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Something I'd heard about climate change many years ago was that it would happen almost imperceptibly slowly at first, then suddenly when we reach the tipping point, it would start happening very rapidly. I think we're right at the sharp edge of that tipping point and things are going to get very interesting very quickly.
"Interesting" - the understatement of the century
It's related to the old-timey curse that sounds like a complement. "May you live in interesting times", because as interesting as it may be to read in the history books, It wasn't as fun for the people living in those times.
Indeed. One can only wish to live in exceedingly boring times..
It's just that you can't be bothered to write up history with all the orgies and drugs.
god I wish we didn't live in such interesting times
And now the change had the inertia. There's no stopping it now.
The slow change and then tipping point is probably less to do with building up inertia and more in line with how a buffered system works.
Define interesting?
See my response to @woland below
Previously inhospitable land could become more accessible
And the inverse, which seems important.
I can't help but think of the climate activists who defaced the Van Gogh painting. Except they didn't -- because the painting is actually behind protective glass. I sincerely doubt most people got that fact from the outrage news cycle that followed that incident.
So who came out to be the villains of the story? The oil and gas industry, where Exxon had relatively accurate warming models decades ago and still funded climate change denialism? No, of course not. Because every major media's headline was about how expensive this painting is and didn't immediately explain the lack of actual damage, nor did they actually cover the climate travesty we are living through. The villains were the climate protestors, who are objectively correct and chose a non-destructive way to get attention that was immediately spun against them.
An example from fiction is in the film Armageddon. Yes, it's a dumb movie, but it was a hit nevertheless. At the start of the movie some Greenpeace protestors are on a ship protesting the offshore oil rig, which shows Bruce Willis's character cavalierly assaulting them with golf balls as he points out that they're hypocrites for being on an ocean-faring vessel which requires... drum roll OIL! To operate!! Wow, such an epic own! This kind of argumentation is used to this day. "You want to raise taxes? Why don't YOU pay more taxes on your own. You want to curb carbon emissions? Why don't YOU stop driving a car." Fuck off. Such a "Yet you participate in society" moment.
So what are people supposed to do? Roll over an accept it? Do we all just wait and see until civilization collapses? Because I cannot see functioning societies as we know them existing in 150-200 years. Maybe even 100 years. Personally, I don't think anything will change until some heads of some certain people actually start rolling. The COVID response taught me that even with full, modern medical knowledge the response from the people in charge will be too little, too late, if anything at all. Just a big fucking collective shrug. Like the emoji. "🤷♂️ we cannot close businesses for two months to nip this novel airborne virus in the bud. We cannot use emergency powers to produce masks and give them to people for free, we will instead just have random meaningless shortages as the price goes up during the critical early moments. We will suffer indefinitely, instead. We don't have the money to do it right once now, only to do it wrong into perpetuity."
The oil and gas industry and their funded allies hold the keys to the doors, they squat on every position of power, they have all the money, and they have a media engine designed to keep a full 30-40% of people on their side with flagrant misinformation or lack of coverage.
I'm not personally doomer about climate change. It doesn't stop me from sleeping at night. But I am realistic about it. We're fucked. Nothing's changing. The Joe Biden promise: Nothing will fundamentally change under his watch. He's keeping that one.
Edit: We are also flying more than ever before! Hooray! This certainly will help. https://nitter.1d4.us/flightradar24/status/1679865495112019968
I can’t help but think of the climate activists who defaced the Van Gogh painting. Except they didn’t – because the painting is actually behind protective glass. I sincerely doubt most people got that fact from the outrage news cycle that followed that incident.
If it makes it ~~better~~ worse, Britain then promptly passed a bill that makes "disruptive" protests like that illegal. The government policy towards the climate crisis there is still the same ol' "Keep Calm and Carry On".
God forbid the slightest bit of discomfort, or even unease, about any agitation against the biggest threat our planet has seen since either the Permian or K-T extinction events. We cannot have that.
The end is near, The end is near, the time has come. No escape found, As we witness the damage we've done.
Is anyone readying a list of climate criminals? Individuals. Not companies. What are we going to do with them? Real consequences.
Read the Ministry for the Future for inspiration.
Looks good. I am going to read that. Thanks.
medals? keys to the city? parades?
Sometime I think the Mayan calendar people were right. The world ended in 2012, it's just a slower process than John Cusack movies would lead us to believe.
So it’s been over a decade obviously, but I believe that’s actually what they were marking in 2012 with the end of their calendar. Not the end of the world but the end of our current era
Its a cyclic calandar and the last major cycle ended. If there were still ancient Mayans maintaining the calendar they would have calculated another major cycle.
That’s it! Thank you for correcting me, if it had been a snake it would’ve bit me
"We destroyed the planet but for a beautiful we generated a lot of value for shareholders."
The quite comprehending of the ending of it all 🎶
I'd like to point out that there are other spikes in the temperature historically. So while the temperature is rising year over year, the large increase here may be an anomaly.
Let's keep working on reducing our CO2 emissions...
But this spike is spikier than the last el Nino spike, so even if spikes do occur, this is the spikiest spike so far.
Without actually seeing the numbers and just looking at the graph, it seems like there are several historical instances of a similar year-over-year spike of similar magnitude - around 1860, 1990 and a few more (I am doing that from memory, dates not exact).
El Nino strikes again
the global ocean is a single body of water though.
headlines like this feel like they're massaging the data to get a desirable result
the global ocean is a single body of water though.
Just as the atmosphere is a single body of air. Yet both have currents (or 'winds'), seasons, regions, hemispheres and all sorts of details.
One reason for the special relevance of the North Atlantic is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).
Severe weakening of the AMOC has the potential to cause an outright collapse of the circulation, which would not be easily reversible and thus constitute one of the tipping points in the climate system.[10] A shutdown would have far greater impacts than a slowdown on both the marine and some terrestrial ecosystems: it would lower the average temperature and precipitation in Europe, slashing the region's agricultural output,[11] and may have a substantial effect on extreme weather events.[12]