this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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"What everyone is missing about climate change is that it's not about saving the planet or about science: it's about people. Earth will survive – it'll be different, but it will carry on. Humans are the ones at risk."

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

“Humans are a cancer…” is a statement of fact. It is the solution that determines if someone is an ecofascist:

… so we should kill off humans and cure the world

is an ecofascist statement and is a problem.

… and we are going to kill our host

is still in the declarative form. Is is apparently defeatist/fatalist and may or may not be a problem depending on the other views of the person

… so we should stop being cancerous.

is more optimistic of human determinism. I think it is the most hopeful and helpful to our situation, but it is not inherently good, and not coming to this conclusion is not inherently bad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (4 children)

A cancer can't just stop being cancerous. Calling humans a cancer inherently implies that they should be exterminated, saying "humans are a cancer so maybe they should stop doing cancer stuff" is just incoherent.

Humans aren't a cancer and saying that is ecofascist bullshit. Capitalism is a cancer and it should be exterminated.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

So cancerous of you

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Do you think human greed will just evaporate with capitalism? That whomever takes control of socialism will insta-do whatever's necessary to save the planet?

I've just accepted that destruction of the natural world is an inevitability for humanity. I view our efforts like shuffling deck chairs around the titanic. Good luck, though!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Human greed" is a lie sold to you by capitalists to convince you that nothing can be better. Read Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Additionally, even if "human greed" were some kind of absolute constant, the worst thing we can possibly do is structure our society to reward it. If humans were perfectly greedy and selfish, then the ideal society would be one in which the selfish and greedy course of action is also the one that benefits society as a whole. In other words, a socialist one.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

"Human greed" is a lie sold to you by capitalists to convince you that nothing can be better. Read *Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution*

Sure, champ! I'll just ignore thousands of years of human history and the entire world around me because of some book some guy wrote. Mammals, rearing of offspring, social groups, cooperation — it's all a recent exception to the other 99% of our evolutionary history.

You became much more reasonable in the second paragraph, but this is dumb If humans were perfectly greedy and selfish. You need to cut all the extremist revolutionary crap and focus on logical changes that are remotely plausible to the average joe. The average person doesn't want a revolution, and they aren't gonna magically forget a lifetime of anti-socialist propaganda because you comment crazy shit at them. Focus on changes that can be made within capitalism first (e.g. worker coops, mandatory profit/ownership share, wealth caps, UBI) ... Man tankies really are just as mentally ill as the far right. How is the left ever supposed to succeed when we have to combat your mental illness aswell?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Humans can still be a cancer without killing them all. We can CURE cancer cells (maybe in the future). We can MANAGE cancer cells, stopping their destructive appetite for more and more energy (uncontrolled capitalism). Opting for killing the worst of them, but not all + the host. We can PREVENT spread of cancer to other cells (countries), stopping the opportunity of the cancer to live in the future. Eventually the cancer will die out a natural death.

Cancerous might be a hyperbole of our built in greed though. Humankind is a pest on the planet though. We consume too much and adapt our surroundings to us, not us adapting to our surroundings.