WTF Climate Change News

Sid

Time for another coffee.
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The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and a million species are at risk of extinction – all largely as a result of human actions, said the study, compiled over three years by more than 450 scientists and diplomats.

Two in five amphibian species are at risk of extinction, as are one-third of reef-forming corals, while other marine animals by down by close to one-third. The picture for insects – which are crucial to plant pollination – is less clear, but conservative estimates suggest at least one in 10 are threatened with extinction and, in some regions, populations have crashed. In economic terms, the losses are jaw-dropping. Pollinator loss has put up to $577bn (£440bn) of crop output at risk, while land degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of global land.
It is too late.
We missed the bus.
Humanity will not witness 2100.
😞
 

Beebo Brink

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It is too late.
We missed the bus.
Humanity will not witness 2100.
😞
Not that I'll be around long enough to know, but 2100 is probably a tad early for complete eradication of the human species. I'd give us another 100-200 years. But those last 100 years won't be any fun for anyone who is still around.
 

Beebo Brink

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If we had 50-75 years to put all these solutions in place, to reorganize our societies, to rebuild our infrastructure, we could bring down CO2 to livable levels. Unfortunately, we needed to start that reformation in the 1970s and we didn't.

Sucks to be us.
 

EmpressOfCommunism

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If survivalist communities weren't full of people basically prepping for EVERY disaster scenario aside from global warming! Now is deifnitely the time to learn about shelter, self defense, and small scale agriculture of hardy edibles. If not for the current generation, so that the knowledge si there enough to teach our children and grand children.
 

Brenda Archer

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If survivalist communities weren't full of people basically prepping for EVERY disaster scenario aside from global warming! Now is deifnitely the time to learn about shelter, self defense, and small scale agriculture of hardy edibles. If not for the current generation, so that the knowledge si there enough to teach our children and grand children.

Yes. They're afraid of possibilities while the certainty stares them in the face.

Energy generation, water supply and food supply chains all need to become more local. It's not happening, probably because of control freaks among the oligarchy still trying to make money off the present system of geographically far flung supply chains. This makes our situation more and more brittle. It will probably lead to war, which can only ramp up the environmental degradation that is already occurring. Iraq is an unfortunate example of how this will play out.

It's so totally unnecessary. Primitive thinking has led to the present oligarchy and primitive thinking cannot get us out of this mess.
 

Innula Zenovka

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If we had 50-75 years to put all these solutions in place, to reorganize our societies, to rebuild our infrastructure, we could bring down CO2 to livable levels. Unfortunately, we needed to start that reformation in the 1970s and we didn't.

Sucks to be us.
Difficult to know what to do, really. I mean, at one level Climate Change is clearly a far bigger issue than is Brexit, but Parliament isn't going to focus on anything other than Brexit for the foreseeable future, and certainly won't find the energy or leadership to address carbon emissions and so forth until it does.

However, it is perhaps worth Americans making the point to their elective representatives that other countries do take global warming very seriously and that we don't find it particularly difficult to achieve targets that are derided as completely fanciful by US "Conservatives." Though since these same "Conservatives"" believe in creationism and Hillary Clinton running paedophile sex rings out the basement of a pizza restaurant that doesn't have such an architectural feature but don't believe in vaccinating their children, maybe we shouldn't be too surprised.
 

danielravennest

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However, it is perhaps worth Americans making the point to their elective representatives that other countries do take global warming very seriously and that we don't find it particularly difficult to achieve targets that are derided as completely fanciful by US "Conservatives." Though since these same "Conservatives"" believe in creationism and Hillary Clinton running paedophile sex rings out the basement of a pizza restaurant that doesn't have such an architectural feature but don't believe in vaccinating their children, maybe we shouldn't be too surprised.
Some of our elected representatives do get it. But the biggest driver towards clean energy in the US is ironically the profit motive. Despite Trump and his cronies best efforts, coal use for electricity is down 9% since he took office, and 44% since 2006. The reason is first natural gas, then wind, and now solar all became cheaper than coal. Most electric utilities are for-profit enterprises, so they are doing the rational thing and switching. The latest change is battery storage has become cheap enough to use on a large scale. This helps bridge the variability of wind and solar by storing any extra they produce for times when there isn't enough. Thus Florida Power & Light is now building lots of solar farms in "The Sunshine State" and has ordered the world's largest array of batteries (900 MWh). Since they supply power to Mar-a-Lago, Trump is being forced to use renewable energy for his weekend residence whether he likes it or not.

Britain is blessed with windy coasts, so they have installed a lot of offshore and onshore wind turbines. The US actually has more wind capacity installed on land than the UK has of all sources combined, but we are a much larger country. Our offshore wind hasn't been exploited yet in favor of the windy middle parts of the country. That will change soon. The US is getting there, but it is taking us longer mainly due to our size.
 

Innula Zenovka

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Some of our elected representatives do get it. But the biggest driver towards clean energy in the US is ironically the profit motive. Despite Trump and his cronies best efforts, coal use for electricity is down 9% since he took office, and 44% since 2006. The reason is first natural gas, then wind, and now solar all became cheaper than coal. Most electric utilities are for-profit enterprises, so they are doing the rational thing and switching. The latest change is battery storage has become cheap enough to use on a large scale. This helps bridge the variability of wind and solar by storing any extra they produce for times when there isn't enough. Thus Florida Power & Light is now building lots of solar farms in "The Sunshine State" and has ordered the world's largest array of batteries (900 MWh). Since they supply power to Mar-a-Lago, Trump is being forced to use renewable energy for his weekend residence whether he likes it or not.

Britain is blessed with windy coasts, so they have installed a lot of offshore and onshore wind turbines. The US actually has more wind capacity installed on land than the UK has of all sources combined, but we are a much larger country. Our offshore wind hasn't been exploited yet in favor of the windy middle parts of the country. That will change soon. The US is getting there, but it is taking us longer mainly due to our size.
I think I've mentioned before that my cousin makes considerable amounts of money from knowing about world energy prices, and he's been saying for several years -- certainly before Trump discovered his love of the fuel -- that burning coal is an horrendously expensive way of generating electricity, quite apart from the environmental costs, and no one in their right mind would consider investing in coal-fired electricity plants.
 

Porsupah Ree

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In 2017, climate activists Roger Hallam and David Durant painted the words "divest from oil and gas" on a wall at King’s College London in chalk paint; they were facing £7,000 in fines and up to 18 months in prison, and did not qualify for a legal aid lawyer. The pair represented themselves in front of a jury at Southwark Crown Court in London, arguing the rarely used "necessity defense," that their actions were justified by the urgency of climate change. During the trial, Judge Michael Gledhill QC frequently interrupted the pair to instruct the jury to ignore the defense, telling them that climate change was "irrelevant" to the charge.

Despite this, the jury exonerated the pair after deliberating for just two hours, the mandatory minimum for such a deliberation.
 

Ellie

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2030? He won't last that long.
Oh don't worry, his faithful Rumpist assholes will preserve his dead body until the grid finally goes down. Unless his enemies go the Captain Love route...I can see some wanting to do that.