@GottaLaff
In this morass of corruption, lies, treason, insurrection, racism, assaults on our civil & equal rights, foreign aggression, homelessness, famine, #ClimateCrisis, and every other damned thing that’s wrong in our lives, it’s despicable that the GOP Congress has nothing better to do than dick around with meaningless crap like this.
“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.“
"The best we can accomplish, is 1.5°C with overshoot. The reason for this is that we have already loaded so much energy/heat into the Earth system, that even if we stopped all emissions today, we are already committed to warming exceeding 1.5°C"—Prof Johan Rockström
@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.
In the usual course of events, Earth’s climate fluctuates naturally. Driven by subtle shifts in solar energy and the slightly wobbling tilt of our planet in space, Earth will experience periodic glacial maximums (ice ages) followed by interglacials (warmer times when the ice retreats). These changes normally operate over thousands of years.
But now something else has happened. Something new.
In an insanely dangerous gambit, capitalist industrialists decided to extract and burn hundreds of billions of tons of coal, oil, and gas. They counted on this to make them rich and powerful, which it did. What they didn’t count on — or didn’t care about — was the destructive impact it would have on Earth’s climate and environment.
The last time the global temperature changed dramatically, when it heated up overall by about 3° Celsius, was at the end of the most recent ice age. Large amounts of CO₂ were released into the atmosphere and temperatures went up. This was a big shift and had a huge effect on the biosphere, driving many plant and animal species to extinction while allowing others to thrive. But that’s just how it goes. That’s what happens naturally.
The difference between then and now is that the previous CO₂ release and corresponding temperature rise took place over a span of about 7,000 years. In geological terms, that’s considered fast.
Today, however, thanks to greedy murdering capitalists, we are in the midst of a rapid heating event unlike anything ever seen in the whole history of Earth. The planet is heating up so fast that species have no chance to respond or adjust. It’s so fast that scientists have no way of knowing how soon it will end or what all the consequences could be.
#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
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?
One of the most ominous risks for Europe is that of a major change in Atlantic ocean currents. Recent science suggests it has been greatly underestimated in the past -including by me, having worked on it for over 30 years. Here my half-hour presentation in Vilnius last week!
@rahmstorf When a world renowned climate scientist quotes, in all seriousness, #TheDayAfterTomorrow movie, it's time to either accept that you or your children will die in a climate extreme situation, or you have to take to the streets now. As he says, the next 10 years of human activity will drive what happens for the next thousand years or more. #ClimateCrisis