Uplifting News

Is climate change an extinction level threat? I've never heard that.

I think we're firmly in "catastrophic disasters and famine that eradicates vast majority of the population" territory.

It's a question, as you said, of how severe the disasters and famine will be.

Okay. But every minute we can delay reaching that threshold will be worth it.

To me it's the same as the US democracy right now. Yes it's far too late to see no ill effects and we are already facing the consequences, but every act of resistance to unlawful, immoral and unconstitutional orders slow them down, and with enough co-ordination may slow them down enough before Trump and the oligarchs become truly unstoppable.

For any issue that effects our world's existence, stand boldly and take action. Don't let the fear of the inevitability of it consume you.

“The Earth will just shake us off like a bad case of fleas.”

It'll at least determine how many species survive. And the threshold to total human extinction is very high, so every ton of co2 is part of a life saved.

You're right, better just give up now.

God forbid someone tries to think past the next quarter.

If the future can't be livable and people just wants a quiet suicide for the human race I've got good news. There's a very easy solution for avoiding that discomfort that also happens to be the #1 way to reduce your carbon footprint.

But if you want to keep living and not just surviving, suck it up...

A few billionaires and rich old assholes decided not to fight climate change. They have a disproportional amount of time behind the mic.

Yeah, it kinda seems like humanity wants to ride that tiger

I didn’t get that at all from the OP, what I saw was “every bit matters so keep fighting.”

If anything the current political context makes what needs to be done pretty clear. There's a difference between downplaying the problem and realizing that if laying down and dieing isn't an option.

A fair concern. It's no peer reviewed research article that's for sure, but it was somewhat news to me and may be to others who likewise did not know and/or needed to hear it.

"News" here meaning from an authoritative source (though I did not confirm that this person even so much as exists, much less is actually a climate scientist) and bringing information that is not trivially already known to the audience.

A lot of the "news" focuses on the tipping point (to be able to reverse the effects of climate change), thus leaving a gap between that vs. what we are now desiring more to know: just how fucked are we all?

But if it needs to be removed, that's okay with me - I don't want to mess up the community's implementation of the rules.

"oh good then we don't have to do anything right now"

You're confusing completely averting things, with mitigating how bad they are.

Well, at this point, we're fucked. The only difference now is how fucked we are.

It's the difference between "really bad" and "even worse".

I don't think healthy skepticism is forbidden here, so feel free to write your rebuttal.

Some humans are more adaptive than others. The ones that have been sitting around with their heads in the sand aren't going to survive.

Remember that it can always be worse. Even if it's irreversible in our lifetimes, it can always be hotter and more extreme.

This Tweet isn't blaming you.

To me, this argument sounds like someone trying to justify their own littering because corporations don't dispose of their waste properly.

This is a well established climate-change-laggard argument. It's the whataboutism logical fallacy.

Why should I take action, at great personal cost, when someone else is not taking action and will in fact benefit from my burden?

The Australian (and other) governments hide behind this same excuse. "Australia is just a small country, why should we take action when our CO2 production is just a small portion of that of other countries like China?".

I mean it's a good point, billionaires are worthy of great criticism, and Australia should be putting pressure on other countries, but at the same time we as individuals really do need to be taking action.

I do agree that polluting corporations use this narrative and I also find it infuriating. It's particularly palpable with plastic producers, as in plastic pollution is not their fault, but the fault of consumers failing to recycle. It's not the fault of consumers, it's the fault of regulators, who are elected by voters who are also consumers.

In summary, the whole thing is fucked and everyone sucks, but you still have to tidy up your own shit.