“Record-breaking temperatures in the last few years shatter the myth that air conditioning alone will keep people safe.”
“Storm-battered homes … lack proper insulation. Power grids stumble & fail during periods of high demand. And many cooling systems are simply not powerful enough to contend with the worsening heat. Some experts have begun to warn of the looming threat of a 'Heat Katrina' – a mass-casualty heat event.“
@WMO reports global temperature will likely exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial level temporarily in next 5 years. Creative Commons is providing no-cost support to climate orgs opening their #climatedata so more people can find solutions to the #climatecrisis. [Link: https://loom.ly/8PsTAqg] (Img: Pia Harboure/WMO 2024 Calendar Competition)
It’s not only Earth’s atmosphere that is warming very rapidly. Perhaps even more worrisome is the tremendous amount of change occurring in our seas.
More than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the Earth system due to human-caused global warming has been absorbed by the oceans, which currently store 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and 20 times more than land plants and soil combined.
It’s not certain, however, how long this ratio can be sustained. As the ocean continues to heat up like the rest of the planet, its waters are projected to become less efficient at taking in carbon dioxide and may release it back into the atmosphere more rapidly.
Also, the more CO₂ the ocean absorbs, the more acidic its chemistry becomes. After years of working overtime to take in some of the excess carbon we’ve pumped into the atmosphere, ocean acidification has already increased 30% compared to pre-industrial levels, and could increase an additional 120% in the decades ahead. That, in turn, could lead to severe disruptions in the worldwide food chain, followed by famine and starvation such as we’ve never seen.
I wish I was exaggerating. But I’m not. We are in grave danger.
#Switzerland is on course to approve a law aimed at accelerating the development of renewable energy as the country targets carbon neutrality by 2050, a polling institute said -AFP #ClimateCrisis
@GottaLaff
Switzerland's upper house of parliament on Wednesday slammed a recent ruling by a top European court that pressed the country to do more to combat global warming, arguing that Swiss authorities were already doing enough to address the threat.
The court had found in favor of a group of elderly Swiss women who took Switzerland to court over its record on tackling global warming, arguing its failures violated their rights.
We noticed populist right-wing forces co-opting "open-source" by "supporting its adoption".
However, they stand for isolationism (hidden behind "tech sovereignty"), and against international collaboration, openness and transparency; which are what makes #FreeSoftware awesome.
I've been thinking that climate fiction that imagines a future where we actually fight the crisis, a future worth fighting for, is super subversive (and it is) but I'm coming around to thinking that encouraging folks (even ones who aren't "writers") to engage in that imaginative act--imagine the future you want and what it would take to get there--is 100% part of how we fight this.
Have you noticed that the politicians who say there are "waves" and "invasions" of immigrants are the same politicians who refuse to fight the climate crisis that is causing mass migration that can only get much much worse?