this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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The memes of the climate

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The climate of the memes of the climate!

Planet is on fire!

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[–] [email protected] 155 points 5 months ago (25 children)

I do, but like most other people, I'm preoccupied with short term crises since, well, I need to survive those in order to be ready for the long-term ones.

In my opinion though, we don't stand a snowball's chance in hell. The elite will manage to hang just a bit longer, but eventually they'll cook and burn with the rest of us, or in their bunkers.

Anyways, shit's already fucked to the point that I've given up. Just sit back, relax and take whatever life gives ya.

[–] [email protected] 110 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This is exactly the messaging of the oil companies and others who oppose climate action now that it’s too hard to deny. They want us to think it’s hopeless and give up trying to change anything. It’s not too late. Green energy is growing exponentially and has been possibly the fastest technological adoption in history. Millions of people are working on the science and technology to solve these problems. We just need some more collective action at the local and national levels. Carbon taxes, funding for green initiatives, local agriculture, and support for alternative transportation like e-bikes or other PEVs to start

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (19 children)

Did you miss the memo that current AI is already using more power than everything we've managed to save with green energy in the last decade? We ARE fucked, the only thing we're still debating is the exact timespan. Which is asinine, the result will remain the same either way.

The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war, becausing nothing else will convince people. We've been trying (and failing) for decades.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago

The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war

Good news! The odds are looking pretty high for both of those!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I never had kids of my own, because I didn't want any, but the last 15 years or so I've becoming increasingly grateful that I made that decision. It at least allows me to sit back and contemplate doom without worrying about what my kids' life on this planet is going to be like after I'm gone.

I've always done the reducing, reusing, and recycling, because it's the right thing to do. Cut waaaaay back on dairy and beef purchases, I eat a lot of plant protein and use plant milk now. But it's all a drop in the bucket. Only the governments can actually fix this, and they won't because they are owned. I just sit around hoping it won't get TOO bad before I'm dead.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

I agree and I am not even preoccupied, but there simply hasn't been any chance for me to make a dent in this. Hasn't been for a long time, at least since 1900 (!!) where we basically already knew where everything was headed.

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[–] [email protected] 135 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Drop everything

... and? Panic? Die?

[–] [email protected] 128 points 5 months ago (5 children)

The people who tweeted this suck at Communication 101. You've gotta have a specific and clear call to action. Something like "Join this protest at XYZ" or "Demand your Congressman support ABC."

You can't just say "Drop everything. Forget about your job and your kid's education." That's not an effective message.

Unless their point is we're past the point of protests and political policies doing anything and we're all gonna die. In which case, say that. "Drop everything and go die, cause we're fucked." You gotta be clear!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think part of the post is the implication that there is no more call to action, only a downward spiral that no action could solve.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Never kill yourself for something that's somebody else's fault.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

(Looking for this image has definitely put me on a watchlist)

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[–] [email protected] 112 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (22 children)

I mean, I get the desperation. But drop everything and…do what?

Calling for a massive strike is one thing. But just “drop everything” with no follow up is a weird reaction. It sounds way too much like, “drop everything and panic.” Not “sacrifice everything to try to save what we can of the livable world.”

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

Drop everything and enjoy life while it lasts.

It may be shorter than you were planning on.

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I've understood since high school, what the fuck do you want me to do about it when I can barely keep myself and my family alive as is?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

This particular author wants you to panic.

We are certainly facing many environmental crisis, there's no doubt about that... But the data here seems limited. I assume we simply don't have measurements older than 50 years to add to this graph?

Edit: Here is a better graph!

Still alarming, but the data only goes back so far... It feels like something everyone needs to pay attention to and take seriously, but perhaps turning down the Vault-Tec guy knocking at your door is still a reasonable action to take.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Seems like the authors doomerism is working. Look at some of the assholes in the comments. It feels like they get off of the negativity.

Is shit bad? Yeah. But giving up helps no one and is a punch in the face to all the people that are fighting tooth and nail every single day.

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[–] [email protected] 102 points 5 months ago (16 children)

Okay. I just want to slam on the brakes here, just a little.... Just a little slam.

There's a LOT of personal blame going around in these comments. As if everyone who ever had burned any fossil fuels ever is somehow personally responsible for everything that's currently happening.

Here's some news, we've been burning shit for more than a millennia. People, in and of themselves, don't require so much heat and energy to create a problem. At least not individually. As a whole, small problem. Individually, microscopic problem at most.

Everyone seems to have fallen into this trap of everyone being personally responsible for the climate change. The vast majority of the issue is companies. Everyone wants to point at trucks and delivery vehicles and whatnot as major contributors when they do talk about contributions from companies, and you're still way off base. It's not even the air traffic that's the problem. It's the fucking boats. Nobody thinks about it, because nobody sees it. Either the boats are off at sea, or they're docked in some yard, away from your vision. 90% of the time, they're sailing. When they're sailing, they're operating the motors 24/7. Each ship, when operating, will consume more fuel in an hour than any one person would use in a year.

Since it's mostly unregulated international waters, who are they reporting any of that shit to? So they don't.

Yes. Climate change is real. Yes, we, personally, should be doing what we can to curb it. The fact is, if all of us did everything possible (switching to all renewable power, using EVs and all renewable powered appliances, etc) it would barely make a dent. All of the "personal responsibility" arguments are just a smokescreen from the big, very guilty corporations, to victim blame the public into turning on eachother so they can continue to destroy the environment unchecked. Based on these comments, they're succeeding.

I'm not saying to not be mad. Be mad, get angry. Just be mad at the right people here. I'm not evil because I drive my 1.5L 4cyl sedan to the grocery once a week, and have a natural gas water heater. Sure, I should change that, and I'm sure I will be changing that when I can, but I'm not the problem. The greenhouse gasses I emit over my lifetime won't offset the emissions of transport ships in a single year.

Just.... Be mad at the right people. Stop making people feel bad for being given bad options because the automotive industry actively and knowingly rejected electric vehicles due to how deep they were with the oil industry. So people had to buy internal combustion vehicles because there literally was no other option at the time. I've had my car since 2014. In 2014, the model S (the only model at the time), was $70k USD to start. I didn't have $70k USD to spend on a car (I still don't). I spent less than one-quarter of that price on my vehicle, and I was barely able to afford it over a 5 year finance. Yet, based on these comments, I should be ashamed that I can't afford a BEV? Or that I live too far from everything that I can't ride a bike or something?

Come on people. You know who is really at fault here. Let's just be angry at the right people.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Shiping represents about 10% of the 25% of global carbon emissions from transportation, so 2.5%, similar to aviation. Yes, it's a problem but it's not the boogeyman you seem to think it is.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 5 months ago (2 children)

climate scientists have already lit themselves on fire trying to warn people and it didn’t actually do anything

people are too religious to believe in science

[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

People are setting themselves on fire, throwing food at famous art or stopping traffic because it feels like a bad dream where you see the disaster coming and you're trying to shake people to get them to understand that we have to DO something, and they just stare straight ahead like zombies.

These are people who are scared and frustrated because we've tried EVERYTHING and nobody actually cares. When I tried to impart this message on reddit, people were like "I get it but why can't they just promote recycling or protest peacefully?" and then a 50-comment deep thread about whether or not the liquid soup can work its way through the screws on the plating that covers the artwork and what kind of lasting damage it might do.

Meanwhile, our destruction is literally around the corner. I don't get it.

We deserve what's coming.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 66 points 5 months ago (19 children)

Drop everything and do what exactly

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

LSD, K, and maybe some MDMA. At least thats what i would like to do.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 5 months ago (7 children)

I know. I'm in my early 40ies and have been trying all my life to convince people around me and do what I could. But with time, I learned about the fraud that is plastic recycling and how capitalism is really not interested at all into solving the issue. My city is fining people for putting recyclables in the trash, but the recycling centres are full and they themselves trash the recycling. What matters is short term profits and virtue signalling. What matters is to look green. Just buy electric cars and everything will be good, apparently. Buy green! But don't stop buying!

Then a pandemic happened and people disappointed me en masse. We could see the changes in the environment and in ways we could live, but most people were "EaGeR To GeT BaCk To ThEiR RoUtInE", even if it meant commuting 5 days a week to the office, just to "resume" the economy. What mattered was not other people, it was the economy. Even when they forced us to stay inside with curfews, people couldn't go out to run/walk in the evening, they barred unvaccinated people from stores (I'm vaccinated 4 times but it's still not okay), it was all for the economy and to save the system, not the people. And if you had a minor disagreement with this, you were a grandma killer for wanting to go cycling at night. Then we went back to our routines and nothing will ever change. People are whining because of paper straws and want the plastic back. And all this straw stupidity is not even important on the grand scheme of things. Most people don't want to change anything. Most people will not vote for change. The system does not have any incentive to change.

I never owned a car and everyone around me is telling me how great they are and how I should definitely buy one because it's useful and practical. I would have total absolution! Some people here are vociferously fighting against active and public transit, and the government is actually cutting public transit funding. People are yelling at me when I trash some plastic instead of putting it in the recycle bin, then they drive away in their car that generates literal tons of toxic fumes and greenhouse gases in the air, accusing me of not caring.

I gave up a few years ago. We will deserve most of it.

Don't worry, the rich will eat well and survive, with their private security forces willing to kill others, while the poor will starve and die. We'll have rations and curfews but it will all be for the good of the ~~people~~ economy. Just like in the pandemic, It will be an effort of the poor, to save the rich. That's what we want. You just have to become rich before it happens.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Seconded. It's so baffling to me that we have seemingly forgotten the purpose of the economy. It is supposed to be there to benefit our lives and instead it is costing us everything. Some slave away on their knees building streets and others waste the precious few laps around the sun staring at a light box. We have the technology to give everyone enough such that the average person would only have to work a few hours.

For a comparison in a very real sense:

Prior to the Neolithic revolution, which put an end to our nomadic past and turned our species into agriculturalists, it took more than 50 hours of labor (mostly gathering wood) to “buy” 1,000 lumen hours of light. By 1800, it took about 5.4 hours. By 1900, it took 0.22 hours. By 1992, 1,000 lumen hours required 0.00012 hours of human labor.

We've put the cart before the horse on an unfathomable scale. A good life for all (current humans and future) is within reach but the economic system that has created this bounty has grown out of control and serves nothing but itself anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The bit about not being able to go outside is because people were using it as a pretext to explain why they weren't at home... when really they were off socialising and increasing possible infection points.

It's why they closed children's playgrounds here in Australia, parents were using their children playing to gather around, then held empty coffee cups to explain why their masks were off. I've never seen so many people desperately swigging at water bottles in a supermarket in my life, or young men clutching at low dose asthma inhalers either. Somewhat amusingly, none of these behaviours have shown up since.

If people could have shown any level of responsibility... but there we have it, don't we? They can't see beyond the end of their own nose, and this is why we are here, finding out.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 5 months ago

Saving the environment? In this economy?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago (9 children)

I bet this is also somehow the immigrants' fault. /s

(Looking at you, right-wing voters in EU. ò.ó )

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I have a coworker who hates undocumented immigrants because she thinks they're all unvaccinated and spreaders of disease. This would be an unremarkable bit of stupidity except that she's also anti-vax.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

When did this place turn into r/collapse on Reddit?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago (13 children)

June already bringing on intense heat waves in California and Mexico are probably driving the doomerism on the west coast.

Houston also got a nasty Derecho a few weeks back that wrecked downtown and shredded half the trees in my neighborhood.

I expect the next big hurricane is going to bring another wave of doomerism, as we all get another big dose of "Find Out", while our Boomer elders continue to Fuck Around

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 months ago

I read an article on the internet that says you're wrong, and it's chemtrails and 5G. And Big Pharma.

And solar. And wind mills. And what they did to General Lee. And Aunt Jemima.

Do your research, sheeple!

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Yea, the graph showing us up 4 standard deviations isn't easy to understand implications. But I imagine on a person level, it's something like "if you live somewhere hot and humid, you better make sure you can afford to run and repair your AC". On a global level, mammals have existed for 200,000,000 years, yet in 200 years we've toyed with global extinction for shareholder profits.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (16 children)

While I get the sentiment and believe action is necessary, this is the wrong way to approach it. Panic is not the way we will solve this crisis.

There's a way out, and if we get through we'll be in a better place than we've ever been. We need to mass invest in green technology. Solar, wind, nuclear, throw everything at it and see what sticks. Solar is already on the right track to save us, but it's better if it goes even faster and have a few back up plans.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Sorry but fuck you doomerist cunts. No, we are not gonna have an easy time AT ALL. But giving up plays right into hands of corporations and governments destroying our planet. Every single improvement we are able to push through will limit suffering.

If we do nothing and completely give up, we will never know what suffering we could have prevented. I know it is not easy and things are not looking good. If we had not fought for some of the improvements we were able to push through, things would have been even worse than they are right now. Every. Single. Thing. Helps.

Don't even let these evil fucking cunts win no matter how hard they kick and scream and destroy stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Already happening in some places. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Oh well, poor alphas. As millenial we had horrible economy with a pandemics an 2 recessions, but this is going to be several levels worse.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But for a shining moment, we created a lot of value for shareholders.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (7 children)

There's a actually a super interesting explanation (and time will tell how accurate that explanation is) regulations from 2020 limited how much sulfur dioxide ships could emit and it turns out the sulfur dioxide was actually creating a slight cooling effect, so now we're experiencing the full brunt of our existing emissions as the world climate rubber bands to where it would have been if ships weren't spewing toxic sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. So presumably this recent trend will stabilize at some point and we'll have our new normal

This is also why geoengineering is so extremely risky. If you ever stop for any reason the climate will rubberband to where it should have been rapidly

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You think affluent capitalists care? Lol, they're probably trying to figure out how to make money out of this.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (4 children)

We can currently choose between:

  • climate change causing drought, heat, rain, flooding and storms with hail or tornados;
  • biodiversity loss preventing pollinating our food and capturing carbon (see climate change);
  • nuclear war in a politically unstable world;
  • tyrannic forms of government threatening our freedom;
  • underpaid slave labour in a capitalistic society, also threatening our freedom;
  • no way to divert that incoming meteor;
  • business as usual causing the next pandemic;
  • more old than young people leading to less care and less work altogether;
  • AI taking over the world;
  • any mix of the above leading to a collapse of society. Feel free to expand.
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (4 children)

So what you are saying is that there is a chance we'll get to tan like this?

One step near to robocop

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