'Aim higher, act faster, or risk losing it all': Climate change report offers 'final warning'

[jgo]

Last edited Sun Mar 19, 2023, 08:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: The New Daily

Humanity has had its “final warning” on the state of our climate, according to an alarming new scientific report.

More than 300 scientists signed off on the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with the most authoritative global body on climate change urging countries to “aim higher, act faster, or risk losing it all” in its final report of the 2020s.

The IPCC Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, compiled by hundreds of scientists from 67 countries, was released on Monday, and it draws together the contributions of the IPCC’s sixth assessment cycle.


Read more: https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/science/environment/2023/03/20/climate-change-ipcc-warning/

[Autumn]

1. Politicians will ignore this final warning as they ignore everything else that doesn't impact them.

They will be fine.

[peppertree]

2. +1

To say nothing of the donor class.

They're already snapping up cheap scrubland in the third world - which happens to sit on major aquifers.

They know that the biggest shortage in the future won't be food, as much as fresh water.

[Autumn]

3. Yeah. Like I said they will be just fine. They have been set up real well.

[orthoclad]

23. Surface water

is steadily being poisoned with petrochemicals and metals. Spills, leaks, runoff, pesticides, pathogens, brake dust.
And now we're injecting toxins into deep groundwater, as waste disposal and as fluids to break and lubricate deep rock. Oh boy.
North America is losing its carrying capacity. It's all going into a few bank accounts.

[peppertree]

42. Absolutely.

They're burning the candle on both ends as far as fresh water - and they'd rather hog it than start conserving it.

[Magoo48]

5. Note to Millennials and Zoomers and future generations: learn to adapt, fast. Now, get to work.

Expect no help from above. The amount of resolve corporate politicians and capitalists offer will always be an insult.

And, the majotity of grassroots folks in the first world will. Not. Be. Inconvenienced.

[Kaleva]

22. That shouldn't stop us from preparing.

We know what's coming. We know the regions that won't be as adversely affected and which ones that will be severely impacted

[Javaman]

31. as I have said in the past...

congress could be in ankle deep water on the floor of the house and claim it was always like this.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread jgo

[live love laugh]

6. On behalf of the majority of the population: YAWN 🥱

[Beartracks]

7. Republicans and their "can't do" attitude will be the death of civilization.

Maybe they would care if climate change was framed as a global catastrophe that would kill unborn children? Oh, wait, that's already been made pretty clear, given the scope of disasters that await humanity if the planet's average temps keep inching upward. Even so, they would have no interest in government solutions to mitigate the worst effects, even though governments are the only entities that could even hope to leverage resources sufficiently and quickly enough enough to make the difference we all need.

============

[hadEnuf]

10. They. Don't. Care.

n/t

[FakeNoose]

14. They plan on being "raptured" out of here

So ... it's none of their concern.

[calimary]

26. Gonna be more like "ruptured" out of here.

Which will undoubtedly mean long, painful, and expensive.

[orthoclad]

8. Scientists don't understand the REAL world

you know, the smoke-filled rooms and reaching across the aisle,
mollifying the rich and bipartying,
keeping Republican support,
the sensible use of resources.

We NEED all that smoke, grime, and petrochemicals. We can adapt to rising seas and Cat6 hurricanes because there's money to be made in adaptation. It's just the way things work in the real world.


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I guess I'd better use the snark tag. This sounds too much like real comments. See below.

[Javaman]

33. aka climate change: the ultimate disaster capitalism. nt

[orthoclad]

51. Good book on disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico

following Maria:

The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists, by Naomi Klein

"A gripping and timely account of classic ‘shock doctrine’ being perpetrated in Puerto Rico. Naomi Klein chronicles the extraordinary grassroots resistance by the Puerto Rican people against neoliberal privatization and Wall Street greed in the aftermath of the island’s financial meltdown, of hurricane devastation, and of Washington’s imposition of an outside control board over the most important U.S. colony. — Juan González, co-host of Democracy Now! and author of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America.Climate Justice More Resources Ad | Zinn Education Project"

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/the-battle-for-paradise-puerto-rico-takes-on-the-disaster-capitalists/

I got it from the local library.

[oldsoftie]

9. How many final warnings does this make?

Sounds a lot like the "peak oil" predictions I used to hear back in the early 80s. And 90s.

[Javaman]

34. except its actually happening right now.

Last edited Mon Mar 20, 2023, 02:30 PM - Edit history (1)

they can always drill deeper and pump more crap into the earth to extract oil, but it's that mentality that's leading the charge to our warming earth.

I choose to believe the 30K plus climate scientist than some rube who "does his research" by watching other debunkers on youtube.

the ice shelf that's holding back the thwaites and pine glaciers is failing. and will completely fail within 5 years. once that goes, oceans rise, globally, 3 meters.

And regarding the "final warnings" you feel are "sky is falling" announcements, the science gets better, the models become more complex and the results get revised. aka scientific method. so what was once a "concern" is now, "we are in deep shit and not going back".

2.5 degree rise is baked in by, at last estimate, the end of this century, but the there is popular believe among the climatologists, that it's more likely to be by 2070 or perhaps earlier.

[oldsoftie]

46. Thats my point; its already a done deal. China & India aren't going to change.

And we in the US think batteries are the answer; they're not. Nobody will push nuclear for the real answer that IT is, so we're stuck making predictions and agreements that only apply to some.
It is what it is & I'm gonna just have to deal with whatever comes down the pike for my days here. We'll just have to adapt to whatever "it" is. I'm more worried about trumpism

[Evolve Dammit]

11. We are on our own. As usual. Good night and Good Luck.

[sakabatou]

12. Basically, we're fucked.

[orthoclad]

13. We have an obligation

to the billions of poor people around the world who had very little to do with creating this disaster. They don't have the resources to save their lives from our pollution. One-third of Pakistan flooded last year. They're starting to ask for compensation. Prevention is better than compensation, whihc won't bring back the dead. I think we're morally obliged to do eveything we can to slow and reduce the effects of our own long wasteful binge, even though the fruits of that binge are concentrated in a very small part of our US population.

And to frame it as self-interest: some of these countries have nukes.

[twodogsbarking]

15. Yep. Fucked.

[orthoclad]

16. Nihilism is immoral

at this point, because just giving up will directly cause the deaths of many people.

I'm not sure if you're saying "give up" or just being realistic. Bear with me.

We can surrender a large portion of our middle-class "wealth" (aka cars, gadgets, "pet rocks", plastic junk) and still have a high if not higher quality of life. If the storms don't get us first.

[twodogsbarking]

29. I think the scientific effects of fossil fuels have been know for at least one hundred years.

Increased population on the planet combined with failure to act sufficiently has likely put us in a position that is irreversible.
Life will continue but not without severe consequences. Things will change and change again.

[orthoclad]

32. Every action we take

to stop emissions and slow the rate of change (aka "flatten the curve" ) will save lives of global poor people who contributed very little to the problem. One USian uses resources equal to 20 Bangladeshis, as an example. This gives us the disproportionate ability to affect the curve.

We've baked drastic change into the world. We in the US can slow the rate of change.

[NewHendoLib]

17. Way too much "can I steam it on TV? Watch it on TikTok? order it on Amazon?"

I have little to no hope the right things will be done, or enough at the right time.

The inability of our species to focus on big things any longer - it's a feature, not a bug

[orthoclad]

18. Yeah. I don't think

it's so much not being able to see big things, as the Anthropocene is an event evolution has not prepared us for, in 2 ways:
1. The threat is remote and intangible (except to people directly hit by storms or fires). We perceive it intellectually, in abstract things like the Mauna Loa graph and satellite images. It's not tangible like a predator stalking us or another tribe encroaching. That said, our brains are advanced enough to analyze and accurately predict events, but the more primitive among us who tend to rise to positions of power (CEOs are C students and sociopaths) override the analysts.
2. The threat is rising exponentially. Our brain works in linear terms, expecting things to develop steadily, whereas the biosphere changes are happening with increasing acceleration. The stalking lion gets steadily closer, not suddenly from distant to right behind us.

I blame tv and its descendants for much of our problems. These media, unlike music, print or speech, put us into a passive, receptive, suggestible, quasi-hypnotic state. Couch potato=potato mind. The content doesn't matter. The medium is the massage.

[calimary]

27. I like that. "The medium is the massage."

Sad and scary, and quite possibly true.

[orthoclad]

35. The title of

Marshall McCluhan's classic book from the 60s, frequently misspelled as "message". His intent was that medium can be an immersive experience, and the medium counts as much or more than the content.

[calimary]

48. Yep. I remember.

[orthoclad]

52. Been a long time

since I read it, I should read it again.
I detoxed on tv shortly after The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. With a few exceptions (Red Green, old Doctor Who), I hate to even be in a room with a tv on now. The sound of it is appalling.

Another couple topical popular books from then:
Naked Ape
Human Zoo
African Genesis

[LT Barclay]

19. Any sensible attempt at change in this country would cause an overwhelming political backlash

against all Democrats and effectively destroy us as well as any other progress we have made.
We'd end up with another Trump-like character who would use the ensuing disasters to sieze total power.

I wish there was another way.

[orthoclad]

36. What makes you think that?

[LT Barclay]

39. The response from the right to Carter reducing the speed

Limit, to the response to the Clinton administration putting the tobacco industry on the ropes, the recent nonsense about Biden taking away gas stoves.
Any thing that causes inconvenience will be seized upon as a way to grab political power.
It’s a pattern I’ve seen since I was a teenager.

[womanofthehills]

40. Catch 22 - we need the military but they are one of the worse polluters as are wars

https://watson.brown.edu/research/2019/pentagon-fuel-use-climate-change-and-costs-war

“The United States’ military comprises of more than two million people, 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, a $700 billion budget in 2019, and the most advanced military aircraft in the world. According to Neta C. Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War Project, “all this capacity for and use of military force requires a great deal of energy, most of it in the form of fossil fuel.” As a result, the U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum, and therefore the single largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. “

[roamer65]

20. The human population will adjust accordingly.

Downward…by BILLIONS.

[Kaleva]

21. Yes it will.

[orthoclad]

24. But only those billions

who didn't actively create the problem. The wealthier populations will "adapt".

[Hugh_Lebowski]

43. I don't really think that's set in stone/universal

A lot is going to depend on where people physically live, and how they live.

In the USA, living along the Coast is associated with affluence in many if not most areas.

We could see a hell of a lot of wealthy areas of the USA underwater.

And if major ports become non-functional, holy shit would this 'wealthy' country descend into chaos quickly.

Deaths DIRECTLY due to climate change will probably affect poorer regions disproportionately as you suggest, simply because people lack the financial means to 'get out quickly'.

But the IMPACTS overall are going to be on everyone, even the wealthy, who are likely to painfully discover that their supposed 'money' is nothing but 1's and 0's on computers somewhere, notational wealth based on the proposition that the 'economy' would be on a 'growth' trajectory forever ... primarily due to cheap fossil fuels.

[orthoclad]

50. I'm not even thinking about the US here, mainly

I'm thinking of countries like Bangladesh, where many millions of people are facing flooding because much of the country is barely above sea level now. They don't drive bloatmobiles. Pakistan had 1/3 of the country flooded last year. They emitted 0.08% of global GHG, and they got clobbered. Then there's India, SE Asia, Africa...
For the most part, these humans contributed very little to global heating, but they will suffer dearly.

And of course, in the US, the poor and working people are the worst hit by petro-poison and disasters. Think "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana. Another example: in Miami, the servants and domestics live in trailers in what were less-desirable areas inland, at a slightly higher elevation. They're being gentrified out now because richies are tired of flooding in their previously-desirable ocean view nieghborhoods and the richies are moving higher.

[tclambert]

25. And they're still too optimistic. We've got 20 years of increasing temps

on the way if we don't add a single molecule more CO2 to the atmosphere. It takes that long to reach a new equilibrium for the CO2 we have already added.

Twenty years if we stop using any fossil fuels right this second. But we can't. What we will do is keep increasing our use of fossil fuels, like we have for the past 30 years, even though we knew it would lead to more warming.

But it's worse than that. Climate researchers have identified something like 50 feedback loops that can amplify climate change, things like reduced snow cover in the winter, methane released from melting permafrost, and 48 others. They say we have already passed the tipping point on half of them, the point at which these feedback loops activate. Those feedback loops will keep us warming even longer. And more of them will activate as it gets warmer, which WILL happen even if we don't burn another drop of petroleum.

30 years ago we might have been able to do something about it. But we let Exxon Mobil dictate our energy policy, and we haven't made any serious attempt to change that policy.

[Javaman]

45. this is why if scientists are proposing using moon dust to cloud the atmosphere to lower temps...

it's really time to say, "oh shit, we are fucked".

[oldsoftie]

47. And how much is Russia adding with its war in UKR?

[NickB79]

49. The last time we had 400+ ppm CO2, seas were 75' higher and forests grew in the Arctic

2.5 million years ago.

Minnesota had a climate more like North Texas or Georgia.

And if you factor in methane and nitrous emissions, we're around 500 ppm equivalent, so we're already WORSE than the Pliocene Warm Phase.

[Duppers]

28. K & R

[TeamProg]

30. Koch Bros aren't going to like this. I'm sure they'll be lobbying for the freedom to

pollute as much as they want to “save jobs”.

[orthoclad]

37. Exxon scientists

accurately predicted the observed rise in global temperatures over 40 years ago. Exxon buried the science and the fossil companies (not just Koch) started a campaign of dis-and-misinformation, astroturfing,and oppression. An example: the attorney who won a major judgement against Chevron for polluting the Amazon went to jail on a trumped-up charge.

The oiligarchs use the power of state against their critics and truth-tellers.

We could create many millions more jobs paying people to clean up their messes.

[TeamProg]

38. Yep, I'd read about the Exxon report. I believe the report was public

before Exxon buried it.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

41. If humanity doesn't get a handle on it's massive overshoot problem

Nature and War are going to do it for us, and we ain't gonna like how that goes down.

It's time to seriously start telling the world ... collectively and loudly ... stop making babies.

We also need to stop people from migrating to 1st world countries from 2nd and 3rd world countries, where their energy use footprint statistically always goes up vs. where they lived before.

We also need to stop keeping people alive for so long. Life expectancy going down ... is a good thing for the environment and climate.

As such, Universal Health Care ... is probably also actually a pretty bad idea.

I know, these are all somewhat anathema to 'liberal' values. But if you're serious about climate change ... they are all positions you should at least consider, as I do, because science and facts come first to me, and my political convictions flow from them, not the other way around.

Lastly ... governments should mandate that anyone who CAN work from home for their job ... must be allowed to do so.

[LT Barclay]

44. The biggest factor in limitation of family size is educational opportunities for women

So I would imagine access to healthcare would improve family planning ie contraception

[News Junkie]

53. Willow was so troubling

The good guys need to do whatever they can

[Duppers]

54. K & R +1000

I'll keep kicking this thread because this is the greatest issue we face.

[LudwigPastorius]

55. Welcome to Venus.