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Four alarming charts that show just how extreme the climate is right now | CNN

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/17/world/four-climate-charts-extreme-weather-heat-oceans

Soaring temperatures. Unusually hot oceans. Record high levels of carbon pollution in the atmosphere and record low Antarctic ice. We’re only halfway through 2023 and so many climate records are being broken.

Four alarming charts that show just how extreme the climate is right now | CNN

49 comments

cassetti

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Back in 2019 I was having a campfire in my backyard with some friends including a retired couple in their late 60's. He had just retired from IBM. We got on the subject of climate change and how terrible it will be for future generations.

"I mean, not like it's going to affect us" he said as they both chuckled uttering that classic line (my wife nor I could believe they said it out loud).

Fast forward a year. He caught Covid from one of their out of state friends who stayed with them for a weekend. And guess who caught covid. He died December 30th 2020 from a disease he very much could have prevented. The irony was undeniable, as he succumbed to Covid-19, a cruel twist of fate potentially amplified by the very climate change he dismissed

Crackhappy

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He died before he could have been vaccinated though. The very first vaccination was December 8th, 2020.

cassetti

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Knowing them and their political affiliations, they likely would have refused to get the shot regardless. To them it was nothing worse than the flu and everyone was overreacting.

fastandcurious

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Unless big corporations do something about it, we are doomed, individual efforts are going to do no shit We have hit 45C and its not even peak summer

sem

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It is not how capitalism works. At first individuals should start prefer local production and production of more green companies. And only after that corporations change their politics. For example, there is a yearly rating of green electronics (how much green electricity company uses, how clean production is, etc.) but customers do not care. And if customers do not care, why corporations should care?

CMahaff

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I think expecting each person to trace the incredibly complex chains of businesses and processes that result in every product they buy is unrealistic. Sure, some stuff is obvious, but plenty is not.

It reminds of of an episode of the Good Place where an angel buys a tomato at the supermarket and inadvertently commits like 14 sins due to the deep chains of unethical practices that brought the tomatoes to the store - which of course no one could possibly know when they picked it up.

IMO corporations aren't going to self-regulate and consumers arent going to do 2 hours of research on everything the buy - it's supposed to be the governments job to spend the time identifying pollution sources and regulating them away - but with regulatory capture and corruption that doesn't usually happen either.

cykablyatbot

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You don't have to trace shit to know fast food, fast fashion, and cruise lines are unsustainable. It is obvious we are producing more emissions when we fly for vacation, buy huge trucks and SUVs we don't need.
Much of what we need to do is both obvious and easy because it merely involves us NOT buying things.
And most of the worst stuff like fast food, fast fashion, huge vehicles, and excessive meat consumption don't do anything to sustain a higher quality of life. Many of them reduce it.

sem

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the governments job

I do not believe that government can do something good. Of course the idea of regulation is good by itself but due to corruption and inefficiency of any government structure result will be more likely opposite (yes, I'm an anarchist and believe that only self-regulation may work).

to trace the incredibly complex chains of businesses and processes

Today it is easier than one may think: a lot of certifications and information from non-profit organization. A lot of mobile apps and sites that allow you to check how green the product is. The only missing part is request from customers side. And until we do not have such request, IMO, nothing will change.

Rumblestiltskin

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Capitalism also works to keep prices as high as possible and wages as low as possible leaving most of the population not in a position to make ethical desicions over affordability decisions.

alwaysconfused

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That's one way capitalism can work. Capitalism, like anything created by humans, is complex. The way you described how capitalism works seems to put all the blame on the people with the least power or knowledge in the whole process.

Corporations have the money to advertise their products, bribe politicians, lobby governments, threaten or deal with whistleblowers, suppress information and research or destroy foreign environments for resources to continually gain more power. That's not a complete list either. The things these entities would do to exploit everything to increase their quaterly profits is horrifying.

Where I live, our regional government official works hand in hand with businesses and corporations to completely gut health care and education while giving away all our green land to build more expensive homes.

If individuals truly had control over capitalism as you suggest, then they will soon be too tired from being over worked, sick from lack of healthcare, possibly homeless, and under educated to know any better to make better decisions, or fight back.

Corporations have the wealth to change things but it seems ruthless manipulation and exploitation are their favourite tools. I don't see how these tools can continue endlessly on this finite planet. You can't exploit a lifeless planet with dead slaves but they just can't see past their quarterly profits.

sem

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Corporations have the wealth to change things

Because corporation are not working for common good but are working for their shareholders that invest their money to corporation. Corporations are ruled by board members that approved to position by shareholders. And board members are responsible to shareholders first not to humanity. My point was that if customers start prefer green production corporation will start focus on it but not opposite. Request from the market, from consumers should be first.

sinkingship

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You are not considering that not everybody can know how everything is produced.

I am more than 30 years into this life and don't know exactly how many things that I buy are produced, how the resources are gained, how far parts were shipped, etc.

On top of that companies go far lengths to hide things that would have a bad public feedback. They even do research only to sow doubt in science. And they print fake green labels and proudly advertise with it.

That's why ideally the government steps in to bring transparency and safety for their citizen.

But guess what? Companies are paying nice money and other benefits for politicians to be able to lead the customers by their noses.

ImplyingImplications

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At first individuals should start prefer local production track

Let me just buy a locally sourced phone from the local farmers market! Hmm while I'm at it I'll switch my power supplier to one that uses renewable energy instead of a coal fired power plant! And for my business trip I think I'll fly on magic carpet!

Wow! Pollution and global climate change really is the fault of selfish individuals and not unregulated capitalist as I initially thought!

eta_aquarid

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customers caring about a thing doesn't guarantee that corporations will care

like perhaps the issue is that we need to basically petition and beg giant corporations to stop killing us

maybe the system shouldn't be such that that's all we can do

fastandcurious

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I get where you are coming from, and it’s true, a lot of people just don’t seem to care…

BigTrout75

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Reminds me of a commercial where they show a little girl recycling plastic bottle. With some lame message on how we need to teach the kids how to recycle. Meanwhile, 80% just ends up in landfill. Forget that! We need effing laws forcing corporations to use sustainable practices.

cykablyatbot

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How are large corporations going to reduce meat consumption? Or reduce the number of international flights people take for vacation? How will they make entirely unsustainable industries like fast food, fast fashion, and cruise lines go out of business? To say nothing about the rampant inhumane working conditions and cruelty in those industries.

Certainly a lot of the issues are dependent upon the world's industrial infrastructure and that is not something that we necessarily have a handle on. But all the people building the new sustainable infrastructure are just regular people and individuals who decided to do something.

phikshun

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Seems like the humans are in a bit of a pickle.

On one hand they can keep using fossil fuels, and that will allow some humans to live more comfortably while they pump so much planet warming gasses into the climate system that it guarantees the future sterilization of the planet.

On the other hand, they could mandate a planet-wide ban on fossil fuels, which would be problematic because their food system is entirely reliant on fossil fuels, without which they could only feed about one billion humans.

Or maybe they will choose to gamble, and attempt to exert their control of the climate system through stratospheric injection of sulphate aerosols. It will be neat to see what possible unanticipated consequences this leads to!

Well whatever the humans choose, just know that we're all rooting for you! 🍿🎉

Larvitar

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The concerning part is always "it's happening faster than they predicted!" I'm not sure what contributes to the models being so far off.

cykablyatbot

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They aren't really far off it's just that the models don't show every feature of the climate because they are models, not reality. But regarding the broad strokes the models are accurate and relevant.
Also CNN peddles fear and useless information. They thrive on sensationalism, not by informing people.

Xenxs

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Well, that's not great.

redtea

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Pikachu use Shock(ed face)

cykablyatbot

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I wish that for even every 10 alarmist articles about climate change published there was one about the various steps and programs being worked on to address it.
But no. Just more selling of fear and sensationalism.

There is very little information regarding that in mainstream news and it is a serious disservice. People need to understand these issues if we are going to contribute to them or vote for them intelligently.

knfrmity

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China for example is doing a huge amount to decrease their impact, but you won't hear about anything positive in China since they must be portrayed as the enemy. That aside, the only way out of even worse global warming and the only way we can mitigate it is to move on from capitalism, and that's a non starter in the western mainstream.

Mainstream news is meant to run interference for billionaires (who of course benefit by destroying the survivability of the planet). Why would it present these issues in a clear, accurate, and understandable way?

tetris11

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What steps have China taken recently? Out of the loop

HeartyBeast

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There are lots of good programmes, of course. But the fact is that global emissions continue to rise year on year. We haven’t even managed to stabilise emissions yet, let alone cut.

cykablyatbot

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Of course not. That isn't remotely possible for well over a decade. That doesn't mean that there is not a massive effort to build new sustainable infrastructure that will replace what we currently have. We spent 50 years building the current infrastructure that depends on fossil fuels. It's not going to be replaced overnight, or even in a few years.
What people don't realize is that when emissions finally start dropping year after year, the reduction will happen relatively quickly after that. That part of the change will be dramatic and observable. The hard work being done right now not so much.
Think about EV cars and trucks; once adoption rises to over 50% a year, the transition to 90% EVs will happen very quickly because no one will want to invest in the old tech and the manufacturing will have scaled up dramatically and be much more mature. What people don't realize is how much of the hard work was done before EVs were being mass produced. Developing and building the battery and car factories and establishing all the supply lines is the hard part, not building cars in the factory.

The same timeline will happen with many other sustainable technologies that are where EVs were in 2005 or 2010.

JasSmith

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It's a very lucrative industry now. People are making fortunes and careers on climate change. You can't expect honesty or clear information on the back of that. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

My take is that a) man-made climate change is happening, and b) it's not nearly as bad as alarmists claim. [The global average temperature is projected to increase by 2-4C over the next 80 years. I'm sorry, but that's just not an "emergency." You know what is an emergency? The 4.6 We should, immediately, work to make energy cheaper and more abundant for more people, even if it increases our carbon output. Saving lives today is obviously much more important than potentially saving lives 100 years from now.

Kettlepants

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I respectfully disagree.

At our current trajectory there will be mass death and significant swathes of the planet will simply be uninhabitable.

The view that we should release more carbon than we already are doing now is, in my opinion, reckless and selfish.

galaxies_collide

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I’ll have to find the source later, but I read somewhere that each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces overall crop yields by 10%. Also, tropical forests that rely on high humidity environments will start drying up causing drastic ecological and an increase in fires. Yes, the fear mongering sells news, but that doesn’t mean you can write off climate change as a big deal.

JasSmith

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each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces overall crop yields by 10%.

That sounds on the high side, so I'd want to read a source before I accept it. Let's say it's true for a moment, and crop yields decline by 20-40% over the next 80 years. Take a look at global wheat yields over time. The use of technology to improve yields has resulted in explosive growth to output. Our continued improvements for the next 80 years will more than make up for even a 40% reduction.

I must be clear: I am well aware that there will be consequences to a 2-4C increase in temperature. I'm claiming that those consequences are not as bad as the millions of people dying each year at present because they lack access to cheap energy.

cykablyatbot

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Agreed. Also making the manufacturing of all the new sustainable infrastructure more expensive would not hasten anything. Anyone who knows what the 1970s were like will understand how bad high oil prices are and the dangers of depending upon Middle Eastern countries for our energy.
Energy austerity will not speed the transition at this point.
Fortunately solar can actually fuel a lot of the most crucial air conditioning power needs, just not the manufacture and transport of AC units yet.

DeJaVu

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Its cycles, and it depends when you start the measurements from. If you start measuring 38 years ago, then there is no change in temperature. If you start in 1850 then were warmer by 0.7C. From middle ages, were colder by 4C. From the times of the Vikings we have warming, and from times of Jesus we have cooling down. Cycles. Money also has cycles. In the past (i know of examples in the 70s) money was made on the fear of The New Ice Age, and today its the fear of Global Warming.

HERRAX

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Those numbers are waaaaay off, and even if you are slightly correct with there being cycles, the speed of which the climate is changing right now is completely bonkers. I'd also like to know who makes money out of this "fearmongering"? And why would that be more reasonable to believe than oil/gas companies doing the opposite? Would it be easier to convince the whole world that we need to quit/change parts of our comfortable lives in order to save the future, than to convince us to keep living like we always have?

I guess the solar and wind companies must be bathing in money for them to be able to bribe 99% of all scientists into risking their careers by producing fake reports?

DeJaVu

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Cant write much atm, so let me just address the "who makes the money" for the time being. Co2 credits are traded on stock exchanges, london has imposed a daily tax on older cars(affecting poorer citizens), developing countries are being hindered as clean energy is not yet an affordable alternative and by this western countries which already went through that process(and it was ok when the west was doing it) effectively destroying existing and potential competition. Its basically making the game unwinnable for them by changing the rules all the time.

Just few quick examples that come to mind how it is lucrative, not to mention the psychologicall effects that fearmongering has on the younger generations living in a state of impending doom all the time.

HeartyBeast

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In the 1970s, there were a few interesting articles published on the possibility of cooling, but they were fairly quickly dismissed . And that was it. I very much doubt there was any serious betting on it, because at that time climate change wasn’t a matter of politicised debate. Perhaps a few climate scientists bet each other £10.

We’ve known what trajectory we’ve been on since t he 80s with increasing certainty each year. In 1988 Margaret Thatcher dedicated her entire address to the UN General Assembly on the science, the threat and how coordinated international action would be needed https://youtu.be/VnAzoDtwCBg

Yes, they’re are climate cycles. This is being driven my human activities

Kettlepants

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Sorry, but pretty much every scientific study disagrees with your view.

DeJaVu

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No need to be sorry, here you go an article from a reputable source citing a study from european researchers - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8555871/Mediterranean-Sea-3-6-F-hotter-Roman-Empire-study-claims.html

133arc585

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A literal tabloid can't be called a "reputable source" with a straight face. If they link to a study, you should have just pasted the link to the study. Don't give tabloids your eyes.

Edit: seems they link to this: Persistent warm Mediterranean surface waters during the Roman period.

Kettlepants

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You said it was a reputable source, but that's a Daily Fail link. No clicky.

Rumblestiltskin

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lol, daily mail reputable. Next you will post a facebook comment.

juergen_hubert

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In the 1970s, talk of a "global cooling" was very much a minority opinion among climatologists.

And I'd like to have some citations on that "38 years ago" thing.

sin_free_for_00_days

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If you start a million years ago, the CO2 concentrations are way above where they've ever been. Cycles, sure, but nothing like what humans have done, nor on the time frame that humans are doing it.