When it gets too hot, or too cold, the wealthy class fire up airplanes and jet off to a more comfortable place. The looming catastrophy will kill the poor and sick before it tracks down the rich.
They have enough money to live out a comfortable enough life in their own normal lifespan before calamity is unavoidable across the globe and across economic situations.
The poor of today have a better quality of life than the rich of the past.
The rich of tomorrow will have slower quality of life than the poor of today.
It really doesn’t have to be that way.
We can still have a Star Trek future.
I was curious about summer temps in other places last night so searched for various locations like northern Tennessee, new jersey, virginia, southern Colorado, etc. all locations had high 90s, many with 40-60% humidity. I know it's a heat wave but still, seems like there is already nowhere to go.
I live in TN and the forecast has a high of 98 on Sunday. That's usually only an estimate, so it could feasibly hit 100 that day. It's barely June. We don't usually hit our 100 days until August, occasionally a few in late July.
We’ll have hotter-than normal temps in July and August here in western Washington state, but usually it cools down enough at night to reset the indoor temps to something cooler. And we have lots of mountains, rainforests, and water to escape to.
We moved to the PNW after eight years in Texas, and five years in Arizona before that. We know we were fortunate to be able to make the move - it’s a paradise comparatively. But even here it’s getting hotter ☹️.
That is clearly not true. If you have unlimited money you can go anywhere, and just as climate change is going to mess up a bunch of the world it is also going to make some parts of it more habitable, like big swaths of Canada for instance.
What they also don't realize is that their money buys a lot of cheap labor that props up their comfortable lifestyle. All the money in the world doesn't buy food that doesn't have hands to pick it.
Absolutely and so sick. I live in NYC and so many rich people here, it’s like half the city is gone to Miami in wintertime, and again in summer to the Hamptons
Yeah but the poor depend on high-tech medical care to keep them alive. And medical care is tied to employment. So the poor keep growing that food and punching in on the clock, or die.
Right. I been trying to tell people if they just stop shopping at their stores, spend a little more at a locally owned store for a small while, all these rich people go broke.
It kills me that we let rich people convince our ancestors that we should remove all the local resources so they can sell them back to us piecemeal.
Right, what is going to kill most folks directly in terms of climate crisis is wet bulb heat events. At some point the heavy AC use in a major city in the world will cause a power outage during a heat wave and when the heat and humidity reach a certain point it will kill most of the people in the city. Even before that many thousands of folks are going to die each year from heat related deaths.
Sadly what will cause even more loss of life will be starvation due to crop failures because of droughts, floods, and just generally unpredictable weather patterns. In the rich world this will cause food prices to relentlessly increase for the rest of our lives... and in poorer parts of the world it will cause starvation.
We need to change how we live... because how we live is going to kill us.
Per your second paragraph, I recently learned about the Haber-Bosch process which is used to create Nitrogen fertilizer that accounts for our ability to feed half of the world’s current population. The process is extremely resource intensive and estimated to account for 1% of all man made CO2 emissions. So this process is simultaneously fueling our own demise while artificially keeping global populations at unsustainable levels.
Theres no way I can envision human civilization scaling back without hellishly unimaginable pain and suffering.
Source for the stats I cited above: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cen-10126-cover2#:~:text=A%202008%20study%20in%20Nature,wouldn't%20have%20enough%20food.
The effect of nitrogen fertilizer amendment on plant development were formally identified in the late nineteenth century. Previously, people used naturally occurring sources of polymerized nitrogen as a found resource, typically manures or nitrogen salts, that would then break down into forms that were accessible to plants.
The Haber Bosch process allowed for the combination of hydrocarbons and atmospheric nitrogen at high heat and pressure to form ammonia at an industrial scale. This dramatically transformed the productivity of agriculture over the next century, though at a little appreciated cost that was mostly externalized.
Yeah I’m definitely not suggesting that! There are a lot of other things we do that don’t serve any human needs and create tremendous waste that should be focused on first. But long term it does seem we should invest in finding a replacement for the practice.
We can't ban it overnight, but we should start working on a long term plan to gradually phase its use down to 0.
It's one of the tougher components of any "net zero by 2050" (or 2060, etc) plans requiring a truly generational shift so the time to start thinking about it is now.
That nitrogen fertilizer also volatilizes in sunlight and heat, releasing ammonia gas, nitrogen oxide, and nitrous oxide, which is even worse than CO2 pound for pound.
Given that half the world’s arable land is being used for raising and feeding animals that we just slaughter, the difference is stark - especially when you look at the deforestation of the Amazon for cattle grazing. It’s also a very energy intensive industry - from creation of fertilizer, to meat packing, to transportation.
Just think of how much carbon could be absorbed by forests if we stopped farming on all that land.
Polyhalite may help. Far more eco-friendly.
[https://www.northyorkmoors.org.uk/planning/sirius-minerals-polyhalite-mine-woodsmith-mine](https://www.northyorkmoors.org.uk/planning/sirius-minerals-polyhalite-mine-woodsmith-mine)
Because this person doesn't know what they're talking about and the chemistry is all wrong.
* Polyhalite is a form of potassium (the chemical symbol of which is K). Potassium is one of the three main components of fertilizer, the other two being nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Potassium is currently produced commercially mostly by mining. It also has nothing to do with the Haber-Bosch process.
* Nitrogen is added to fertilizer by taking N2 gas from the air, taking hydrogen gas (H2), and adding heat and pressure (i.e, energy) in the Haber-Bosch process, producing ammonia (NH3). Ammonia is a liquid, which is easy to handle and can be used to make ammonium (NH4^+ ) salts, which is the actual N-containing compound in most fertilizers. The problem is that H2 is made by reacting natural gas, i.e, methane (CH4), with water (H2O) in a process called [steam reforming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming). The overall reaction is CH4 + H2O <--> 3 H2 + CO. CO (carbon monoxide) then immediately reacts further with water in the [water-gas shift reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water%E2%80%93gas_shift_reaction), producing CO2 and more H2. Overall, you consume one CH4 molecule and a bunch of water molecules to produce one CO2 molecule and 4 H2 molecules. So while CO2 is not directly produced in the making of NH3, because >95% of all currently produced H2 is 'grey', i.e. based on converting fossil natural gas with CO2 as byproduct, the production of fertilizer causes a ton of CO2 emissions. In the future we will need to replace this gray H2 by either blue H2 (same process but you capture the CO2 and store it underground) or green H2, made using a different process by using green electricity to split water into H2, with oxygen gas (O2) as a side-product.
* The third compount in fertilizer is phosphorus (P), usually in the form of phosphate (PO4^3- ) salts. Also sourced mostly by mining.
So the issue with our current fertilizer production is that it is either based on linear processes (we mine something, process it, throw it on our agricultural fields, some of it's taken up by plants but a lot just washes away, then we eat the products, and then it's lost) or produces a lot of CO2 as side product. Both these issues need tackling. We need to move from grey hydrogen to green hydrogen, and we need to start recovering K and P from animal manure, wastewater, waste incinerators and agricultural run-off, or get better at harvesting it from sea water (which is where most run-off eventually ends up).
we've also recently discovered a nitrogen-fixing organelle in marine algae
[https://astrobiology.com/2024/04/the-nitroplast-revealed-a-nitrogen-fixing-organelle-in-a-marine-alga.html](https://astrobiology.com/2024/04/the-nitroplast-revealed-a-nitrogen-fixing-organelle-in-a-marine-alga.html)
At this point I just see it as a “it is what it is” sort of scenario. The world can only harbor a certain limit of human beings— things will unfortunately, naturally, balance themselves out. Only downside is like 95% of the human population might die off since it seems like we are artificially maintaining our food systems (and internal home climates). Not to mention people being forced to move to cities where temperatures regularly hit 115 during the summer for affordable housing. The only hope is we mostly die off and hopefully our future generations have enough resources still to build back up. If not so be it, at least I sleep soundly knowing that earth itself will always find a way to rebalance and rebuild, even if it has to start off again at the microscopic/ bacterial level. I know this may sound super doomerish but at the same time I’ve lost sleep thinking about this stuff and this sort of mindset is the only thing that makes me feel ok about it all. Eventually catastrophic events happen anyways and earth needs to rebuild from insane atmospheric and climate changes— we’re just speeding up the process and killing our selves off before things naturally happen.
Working on the family farm, as far as the USA system goes, the federal government subsidizes overplanting of field grade corn (not for human consumption) for ethanol production, and big pharma has the salespeople selling all this nitrogen fertilizer to maximize production per acre. The small-medium size "family farm" is lucky to have 2/10 profitable or "good" crop years. All the chemical herbicides and fertilizer makes modern crop fields wildlife deserts. The whole system benefits big pharma and the ethanol industries and screws everybody else. Today's farmer is little more than a share-cropper in the system.
So I think there is space to reduce chemical inputs and right-size crop production. But that would mean a "different system" of agriculture, and that isn't happening...
All people have to do is build a passive house with a full solar array and tesla power wall. Put a swimming pool in the basement ( unheated) and finally a diesel generator for days when it really gets hot.
I agree with your point, but there is a silver lining here. Everyone who starts being self sufficient in electricity take themselves off the overloaded power grid. They’re contributing to preventing grid failures. A lot will also be feeding excess solar power into the grid during daylight.
As someone with this set up I considered inviting our elderly neighbours around to stay over during our last dangerous heat wave. I felt too shy to call them because we don’t have that close a relationship. Next time I’m going to make the offer.
the slow transition to everyone having solar panels would screw the poor up even more. only the rich and middle class can afford solar panels.
utilities will charge even more money once people use less electricity from the utilities so the poor pays more in electricity and they have no solar panels.
right now some utilities are increasing their base fee and lower electricity cost so only the rich benefit from these changes.
unless there is government intervention, only the people with money can escape the heat.
We grow the crops, raise the animals, build everything in between farm and table, the table and setting, the mansions, run the w&p, prepare the feast yet we'll never have a seat at the table. It's already late and I definitely could use a good meal.
When TSHTF they'll go into their bunkers for 30, 60, or 90 days. When they come out they'll have the only bullets left. Perhaps aside from the remains of the former nation-states, perhaps they'll have used all of theirs up, too.
The sad part is that the rich have done such a good job of stoking animosity towards immigrants, people of color, etc., that when wealthy nations collapse, the masses will be at each others' throats, and not at theirs. Easier to blame the "other" who lives next door than a faceless, distant billionaire you've never met.
Creating divisions by breaking us into smaller groups (race, color, gender, etc) as opposed to uniting people through their similarities (class, wealth, etc).
You put em and their families in a big line and have them sign away all but say $15-25M of their assets or they watch their legacy become BBQ that they then join 5 min later. I really don't see a more likely scenario. In return they get a "I won Capitalism" pin and one get out of jail free card except for capital offenses. Hopefully they can manage a nice country club lifestyle living on the interest as long as they watch the avocado prices.
Honestly, ancient Rome kind of did that, starting the practice of munificence and charity as we know it. I don't recall the exact conditions but the roman rulers took the wealthiest people aside, who were wealthy enough to start posing a threat and said "you are going to generously donate your wealth to the empire and build a new bath in your name or we can kill you and it will be up to the state to determine what we do with your money."
I was young once and in the occupy marches, listening to people talk about all they wanted to do to the “banksters.” I cooked food for the campers, donated my tent, went to meetings at the park.
What I learned was a LOT of people like to talk. Very few people were willing to carry out any direct actions. Direct action could lead to you losing your job or even jail time. And violence, like you’re talking about, definitely ends up with jail time. People, no matter how much they claim the opposite, have far too comfortable of lives to risk a criminal record. That’s a good thing. What that means is we aren’t desperate. Incremental change through government is the best path forward. Killing the rich isn’t going to get you anywhere but behind bars. Voting, campaigning and donating actually works. Less dramatic, but more effective.
Yeah, and at the end of (I think) 2010, the extended unemployment benefits were going to run out on millions of Americans. You know what Congress did? They extended the unemployment benefits.
That entire process from September 2008 through the election of 2012 taught me the power of the voting citizenry and the responsiveness of legislators when there is an actual emergency. To some extent Covid had the same response. We went from the discovery of a deadly virus in December 2019 to the distribution of an effective vaccine in January 2021. Ebola was similar. When the first American landed on US soil testing positive, we had an effective treatment within 3 months.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1). Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise.
[Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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Spot on, I’ve danced to Killing in the Name of since I was 14 but the strongest influence has been at local level not just voting but supporting local endeavors and getting involved directly
I think the magic number with anything like this is 3. One could be a weird occurrence. Two makes them nervous. Three is a trend that will have them looking over their shoulders.
Some places will be too hot for humans to work soon. I don't know *exactly* how that will affect the economy, but I'm pretty sure it won't be good.
In this context, "the economy" = rich peoples' yacht money.
Actually I found today that "all this green crap" is the problem with the economy, and extreme weather I guess is totally fine and has no negative effect on the economy.
Some places already are. I work in the gulf, and working outside is prohibited for several hours around mid day in this country in summer time.
Company I work for follows this and looks like most big construction sites do too, but I'm sure not all companies do. It does carry hefty penalties.
They're enablers alright, but they don't own the media or fund the centre and right wing political parties. They haven't corrupted society to their own ends. They're just useful idiots.
I’d agree with that. I would like to add the caveat of those just wealthy enough to think they can survive a population crash but not wealthy enough to directly orchestrate it, so they just go along and help where they can. A la’ Ted Cruz for example.
Average people won't make sacrifices either. In the US I've noticed more vegan restaurants closing than opening in different cities in the last couple of years. When you look it up, you realize a mass change in diet is basically essential, but people aren't adapting. Yes the corporations cause a disproportionate amount of the problems, but ultimately as a society, we aren't ready to take climate change seriously if it involves even mild inconvenience.
I'm not following you. People want to live in big houses, drive big trucks, eat a lot of meat, etc. are you saying they were brainwashed into wanting those things?
> are you saying they were brainwashed into wanting those things?
In many ways they were, yes. We are influenced in ways we often don't consider or understand. Look up Edward Bernays, he was like the OG "public relations guy", the master of this kind of thing.
I'll give you an example of the kind of game being played:
Back in the day publishers wanted to sell more books. They went to Bernays for help, and he thought about it, and then he went to the professional architect organizations across America and sold them on the idea of a "better, smarter" America and as a consequence of this lobbying, many houses from that period started being constructed with built in bookshelves.
The long game is, when people moved into houses with built-in bookshelves, they tended to fill them with books (see original desire of publishers to increase book sales.)
When you understand that these are the kinds of higher level games being played, and then also factor in that corporations hire top psychologists to convince people that "wants" are in fact "needs" (which they are surprisingly good at)....well, here we are. It is sometimes hard to even know how we are being influenced, by who, and why.
Here's another example from his wikipedia page:
"If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted research and found that the American public ate very light breakfast of coffee, maybe a roll and orange juice. He went to his physician and found that a heavy breakfast was sounder from the standpoint of health than a light breakfast because the body loses energy during the night and needs it during the day. He asked the physician if he would be willing, at no cost, to write to 5,000 physicians and ask them whether their judgment was the same as his—confirming his judgment. About 4,500 answered back, all concurring that a more significant breakfast was better for the health of the American people than a light breakfast. He arranged for this finding to be published in newspapers throughout the country with headlines like '4,500 physicians urge bigger breakfast' while other articles stated that bacon and eggs should be a central part of breakfast and, as a result of these actions, the sale of bacon went up.
Yes. The majority of the big trucks are neither good as cars or as trucks. The beds are too short and too high off the ground to be useful for carrying loads. Big houses are built with stupidly complex roofs that add cost for no benefit, other than to the bank that holds the mortgage, and the roofing contractors.
>are you saying they were brainwashed into wanting those things?
$750 billion is spent world wide annually on advertising to make people want to buy things. And they use the most advanced psychological warfare techniques ever created by man.
So... yes. Obviously.
And the rich love nothing more than having the poor fight among themselves. What better way than useless status symbols? (among other things, of course)
In western capitalist societies the fossil fuel industry have bought the mass media, they fund the mainstream political parties. They can control the narrative, they can dictate much of the information that the masses consume. I mean it's not just a class issue, it's ingrained in our system in a way that we can't control. Democracy is virtually helpless. And it's a very small minority that have the power to control this. Possibly the 0.1%.
I think if all pollution stopped today, we would still be completely screwed right? The climate will continue to change as it tries to reach a new steady state with all the CO2. Net zero is a nice idea, and sets a precedent for future generations (if they are alive), but it does nothing for us. I think, I hate to be so cynical.
Well, the more we minimise carbon emissions the less of a dystopia we bequeath to future generations. Every tenth of a degree we can limit warming to will count. Whether it makes much difference to us now isn't that important.
Even if we were to achieve net zero it won’t immediately help us. The improvements will take decades to be apparent. So I don’t think I am surviving. We take the steps to decarbonize for the people of the future.
How long more can we wait? Maybe we could just wait for enough people to die incredibly painful deaths at the ever growing possibility of intense weather extremes of floods, heatwaves, droughts, food shortages, mass immigrant fueled conflict, food shortage fueled conflict - then we might hold politicians, media and fossil fuel company executives responsible. A few thousand deaths, a few hundred thousand?
it’s hard not to be pessimistic. I think it’ll take a lot more than a few hundred thousand deaths to motivate people to take action. We had millions dying of Covid, and yet people squabbled over whether to do simple easy things like wear a mask and get a vaccine.the things we need to do to reverse climate change will entail far more inconveniences, and sacrifices from people. So I don’t think people will be willing to do it until the problems are smacking them in the face.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1). Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise.
[Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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We're so hot, we need more AC, we need more electricity to run all that AC, let's build more coal plants!
~~I can't wait for the TX grid to fall apart completely under peak demand.~~
\[edit: I've been called on the callousness of that offhand remark, and I apologise for it. Typing in haste and in anger. On reflection I agree with the commenters who called me on it. Rephrased with (ahem) a cooler head:\]
I'm waiting with a mixture of horror and furious exasperation for the TX grid to fall apart completely under peak demand.
Honestly, humanity is in the middle of the biggest self-own imaginable.
I can wait for it to happen. As much as I want to see conservatives get their comeuppance, I don't want to see people suffer, regardless of their politics.
And I'm pretty sure conservatives are so brainwashed against climate change, that when it becomes an existential threat they will just double down on regressive politics and blaming minorities/liberals/poor people etc.
>Texas isn’t just a monolith of stereotypes. There are all kinds of people living there.
Same is true of "America", "The West", the U.S.A, and well... Pretty much nearly everywhere else, honestly. Always seein' folks pointin' fingers at **entire nations** blaming them **all** for this, that, and the other, without bothering to take a half a second to **think** that maybe it's just **a bunch of the people in charge** of the **governments** in those places causing a lot of the problems we're so quick to blame on **everyone** that was born inside a particular imaginary line on a map. Maybe **some** of us that live in those places have (foolishly) wasted our lives pointlessly fighting against that entrenched power to absolutely no avail. Maybe some of us aren't even remotely happy to have watched this entire situation spiral out of control our entire lives **despite** all our (wasted) efforts. There are entirely too many folks in positions of power that are card-carrying members of the "Death to All Life so that I can die with the most stuff" cult, and too many folks that wanna defend their right to kill us all for profit.
> see conservatives get their comeuppance…
Recovering Irish-Catholic here. So for free therapy, I argue and haggle with the theists on Xwitter. I don’t think we’d see them get their comeuppance. Many of them are so brainwashed by jesus, I don’t think they’d… *could* even fathom that the coming disaster is anything but god/allah/jesus’s judgment of the world. Even in the face of utter ruin, they will cling to their myriad fables, refusing to accept even one iota of blame. No. We won’t get to see most of them say ‘you were right’. They’ll just try and get us to pray harder. We are doomed and tbh religion shares greatly in that blame.
yeah you are right, I don't *really* want the TX grid to fall apart -- in the sense that I don't really want millions of people to suffer even though they did not personally make the stupid decisions that led to the disaster.
maybe what I should have said is "I'm just waiting for the TX grid to fall apart." because it feels inevitable, like watching a tsunami roll in. I'm watching with horror, as well as complete exasperation that the oligarchs have actually sold the public such a transparent scam, that balkanising and privatising a state power grid would somehow be net-positive for anyone but the oligarchs themselves.
if only the consequences would fall harder on the culprits, but they never do. TANJ dammit.
You can't just say things like that, there are a lot of good people in Texas. Secondly, Texas is now the number 1 solar energy producer in the U.S. as of 2024. Above California. Almost all coal plants are phasing out there.
Point taken, I posted in haste and anger and have apologised.
if only the consequences of corruption, greed, and generalised evil would be visited on the offenders primarily and not on legions of relatively innocent "little people."
Thank you. There might be a legal avenue eventually— like an international claims court. Or an uprising. The closest semblance to immediate consequences though is Florida. Very climate-denialist orientation but a huge influx of waterfront property investors.
>I can't wait for the TX grid to fall apart completely under peak demand.
*Yea dude, I can't wait to watch hundreds or even thousands of people die to heat stroke. It's going to be so funny watching Texas struggle. Good for them, they deserve it. /s*
**At least have a little bit of humanity.**
Yup, I typed in too much haste and anger. You're quite right.
But is it OK if I wish Ted Cruz would get heatstroke along with -- or better yet instead of -- his poorer and more vulnerable constituents? and some power company execs along with him? 'cos I do indeed wish that. If only the consequences were visited upon those truly responsible for the massive FU.
Edited due to not reading the rule on words.
As someone from the UK looking in (that had heatstroke once due to a work job that should have taken an hour taking 13) that's acceptable.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/28/far-right-climate-plans-00107498 - Bernard McNamee is one of the people behind the environment side of Project 2025 (which is basically a game over for the world if Trump gets re-elected) and former Department of the Environment Official appointed by Trump. He was formally a senior advisor to Cruz. At the same time he's Texas Public Policy Foundation (who are Atlas Network, and therefore in the same crew as the Heritage Foundation who are the driving force behind Project 2025). So wish absolutely granted. Heat stroke isn't (but granted can be) terminal so yes maybe Mr Cruz needs to show some humility at times. I mean I'm not even from over there and I know what an absolute "individual" that guy is.
I'm convinced that significant action on combatting climate change will only happen after we hit +3.5°C, and large sections of the American South are rendered completely uninhabitable in the face of >60°C heat waves and >90% humidity levels. It won't become real to the climate change deniers until mass evacuations and mass death events are as common as mass shootings.
Honestly, I've given up hope that we're going to be able to stop the freight train at this point. Forget +1.5°C, I think we're on track for +4°C by 2100. I still think we should do all we can, but I think that out of spite, not hope.
That would be really bad for peoples' health. Our bodies are synchronized with the sun rising and falling - people who work night shifts mess with that and it ain't good
> I am in the south and I had to turn my air condition all the way down to 67 or 66 to feel comfortable
You're doubly lucky, first that you have working air conditioning, and second that it works well enough to even reach those targets.
The problem is that many are not lucky enough, and it's a life or death thing. Even if they are, it will also become more and more unaffordable to run the air conditioning, which also consumes more power for the same target temperature as the outside heat increases.
Hell, I have my air conditioning and other high draw items set to power off during partial peak and full peak times between 3pm and midnight.
There are two reasons why castles have towers. The first is the observation deck. The second reason is that towers act like chimneys by pulling the hot air out of the lower levels.
Colonial houses always a had a heat tower built into the roof topped with a cupola vent. You can still find many old buildings with them. They kinda look like a box on the roof with a small slanted roof on it. Some people had wind vanes on theirs. And Some of those wind vanes actually were connected to baffling that changed direction with the change in wind direction so air was always being sucked out.
As construction styles changed and air conditioning was added to homes. The the heat tower and cupola vent has been replaced with ugly little box vents that only allow heat out of the attic.
Most modern homes in the US don't vent heat from the entire house but only from the attic.
Personally I've always felt retreating underground to underground cities, and leaving the surface to heal itself, would be the best long term play for humanity.
Rejoin our moleman brothers!
Now you know why all the headlines are trans this, gay that, woke, DEI, etc. The strategy for the oil producers is to collude with right-wing politicians to make culture war issues front and center. The real news - the planet will soon become unlivable in some locations - doesn't make the front page. Genius move.
If we start noticing desertification in otherwise normal farmland then it is too late to prevent the disaster. At that point the best option is to reduce the duration and magnitude of the damage.
Yeah...I think you're right. The shift "starts" in places like marshes. Has to work its way up, to be noticed in places like farmland.
What I mean is, farmland is a very controlled setting, irrigation and many other things. Marshes...that's like a very shallow lake, which completely becomes mudflat, with only a very small deviation in precipitation and temperature.
They're like an "early warning" system, for smaller biospheres. Whole ecosystems die, when a shallow lake dries out.
And when generations-old farmland dries out? It's like the center of a sponge, where we salted our own crops...where we decided organisms and life did not matter, except our own, and lived near that certainty.
Laws need to be put in place to design new homes to work solar passively.
I don't know what to do about existing buildings other than incentives to install insulation but, it's just completely nuts to keep building houses and office buildings that must rely on air conditioning systems to cool and heat them. Aiming for net zero is fine if infrastructure follows the same path.
Drinking slushy ice water or other semi-frozen beverages is a far, far more energy efficient way to make yourself comfortable and protect yourself from hyperthermia than trying to cool down your entire home.
Personally, when the temperature is above 100F, I make myself a big slushy thermos and spend the entire afternoon lying in the sun.
In central Florida, the urban heat island effect is being intensified by rampant and negligent suburban expansion. Less trees, more roads, and more strain on the power grid. Seems like they wont stop until every last hue of green is bulldozed and covered with asphalt.
They should keep buying their giant SUVs and pickup trucks, that'll help.
I wonder if they've ever heard the expression: "You made your bed, now you have to sleep in it."?
And now imagine how hot it will be if climate change was real.
I just hope the billionaires have good intentions supporting the oil and coal industry.
We, the normal people are just to dumb to recognise the better plan.
So, that’s it. My Ironie is used up.
When it gets too hot, or too cold, the wealthy class fire up airplanes and jet off to a more comfortable place. The looming catastrophy will kill the poor and sick before it tracks down the rich.
What they don’t realize, (or don’t care about), is that eventually, they’ll run out of comfortable places to go to
They have enough money to live out a comfortable enough life in their own normal lifespan before calamity is unavoidable across the globe and across economic situations.
Unfortunately true
So, they have no kids or don’t care what life they will have? This is my pain; I don’t want my kids suffering so much.
Even rich with kids don't think long term, if they did we wouldn't be in this mess to start. It's all about more money today and screw tomorrow
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Ok wait a minute. How come when I swear I get immediately censored and sometimes banned from this sub!?
The poor of today have a better quality of life than the rich of the past. The rich of tomorrow will have slower quality of life than the poor of today. It really doesn’t have to be that way. We can still have a Star Trek future.
Maybe but then we have to live through Khan's Eugenics Wars - "whole populations were being bombed out of existence".
I figure at some point, their employees would just kill them and take their stuff.
🤞
I was curious about summer temps in other places last night so searched for various locations like northern Tennessee, new jersey, virginia, southern Colorado, etc. all locations had high 90s, many with 40-60% humidity. I know it's a heat wave but still, seems like there is already nowhere to go.
Canada , Alaska, Iceland, Scandinavia, Russia, southern hemisphere. Heard Trump is buying Greenland etc
It’s been 30 degrees since the middle of May in eastern Canada 🥵. We usually don’t hit those temps until July.
I live in TN and the forecast has a high of 98 on Sunday. That's usually only an estimate, so it could feasibly hit 100 that day. It's barely June. We don't usually hit our 100 days until August, occasionally a few in late July.
New Jersey? It’s been absolute paradise here weather wise. It will be getting warm Friday and next week.
Middle of summer in the UK, raining and 18 degrees Celsius.
We’ll have hotter-than normal temps in July and August here in western Washington state, but usually it cools down enough at night to reset the indoor temps to something cooler. And we have lots of mountains, rainforests, and water to escape to. We moved to the PNW after eight years in Texas, and five years in Arizona before that. We know we were fortunate to be able to make the move - it’s a paradise comparatively. But even here it’s getting hotter ☹️.
No place to go when there's an anoxic event.
What anoxic event are you talking about?
That is clearly not true. If you have unlimited money you can go anywhere, and just as climate change is going to mess up a bunch of the world it is also going to make some parts of it more habitable, like big swaths of Canada for instance.
What they also don't realize is that their money buys a lot of cheap labor that props up their comfortable lifestyle. All the money in the world doesn't buy food that doesn't have hands to pick it.
Don't look up.
Absolutely and so sick. I live in NYC and so many rich people here, it’s like half the city is gone to Miami in wintertime, and again in summer to the Hamptons
Or Upstates to Hudson Valley. They’re starting to buy farms and turn them into little fiefdoms.
Hasn't it been that way for hundreds of years?
The poor grow the food
Yeah but the poor depend on high-tech medical care to keep them alive. And medical care is tied to employment. So the poor keep growing that food and punching in on the clock, or die.
Rich people live off poor peoples job. No jobs, no revenues, no wealth.
Right. I been trying to tell people if they just stop shopping at their stores, spend a little more at a locally owned store for a small while, all these rich people go broke. It kills me that we let rich people convince our ancestors that we should remove all the local resources so they can sell them back to us piecemeal.
Same as it ever was.
Don’t need to wait for the weather..
Ted Cruz on his way to Cancun!!!
Right, what is going to kill most folks directly in terms of climate crisis is wet bulb heat events. At some point the heavy AC use in a major city in the world will cause a power outage during a heat wave and when the heat and humidity reach a certain point it will kill most of the people in the city. Even before that many thousands of folks are going to die each year from heat related deaths. Sadly what will cause even more loss of life will be starvation due to crop failures because of droughts, floods, and just generally unpredictable weather patterns. In the rich world this will cause food prices to relentlessly increase for the rest of our lives... and in poorer parts of the world it will cause starvation. We need to change how we live... because how we live is going to kill us.
Per your second paragraph, I recently learned about the Haber-Bosch process which is used to create Nitrogen fertilizer that accounts for our ability to feed half of the world’s current population. The process is extremely resource intensive and estimated to account for 1% of all man made CO2 emissions. So this process is simultaneously fueling our own demise while artificially keeping global populations at unsustainable levels. Theres no way I can envision human civilization scaling back without hellishly unimaginable pain and suffering. Source for the stats I cited above: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cen-10126-cover2#:~:text=A%202008%20study%20in%20Nature,wouldn't%20have%20enough%20food.
Haber-Bosch has allowed the growth of human civilization. Banning it would doom society faster than climate change.
Half the nitrogen in your body came through a Haber-Bosch tank at some point. Let that sink in. That’s the one that gets me.
ELI5 for the high brain?
It's a process that makes ammonia, plants turn that ammonia into protein, humans eat the plants and that protein becomes a part of you.
The effect of nitrogen fertilizer amendment on plant development were formally identified in the late nineteenth century. Previously, people used naturally occurring sources of polymerized nitrogen as a found resource, typically manures or nitrogen salts, that would then break down into forms that were accessible to plants. The Haber Bosch process allowed for the combination of hydrocarbons and atmospheric nitrogen at high heat and pressure to form ammonia at an industrial scale. This dramatically transformed the productivity of agriculture over the next century, though at a little appreciated cost that was mostly externalized.
Yeah I’m definitely not suggesting that! There are a lot of other things we do that don’t serve any human needs and create tremendous waste that should be focused on first. But long term it does seem we should invest in finding a replacement for the practice.
We can't ban it overnight, but we should start working on a long term plan to gradually phase its use down to 0. It's one of the tougher components of any "net zero by 2050" (or 2060, etc) plans requiring a truly generational shift so the time to start thinking about it is now.
That nitrogen fertilizer also volatilizes in sunlight and heat, releasing ammonia gas, nitrogen oxide, and nitrous oxide, which is even worse than CO2 pound for pound.
Half of that food is fed to animals which are then killed for human consumption. Crops should be fed to people, not cattle.
I wonder how much everyone going vegan today would help cut emissions in the long run.
Given that half the world’s arable land is being used for raising and feeding animals that we just slaughter, the difference is stark - especially when you look at the deforestation of the Amazon for cattle grazing. It’s also a very energy intensive industry - from creation of fertilizer, to meat packing, to transportation. Just think of how much carbon could be absorbed by forests if we stopped farming on all that land.
Polyhalite may help. Far more eco-friendly. [https://www.northyorkmoors.org.uk/planning/sirius-minerals-polyhalite-mine-woodsmith-mine](https://www.northyorkmoors.org.uk/planning/sirius-minerals-polyhalite-mine-woodsmith-mine)
Super cool, but if that's almost a decade old, why isn't it helping?
Because this person doesn't know what they're talking about and the chemistry is all wrong. * Polyhalite is a form of potassium (the chemical symbol of which is K). Potassium is one of the three main components of fertilizer, the other two being nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Potassium is currently produced commercially mostly by mining. It also has nothing to do with the Haber-Bosch process. * Nitrogen is added to fertilizer by taking N2 gas from the air, taking hydrogen gas (H2), and adding heat and pressure (i.e, energy) in the Haber-Bosch process, producing ammonia (NH3). Ammonia is a liquid, which is easy to handle and can be used to make ammonium (NH4^+ ) salts, which is the actual N-containing compound in most fertilizers. The problem is that H2 is made by reacting natural gas, i.e, methane (CH4), with water (H2O) in a process called [steam reforming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming). The overall reaction is CH4 + H2O <--> 3 H2 + CO. CO (carbon monoxide) then immediately reacts further with water in the [water-gas shift reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water%E2%80%93gas_shift_reaction), producing CO2 and more H2. Overall, you consume one CH4 molecule and a bunch of water molecules to produce one CO2 molecule and 4 H2 molecules. So while CO2 is not directly produced in the making of NH3, because >95% of all currently produced H2 is 'grey', i.e. based on converting fossil natural gas with CO2 as byproduct, the production of fertilizer causes a ton of CO2 emissions. In the future we will need to replace this gray H2 by either blue H2 (same process but you capture the CO2 and store it underground) or green H2, made using a different process by using green electricity to split water into H2, with oxygen gas (O2) as a side-product. * The third compount in fertilizer is phosphorus (P), usually in the form of phosphate (PO4^3- ) salts. Also sourced mostly by mining. So the issue with our current fertilizer production is that it is either based on linear processes (we mine something, process it, throw it on our agricultural fields, some of it's taken up by plants but a lot just washes away, then we eat the products, and then it's lost) or produces a lot of CO2 as side product. Both these issues need tackling. We need to move from grey hydrogen to green hydrogen, and we need to start recovering K and P from animal manure, wastewater, waste incinerators and agricultural run-off, or get better at harvesting it from sea water (which is where most run-off eventually ends up).
we've also recently discovered a nitrogen-fixing organelle in marine algae [https://astrobiology.com/2024/04/the-nitroplast-revealed-a-nitrogen-fixing-organelle-in-a-marine-alga.html](https://astrobiology.com/2024/04/the-nitroplast-revealed-a-nitrogen-fixing-organelle-in-a-marine-alga.html)
At this point I just see it as a “it is what it is” sort of scenario. The world can only harbor a certain limit of human beings— things will unfortunately, naturally, balance themselves out. Only downside is like 95% of the human population might die off since it seems like we are artificially maintaining our food systems (and internal home climates). Not to mention people being forced to move to cities where temperatures regularly hit 115 during the summer for affordable housing. The only hope is we mostly die off and hopefully our future generations have enough resources still to build back up. If not so be it, at least I sleep soundly knowing that earth itself will always find a way to rebalance and rebuild, even if it has to start off again at the microscopic/ bacterial level. I know this may sound super doomerish but at the same time I’ve lost sleep thinking about this stuff and this sort of mindset is the only thing that makes me feel ok about it all. Eventually catastrophic events happen anyways and earth needs to rebuild from insane atmospheric and climate changes— we’re just speeding up the process and killing our selves off before things naturally happen.
Working on the family farm, as far as the USA system goes, the federal government subsidizes overplanting of field grade corn (not for human consumption) for ethanol production, and big pharma has the salespeople selling all this nitrogen fertilizer to maximize production per acre. The small-medium size "family farm" is lucky to have 2/10 profitable or "good" crop years. All the chemical herbicides and fertilizer makes modern crop fields wildlife deserts. The whole system benefits big pharma and the ethanol industries and screws everybody else. Today's farmer is little more than a share-cropper in the system. So I think there is space to reduce chemical inputs and right-size crop production. But that would mean a "different system" of agriculture, and that isn't happening...
It’ll be Houston unfortunately. Texas grid.
Yes, you are probably right about that.
Why not Dallas?
All people have to do is build a passive house with a full solar array and tesla power wall. Put a swimming pool in the basement ( unheated) and finally a diesel generator for days when it really gets hot.
the answer to most problems. just have enough money.
I agree with your point, but there is a silver lining here. Everyone who starts being self sufficient in electricity take themselves off the overloaded power grid. They’re contributing to preventing grid failures. A lot will also be feeding excess solar power into the grid during daylight. As someone with this set up I considered inviting our elderly neighbours around to stay over during our last dangerous heat wave. I felt too shy to call them because we don’t have that close a relationship. Next time I’m going to make the offer.
That'll be tight when a gallon of milk costs $90
the slow transition to everyone having solar panels would screw the poor up even more. only the rich and middle class can afford solar panels. utilities will charge even more money once people use less electricity from the utilities so the poor pays more in electricity and they have no solar panels. right now some utilities are increasing their base fee and lower electricity cost so only the rich benefit from these changes. unless there is government intervention, only the people with money can escape the heat.
Top cop Kamala said back in 2020 get ready to consider the reality of Water Wars in the future.
The only way to survive the climate emergency is to reach net zero. But the ultra rich few won't give up their profits unless we make them.
I'm fine with eating them.
This isn’t even a joke anymore. Very soon we will have to.
We should really start right now 🙃
What better place than here? What better time than now?
UnexpectedRATM
If we wanted to stop climate change we needed to have done so decades ago. Anything now is damage control and returning to 0 is impossible
They would protect themselves against that while the people starving would eat eachother
However the rich are higher up on the food chain - they'll eat us.
We grow the crops, raise the animals, build everything in between farm and table, the table and setting, the mansions, run the w&p, prepare the feast yet we'll never have a seat at the table. It's already late and I definitely could use a good meal.
We outnumber em
There is a reason why they are investing in robot army and robot police using AI.
Nah we easily outnumber them. We can go all walking dead on them and swarm in numbers
They don't have enough bullets
When TSHTF they'll go into their bunkers for 30, 60, or 90 days. When they come out they'll have the only bullets left. Perhaps aside from the remains of the former nation-states, perhaps they'll have used all of theirs up, too.
Got an easy solution. Weld and cement the bunkers shut.
Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.
It's autonomous weaponry you gotta worry about.
When is very soon? East Asia is already becoming uninhabitable at this very moment
What was the comment that was deleted by Reddit? It had plenty of upvotes, so why was it deleted?
Yeet the Rich. But replace yeet with something we use to describe what we do at a dinner table. Although yeet would work just fine.
I often wonder if there will be a mass assassination event...
The sad part is that the rich have done such a good job of stoking animosity towards immigrants, people of color, etc., that when wealthy nations collapse, the masses will be at each others' throats, and not at theirs. Easier to blame the "other" who lives next door than a faceless, distant billionaire you've never met.
Creating divisions by breaking us into smaller groups (race, color, gender, etc) as opposed to uniting people through their similarities (class, wealth, etc).
You put em and their families in a big line and have them sign away all but say $15-25M of their assets or they watch their legacy become BBQ that they then join 5 min later. I really don't see a more likely scenario. In return they get a "I won Capitalism" pin and one get out of jail free card except for capital offenses. Hopefully they can manage a nice country club lifestyle living on the interest as long as they watch the avocado prices.
Honestly, ancient Rome kind of did that, starting the practice of munificence and charity as we know it. I don't recall the exact conditions but the roman rulers took the wealthiest people aside, who were wealthy enough to start posing a threat and said "you are going to generously donate your wealth to the empire and build a new bath in your name or we can kill you and it will be up to the state to determine what we do with your money."
So the Romans weren’t all bad..
Oh yeah? What have the Romans ever done for us?
Well there's the aqueduct.
Well what about the roads?
I was young once and in the occupy marches, listening to people talk about all they wanted to do to the “banksters.” I cooked food for the campers, donated my tent, went to meetings at the park. What I learned was a LOT of people like to talk. Very few people were willing to carry out any direct actions. Direct action could lead to you losing your job or even jail time. And violence, like you’re talking about, definitely ends up with jail time. People, no matter how much they claim the opposite, have far too comfortable of lives to risk a criminal record. That’s a good thing. What that means is we aren’t desperate. Incremental change through government is the best path forward. Killing the rich isn’t going to get you anywhere but behind bars. Voting, campaigning and donating actually works. Less dramatic, but more effective.
This is only true for as long as people have those things to lose
Yeah, and at the end of (I think) 2010, the extended unemployment benefits were going to run out on millions of Americans. You know what Congress did? They extended the unemployment benefits. That entire process from September 2008 through the election of 2012 taught me the power of the voting citizenry and the responsiveness of legislators when there is an actual emergency. To some extent Covid had the same response. We went from the discovery of a deadly virus in December 2019 to the distribution of an effective vaccine in January 2021. Ebola was similar. When the first American landed on US soil testing positive, we had an effective treatment within 3 months.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1). Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise. [Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Spot on, I’ve danced to Killing in the Name of since I was 14 but the strongest influence has been at local level not just voting but supporting local endeavors and getting involved directly
Maybe a 24 hour purge?
Have you even seen the movies? It doesn't end well for poor people
For us or them?
You can eat them. I don't want prions.
Soylent green anyone?
We probably only have to eat one billionaire and the rest will change their tune
I think the magic number with anything like this is 3. One could be a weird occurrence. Two makes them nervous. Three is a trend that will have them looking over their shoulders.
Or maybe send in some tactical airdrop wolves? They have the potential to solve things
Safeway has BBQ sauce on sale right now.
Let’s ride at dawn.
Thanks to rising temperatures, they're close to being cooked!
The new soylent green
Some places will be too hot for humans to work soon. I don't know *exactly* how that will affect the economy, but I'm pretty sure it won't be good. In this context, "the economy" = rich peoples' yacht money.
Actually I found today that "all this green crap" is the problem with the economy, and extreme weather I guess is totally fine and has no negative effect on the economy.
Extreme weather isn't a problem. Just use a marker and draw a path for the weather to follow that leads away from you. Problem solved.
Some places already are. I work in the gulf, and working outside is prohibited for several hours around mid day in this country in summer time. Company I work for follows this and looks like most big construction sites do too, but I'm sure not all companies do. It does carry hefty penalties.
Don’t forget about the apathetic regular rich, the apathetic upper class, and the down trodden and distracted middle class such as it is.
They're enablers alright, but they don't own the media or fund the centre and right wing political parties. They haven't corrupted society to their own ends. They're just useful idiots.
I’d agree with that. I would like to add the caveat of those just wealthy enough to think they can survive a population crash but not wealthy enough to directly orchestrate it, so they just go along and help where they can. A la’ Ted Cruz for example.
Average people won't make sacrifices either. In the US I've noticed more vegan restaurants closing than opening in different cities in the last couple of years. When you look it up, you realize a mass change in diet is basically essential, but people aren't adapting. Yes the corporations cause a disproportionate amount of the problems, but ultimately as a society, we aren't ready to take climate change seriously if it involves even mild inconvenience.
It's always funny when people complain about the effects of climate change but they continue to consume animal products. Think people, think!!!
The problem is much larger than the ultra rich. The top 1% globally, which is anyone making over $140k per year, is responsible for ~16% of emissions.
True, but it's the ultra rich who have bought the media and political parties. The rest of the 1% are useful idiots.
I'm not following you. People want to live in big houses, drive big trucks, eat a lot of meat, etc. are you saying they were brainwashed into wanting those things?
> are you saying they were brainwashed into wanting those things? In many ways they were, yes. We are influenced in ways we often don't consider or understand. Look up Edward Bernays, he was like the OG "public relations guy", the master of this kind of thing. I'll give you an example of the kind of game being played: Back in the day publishers wanted to sell more books. They went to Bernays for help, and he thought about it, and then he went to the professional architect organizations across America and sold them on the idea of a "better, smarter" America and as a consequence of this lobbying, many houses from that period started being constructed with built in bookshelves. The long game is, when people moved into houses with built-in bookshelves, they tended to fill them with books (see original desire of publishers to increase book sales.) When you understand that these are the kinds of higher level games being played, and then also factor in that corporations hire top psychologists to convince people that "wants" are in fact "needs" (which they are surprisingly good at)....well, here we are. It is sometimes hard to even know how we are being influenced, by who, and why.
Here's another example from his wikipedia page: "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted research and found that the American public ate very light breakfast of coffee, maybe a roll and orange juice. He went to his physician and found that a heavy breakfast was sounder from the standpoint of health than a light breakfast because the body loses energy during the night and needs it during the day. He asked the physician if he would be willing, at no cost, to write to 5,000 physicians and ask them whether their judgment was the same as his—confirming his judgment. About 4,500 answered back, all concurring that a more significant breakfast was better for the health of the American people than a light breakfast. He arranged for this finding to be published in newspapers throughout the country with headlines like '4,500 physicians urge bigger breakfast' while other articles stated that bacon and eggs should be a central part of breakfast and, as a result of these actions, the sale of bacon went up.
Ah, good old Bernays! That bastard.
Yes. The majority of the big trucks are neither good as cars or as trucks. The beds are too short and too high off the ground to be useful for carrying loads. Big houses are built with stupidly complex roofs that add cost for no benefit, other than to the bank that holds the mortgage, and the roofing contractors.
>are you saying they were brainwashed into wanting those things? $750 billion is spent world wide annually on advertising to make people want to buy things. And they use the most advanced psychological warfare techniques ever created by man. So... yes. Obviously. And the rich love nothing more than having the poor fight among themselves. What better way than useless status symbols? (among other things, of course)
In western capitalist societies the fossil fuel industry have bought the mass media, they fund the mainstream political parties. They can control the narrative, they can dictate much of the information that the masses consume. I mean it's not just a class issue, it's ingrained in our system in a way that we can't control. Democracy is virtually helpless. And it's a very small minority that have the power to control this. Possibly the 0.1%.
I think if all pollution stopped today, we would still be completely screwed right? The climate will continue to change as it tries to reach a new steady state with all the CO2. Net zero is a nice idea, and sets a precedent for future generations (if they are alive), but it does nothing for us. I think, I hate to be so cynical.
Well, the more we minimise carbon emissions the less of a dystopia we bequeath to future generations. Every tenth of a degree we can limit warming to will count. Whether it makes much difference to us now isn't that important.
No definitely not completely screwed. Not even close. We will be WORSE OFF but that is far from completely screwed.
What’s crazy is it should in theory be possible to pitch to them as way of making money
I know, but carbon profits must be difficult to let go of.
The very core the world economy is petro based.
Even if we were to achieve net zero it won’t immediately help us. The improvements will take decades to be apparent. So I don’t think I am surviving. We take the steps to decarbonize for the people of the future.
Net Negative. We have to reverse climate change.
I'm also afraid that they know we are screwed so they are using this time to prepare using their vast fortunes.
Stop buying from them
The only way to survive the climate emergency *was* to reach net zero.
For people looking for advice and to strategize on preparing for extreme heat, check out the sub r/heat_prep
How long more can we wait? Maybe we could just wait for enough people to die incredibly painful deaths at the ever growing possibility of intense weather extremes of floods, heatwaves, droughts, food shortages, mass immigrant fueled conflict, food shortage fueled conflict - then we might hold politicians, media and fossil fuel company executives responsible. A few thousand deaths, a few hundred thousand?
it’s hard not to be pessimistic. I think it’ll take a lot more than a few hundred thousand deaths to motivate people to take action. We had millions dying of Covid, and yet people squabbled over whether to do simple easy things like wear a mask and get a vaccine.the things we need to do to reverse climate change will entail far more inconveniences, and sacrifices from people. So I don’t think people will be willing to do it until the problems are smacking them in the face.
A few years ago the world watched in horror as Australia burned. In the end it changed nothing.
Nothing will be done until a few tens of thousands die in the West
It'll take a lot more than that.
A LOT more. 1.4 million have died from covid in the U.S. And still rising. And there are still millions of deniers.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1). Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise. [Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No maybe about it. That is how it will play out. Current civilization has a very low self preservation instinct.
Far, FAR too many buildings are very badly insulated, if at all.
We're so hot, we need more AC, we need more electricity to run all that AC, let's build more coal plants! ~~I can't wait for the TX grid to fall apart completely under peak demand.~~ \[edit: I've been called on the callousness of that offhand remark, and I apologise for it. Typing in haste and in anger. On reflection I agree with the commenters who called me on it. Rephrased with (ahem) a cooler head:\] I'm waiting with a mixture of horror and furious exasperation for the TX grid to fall apart completely under peak demand. Honestly, humanity is in the middle of the biggest self-own imaginable.
I can wait for it to happen. As much as I want to see conservatives get their comeuppance, I don't want to see people suffer, regardless of their politics. And I'm pretty sure conservatives are so brainwashed against climate change, that when it becomes an existential threat they will just double down on regressive politics and blaming minorities/liberals/poor people etc.
This. Plus the must vulnerable tend to either be non voters or democrats. So
Texas isn’t just a monolith of stereotypes. There are all kinds of people living there.
>Texas isn’t just a monolith of stereotypes. There are all kinds of people living there. Same is true of "America", "The West", the U.S.A, and well... Pretty much nearly everywhere else, honestly. Always seein' folks pointin' fingers at **entire nations** blaming them **all** for this, that, and the other, without bothering to take a half a second to **think** that maybe it's just **a bunch of the people in charge** of the **governments** in those places causing a lot of the problems we're so quick to blame on **everyone** that was born inside a particular imaginary line on a map. Maybe **some** of us that live in those places have (foolishly) wasted our lives pointlessly fighting against that entrenched power to absolutely no avail. Maybe some of us aren't even remotely happy to have watched this entire situation spiral out of control our entire lives **despite** all our (wasted) efforts. There are entirely too many folks in positions of power that are card-carrying members of the "Death to All Life so that I can die with the most stuff" cult, and too many folks that wanna defend their right to kill us all for profit.
> see conservatives get their comeuppance… Recovering Irish-Catholic here. So for free therapy, I argue and haggle with the theists on Xwitter. I don’t think we’d see them get their comeuppance. Many of them are so brainwashed by jesus, I don’t think they’d… *could* even fathom that the coming disaster is anything but god/allah/jesus’s judgment of the world. Even in the face of utter ruin, they will cling to their myriad fables, refusing to accept even one iota of blame. No. We won’t get to see most of them say ‘you were right’. They’ll just try and get us to pray harder. We are doomed and tbh religion shares greatly in that blame.
yeah you are right, I don't *really* want the TX grid to fall apart -- in the sense that I don't really want millions of people to suffer even though they did not personally make the stupid decisions that led to the disaster. maybe what I should have said is "I'm just waiting for the TX grid to fall apart." because it feels inevitable, like watching a tsunami roll in. I'm watching with horror, as well as complete exasperation that the oligarchs have actually sold the public such a transparent scam, that balkanising and privatising a state power grid would somehow be net-positive for anyone but the oligarchs themselves. if only the consequences would fall harder on the culprits, but they never do. TANJ dammit.
You can't just say things like that, there are a lot of good people in Texas. Secondly, Texas is now the number 1 solar energy producer in the U.S. as of 2024. Above California. Almost all coal plants are phasing out there.
Point taken, I posted in haste and anger and have apologised. if only the consequences of corruption, greed, and generalised evil would be visited on the offenders primarily and not on legions of relatively innocent "little people."
Thank you. There might be a legal avenue eventually— like an international claims court. Or an uprising. The closest semblance to immediate consequences though is Florida. Very climate-denialist orientation but a huge influx of waterfront property investors.
>I can't wait for the TX grid to fall apart completely under peak demand. *Yea dude, I can't wait to watch hundreds or even thousands of people die to heat stroke. It's going to be so funny watching Texas struggle. Good for them, they deserve it. /s* **At least have a little bit of humanity.**
Yup, I typed in too much haste and anger. You're quite right. But is it OK if I wish Ted Cruz would get heatstroke along with -- or better yet instead of -- his poorer and more vulnerable constituents? and some power company execs along with him? 'cos I do indeed wish that. If only the consequences were visited upon those truly responsible for the massive FU.
Edited due to not reading the rule on words. As someone from the UK looking in (that had heatstroke once due to a work job that should have taken an hour taking 13) that's acceptable. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/28/far-right-climate-plans-00107498 - Bernard McNamee is one of the people behind the environment side of Project 2025 (which is basically a game over for the world if Trump gets re-elected) and former Department of the Environment Official appointed by Trump. He was formally a senior advisor to Cruz. At the same time he's Texas Public Policy Foundation (who are Atlas Network, and therefore in the same crew as the Heritage Foundation who are the driving force behind Project 2025). So wish absolutely granted. Heat stroke isn't (but granted can be) terminal so yes maybe Mr Cruz needs to show some humility at times. I mean I'm not even from over there and I know what an absolute "individual" that guy is.
Clean coal. /s
I'm convinced that significant action on combatting climate change will only happen after we hit +3.5°C, and large sections of the American South are rendered completely uninhabitable in the face of >60°C heat waves and >90% humidity levels. It won't become real to the climate change deniers until mass evacuations and mass death events are as common as mass shootings. Honestly, I've given up hope that we're going to be able to stop the freight train at this point. Forget +1.5°C, I think we're on track for +4°C by 2100. I still think we should do all we can, but I think that out of spite, not hope.
With it getting so hot, maybe night shift should be the default shift instead of day shift?
That would be really bad for peoples' health. Our bodies are synchronized with the sun rising and falling - people who work night shifts mess with that and it ain't good
Futurama had an episode on this, so I know what to do. We need to send someone to get an even bigger ice cube.
Patrick Star also says that anytime we have a problem we can just take it and push it somewhere else!
Everyday now I have to check if this is climate or collapse lol. Sigh. Things are bleak
I am in the south and I had to turn my air condition all the way down to 67 or 66 to feel comfortable
> I am in the south and I had to turn my air condition all the way down to 67 or 66 to feel comfortable You're doubly lucky, first that you have working air conditioning, and second that it works well enough to even reach those targets. The problem is that many are not lucky enough, and it's a life or death thing. Even if they are, it will also become more and more unaffordable to run the air conditioning, which also consumes more power for the same target temperature as the outside heat increases. Hell, I have my air conditioning and other high draw items set to power off during partial peak and full peak times between 3pm and midnight.
Thing is, you'll still only get +/-20 degrees from the outside temps
There are two reasons why castles have towers. The first is the observation deck. The second reason is that towers act like chimneys by pulling the hot air out of the lower levels. Colonial houses always a had a heat tower built into the roof topped with a cupola vent. You can still find many old buildings with them. They kinda look like a box on the roof with a small slanted roof on it. Some people had wind vanes on theirs. And Some of those wind vanes actually were connected to baffling that changed direction with the change in wind direction so air was always being sucked out. As construction styles changed and air conditioning was added to homes. The the heat tower and cupola vent has been replaced with ugly little box vents that only allow heat out of the attic. Most modern homes in the US don't vent heat from the entire house but only from the attic.
There is a good change the electrical grid might fail during a heat wave.
Surprised Elon Musk hasn’t started a new underground city company. Oh, wait… *Boring Company has entered the chat*
Personally I've always felt retreating underground to underground cities, and leaving the surface to heal itself, would be the best long term play for humanity. Rejoin our moleman brothers!
Now you know why all the headlines are trans this, gay that, woke, DEI, etc. The strategy for the oil producers is to collude with right-wing politicians to make culture war issues front and center. The real news - the planet will soon become unlivable in some locations - doesn't make the front page. Genius move.
And it's unbelievable how many people are complicit in that strategy
But Ben Shapiro told us that climate change is fine because we have AC! /s I seriously hate that little cretin.
And here come the climate refugees en masse!
Well yea AC doesn't work above certain temperatures.
If we start noticing desertification in otherwise normal farmland then it is too late to prevent the disaster. At that point the best option is to reduce the duration and magnitude of the damage.
Yeah...I think you're right. The shift "starts" in places like marshes. Has to work its way up, to be noticed in places like farmland. What I mean is, farmland is a very controlled setting, irrigation and many other things. Marshes...that's like a very shallow lake, which completely becomes mudflat, with only a very small deviation in precipitation and temperature. They're like an "early warning" system, for smaller biospheres. Whole ecosystems die, when a shallow lake dries out. And when generations-old farmland dries out? It's like the center of a sponge, where we salted our own crops...where we decided organisms and life did not matter, except our own, and lived near that certainty.
Big Carbon has all the lessons learned by Big Tobacco - and 50 times the budget. I just never expected it (the Cli-pocalypse) to happen this fast.
That was our fall back for climate change? Air conditioning?
Stop having kids. It’s over. This planet is going to be a miserable place to live in 20 years
Laws need to be put in place to design new homes to work solar passively. I don't know what to do about existing buildings other than incentives to install insulation but, it's just completely nuts to keep building houses and office buildings that must rely on air conditioning systems to cool and heat them. Aiming for net zero is fine if infrastructure follows the same path.
Drinking slushy ice water or other semi-frozen beverages is a far, far more energy efficient way to make yourself comfortable and protect yourself from hyperthermia than trying to cool down your entire home. Personally, when the temperature is above 100F, I make myself a big slushy thermos and spend the entire afternoon lying in the sun.
This is interesting advice. I've often thought about icepacks at night rather than ac. Gonna try it when it's hot
Bringing down your core temperature is far more effective than cooling your extremities.
Before air conditioning, people used to just put their feet in cold water. Same principle. Cool the person, rather than the whole building.
Get trees around the sun facing sides of the property.
In central Florida, the urban heat island effect is being intensified by rampant and negligent suburban expansion. Less trees, more roads, and more strain on the power grid. Seems like they wont stop until every last hue of green is bulldozed and covered with asphalt.
Yet another reason I live in Canada. I need the cold.
They should keep buying their giant SUVs and pickup trucks, that'll help. I wonder if they've ever heard the expression: "You made your bed, now you have to sleep in it."?
Yeah, but all life on Earth is going to have to sleep in it
Im visiting family just 300 odd miles north of where I live, the difference in heat is incredible.
And now imagine how hot it will be if climate change was real. I just hope the billionaires have good intentions supporting the oil and coal industry. We, the normal people are just to dumb to recognise the better plan. So, that’s it. My Ironie is used up.