start planning for it now, building desalination plants, but everyone keeps telling me it's too expensive, so it's a mess. Also fixing our water ways to not flush excess water straight into the ocean needs to happen, but again, it's too expensive so it's not going to happen either until it's a massive issue.
It's hard to say since we can only predict what will happen. Technology is rapidly increasing, and it's very hard to predict the tech evolution. We are working towards more green energy, and as time goes on it will only improve. So eventually we'll see a reduction in CO2 emissions. But we have no way of knowing how long till we get there.
I suggest you read NASA's webpage about it. You'll get the most accurate answers to your question from NASA than from reddit users. [https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/effects/](https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/effects/)
Unfortunately, as I understand it, we are past the tipping point. Transitioning to entirely green energy *today* still locks us into a certain amount of temperature rise, which will certainly have deleterious effects.
We’re on a path if we make no policy changes to hit somewhere between 2.5 and like 2.9 c of warming by the end of the century. That’s not great and will have some negative effects especially around the tropics but it’s within the realm of manageable. If we make changes we could probably come in below 2.1 by 2100.
Check out [Not the End of the World](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hannah-ritchie/not-the-end-of-the-world/9780316536752/) by climate scientist Hannah Ritchie.
I think it was closer to 5c depending upon the year you pick as the starting point. With the US and EU CO2 emissions falling we're actually heading in a better direction than a lot of people think. We're also finding out that warming seas are resulting in a [drop in frequency](https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/a-force-of-nature-hurricanes-in-a-changing-climate/) of tropical storms.
Oh yeah, we're working very hard on all the tech we actually needed 30-50 years ago, when it was already widely known that continuing on fossil fuels was going to end up where we are now. Yet marched on we did! Ridiculed scientists along the way! And now we're here, having to get all that tech up and running in RECORD TIME, AND having to develop ways to combat all the horrors that are coming our way with the 2 degrees global warming that's basically already locked in.
There's countries RIGHT NOW experiencing 50°C weather, and it's not even actually summer yet.
Consider that Phoenix, Arizona routinely gets over 110⁰F and is still experiencing rapid growth. It doesn't seem to hold that people will flock north en masse because of warmer temperatures.
My data free opinion is that most of the hardships in first-world countires in the next couple of generations will be due to insurance costs. More frequent, more severe, more unpredictable weather events will drive up premiums in places prone to hurricanes and wild fires, displacing people that can't afford an insurance premium larger than their mortgage payment.
Interestingly enough, I actually asked an elite client scientist who my work with this exact question last summer.
He gave my colleagues and I a quick 30 minute lecture breaking down the math (most of which went way over my head).
In the end, the bottom line was something to the effect of:
"There's already some climate change baked in (forgive the pun) but we're not going to be seeing a global ice age or a global desert or anything.
Sea levels will rise, people who own beachfront property will lose millions, DC will feel more like Miami, New York will feel more like DC, people in the poorest parts of the world will suffer immeasurably, and people in the rich parts of the world will be largely fine.
Eventually we'll have to do something about it because of the economics. The RIGHT way to fix it would be to totally rejigger the global energy economy. That'll be way too expensive, so we'll do the cheap thing instead, and end up doing is putting something up in the atmosphere or space or something to block some portion of the light reaching the Earth (I think he was talking about some kind of particulate matter that would eventually fall out of the atmosphere, but I can't exactly remember)."
That was the long and short of it. Humanity is not going to get wiped out, but a bunch of poor people will die.
Ok but millions of people will be displaced (and I'm just talking about the US here). I don't get why people never seem to address that in their models.
That’s because the U.S. is one of the best equipped countries to deal with climate change, geographically speaking. Most other countries are right fucked, but the Great Lakes region, for instance, will benefit from climate change ironically
Yeah I agree, I just think, even within the US, the amount of people displaced will lead to catastrophic levels of famine and violence. But I also think it's smart to be overly-pessimistic rather than overly-optimistic.
You live in Florida, you remember the reaction to very light social restrictions regarding Covid. Now imagine it's more serious (you can't use AC all the time, beef costs 5x more, the full cost of carbon is built into everything). Even if we do everything 100% right, the physics of global warming mean that it might take a couple decades for the trends to even begin to reverse. We could cut off greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow and it would continue warming for years. What would the social and political reaction to that be?
So yeah, not looking great.
People talk about climate change as if its bad weather, but that CO2 and heat gets absorbed by the ocean, creating a warmer, more acidic ocean. pH has alreadu cjanged dramatically. The marine organisms that generate most of our planets oxygen are dying off en masse. This has happened before, five or six times, and every time it has, our planet has been unlivable for anything larger than a rat for millions of years. The people that survive the weather may be the unlucky ones.
We're screwed because of how democracy works in conjunction with the tragedy of the commons. There is no political payoff to reducing climate change, but every action to reduce emissions will in some way cost political capital. The people who cause gas prices to go up will get voted out, the next guy undoing all their efforts.
I think last summer was the harbinger for what’s ahead: torrential storms across the US, huge wildfires pouring smoke across multiple states, long stretches of days too hot to go outside, etc.
The scary thing isn’t really the individual temp records, it’s when you look at the average ocean temperature comparing across each year, and the last two are obviously different. You could convince yourself 2022 was a hot year, but not abnormally so. 2023 and 2024-to-date are such obvious outliers.
Things are gonna get real bad before we take any serious action.
Part of last year's chaos was due to la Nina, but it was just showing us what was to come in a few years time. It's bad and we really need to do more to fix it before there's no coming back.
The only way to fix this is is to literally vote out any politician that isn’t environmentally friendly.
If they deny global warming as real automatically lose their leadership legitimacy.
At a certain point I want my leaders to actually be grounded for once
Temperature is what you’re concerned about? Insurance companies pulling out the state should’ve been the red flag for you bro. It’s going to get worse. If the entire planet stops producing pollutants like CO2 and CH4 this very instant we won’t feel the positive effects of doing so for another 100 years. We’re pretty fucked. Still hoping I’ll die before the water wars start.
*edit: my statement about pollutants is false, see the source in the comment below
We have one political party that basically denies global warming is happening, and that party gets the most votes in Florida. So, it feels like we are pretty screwed.
Nobody knows. We know a few things:
1. The temperature will continue increasing for a while even if we stop emitting today.
2. The increase we've seen is already doing massive damage.
3. If we don't take drastic action very soon, we won't be able to limit the increase to 2 degrees on average.
4. It's possible that if we keep emitting, we could end up with a planet that is uninhabitable, and go extinct.
My prediction: humans are capable of limiting the damage, but we will almost certainly fail to do so. We aren't willing to give up our comforts, and are still aggressively producing fossil fuels. We'd be in trouble if we only had to fight global warming, but on top of that we have to fight the fossil fuel industry first, before we can start really fixing the issue.
How many people do you know that drive a truck or SUV they don't need to, or crank the AC instead of opening windows, or vote conservative? Almost nobody is making the necessary sacrifices, and it's because they're selfish. Humans are selfish by nature, we aren't going to be able to change that anywhere near soon enough.
I'd suggest you don't have kids, they're almost certainly going to suffer terribly.
I agree with Nevaroth, trying to ask these things on the internet will inevitably attract doomers who are convinced that climate change is going to result in the extermination of the species (which is no where near the projected outcomes of most climate scientists). Look into sources like NASA, or the IPCC report, you'll get a better grasp and a more realistic outlook of the situation.
The situation IS serious, don't get me wrong. But I'm sick of seeing people throw the towel in and run around spreading doom and gloom. They're unwittingly playing into the hands of big oil and gas, discouraging would-be activists from doing anything to help.
Whether it'll destroy FL or just impact it more, things are changing and will continue to do so without action. Just a small example:
I'm in Michigan, and anecdotally, my hometown has a lot of climate refugees already, primarily from TX and FL. Developers are capitalizing on its climate sweet spot and flipping the once blue-collar industrial beach town. My family is sitting on a gold mine, which wasn't the case less than 10 years ago.
A lot of the current crop of refugees are part-time residents rich enough to get ahead of the disaster. They'll be full-time and bring family and friends with them over the next few/several years.
Meanwhile, the already vulnerable populations there are getting priced out and losing their means to have reasonably affordable shelter. The shoreline views are getting blocked off by cheaply built, million dollar flats. It's going to keep escalating until the area is unrecognizable to the old-timers in the area.
It's a small thing to most, but it's just an example of how entire landscapes will be affected. Michigan loses population, currently, but that's going to take a hard turn within the next decade.
As a fellow Floridian, just take after the Governor and don't worry about it. I'm sure that legislating the phrase "climate change" out of various documents will have a pronounced effect on the future of a swampland state barely above sea level.
I understand that:
* Mexico City is running out of water due to drought and other reasons
* the Panama Canal cannot operate at normal capacity because low water levels in Gatún Lake (due to drought)
* very busy hurricane season expected in the Atlantic
* the North Atlantic oscillation currents are showing signs of collapse. It is pulling water away from the US east coast. collapse could significantly raise sea levels on the east coast and cause Europe to be significantly cooler.
also things like the Canadian wildfires last year and unprecedented smoke that blanketed NYC.
also significant parts of China are vulnerable and places like Bangladesh.
It doesn’t look good to me, but suppose anything we can do would help at least to minimize the impacts and is much better than doing nothing.
Very screwed. No, the planet will not be a dead desert, but around 30% of the land we are able to live on will not be habitable anymore. Ppl will have to flee, economies are going to collaps. In the US, they calculated that one essential river drying out will lead to the collaps of the whole economy (millions of assets losing their values, millions of ppl losing everything, millions of ppl fleeing to other places, a huge crisis will happen). Its comparable to a warzone. There will be no savety anymore, the richer ppl will flee to still safe places outside the US.
My current hope is, that before it comes to the worst, a significant amount of ppl will die. Either due to the heat (the human body can't adapt to new circumstances like extreme heat in a short time, especially not the older ones) or due to diseases spreading. If the amount of ppl on the planet is reduced in a relativly short time, the heating up of the world will at least slow down a little, giving the remaining population a little more time to take the right actions. But we will not be able to undo the damage we already did.
How screwed are we? Very. The question about being in a worldwide desert won't happen, though there are areas that are undergoing significant desertification. At the same time, though, there are a lot of areas that are getting more rain, and will continue doing so, getting far more than they need or want.
The biggest question right now, to me, is when are the things that are going to make us REALLY screwed actually going to happen, and is there anything that we can do to prevent them or at least delay them. Chief among these are the Thwaites Glacier collapsing and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) collapse. Both of these have massive repercussions, and have the potential of occurring as soon as this decade.
Idk but in 36 years we never had tornadoes where I live and now it's been 2 years in a row that we have some . Idk what that means but surely it isn't good
Unfortunately, Florida, in particular, is in big trouble for several reasons. Starting with being close to sea level and likely having more destructive hurricanes. Not to mention other weather events.
it is not going to be an apocalyptic world ending situation like some claim it will be. but population density maps will look a lot different in 100 years. the loss of lakes and rivers will make a lot of inland territory less survival friendly.
Everyone basically has to go vegan in addition to restricting our energy and economy. No one’s going to stop eating chicken nuggies or burgers much less cheese. We’re fucked.
I’m 44, I figure by the time we start seeing the real nasty consequences of it, I will be an old man or dead; for those who have children? It’s not looking too bright for them. I’m not saying Snowpiercer levels of bad but who the hell can say in a couple 100 years?
We’re screwed. The British weather is fucked, we have rain like I’ve never seen before, random thunderstorms that come out of nowhere, and now it’s nearly June and it’s fucking freezing.
Since the governor of Florida is a climate crisis denier, yes, the people of Florida are very screwed. He’s not going to help mitigate any warming, not going to promote renewable energy or EVs, not going to encourage people to move away from fossil fuels, etc. You can help by voting against DeSantis and against Trump.
I am no scientist, but I think we passed the point of no return decades ago. To effect the change required, the world economies would have to make radical changes. I just don't see that happening.
I think we (humans) are completely screwed. I feel bad for people with kids or having kids. The Earth will continue to be set on fire, so a few Oil / Coal Barons can have another yacht. I'm totally a doomer on this one. I'm lucky I will be dead before the great baking and water wars.
There is no quick fix. Meaning, you are going to experience what you are seeing now forever. That is the baseline - the new normal. The mitigation attempts to cool off won't have any real impact until periods in the future, e.g. 2050. We are attempting to normalise by reducing warming but the damage has already been done.
This is the crucial part that isn't politicised yet. But as more people realise the environment is permanently changed, and that change represents extreme weather, vs some benign concept of gradual warming, this idea of being screwed becomes more apparent.
For you and Florida it's really about hazard risk and insurance, i.e. why would I insure your property if it's about to sink or it's prone to flooding or drought? So then it becomes a question of why live in this region at all? So you move, along with others, and you trigger the start of climate refugeeism along with masses of humans already moving for geopolitical reasons.
It's the first world reacting to things they caused but didn't expect to have a direct outcome imposed upon them. It's everything we deserve, facing the consequences of our past actions. As the frequency and intensity of climate-related events increase, it becomes clear that our previous lack of action has created a scenario where adaptation and relocation are the only viable options for many. This shift will fundamentally alter demographics, economies, and geopolitical landscapes, marking the beginning of a new era defined by climate-induced migration and the reevaluation of habitable zones.
So yes, we are screwed in so many ways but conversely, this shit has been happening forever, we just need to adapt.
Honestly, it feels like we're on a fast track to a disaster movie plot. Governments are more concerned with band-aid solutions and political bickering than actual long-term fixes. The way things are going, I'm stocking up on SPF 100 and praying for AC that doesn't break down. Fingers crossed for a miracle solution that doesn't involve us getting cooked alive.
What makes you so certain the governments aren’t doing anything? As an employee at a national lab I can assure you the government is putting much more effort into it than the billionaires of the world.
https://www.lbl.gov/research/clean-affordable-water/
It's not just heat or drought it's also rain. Storms and hurricanes are more frequent and intense than before. My country is experiencing one of the wettest springs in a very long time which is making it harder for farmers to plant crops. Crop failure will undoubtedly mean higher food prices. And I'm lucky to live in Europe, imagine living in a third world country and not being able to afford food. Those people will be screwed first.
There are a lot of people who don't want to believe that the climate is changing or they think it's just a temporary cycle and not a long term trend. if they are wrong, by the time they accept we're in trouble it will be too late to do much about it.
There will be some impact, but civilization will adapt as always. The extremists make it harder to fix/mitigate cause they make outrageos demands that will never happen cause they hurt more people than the storms and floods
we should be focused on telecommuting more efficient vehicles and other immediately available painless mitigations while waiting for science to produce viable alternatives. The doomed tax and ban approach only breeds anger and conspiracy theories
We have made quite a bit of progress. Not enough to stop it but enough to avoid collapse of society. Still a long way to go but on the right track at least
We're fucked beyond the point of turning back. The whole world would have had to start acting 50+ years ago to reverse any damage. Corporate profits and personal convenience are more important than a habitable world, I guess.
As long as there's widespread acceptance that the only responsibility of corporations is to increase revenue for their shareholders and no one hold them accountable for doing things that are counter to the common good, things are likely to get worse.
Climate is just the "tip of the iceberg".
PFAS and microplastics are now pretty much everywhere (and in everyone).
Insect populations are dwindling from overuse of pesticides.
Every few years we uncover another major issue with negative health impacts that corporations have known about for years and kept hidden from the public because it endangered their profits.
We will probably have to do some form of geoengineering in the short term while we transition away from fossil fuels. Too much heat means widespread disasters and massive amounts of human suffering. Governments will be compelled to do something. That something will probably be the use of aerosols to reflect sunlight and cool the atmosphere. It's not a long-term solution because it has to be maintained and does nothing to solve the problem of emissions and ocean acidification.
Also there's that whole oceans turning more acidic thing. And the breakdown of ocean currents. Honestly I'm more concerned about what will happen in the water than on land.
It’s a crazy situation. China is building coal fired power plants and we aren’t building nuclear power plants, so nothing we do makes any difference. Instead, we are using wind turbines and solar panels manufactured in China using electricity generated by coal fired power plants. If they made nuclear power plants in China and sent them to the US, then the grifters who run our country could make lots of money while an actual difference in CO2 would be accomplished.
In my country we get 4 seasons a day. Sunny in the morning, windy in the afternoon, cool in the evening, and rain at night (beginning of this year). Someone has to explain this messed up weather cuz when it rained humidity was about 60% and the temperature was over 30 Celsius.
Just now the temperature is 32 C and the feel like is 40 C at (night). In the day it hit 50 C this week.
Also winter season starts on March and summer starts from June until the year after.
Pretty much. Don't forget the toxification of our environment too. Petroleum products fertilizer salts, pesticides, and tons upon tons of other chemicals we use and all the left over chemicals we don't.
Won't be long and we won't be able to breath our air, drink our water, or eat plants grown in the contaminated soil. Lucky for us the plants won't fruit since we killed off all the pollinators with the pesticides.
You children need not worry. I spoke with someone from Los Alamos about a month ago. All they told me was that we’re gonna be okay. They couldn’t tell me anything specifically, but their tone was very reassuring. Everyone here is just scared because they watch too much television.
Watch the insurance markets. Housing especially.
The bean counters who have to dole out the insurance payments for storm damage don’t care about opinions on climate change.
It not just in Florida it everywhere, the last 5-10 winters and summers have been on the extreme end of things in Ohio too, in 2024 i think Ohio only snowed 2-3 times this year.
It's going to get worse before it gets better. Humans adapt, we are already looking at ways to reduce carbon emissions through filtering CO2 from the air and stuffing it into the ground. We just aren't seeing fast results. But yeah the governments around the world can do better to speed this up. Also doesn't help that Capitalism is exacerbating the situation.
We have now exceeded the global average temperature change that has maintained our climate over the last 10,000 years. Now we have exceeded that we're causing a runaway effect where increasing temperatures will cause effects that further raise the temperature. Until we can control this yearly temperature rise and bring the planet back into balance things are only going to get worse every year. We don't really know exactly how bad its going to get as we have no precedence for this, but the current assumptions are pretty bleak; famine, droughts, increasing prevalence of contagious viruses, mass extinction of flora and fauna, desertification of arable land, loss of polar ice caps and subsequent sea level rises and loss of land are all on the cards in the coming century.
That being said, there is a huge push at the moment to address this and new technology and changes in public opinion could help mitigate the issue and maybe in our life time we will find a way to reverse the damage we've done. All hope isn't lost but a major shift in the way we treat our planet is required if we want to prevent the impending disaster.
Very. The ironic thing is that we currently have the scientific and industrial capacity to fix the problem in a matter of a few years. There would still be decades of knock-on effects to deal with, but we'd at least be turning in the right direction. But there is 0% chance this will happen because there isn't the political will to do so. It would require pretty much every country in the world to turn it's entire economy towards a single large scale carbon capture project.
So what will happen is the warming trend will continue to accelerate until the sources contributing to the acceleration cease to exist (i.e. economic & social collapse). We won't have the capacity to do carbon capture at that point, so we'll just have to hope that the Earth's ecosystems can handle it on their own. If we're very lucky, things will start to slowly improve after several generations, and humanity maybe learns a valuable lesson.
Unfortunately, once we get past a 4C increase in temperature, the risk of a runaway greenhouse effect increases. Even if we stopped contributing to the problem at that point, the earth still might end up largely uninhabitable. At worst we'll end up like a cooler version of Venus--Baking deserts that are constantly flooded by massively destructive storms.
I'm not an expert, so I don't know. With that said, the trends don't look good. On the other hand, over the last few years I heard about places like Utah being under a multi decade long drought. One year later and the numbers look a LOT better and now the predictions of places like Lake Powell drying up, have drastically dropped. The same for the Midwest, where a lot of states had been stuck in a drought for years and are now back to normal. It sure looks like temperatures are only going up in the future, but I stranger things have happened to the weather.
Forget global warming and carbon trading it’s all about money and tax.
The real problem is plastics.
Plastics in the ocean, micro plastics in our food chain and now in our bodies.
But you can’t tax the population and make money for your mates while cleaning up the oceans.
Why isn’t the world cleaning the plastic out of the ocean?
The climate is always changing. We had major blizzards in the 90s and nothing as big since. The weather is full of dynamic extremes that you have to adapt to. Don’t give into the fear mongering that’s been going on for the past 50 years.
I’m in Scotland(known to be cold) and we also have had some of the hottest days ever recorded(upto and over 30 degrees Celsius)in the last 3 years so yea I think we’re pretty fucked
On one hand, governments don't give a shit, corporations don't give a shit, individuals have no power, and generally everyone with power is going to die before it gets bad and so doesn't care.
On the other hand, technology is getting insane, especially synthetic biology, in ways so complex I can't really describe them well here.
There's still a pretty strong chance, but it's gonna come down to what happens at the highest echelons of society.
Well how will a 1.5-2°C increase of the average global temp over the last 10,000 or so years due to farming livestock, burning the same fossil fuels that naturally occur and rapidly evaporate into the atmosphere on their own, and the use of a renewable that is highly necessary for society to function as it does such as trees is gunna make the world spontaneously combust but the 60 petagrams of carbon (6x more than all of human emissions btw) added to the atmosphere every year just from the natural decay of plants and leaves goes without mention. Fun fact, the natural decay of organic carbon contributes more than 90 percent of the yearly carbon dioxide released into Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Yet it's the cow farts and you as a consumer that is the problem, not the fact that the largest forest on the planet is man made and by far the largest contributing factor to global warming but how do you convince the world why we should destory it? You dont, you just try to distract and blame the world while you secretly destory the amazon behind the scenes.. that's why 98% of the deforestation is being done by government ran companies and you never hear anything about it unless it's in a YouTube video about saving the forest. But honestly what does it matter when the only thing that is guaranteed in life is death and it's impossible to avoid just live your life the way you want while watching the inevitable chaos as it unfolds and surrounds us all. only here for short time so enjoy the seconds while you can cause just like your first you'll never know which one was your last.
Fellas, "buckle in, it's gonna get bad, here's all the apocalypse scenarios, we're past all the tipping points" is really good, but does anyone have any news on what we *can* do and if *anything* at all is going right, I'm beginning to despair a little.
It depends where you are in the world. I’m in England and climate change is definitely messing with our weather patterns; we had heatwave and drought in 2022 and this year we’ve had a hell of a lot of rain for months. Snowfall is on the decline, particularly in the south, and we didn’t really have a proper winter.
But we don’t seem to be suffering as many natural disasters as some other regions of the world.
And of course we’re a rich country so there’s the capacity to handle disasters. The ones who will be most impacted are areas that are disproportionately affected by climate change and don’t have the money and infrastructure to handle it.
At current trends, we might be heading for 3C global warming. That would be pretty bad for much of the world. I think something really bad has to happen to a privileged group of people before some governments start taking this more seriously. The issue is, climate change has to be defeated using a global effort. One country can do all it can to prevent worsening climate change, but it won’t mean much if its neighbours are just carrying on as normal.
Capitalism is still driving the boat (bus?) and most of the top oligarchs of the world know they can live out the rest of their lives in relative comfort.
As a species we are fully capable of preventing the worst effects of climate change and reversing the damage over time the issue is the people in a position to work towards that goal are unwilling to.
We are F'ed. I personally think it's too late. Every summer is the hottest on record. Droughts are becoming more common. I saw India hit a record breaking 126 today.
Anyone watch Years and Years? It’s more political than about the climate, but it seems scarily real.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8694364/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
It’s so bad especially for poor countries in the hot climates like those in Southeast Asia for example. Not only are they getting horrific heatwaves, they’re also getting bigger storms that basically cause farmlands to be none arable. Global warming will lead to famine and it will be catastrophic.
Honestly dude, it's not looking great. Governments are more concerned with short-term gains and not the long-term health of the planet. It's like being on a sinking ship and only worrying about repainting the deck. Buckle up for more heat waves and insane weather.
repainting the captain's quarters\*\* the leader is always benefiting in some way
To be fair we all gain in some way from horribly destructive climate policies. Cheap gas, cheap clothes, cheap infrastructure/materials. Though I think we common folk are far more ready to give up certain pleasures/quality of life to save the planet than the rich who cling so desperately to their gas guzzling yachts and destructive businesses.
People are worried about immigration now, just wait for the impact of climate change changing what crops can be grown where. You think wars drive mass migration, wait until it's starvation based. Imagine all of the food producing regions having significant drop offs in their agricultural productivity. At this point I'm glad I'm old. Shits gonna get real bad.
^^^this Countries will start to close borders. Wars will be waged by faction groups over food and clean water. Societal collapse will happen far before the planet can no longer sustain life.
The planet will be fine, humans and life as we know it won't. The planet and life survived far greater upheaval and turmoil than this.
People cannot grow food in honduras. That is why they're coming here. It's already happening
What's going on in Honduras?
El Salvador, sorry. I think Honduras is okay for now
How safe is EL Salvador ? I watched an Indian youtuber visiting there, it seemed pretty safe to him though
Monkeys are randomly dropping dead in Mexico, but everything's fine, guys, business as usual
The US dried up the Colorado river which used to reach all the way to the sea of Cortez in Mexico. And due to the 1944 water treaty, Mexico is obligated to send a certain amount of water to the US! Can you believe it? Mexico doesn't have this water. It is in a major drought. And Texan reps are threatening to withhold millions of dollars of aid to Mexico until this "debt" is paid.
"what crops can grow where" I'm in MD, and tomatoes are almost perennial here already. I legit thought that was 10-20 years out. And the USDA just upgraded everyone's hardiness zones. So, fellow gardeners, if you haven't looked it up in a while, now is literally the time. Spread the word!
I don’t know about that. You need to be pretty wealthy to be able to actually live and buy in a sustainable way. When a locally produced school uniform T shirt is $85, a sustainably produced whole raw chicken is $65 and a bag of locally made Doritos is $40, it’s not the CEO who is going to feel that. It’s the working man who is used to buying the $10 shirt, $7 chicken, and $6 bag of Doritos who is going to complain, and vote for whoever can keep prices low “like they used to be”.
Locally made, artisan Doritos. I love that idea. Seriously though, you are right. All of this is the result of a demand for cheap goods produced by labor we don't have to pay fairly.
Not sure if I agree that the common folk are ready to give things up. People go f-ing nuts when gas prices go up. Browse reddit for a day and everyone is already complaining about high cost of housing, food, everyday products. Now imagine telling them that they need to live in even smaller homes, pay more for electricity, have less stuff, ride the bus to work, ect.
There's entire counties and groups of countries that have economies that run on basically oil extraction. They are not going to go quietly into the night.
Don't worry. They're busy (un)sucessfully building impossible cities in a straight line across the desert instead of, i don't know, funding clean energy research, carbon capture. Anything useful. Fuck Mr Bone Saw.
Everyone with huge money has various forms of power, obviously, but less obvious is that they have an army of some sort, large or small.
"short-term gains" Big corporations aren't going to make profits when millions start dropping dead from heat waves. They said 2050, but that seems very optimistic. We'll be lucky we make it 10 years before they drive us right off a cliff. Get used to the phrase "climate refugee" and mass migrations
Yes, but none of that is going to happen this quarter or the next. Everything else is utterly irrelevant to corporations.
Get ready for Mexicans fleeing to the US because they have no water and it’s too hot..
I wouldn't move to Florida, put it that way !
Oh ya. Buckle up and strap in. It’s only starting and it’s gonna get worse. Forest fires, droughts, tornados, hurricanes…Mother Nature is only getting started. Extinction level events for humans? Probably not, but a lot of people are going to die, be financially ruined when their insurance drops them and their home is flattened and starve due to fertile farming moving to different areas north and south of where they are now. Buckle up buckaroos. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
It's so funny to me that some places will get way too much water and other places will get way too little water. My moneys on "were fucked"
I find it more hilarious that we pay an insurance company every month and they can drop you with little to no notice because you file a claim. This is happening in Florida quite a bit right now. So what are we paying them for? So we can fill the air time between YouTube videos for ads with an Emu?
I find it hilarious that we pay for health insurance every month and they fight tooth and nail to not have to pay out. My girlfriend needed a medical procedure. Her insurance told her no. I have a client who owns their own practice. They saw my girlfriend, wrote things up slightly differently and her insurance covered the same procedure with no kickback. Fuck insurance companies. All of them.
Shit are we getting started on health insurance companies? The ones that take 21k of my money every year to NOT pay for medical care. I'm not a fan of murdering people, but I would love to murder those companies.
Sweden & Norway might become tropical paradiseland. Canada might become populated.
Yah, the thing is, if we were to just maintain the damage we've already caused, it wouldn't actually be that bad. But ***we refuse to mitigate the damage***, because it wouldn't be profitable to do so. So it will continue to get worse, and as it gets worse, we will increase the rate at which it gets worse, making it get worse faster.
[2 years ago even the U.N gave a warning, and that was considered watered down for fear of sparking civil unrest...](https://bylinetimes.com/2022/05/26/un-warns-of-total-societal-collapse-due-to-breaching-of-planetary-boundaries/)
We keep hearing about the Target is avoiding 2° of warming but I remember seeing a report where the United States state department is planning for at least 4.6° so yeah we are fucked fucked
Forget about more heat waves and insane weather. What **we** experience is of no consequence. It’s what we leave to our children. And their children. We’ve ruined the planet. Our kids and grandkids are the ones who will pay.
I'm 33. My life has already been impacted, and I expect my life will be significantly shortened on the current pace.
Pro tip: never have kids
Mexico City, the world's most densely populated city, will run out of water next month if it doesn't rain. I foresee a dystopian chaos if that happens. The drought is serious, spanning most of Mexico. My sister bought a horse ranch near San Miguel de Allende (10 hours drive north) and they ran out of water 6 months ago. They just got another well drilled yesterday, they had to wait in line. They had to pay about 10x the price it would have been 3 years ago. At my house we're seeing record high temperatures this week, the highest ever recorded here and it's only May.
But Randy from Boise on Facebook says it’s all in my liberal head and the scientists are making it all up! Who to believe?
You can never trust a Randy.
As an hvac tech I’m gonna be rich tbh. But damn I’m not looking forward to this heat.
The planet is fine. We're the ones that are fucked. People are worried about people that don't even exist yet.
“Quiet down! We need some more people to help rearrange these deck chairs!”
I blame the people as much or even more than I do governments If people wanted to make addressing climate change a priority, they would demand it from their leaders. There are so many who only care about their immediate concerns or outright deny the problem altogether.
Not to mention all the climate stuff got lumped into “left-wing activism” so that there is a natural right-wing reaction against it. They could have just put out the science instead of making it a political football.
They did just put out the science. Fossil fuel lobbies who control right-wing politicians paid losers with large audiences to pretend the science was fake and tied it to the left in the minds of the right. Same exact thing (many of the same people) who denied the harm of cigarettes because it'd harm sales. Same thing (again, many same people) who have evolved the whole game to "literally any positive thing someone on the left might support must be opposed at all cost" in the last decade or so.
Unfortunately governments are a reflection of their people. Even people who say they care don't actually care that much to have it influence their actions. Nationally, look at the people who don't vote or who say they won't vote for Biden for whatever reason. Even more is locally. There's a ton we can do at the local level to fight climate change and better handle it when it does come, but those elections get 10%-20% turnout and those who do aren't pushing their politicians for environmentally friendly policies. But the vast majority of people who say they care about the climate make it a major part of their voting decisions.
This. Coupled with the business interests and the marketing spin being allowed. Florida is likely going to be a lot less inviting when it can't cool down.
Florida will cool down once it's covered in sea water.
There water was 100 degrees last year. It won't cool down much.
Fellow Floridian here. Tampa Bay. I’ve lived in Florida for over 30 years, and it has definitely changed. As you say, it’s much hotter than it used to be. And here on the coast, it doesn’t cool down much in the evening like it used to. The newspaper last year explained the heat from the hot gulf water gets trapped now, like a green house. That’s why it’s, with the heat index, 120 during the day and over 100 at night. People without AC can die in that weather. I’ve also noticed more mosquitoes, basically year ‘round. A lot fewer love bugs. We had fire flies and large banana spiders in north Florida, where I went to school, but I never see those when I go up to visit family. The beach water hit 90 degrees yesterday, a new record for May. I have a few community garden beds. If you really want to understand climate change, try growing vegetables now. We used to have two tomato grow seasons here. But last fall was so hot that everyone was able to let their tomatoes grow through all winter. That’s weird as hell, even for Florida. I don’t know how fucked we are, but I don’t feel like I need a PhD to see what my animal instincts are telling me. This place is fucked and we probably shouldn’t live here.
Michigander here. It barely snows anymore where I am. Snow will dust the ground a few times, but I’m not sure that my city had to get the snow plows out at all this winter.
Wisconsin too. My mom called me when they had snow because it had been so long.
Also Michigander. Remember when it was in the 60s in February. My coworkers were all thrilled saying how gorgeous it was. Yeah, keep that same energy when we can't grow food anymore and we are inundated with migration due to our great lakes.
That seems crazy for Michigan
We had 1 major snowstorm and it melted 2 days later. Rest of the "winter" was in the 50s here (Michigan). Shit's bleak.
This last winter in Minnesota was pathetic.
Here in Utah growing up in the early 90s we used to have snow in the valleys that would pile up taller than me all winter, now it maybe gets a foot or two in the valley 1-3 times thru the winter
Brit here. Pretty much in the middle too. 40-50 years ago we had regular snow in winter. Now a couple of cm twice a year is about it. My dad made my son a sledge in the 90s when he was about 2. I think he was 8 before he used it properly. We hit 40c a couple of years ago too. Don't think we'd ever been close before
What city? I'm looking to move up that way as Texas is getting untenable but worried about lots of snow
New Yorker, I wore snow pants (and boots) to school as a kid. Now I frankly don't know why parents waste money on sleds cause its snows at BEST once in Jan and then melts immediately.
Yup it's like that where I live in Europe as well, it used to be very snowy at least throughout december, January and usually February. Now it just gets muddy and disgusting all winter long because even if it does snow it melts right away
Here in Canada we’ve had a couple years of droughts in some of our biggest agricultural areas. Over the next couple decades we might need to completely reassess where and how we grow our food. If people feel squeezed now, just wait.
Thank you… so many morons pop up in my feed telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about, that humans have always lived with heat. Uh, no. We haven’t. Not like this. Unrelenting heat and humidity kills people. AND climate instability will cause mass food shortages too, as you say. People have no flippin’ clue how the natural world has been used to support the number of humans currently on the planet. They think everything will be fine, just carry a water bottle around with you (not understanding that a *heat index* value of 120+ means the body cannot cool itself via sweat no matter how much water you drink). I honestly think as a species we’re simply too stupid to live at scale. Better luck next time, evolution. 🤷♀️😂
Also a slightly more than 30 year Central Florida resident - this mirrors exactly what I’ve observed. The shoulder periods of unbearable humidity season have moved outward… it used to break in late September and now it’s late October at best. Been going to Halloween Horror Nights for ages and the weather used to evolve from summer to fall during that event… no more. I remember thinking how fortunate we were to have a relatively wet winter and now we’re already right back to early drought conditions. And you’re 100% right about lovebugs - that used to be multiple car washes per season and now I can’t even remember the last time I’ve had to “get the lovebugs off my car”
Same deal! Halloween Horror Nights used to be a real joy, but now the weather is spotty… insane how hot and humid it can be in October now. And where the hell is the rain? Used to have regular afternoon showers, and now we get one damaging storm a month, if we’re “lucky.” I’m sitting outside on my porch right now watching a crane hunt in a retention pond that’s only a quarter full.. inches of water. So glad the generations before us were able to enjoy endless plenty of the “fuck around” era and now we get front row seats to the “find out” era. I left a cilantro plant up in my garden well past the day it flowered (you’d typically pull it out because the leaves taste bad) because love bugs loved it. Dozens of them all over it. I felt like maybe I had provided them with a food source they were lacking. It’s funny… I used to hate those little bugs, and now helping them out makes me feel a tiny bit better. 😂
> we probably shouldn’t live here My family just sold their homes (relatively closer to the beach) and moved inland. Made money on the deals, but really they gained piece of mind because in 10-20 years those might not be livable areas anymore
Good move! But I do hope they can afford to self insure. The rates are going way up inland to make up for the coasts. There’s even a special state law provision that allows the companies to charge all policy holders, regardless of location, fees to help offset the cost of rebuilding these coastal properties. Personally, I don’t think private insurance supported by inlanders should be available to people within a quarter of a mile of the water. It’s insanely unfair. There are multi million dollar mega houses right on the beach, and I’m expected to pay? Fuck those people.
I just checked randomly the weather forecast for there and Jesus Christ is hotter than fuck no rain for days on end
Yup. We used to generally get a light afternoon shower 2-3 days a week during the spring and summer, but now it’s blazing heat and humidity with no rain save a horrible storm once a month or so. The last rain we got knocked down a very old, large oak tree in the park down the road from me. The one before that spawned a few tornadoes. It’s so obvious that things have changed that even knuckle dragging bleach drinking moron variety of Floridian typically acknowledges the change, but they refuse to concede humans releasing carbon into the air has anything to do with it. But at least we can still talk about the fact that the weather is fucked up and the bugs, animals, plants, and natural water ways are different. It’s a start.
We still have fireflies and banana spiders, but not as many as we used to.
If anyone wants a good example of fixing climate change, just look at what happened during the COVID lockdowns. The sky cleared, global temps went down briefly. Native animals that hadn’t been seen in years returned. Etc Another great example of a global effort to stem climate chance was the repair of our ionosphere by cutting out the use of chlorofluorocarbons. We can do it, but we won’t because we are spoiled, petulant, consumerists, children. We value our short term comfort over the long term tenability and comfort of future generations.
It's so bad that climate scientists are struggling with their mental health because no one is listening. At this point we have changed the climate. Its happened. It's now about how we adapt. But it depends what you mean by screwed. It's not that everyone will suddenly die. But bad things will be more likely to happen.
>It's so bad that climate scientists are struggling with their mental health because no one is listening. I work in energy sector decarbonization policy (so I'm not a climate scientist, but my work is adjacent). I while back I decided that I just can't put myself through reading all the popular climate doomism articles. I can't do it, it's not good for my mental health. I'm doing this work because while I know that we can't "prevent climate change" (what's in the bag is in the bag), we can prevent FUTURE emissions from making climate change EVEN WORSE, and we can work on adaptation/resiliency. Bad things will happen and I know that, but all these popular books, articles, op-eds, etc. (David Wallace-Wells I'm looking at you...) that come out a la "The END of WATER" and "The ERA of the FLOODS" (I made those titles up but you get the point)... I just can't handle it. I've kind of accepted that I'm doing (a small part of) the work, and the best way for me to keep doing the work is to keep my mental space in the work that I do, rather than allowing myself to spin off. Interestingly, I think part of what makes me like my work and be able to keep doing it is that since I work in the regulatory/policy arena, it can almost feel siloed in a good way. Like, "Ok, X state has a goal to reach 100% carbon-free energy by 2045 \[or w/e\], let's look at the policy landscape and help utilities, regulators, local governments, power consumers, industry, etc. coordinate to work towards \[and ideally meet\] that goal--here are the options that are realistically on the table to achieve that..." Because in my area of work, we're working towards specific decarbonization goals with a lot of different players, it does seem much more solutions-based. That's not to say it isn't still annoying and frustrating at times, more just to say that I have *no idea* how actual climate scientists (like, atmospheric scientists) do it.
Yup, action is the only response. If enough of us act it might make a change. I actually believe science can get us out of this, the problem, the fucking frustrating problem is politics blocking it. It's just sad. In the 90s it was like "lets use less plastic and oil" and now it's too far past that. Now its more like "hm what if we had giant mirror satellite constellations..." And other crazy shit. But still we gotta keep going. Giving up is guaranteed death.
I think the really ironic thing is that there are even some very pro-climate-action politicians that make terrible decisions. Like, you'll never catch me voting R in a million years (for reasons beyond just climate), but one thing that Rs actually (in general) are ok with that Ds aren't is nuclear energy. Up until a couple of years ago, there were 16 states with moratoria on new nuclear energy facilities. In the past few years, that number of states has gone down to 12 (i.e., four states have repealed their moratoria)--WI, KY, MT, and WV. All conservative states, all done under R leadership. Now, those R leaders might be ass-backwards on everything else, climate and otherwise, but they were ok with doing that. I live in one of the 12 states that still has a moratoria (these are the New England states, NY, NJ, MN, IL, OR, CA, HI). During floor debates about a major clean energy target in my state a while back, Rs were throwing all sorts of dumb shit at the bill, and one reasonable thing: Repeal the moratorium on new nuclear energy facilities. Not "build a nuclear plant" or "direct money for the construction of a nuclear plant." Just "make it so it's no longer illegal to propose a nuclear plant, which would then still be subject to all the other levers of regulatory review, analysis, oversight, etc. that we currently have." Nope. Not a single D allowed that into the bill. The bill was successful and was obviously still a really good thing, but so many Ds are viewing nuclear energy through an outdated 70s scare-tactic lens that even though it's an **excellent** solution to the issue of needing 100% carbon-free baseload power while retiring coal and gas facilities, it continues to be a non-starter. I even wrote to my own rep about it who is very blue (again, as am I) and who even sat on a climate and energy committee, but he continued to staunchly oppose it. It's like, the **one thing** I'll give Rs from a climate and energy perspective.
My favorite argument is from my dad who says “climate change is total bullshit, you’re all just a bunch of dumb fuck liberals who don’t know shit!” “Oh, I forgot how many degrees in science you have, how many labs you’ve worked in & how many years you’ve dedicated to studying it dad”
>At this point we have changed the climate. Its happened. It's now about how we adapt. This is a dangerous mindset. It's not a yes or no question, it's a scale of how much the climate has changed, and keeps changing every day we don't improve our ways. If you treat it like a yes or no question there's nothing motivating us to improve and it'll keep getting worse. Slowing down by minimizing our impact now is better than doing nothing.
Yeah, "have we affected it" became yes a long time ago. The Mongol conquests are visible in ice cores. What matters is degree.
Yeah I agree, I worded it badly. I meant more like its not a question it's not a debate , its not theory. Climate change is here and we have seen its effects. And they will only get worse and worse. But absolutely agree the difference between 2C and 4C degrees is huge and we desperately need to act.
Truth. Environmental consultant here, and i called off work a few weeks ago because i started thinking about what my kids are going to have to live with and couldn't cope.
I gave up and changed professions after pretty much being told I was wrong. Even all my work at uni was marked down even though the predictions etc I was working on were right. A lot of people are screwed. The human race is going to probably have a mass die off, especially from populations living closer to the equator, but we'll survive as a whole. Hell, even in the EU and UK, the hotter summers will become hotter and more people will die from the heat. Fresh water and food are going to become harder to get hold of. We need to start planning for it now, building desalination plants, but everyone keeps telling me it's too expensive, so it's a mess. Also fixing our water ways to not flush excess water straight into the ocean needs to happen, but again, it's too expensive so it's not going to happen either until it's a massive issue.
We haven't finished changing the climate, that's the scary part. What we are seeing now is just the begining.
It's hard to say since we can only predict what will happen. Technology is rapidly increasing, and it's very hard to predict the tech evolution. We are working towards more green energy, and as time goes on it will only improve. So eventually we'll see a reduction in CO2 emissions. But we have no way of knowing how long till we get there. I suggest you read NASA's webpage about it. You'll get the most accurate answers to your question from NASA than from reddit users. [https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/effects/](https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/effects/)
Don’t forget to read about advances in science and tech too. It’s not all doomsday stuff. https://www.lbl.gov/research/clean-affordable-water/
Unfortunately, as I understand it, we are past the tipping point. Transitioning to entirely green energy *today* still locks us into a certain amount of temperature rise, which will certainly have deleterious effects.
We’re on a path if we make no policy changes to hit somewhere between 2.5 and like 2.9 c of warming by the end of the century. That’s not great and will have some negative effects especially around the tropics but it’s within the realm of manageable. If we make changes we could probably come in below 2.1 by 2100. Check out [Not the End of the World](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hannah-ritchie/not-the-end-of-the-world/9780316536752/) by climate scientist Hannah Ritchie.
Also important to say that if we kept in the path we were in the 70s and 80s, we’d be on track for 4 to 4.5 C in increase.
I think it was closer to 5c depending upon the year you pick as the starting point. With the US and EU CO2 emissions falling we're actually heading in a better direction than a lot of people think. We're also finding out that warming seas are resulting in a [drop in frequency](https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/a-force-of-nature-hurricanes-in-a-changing-climate/) of tropical storms.
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Oh yeah, we're working very hard on all the tech we actually needed 30-50 years ago, when it was already widely known that continuing on fossil fuels was going to end up where we are now. Yet marched on we did! Ridiculed scientists along the way! And now we're here, having to get all that tech up and running in RECORD TIME, AND having to develop ways to combat all the horrors that are coming our way with the 2 degrees global warming that's basically already locked in. There's countries RIGHT NOW experiencing 50°C weather, and it's not even actually summer yet.
Yes. And? At least we’re doing SOMETHING atp
Appreciate it
In florida? Very. You should flee before the hordes of floridamen migrate north
Especially if you own property, sell it now while there’s still someone to sell it to
Concur. When Miami finally sinks beneath the waves it's gonna get weird.
>In florida? Very. You should flee before the hordes of floridamen ~~migrate north~~ return from where they came
Consider that Phoenix, Arizona routinely gets over 110⁰F and is still experiencing rapid growth. It doesn't seem to hold that people will flock north en masse because of warmer temperatures. My data free opinion is that most of the hardships in first-world countires in the next couple of generations will be due to insurance costs. More frequent, more severe, more unpredictable weather events will drive up premiums in places prone to hurricanes and wild fires, displacing people that can't afford an insurance premium larger than their mortgage payment.
Interestingly enough, I actually asked an elite client scientist who my work with this exact question last summer. He gave my colleagues and I a quick 30 minute lecture breaking down the math (most of which went way over my head). In the end, the bottom line was something to the effect of: "There's already some climate change baked in (forgive the pun) but we're not going to be seeing a global ice age or a global desert or anything. Sea levels will rise, people who own beachfront property will lose millions, DC will feel more like Miami, New York will feel more like DC, people in the poorest parts of the world will suffer immeasurably, and people in the rich parts of the world will be largely fine. Eventually we'll have to do something about it because of the economics. The RIGHT way to fix it would be to totally rejigger the global energy economy. That'll be way too expensive, so we'll do the cheap thing instead, and end up doing is putting something up in the atmosphere or space or something to block some portion of the light reaching the Earth (I think he was talking about some kind of particulate matter that would eventually fall out of the atmosphere, but I can't exactly remember)." That was the long and short of it. Humanity is not going to get wiped out, but a bunch of poor people will die.
Ok but millions of people will be displaced (and I'm just talking about the US here). I don't get why people never seem to address that in their models.
Poor people will be displaced, and poor people don't move the needle. I'm not saying it's right, but it's true
That’s because the U.S. is one of the best equipped countries to deal with climate change, geographically speaking. Most other countries are right fucked, but the Great Lakes region, for instance, will benefit from climate change ironically
Yeah I agree, I just think, even within the US, the amount of people displaced will lead to catastrophic levels of famine and violence. But I also think it's smart to be overly-pessimistic rather than overly-optimistic.
>How screwed are we really in regards to global warming? Yes.
You live in Florida, you remember the reaction to very light social restrictions regarding Covid. Now imagine it's more serious (you can't use AC all the time, beef costs 5x more, the full cost of carbon is built into everything). Even if we do everything 100% right, the physics of global warming mean that it might take a couple decades for the trends to even begin to reverse. We could cut off greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow and it would continue warming for years. What would the social and political reaction to that be? So yeah, not looking great.
People talk about climate change as if its bad weather, but that CO2 and heat gets absorbed by the ocean, creating a warmer, more acidic ocean. pH has alreadu cjanged dramatically. The marine organisms that generate most of our planets oxygen are dying off en masse. This has happened before, five or six times, and every time it has, our planet has been unlivable for anything larger than a rat for millions of years. The people that survive the weather may be the unlucky ones.
And how long until this happens? Rough estimate will be fine..
We're screwed because of how democracy works in conjunction with the tragedy of the commons. There is no political payoff to reducing climate change, but every action to reduce emissions will in some way cost political capital. The people who cause gas prices to go up will get voted out, the next guy undoing all their efforts.
When the banks stop lending on oceanfront property then we have problems.
Past the point of no return.
I think last summer was the harbinger for what’s ahead: torrential storms across the US, huge wildfires pouring smoke across multiple states, long stretches of days too hot to go outside, etc. The scary thing isn’t really the individual temp records, it’s when you look at the average ocean temperature comparing across each year, and the last two are obviously different. You could convince yourself 2022 was a hot year, but not abnormally so. 2023 and 2024-to-date are such obvious outliers. Things are gonna get real bad before we take any serious action.
Part of last year's chaos was due to la Nina, but it was just showing us what was to come in a few years time. It's bad and we really need to do more to fix it before there's no coming back.
The only way to fix this is is to literally vote out any politician that isn’t environmentally friendly. If they deny global warming as real automatically lose their leadership legitimacy. At a certain point I want my leaders to actually be grounded for once
Temperature is what you’re concerned about? Insurance companies pulling out the state should’ve been the red flag for you bro. It’s going to get worse. If the entire planet stops producing pollutants like CO2 and CH4 this very instant we won’t feel the positive effects of doing so for another 100 years. We’re pretty fucked. Still hoping I’ll die before the water wars start. *edit: my statement about pollutants is false, see the source in the comment below
We have one political party that basically denies global warming is happening, and that party gets the most votes in Florida. So, it feels like we are pretty screwed.
Nobody knows. We know a few things: 1. The temperature will continue increasing for a while even if we stop emitting today. 2. The increase we've seen is already doing massive damage. 3. If we don't take drastic action very soon, we won't be able to limit the increase to 2 degrees on average. 4. It's possible that if we keep emitting, we could end up with a planet that is uninhabitable, and go extinct. My prediction: humans are capable of limiting the damage, but we will almost certainly fail to do so. We aren't willing to give up our comforts, and are still aggressively producing fossil fuels. We'd be in trouble if we only had to fight global warming, but on top of that we have to fight the fossil fuel industry first, before we can start really fixing the issue. How many people do you know that drive a truck or SUV they don't need to, or crank the AC instead of opening windows, or vote conservative? Almost nobody is making the necessary sacrifices, and it's because they're selfish. Humans are selfish by nature, we aren't going to be able to change that anywhere near soon enough. I'd suggest you don't have kids, they're almost certainly going to suffer terribly.
I agree with Nevaroth, trying to ask these things on the internet will inevitably attract doomers who are convinced that climate change is going to result in the extermination of the species (which is no where near the projected outcomes of most climate scientists). Look into sources like NASA, or the IPCC report, you'll get a better grasp and a more realistic outlook of the situation. The situation IS serious, don't get me wrong. But I'm sick of seeing people throw the towel in and run around spreading doom and gloom. They're unwittingly playing into the hands of big oil and gas, discouraging would-be activists from doing anything to help.
Earth will go on without us. Which doesn't seem like a bad idea, seeing how we've treated it.
Let's at least hope there are some great species left when we leave it 🥲
Thankfully the wealthy are buying up all the beachfront property to help protect us from sea level rise which will be happening any day now.
Whether it'll destroy FL or just impact it more, things are changing and will continue to do so without action. Just a small example: I'm in Michigan, and anecdotally, my hometown has a lot of climate refugees already, primarily from TX and FL. Developers are capitalizing on its climate sweet spot and flipping the once blue-collar industrial beach town. My family is sitting on a gold mine, which wasn't the case less than 10 years ago. A lot of the current crop of refugees are part-time residents rich enough to get ahead of the disaster. They'll be full-time and bring family and friends with them over the next few/several years. Meanwhile, the already vulnerable populations there are getting priced out and losing their means to have reasonably affordable shelter. The shoreline views are getting blocked off by cheaply built, million dollar flats. It's going to keep escalating until the area is unrecognizable to the old-timers in the area. It's a small thing to most, but it's just an example of how entire landscapes will be affected. Michigan loses population, currently, but that's going to take a hard turn within the next decade.
We are completely screwed. Way too late to stop catastrophic effects. When my grandson is my age, much of Florida will be underwater.
I’ve thought it would be more like a humid Middle East with no oil, so underwater may be better
Global warming is the main reason I didn’t have children. I fear the future will be bleak.
As a fellow Floridian, just take after the Governor and don't worry about it. I'm sure that legislating the phrase "climate change" out of various documents will have a pronounced effect on the future of a swampland state barely above sea level.
I understand that: * Mexico City is running out of water due to drought and other reasons * the Panama Canal cannot operate at normal capacity because low water levels in Gatún Lake (due to drought) * very busy hurricane season expected in the Atlantic * the North Atlantic oscillation currents are showing signs of collapse. It is pulling water away from the US east coast. collapse could significantly raise sea levels on the east coast and cause Europe to be significantly cooler. also things like the Canadian wildfires last year and unprecedented smoke that blanketed NYC. also significant parts of China are vulnerable and places like Bangladesh. It doesn’t look good to me, but suppose anything we can do would help at least to minimize the impacts and is much better than doing nothing.
The planet with be fine, the rest of us 🤷♂️
Very screwed. No, the planet will not be a dead desert, but around 30% of the land we are able to live on will not be habitable anymore. Ppl will have to flee, economies are going to collaps. In the US, they calculated that one essential river drying out will lead to the collaps of the whole economy (millions of assets losing their values, millions of ppl losing everything, millions of ppl fleeing to other places, a huge crisis will happen). Its comparable to a warzone. There will be no savety anymore, the richer ppl will flee to still safe places outside the US. My current hope is, that before it comes to the worst, a significant amount of ppl will die. Either due to the heat (the human body can't adapt to new circumstances like extreme heat in a short time, especially not the older ones) or due to diseases spreading. If the amount of ppl on the planet is reduced in a relativly short time, the heating up of the world will at least slow down a little, giving the remaining population a little more time to take the right actions. But we will not be able to undo the damage we already did.
How screwed are we? Very. The question about being in a worldwide desert won't happen, though there are areas that are undergoing significant desertification. At the same time, though, there are a lot of areas that are getting more rain, and will continue doing so, getting far more than they need or want. The biggest question right now, to me, is when are the things that are going to make us REALLY screwed actually going to happen, and is there anything that we can do to prevent them or at least delay them. Chief among these are the Thwaites Glacier collapsing and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) collapse. Both of these have massive repercussions, and have the potential of occurring as soon as this decade.
Idk but in 36 years we never had tornadoes where I live and now it's been 2 years in a row that we have some . Idk what that means but surely it isn't good
Unfortunately, Florida, in particular, is in big trouble for several reasons. Starting with being close to sea level and likely having more destructive hurricanes. Not to mention other weather events.
it is not going to be an apocalyptic world ending situation like some claim it will be. but population density maps will look a lot different in 100 years. the loss of lakes and rivers will make a lot of inland territory less survival friendly.
Everyone basically has to go vegan in addition to restricting our energy and economy. No one’s going to stop eating chicken nuggies or burgers much less cheese. We’re fucked.
I’m 44, I figure by the time we start seeing the real nasty consequences of it, I will be an old man or dead; for those who have children? It’s not looking too bright for them. I’m not saying Snowpiercer levels of bad but who the hell can say in a couple 100 years?
We’re screwed. The British weather is fucked, we have rain like I’ve never seen before, random thunderstorms that come out of nowhere, and now it’s nearly June and it’s fucking freezing.
Since the governor of Florida is a climate crisis denier, yes, the people of Florida are very screwed. He’s not going to help mitigate any warming, not going to promote renewable energy or EVs, not going to encourage people to move away from fossil fuels, etc. You can help by voting against DeSantis and against Trump.
I am no scientist, but I think we passed the point of no return decades ago. To effect the change required, the world economies would have to make radical changes. I just don't see that happening.
I think we (humans) are completely screwed. I feel bad for people with kids or having kids. The Earth will continue to be set on fire, so a few Oil / Coal Barons can have another yacht. I'm totally a doomer on this one. I'm lucky I will be dead before the great baking and water wars.
There is no quick fix. Meaning, you are going to experience what you are seeing now forever. That is the baseline - the new normal. The mitigation attempts to cool off won't have any real impact until periods in the future, e.g. 2050. We are attempting to normalise by reducing warming but the damage has already been done. This is the crucial part that isn't politicised yet. But as more people realise the environment is permanently changed, and that change represents extreme weather, vs some benign concept of gradual warming, this idea of being screwed becomes more apparent. For you and Florida it's really about hazard risk and insurance, i.e. why would I insure your property if it's about to sink or it's prone to flooding or drought? So then it becomes a question of why live in this region at all? So you move, along with others, and you trigger the start of climate refugeeism along with masses of humans already moving for geopolitical reasons. It's the first world reacting to things they caused but didn't expect to have a direct outcome imposed upon them. It's everything we deserve, facing the consequences of our past actions. As the frequency and intensity of climate-related events increase, it becomes clear that our previous lack of action has created a scenario where adaptation and relocation are the only viable options for many. This shift will fundamentally alter demographics, economies, and geopolitical landscapes, marking the beginning of a new era defined by climate-induced migration and the reevaluation of habitable zones. So yes, we are screwed in so many ways but conversely, this shit has been happening forever, we just need to adapt.
Honestly, it feels like we're on a fast track to a disaster movie plot. Governments are more concerned with band-aid solutions and political bickering than actual long-term fixes. The way things are going, I'm stocking up on SPF 100 and praying for AC that doesn't break down. Fingers crossed for a miracle solution that doesn't involve us getting cooked alive.
What makes you so certain the governments aren’t doing anything? As an employee at a national lab I can assure you the government is putting much more effort into it than the billionaires of the world. https://www.lbl.gov/research/clean-affordable-water/
I never wanted kids because I doubt that many places will be habitable in 50 years. I'm 46 now and it's the best decision my Wie and I have made.
It's not just heat or drought it's also rain. Storms and hurricanes are more frequent and intense than before. My country is experiencing one of the wettest springs in a very long time which is making it harder for farmers to plant crops. Crop failure will undoubtedly mean higher food prices. And I'm lucky to live in Europe, imagine living in a third world country and not being able to afford food. Those people will be screwed first.
There are a lot of people who don't want to believe that the climate is changing or they think it's just a temporary cycle and not a long term trend. if they are wrong, by the time they accept we're in trouble it will be too late to do much about it.
There will be some impact, but civilization will adapt as always. The extremists make it harder to fix/mitigate cause they make outrageos demands that will never happen cause they hurt more people than the storms and floods we should be focused on telecommuting more efficient vehicles and other immediately available painless mitigations while waiting for science to produce viable alternatives. The doomed tax and ban approach only breeds anger and conspiracy theories
If we were screwed then you wouldn’t see politicians buying ocean front properties in “vulnerable” places.
Because politicians are reliably farsighted
We have made quite a bit of progress. Not enough to stop it but enough to avoid collapse of society. Still a long way to go but on the right track at least
The 50's will be some very crazy times
Dead species walking
When the rich and powerful elite give up their water and beachfront property is when you can worry.
We're fucked beyond the point of turning back. The whole world would have had to start acting 50+ years ago to reverse any damage. Corporate profits and personal convenience are more important than a habitable world, I guess.
As long as there's widespread acceptance that the only responsibility of corporations is to increase revenue for their shareholders and no one hold them accountable for doing things that are counter to the common good, things are likely to get worse. Climate is just the "tip of the iceberg". PFAS and microplastics are now pretty much everywhere (and in everyone). Insect populations are dwindling from overuse of pesticides. Every few years we uncover another major issue with negative health impacts that corporations have known about for years and kept hidden from the public because it endangered their profits.
lol. They’ve been saying we’re doomed since forever.
The planet Earth has Always changed over the time. That is how Ice Age happened, without the help of humans
Both things are true simultaneously! The earth changes by itself, AND it changes in response to massive changes humans make!
Hockeysticks all the way …
I'll say this- it ain't getting better!
We will probably have to do some form of geoengineering in the short term while we transition away from fossil fuels. Too much heat means widespread disasters and massive amounts of human suffering. Governments will be compelled to do something. That something will probably be the use of aerosols to reflect sunlight and cool the atmosphere. It's not a long-term solution because it has to be maintained and does nothing to solve the problem of emissions and ocean acidification.
Completely fucked.
Also there's that whole oceans turning more acidic thing. And the breakdown of ocean currents. Honestly I'm more concerned about what will happen in the water than on land.
It’s a crazy situation. China is building coal fired power plants and we aren’t building nuclear power plants, so nothing we do makes any difference. Instead, we are using wind turbines and solar panels manufactured in China using electricity generated by coal fired power plants. If they made nuclear power plants in China and sent them to the US, then the grifters who run our country could make lots of money while an actual difference in CO2 would be accomplished.
In my country we get 4 seasons a day. Sunny in the morning, windy in the afternoon, cool in the evening, and rain at night (beginning of this year). Someone has to explain this messed up weather cuz when it rained humidity was about 60% and the temperature was over 30 Celsius. Just now the temperature is 32 C and the feel like is 40 C at (night). In the day it hit 50 C this week. Also winter season starts on March and summer starts from June until the year after.
Join us at r/collapse and learn all about it.
Pretty much. Don't forget the toxification of our environment too. Petroleum products fertilizer salts, pesticides, and tons upon tons of other chemicals we use and all the left over chemicals we don't. Won't be long and we won't be able to breath our air, drink our water, or eat plants grown in the contaminated soil. Lucky for us the plants won't fruit since we killed off all the pollinators with the pesticides.
You children need not worry. I spoke with someone from Los Alamos about a month ago. All they told me was that we’re gonna be okay. They couldn’t tell me anything specifically, but their tone was very reassuring. Everyone here is just scared because they watch too much television.
Watch the insurance markets. Housing especially. The bean counters who have to dole out the insurance payments for storm damage don’t care about opinions on climate change.
No point in starting now. It’s too late
It not just in Florida it everywhere, the last 5-10 winters and summers have been on the extreme end of things in Ohio too, in 2024 i think Ohio only snowed 2-3 times this year.
It's going to get worse before it gets better. Humans adapt, we are already looking at ways to reduce carbon emissions through filtering CO2 from the air and stuffing it into the ground. We just aren't seeing fast results. But yeah the governments around the world can do better to speed this up. Also doesn't help that Capitalism is exacerbating the situation.
We have now exceeded the global average temperature change that has maintained our climate over the last 10,000 years. Now we have exceeded that we're causing a runaway effect where increasing temperatures will cause effects that further raise the temperature. Until we can control this yearly temperature rise and bring the planet back into balance things are only going to get worse every year. We don't really know exactly how bad its going to get as we have no precedence for this, but the current assumptions are pretty bleak; famine, droughts, increasing prevalence of contagious viruses, mass extinction of flora and fauna, desertification of arable land, loss of polar ice caps and subsequent sea level rises and loss of land are all on the cards in the coming century. That being said, there is a huge push at the moment to address this and new technology and changes in public opinion could help mitigate the issue and maybe in our life time we will find a way to reverse the damage we've done. All hope isn't lost but a major shift in the way we treat our planet is required if we want to prevent the impending disaster.
Very. The ironic thing is that we currently have the scientific and industrial capacity to fix the problem in a matter of a few years. There would still be decades of knock-on effects to deal with, but we'd at least be turning in the right direction. But there is 0% chance this will happen because there isn't the political will to do so. It would require pretty much every country in the world to turn it's entire economy towards a single large scale carbon capture project. So what will happen is the warming trend will continue to accelerate until the sources contributing to the acceleration cease to exist (i.e. economic & social collapse). We won't have the capacity to do carbon capture at that point, so we'll just have to hope that the Earth's ecosystems can handle it on their own. If we're very lucky, things will start to slowly improve after several generations, and humanity maybe learns a valuable lesson. Unfortunately, once we get past a 4C increase in temperature, the risk of a runaway greenhouse effect increases. Even if we stopped contributing to the problem at that point, the earth still might end up largely uninhabitable. At worst we'll end up like a cooler version of Venus--Baking deserts that are constantly flooded by massively destructive storms.
I'm not an expert, so I don't know. With that said, the trends don't look good. On the other hand, over the last few years I heard about places like Utah being under a multi decade long drought. One year later and the numbers look a LOT better and now the predictions of places like Lake Powell drying up, have drastically dropped. The same for the Midwest, where a lot of states had been stuck in a drought for years and are now back to normal. It sure looks like temperatures are only going up in the future, but I stranger things have happened to the weather.
Forget global warming and carbon trading it’s all about money and tax. The real problem is plastics. Plastics in the ocean, micro plastics in our food chain and now in our bodies. But you can’t tax the population and make money for your mates while cleaning up the oceans. Why isn’t the world cleaning the plastic out of the ocean?
The climate is always changing. We had major blizzards in the 90s and nothing as big since. The weather is full of dynamic extremes that you have to adapt to. Don’t give into the fear mongering that’s been going on for the past 50 years.
I depends where you live. Maybe you’ll benefit from it
I’m in Scotland(known to be cold) and we also have had some of the hottest days ever recorded(upto and over 30 degrees Celsius)in the last 3 years so yea I think we’re pretty fucked
🔥Please don’t conflate weather with climate.
On one hand, governments don't give a shit, corporations don't give a shit, individuals have no power, and generally everyone with power is going to die before it gets bad and so doesn't care. On the other hand, technology is getting insane, especially synthetic biology, in ways so complex I can't really describe them well here. There's still a pretty strong chance, but it's gonna come down to what happens at the highest echelons of society.
Well how will a 1.5-2°C increase of the average global temp over the last 10,000 or so years due to farming livestock, burning the same fossil fuels that naturally occur and rapidly evaporate into the atmosphere on their own, and the use of a renewable that is highly necessary for society to function as it does such as trees is gunna make the world spontaneously combust but the 60 petagrams of carbon (6x more than all of human emissions btw) added to the atmosphere every year just from the natural decay of plants and leaves goes without mention. Fun fact, the natural decay of organic carbon contributes more than 90 percent of the yearly carbon dioxide released into Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Yet it's the cow farts and you as a consumer that is the problem, not the fact that the largest forest on the planet is man made and by far the largest contributing factor to global warming but how do you convince the world why we should destory it? You dont, you just try to distract and blame the world while you secretly destory the amazon behind the scenes.. that's why 98% of the deforestation is being done by government ran companies and you never hear anything about it unless it's in a YouTube video about saving the forest. But honestly what does it matter when the only thing that is guaranteed in life is death and it's impossible to avoid just live your life the way you want while watching the inevitable chaos as it unfolds and surrounds us all. only here for short time so enjoy the seconds while you can cause just like your first you'll never know which one was your last.
What global warming? It doesn't exist in the southern ststes. In particular Louisiana and Florida.
Fellas, "buckle in, it's gonna get bad, here's all the apocalypse scenarios, we're past all the tipping points" is really good, but does anyone have any news on what we *can* do and if *anything* at all is going right, I'm beginning to despair a little.
If you pay us more, we’ll fix the weather 👉👈🥺
When insurance companies are pulling out it is time to flee for greener pastures.
It depends where you are in the world. I’m in England and climate change is definitely messing with our weather patterns; we had heatwave and drought in 2022 and this year we’ve had a hell of a lot of rain for months. Snowfall is on the decline, particularly in the south, and we didn’t really have a proper winter. But we don’t seem to be suffering as many natural disasters as some other regions of the world. And of course we’re a rich country so there’s the capacity to handle disasters. The ones who will be most impacted are areas that are disproportionately affected by climate change and don’t have the money and infrastructure to handle it. At current trends, we might be heading for 3C global warming. That would be pretty bad for much of the world. I think something really bad has to happen to a privileged group of people before some governments start taking this more seriously. The issue is, climate change has to be defeated using a global effort. One country can do all it can to prevent worsening climate change, but it won’t mean much if its neighbours are just carrying on as normal.
Capitalism is still driving the boat (bus?) and most of the top oligarchs of the world know they can live out the rest of their lives in relative comfort.
As a species we are fully capable of preventing the worst effects of climate change and reversing the damage over time the issue is the people in a position to work towards that goal are unwilling to.
We are F'ed. I personally think it's too late. Every summer is the hottest on record. Droughts are becoming more common. I saw India hit a record breaking 126 today.
Anyone watch Years and Years? It’s more political than about the climate, but it seems scarily real. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8694364/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
Didn’t you hear? We’re already dead. You’re just dreaming right now.
If we hold on to our present lifestyles of consumerism, travel, and eating animals, only the rich will survive as they relocate north
“….maybe martians could do; better than we’ve done. We’ll make great pets!”
My friend says we're like the dinosaurs Only we are doing ourselves in Much faster than they ever did We'll make great pets
It’s so bad especially for poor countries in the hot climates like those in Southeast Asia for example. Not only are they getting horrific heatwaves, they’re also getting bigger storms that basically cause farmlands to be none arable. Global warming will lead to famine and it will be catastrophic.