What if we are all wrong about climate change?
What if it’s actually going to be far worse than we imagine?
What if we simply don’t comprehend how quick and how bad things get from now on?
The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth
We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change (Ripple et al. 2020). For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies (Supran et al. 2023). Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024 (Guterres 2024), and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius (°C) peak warming by 2100 (UNEP 2023). Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage. We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering. We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus, Homo (supplemental figure S1; CenCO2PIP Consortium et al. 2023).
Last year, we witnessed record-breaking sea surface temperatures (Cheng et al. 2024), the hottest Northern Hemisphere extratropical summer in 2000 years (Esper et al. 2024), and the breaking of many other climate records (Ripple et al. 2023a). Moreover, we will see much more extreme weather in the coming years (Masson-Delmotte et al. 2021). Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change. As of 2022, global fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes account for approximately 90% of these emissions, whereas land-use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for approximately 10% (supplemental figure S2).
…LOOK AT THE GRAPHS SLEEPY HOBBITS…
…The Right know climate change is real and they know it is catastrophic and while they feed you bullshit and claim any real analysis of what’s coming is ‘alarmism’, they are quietly plotting against your interests…
New Zealand climate report: Home owners face risks as buy-outs phase out, expert warns
…that’s right, fuck you if you are impacted by climate change.
Sure, the petrol companies knew and lied and hid the truth of global warming since the 1990s, and sure every right wing Government has done everything to ensure the biggest polluters were left unscathed, so now the real impacts are being felt, go fuck yourself dumb Kiwi!
You understand you are being played now this report is out right?
The catastrophic climate change the Polluters and politicians knew was coming will now be dumped on you and you alone.
Shhhh, keep voting for National, ACT and NZF sleepy hobbits.
There is a point when your rage at what they’ve done will finally motivate you to stand on your feet and fight back.
I believe, and have been arguing for some time, that climate change is the existential threat to late stage capitalism and that the reality and scale of what we face demands urgent and radical solutions.
There are many in agriculture who see first hand the impact of climate change and its increasing intensity.
Those voices are not as powerful as the Dairy Industry and the Pollution Industry and Big Oil.
What those industries want is tepid nothings that look like something is being done while that illusion only makes things worse.
The data doesn’t lie, fossil fuels extraction industries have doomed us to a feedback loop that will make life very difficult in failed state after failed state world.
There is a gravity to the problems we face that National, ACT and NZF as a political movement beholden to Dairy, mining and polluters are in total denial over.
We will need a revolution at the ballot box and every year of increasing climate damage will make that revolution more desperate.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
“The Right know climate change is real and they know it is catastrophic and while they feed you bullshit and claim any real analysis of what’s coming is ‘alarmism’, they are quietly plotting against your interests…”
Typical, just fuckin typical – its the Right that is the problem, the Right, the people on the Right that are the problem – the people are the problem – says Martin, not the powerful, not the politicians, not big industry and the big finance machine behind it. Not the war machine and the money behind that also. No, yet again, we the people cop it right up our royal asses, throw in the ruling class engendered Right/left tag and yet again, the focus is put back onto us – we the fucken people!
Anyone smell a rort in climate change when all roads behind it leads back to we, the people. Meanwhile, the richie riches are not selling up their waterfront properties and the war machine is on the verge of using nukes (on Iran) for the first time since WWII
But no, we are the existential threat, the choices we, the people make are the source behind all the problems to come, and naturally, all the problems in the world today. Fuck me, give me a break.
banners of futility.
nature will sort it out.
procreate and die happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFpnY-ooQhw
Really well stated Martyn. The deliberate unknowing is amazing and as I can practice that too I slightly understand it. There are peculiar ego things here. The ancients observed, and wrote them down and it has been a point of pride to be able to read Latin or Greek etc. And quote what they said but only perhaps apply it.
And the reflections about what we do and think have come at us in our fairy tales, Grimms, Aesops morality tales, which we read or recite with interest, or not, and do not immediately implement as needed. Pop songs, should tell us, encourage deep thought but apparently Nick Drake’s audiences couldn’t cope with his reality which was not even pop. A bridge too far it was. Don McLean’s were accepted and promoted successfully but didn’t change anything either. Our fickle minds bypassed Nick’s efforts, he became depressed which was treated with antidepressants,and finally took an overdose ending his life at age 26.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Drake
…Drake suffered from depression and [had become] reluctant to perform in front of live audiences. Upon completion of Pink Moon, he withdrew from both performance and recording, retreating to his parents’ home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, Drake was found dead at the age of 26 due to an overdose of antidepressants. … Think of Noam Chomsky who has been heard his whole life, but not penetrated far enough to change the direction of events .
It might all prove to be a rehearsal for how things will go for many of us. We can’t stand and appreciate our world and each other; live and love and achieve at a simpler level. Money is an indispensable aid, offers so many pleasures, and comforts, and we want them individually. But not for everyone; limiting ourselves so that others can have a life even if not great, is too hard for many of us. We want the most money and things and others welfare aren’t our problem.
Who misses out on the way to my being able to buy items from the $3 shop that are highly technical, eg keyring lights half a finger wide with batteries within and LED and also laser light, at the touch of a button, anodised in four different colours. I bought four, they are useful. They are there so my not buying them isn’t going to save the world. And the shop has a million items around $3 which should be perhaps twice that; who is missing out on a living wage in another country, also work safety protections so I can take advantage? The system grinds people down and nets customers like fish. That smells. But how to pull away – buy it and make a donation to a charity that helps the poor workers simultaneously?
Or what if climate change is different in different parts of the globe, variable, not uniform.
Or what if climate change is more than what people experience as adverse weather? What if tropical bugs start infesting our grass pasture or eating our commercial fruit and veg? What if the pesticides dont work? What if those nasty equatorial mosquitos make their way here?
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