this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
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I can't wait to lose arguments on the Internet in 50years from kids calling me a zoomer with microplastic poisoning. Karma for all the boomers with lead poisoning I've made fun of ๐ญ
Lol.
In 50 years you'll be dead from the earth is on fire and uninhabitable poisoning.
Honestly I am of the opinion that climate change is far less of an existential threat to humanity than mutually assured destruction was. Ecosystems are gonna collapse and lots of people are going to die. I think the true climate change doomer pill isn't that it's too late and the world is doomed, it's that the people living in the global north will not make the sacrifices needed to stop the climate catastrophes that will happen in the global south. We could all go vegan tomorrow and cause the largest single decrease in greenhouse emissions. We could all stop buying products that are made unsustainably and unethically in countries that are supposedly no longer colonised. But we won't. No one will pay higher prices for the same products. No one will make an effort to change their lifestyle. And no one will care that other people, far away, will die because of it. Entire cultures will be erased and we will not lose sleep over knowing that we let it happen because it was easier than doing something about it.
Actually there is a serious risk that Earth turns into Venus. Perpetually self-reinforcing green house effect. All life on Earth, fried, for all eternity.
Edit: Well, until the sun blows.
I'm sorry, but no. There's not. Not only is there not a serious risk, there's not even a slight chance. Even if we burned every drop of oil and bit of coal and released all the methane deposits, the earth still wouldn't even be close to reaching the conditions required for runaway greenhouse effect. Not for about 2 billion years, when it's estimated the sun's output will have increased sufficiently to vaporize much of our oceans.
I get that climate change is serious - my graduate thesis centered around it and carbon cycling - but please don't spread bullshit. We have enough issues to deal with already without making up more. Please fact check yourself and others.
Relevant articles you should read:
Scoping of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report Cross Cutting Issues
Low simulated radiation limit for runaway greenhouse climates
The Runaway Greenhouse: implications for future climate change, geoengineering and planetary atmospheres
Can Increased Atmospheric CO2 Levels Trigger a Runaway Greenhouse?
I don't believe you
Isn't the carbon were releasing now from fossil fuels carbon that used to be in the atmosphere? What self reinforcing mechanisms will allow for temperatures roughly beyond what has already occurred, which still sustained life?
Briefly, they're wrong. I responded in detail above.
You are correct, what we're burning as fossil fuels is largely the remains of millions of years of vegetative and microbial life, altered due to heat, pressure, and time. Millions of years of time.
All that carbon making up those organisms was fixed from the atmosphere. While biological functions have been busy fixing CO2, volcanoes, the Earth's mantle, and even some geochemical processes release CO2. If not for biological fixation, the atmosphere's CO2 content would be higher.