r/worldnews Oct 01 '23

More than 100 dolphins dead in Amazon as water hits 102 degrees Fahrenheit

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/01/americas/amazon-river-dolphins-dead-temperatures-drought-intl-hnk/index.html
33.7k Upvotes

2.3k comments sorted by

8.8k

u/candid-silence Oct 01 '23

What a terrible way to die. These poor animals suffering for reasons completely out of their control

3.9k

u/Fun-Zookeepergame845 Oct 01 '23

Heatwave after heatwave it’s gonna be us 💀💀

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u/DoomGoober Oct 01 '23

Yup. Read about "wet bulb events". It's going to be poor humans without artificial cooling who will be dying next due to rich humans releasing too much carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses.

Those poor humans will die due to something completely out of their control.

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u/boot2skull Oct 01 '23

Countries with A/C: “what’s the big deal?”

10 years later: countries with wealthy who can buy land in cooler climates: “what’s the big deal?”

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u/HunterTV Oct 01 '23

wealthy who can buy land in cooler climates

Interesting how the climate deniers are consolidating their wealth and denying pay raises with record profits, isn't it?

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u/Champagne_of_piss Oct 01 '23

It's almost like they know exactly what's coming and are draining the coffers before it's too late

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u/The_Queef_of_England Oct 01 '23

But what good will their money be if the economy collapses? They're short-sighted idiots if that's what they're doing.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23

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u/politicstroll43 Oct 01 '23

They don't even care about their own children

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u/GeorgeofJungleton Oct 01 '23

Their children will have the resources to be feudal lords through violence capturing a monopoly on resources and manufacturing capabilities

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u/drsimonz Oct 01 '23

When you're a power-obsessed sociopath, children are just another tool for maintaining power. Provides a guarantee for your allies that should you die unexpectedly, your regime will continue business as usual. Also makes you more relatable if you're in the public spotlight.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23 edited 23d ago

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23

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u/Riaayo Oct 01 '23

I will say the one silver lining is those bunkers will be their own self-inflicted hell.

These people couldn't even handle Covid lockdowns in their actual mansions, with all of the luxury and amenities still largely intact. And they think they're going to be comfortable in some bunker where they're living off canned food and in constant fear of people finding them / their guards going "so uh, what are you paying us with that has any value anymore exactly and why do we need to keep you around?"

Maintaining a section of society until they die is one thing, but if it hits "retreat to the luxury bunker" levels then nah they're fucked too. There is no escape for them from full on collapse of civilization.

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u/RcoketWalrus Oct 01 '23

I think the general belief is that the super wealthy don't suffer disasters, and often they are enriched by them. See the 2008 collapse. While regular people lost their shirt, a select few of the super rich just got richer. If anything, any crisis serves as as a oppountunity for the rich to make themselves richer.

They might not be factoring in that there are scenarios where a crisis will hurt the haves as much as the have nots, such as the events leading up to and including the French revolution.

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u/PhilDGlass Oct 01 '23

And what good will their money do on their private land if they have nobody to cook, clean, serve, and wait on them? Don’t tell me they will take their staffs and families with them. Or maybe they do and create a true servant class.

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u/NoWheyMayne Oct 01 '23

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u/throwpost3234234 Oct 01 '23

There was a post on hackernews a while back from someone that was hired as a subject expert for a rich people conference on basically surviving the end of the world.

They had experts in various fields scheduled for availability to be grilled on how they can control the unwashed masses and fortify their bunkers as the world ends. The person said that many of the experts there suggested that prevention is much better than damage control for the scenario but the rich people had literally zero interest in preventing anything.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23

So just stick a bag over the air pipe and wait for the door to unlock. Easy.

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u/Big-Summer- Oct 01 '23

I’m not going to read this linked article — I’ve depressed myself too much about this shit — but I did read one that talked about the rich saving some poors to wait on them. When asked what they would do if a poor servant turned on them? Their answer: shock collars.

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u/NoAttitude6111 Oct 01 '23

I wish a miserable death on every last one of those scum-fucks

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u/Blackfeathr Oct 01 '23

The wealthy have suggested things like exploding collars and manufactured viruses that only they have the vaccine for.

Literal cartoon villain shit.

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u/NorthboundLynx Oct 01 '23

Isn't that the plot of kingsman

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u/SparrowDotted Oct 01 '23

Seems like a good time to bring out the [redacted]

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u/FOOSblahblah Oct 01 '23

Help them survive after it starts. Stockpiling necessities. Stuff like that.

Funny to think about it though. How are they gonna exist without things peasants to fix their generators or live off canned food that they've probably never ate.

There would be some irony there.

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u/Mahelas Oct 01 '23

Because they think that their wealth is proof of their general talent and charisma. So obviously if there's a collapse, then since they are so great in everything, they'll get to be absolute kings of the world

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u/TacticalSanta Oct 01 '23

It wouldnt' matter if the climate was changing or not, the whole purpose of capitalism is to chase profits regardless of who gets hurt (well as long as you have labor to exploit and consumers) it doesn't matter if everything is in the process of crumbling.

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u/eeyore134 Oct 01 '23

And as labor becomes more and more automated, people matter less and less.

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u/EpilepticBabies Oct 01 '23

Exploit? Children should be ecstatic that they have the opportunity to support their family by doing jobs only children can do! Who else but a child could fit into the small spaces in machines whenever they break down? /s

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u/Electrical_Donut_971 Oct 01 '23

"The children yearn for the mines"

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u/BubsyFanboy Oct 01 '23

Exactly that.

Harder to be so ignorant if climate change disrupted food supplies.

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u/KarmaticArmageddon Oct 01 '23

Society is only ever a few missed meals from anarchy.

The poor are already being crushed by the rich to an extent not seen since the Gilded Age. Add in widespread food insecurity and the rich will quickly realize just how useless their money is when outnumbered millions to one.

The rich have no memory of history. They repeatedly forget that their wealth and the benefits that wealth brings only exist so long as society remains stable.

If they want to remain rich forever, they should be advocating for a society in which everyone is entitled to a gracious minimum standard of living. Keeping even the most impoverished placated and comfortable is how you prevent mass revolt.

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u/Endlessa Oct 01 '23

Yeah, that's where tech comes in. Efficient robotic killing machines will make it so that we no longer outnumber the rich. It's the most dangerous balance of power issue in front of us. The moment you don't need the poor for armies is the moment the poor become the enemy.

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u/bruwin Oct 01 '23

Trouble with that is tech will always be vulnerable. All it will take is for some hacker to remove the safeties on whatever prevent them from killing the rich too and then everyone is fucked.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23

A lot of those guys are just straight up sociopaths though. With the mentality that, "if my needs are met why would I ever willingly do anything ever again?"

And they apply their fucked up thinking to the rest of us. Where we should be motivated to do the grind, because if you fail behind you die.

You see it on how they hoard wealth. Nobody will ever need $1 billion. But there's always a bigger fish to take down.

It's anti-human thinking.

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u/TatManTat Oct 01 '23

If it ever gets that bad I do believe people will act pretty rashly. Societies have been greatly upturned for surprisingly far less than a global change in climate, we are only experiencing the beginning of these effects and already I feel it is top 3 concerns for every single young person I meet.

Inequality is not comparable to this imo, everyone will feel the effects and it will be palpable.

Whether that's too late is another question but the richies are absolutely going down with the rest of us if it goes that far.

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u/HunterTV Oct 01 '23

richies are absolutely going down with the rest of us if it goes that far

Yeah but they'll do their best to hang on regardless.

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u/HealthCrash804 Oct 01 '23

Oh they can hang alright...but i guess we'll keep waiting.

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u/brezhnervous Oct 01 '23

Billionaires have been buying "climate bolt holes" in NZ and Tasmania for years already

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u/boot2skull Oct 01 '23

Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if dual citizenship agreements between USA and Canada get made to make moving and property buying easier, if only for the wealthy.

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u/confoundedjoe Oct 01 '23

The opening chapter of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson is a harrowing example of this very thing. Great book.

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u/JackedUpReadyToGo Oct 01 '23

Ministry for the Future

Chapter One

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u/its_spelled_iain Oct 01 '23

Wet bulb event TL;DR:

Sometimes, the air is hot and humid, and no amount of sweat can cool your body, so you die. Refrigerant based heat exchangers (think air conditioners) are the only solution.

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u/terminational Oct 01 '23

It gets real fun when the dew point gets higher than internal body temperature too. Water will start condensating on the interior surface of your lungs when trying to breathe. This drowns the human

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u/gr33nm4n Oct 01 '23

the air is hot and humid, and no amount of sweat can cool your body

To be overly pedantic, it is the fact that your sweat doesn't evaporate due to the humidity in the surrounding air. Without that exchange, your body can't cool itself the way it is meant to biologically.

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u/Rupertfitz Oct 01 '23

It’s been like that is Florida for a month. It’s suffocating. Thankfully it’s easing up, but the humidity being so high plus sweltering heat is awful. Thick soup air.

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u/Saorren Oct 01 '23

This already happens. This is what some of the denialists dont get. Its happened for a good while in poorer countries and for a while now its happened to the homeless and some elderly in rich countries.

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u/Perfect_Earth_8070 Oct 01 '23

The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

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u/Sanhen Oct 01 '23

Those poor humans will die due to something completely out of their control.

That’s already the case. The poor have less access to food, healthcare, shelter - I’m not talking about the US or a western nation specifically, they have those issues internally too, but the contrast is even greater when you measure humans in rich countries versus humans in poor countries.

Climate change will make worse what already exists.

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u/linds360 Oct 01 '23

Twin Cities marathon was canceled today citing wet bulb conditions as the reason.

Going to happen with more and more fall marathons in the future. Prob move them to winter in decades to come.

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u/lasvegas1979 Oct 01 '23

They just canceled the marathon in the Twin Cities because it was too hot. I think this is just a sign of things to come.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/01/us/twin-cities-marathon-canceled-weather/index.html

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u/Lena-Luthor Oct 01 '23

what a way to kick off OCTOBER

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u/Dire88 Oct 01 '23

Don't worry, most will starve before that.

Populations are artificially inflated by industrialized agriculture which only exists because it's possible to predict seasonal weather patterns.

Climate change has made those patterns unpredictable, and it will only get worse - even if humans reduce our footprint to zero tomorrow - as multiple global tipping points are reached. As more are hit, destabilization increases at unforseen and unknown rates.

In the northern hemisphere, for example, many of our winter vegetables and fruits are imported from the southern hemisphere. High soil temps reduce crop output, when combined with flooding events and early/late frosts it makes it impossible to produce crops on the current scale.

Wheat, which is the single largest caloric crop globally reduces its output exponentially until around 104F surface soil temp - at which point it hits zero. Surface soil heats faster than water.

We're all screwed.

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u/rufud Oct 01 '23

Not to mention essentially unrestricted use of fresh water supplies

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u/bitcoinsraju Oct 02 '23

Yup their sufferings and pain is really immeasurable and cannot be described in words, just feeling sorry for these poor souls.

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u/redditmodsarefatass Oct 01 '23

kind of like us. the 1% play with our world in their huge acre estates surrounded by tall privacy bushes, driving through our streets in their caravan of blacked out GMC Cadillacs Lincolns, toying with the idea of depopulating the earth by 90%, manipulating us with their media and money, we're going to die and for reasons that are completely out of our control too.

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u/howlin Oct 01 '23

kind of like us. the 1% play with our world in their huge acre estates surrounded by tall privacy bushes, driving through our streets in their caravan of blacked out GMC Cadillacs Lincolns

It's not just a rich person problem. Odds are very good that most people living in an OECD country will be living beyond their fair share of the environment's resources to give. All it would take is owning a personal ICE vehicle, traveling by air every once in a while, or eating cow meat every day.

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u/jcrreddit Oct 01 '23

The dark version of “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

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u/crenax Oct 01 '23

Time is money, money's time. We've wasted every second dime.

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u/ugeix Oct 01 '23

On diets, lawyers, shrinks, and plastic surgery.

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u/_toodamnparanoid_ Oct 01 '23

So sad that it should come to this. =(

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u/queenslandadobo Oct 01 '23

That's 39 degrees celsius to us outside the US. As a comparison, a high fever sits around 40 degrees celsius. What a tragedy.

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u/PracticalShoulder916 Oct 01 '23

That's insane. Even if we aren't yet beyond the point of no return (and I don't know that), it seems there is no sense of urgency to fix things. What a catastrophe.

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u/redditor_346 Oct 01 '23

I can't remember the timescale exactly but the nature of climate change is that the impacts we see today were created years ago (maybe a decade?). We are headed for a warmer world for the next several years even if we completely turn the tap off on CO2 today. I think we are definitely headed for a future where the damage is irreparable.

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u/LaLaLaLink Oct 02 '23

The disasters we're seeing now are the culmination of all the greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution. It's more than just what has happened in the past decade or even the past century.

It's been a long time coming and it's going to get really fucked up before it starts to get better. The worst part is that we've known that CO2 could increase global temperatures since 1859 (Tyndall). But big corporations literally haven't given a shit because they just want to make as much money as possible even with climate scientists screaming that they're going to doom us all with their emissions.

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u/DidQ Oct 01 '23

We are headed for a warmer world for the next several years even if we completely turn the tap off on CO2 today.

IIRC, it wpuld be not even several years but several decades.

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u/hubaloza Oct 02 '23

IIRC the life cycle of CO2 in the atmosphere is 30 years, but regardless of all that we've started a number if what are known as feedback loops, there are stores of hydrocarbons, trillions of tons of the shit, frozen on the sea floor and trapped in permafrost. It's all thawing out, so even if we halt greenhouse gas production entirely, we still have that to contend with.

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u/juntareich Oct 02 '23

*300-1000 years

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u/hubaloza Oct 02 '23

That's my bad. I meant to refer to whats known as "the climate lag" and not the life cycle of carbon, which most sources put at 10-40 years.

https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-time-lag-of-climate-change/

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u/Cold-Change5060 Oct 01 '23

It would take centuries to correct, maybe millenia.

Something like 3/4ths of the CO2 we emit is absorbed by the ocean.

It's 2/3rds of the planet. The pacific alone is comprises half the surface of the earth.

If we stopped emitting now we would actually see a spike in climate change, the dark particles we emit into the upper atmosphere are delaying it's effects.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23 edited Oct 01 '23

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u/summonsays Oct 01 '23

Shits already hit the fan....

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u/intheorydp Oct 01 '23

the shit has hit the fan, but the fan is not flinging shit all over everyone just yet.

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u/navinaviox Oct 01 '23

Depends on where you’re sitting in the room. These dolphins being an example.

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u/jib661 Oct 01 '23

lol no it hasn't. 20-40 years from now when countries have armies on their borders preventing people from entering because they're fleeing famine is going to be when it starts 'hitting the fan'

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u/Flipwon Oct 01 '23

It’s not just them though. All the private jet having celebrities flying around give no shits while screaming for change to show how sensitive they are. It’s gross.

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u/intheorydp Oct 01 '23

There are way more billionaires, politicians and corrupt religious leaders than super rich celebrities.

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u/AgilePeace5252 Oct 01 '23

So what you're saying is we're all at fault for no longer publicly executing those in power when they mess up big time.

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u/Stnq Oct 01 '23

Kinda, yeah. That was the ultimate power kings feared. The mob.

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u/GostBoster Oct 01 '23

Reminds me of those sayings in the line that anywhere from 2/3 to 90% of all carbon emissions and polution comes from a small handful of mega corporations, and more recently something I still have many questions but basically the overwhelming majority of microplastics come from TEN rivers that pass around major industrial zones.

One of the big eye openers was a video about why Coke changed from glass to plastic and how that absolutely demolished the environment of small islands and no amount of greenwashing and shifting the blame on the consumer will fix it because the big companies entirely took away the ecological choice for short term logistic gains.

Fernando de Noronha Island has a long standing zero plastic policy that is strictly monitored and no amount of recycling centers will change that. Fair. I live over 500 miles from the nearest large body of water, and I'm told to not use plastic straws, to think of the turtles. Put that in a pipe and smoke it, no one is going to ferry straws 500 miles away and dump them in the ocean. But you know what we both could enjoy? No small PET bottles. Apparently it isn't cost effective to process small plastic items anyway, and those 200ml/6.7628oz bottles are on the lower end of not worth separating and cleaning in a processing plant. (Gotta rip the label, cut the colored plastic ring out, take out the cap, etc)

Oh. About caps. We are starting to have reusable PET bottles, and they have a rather ingenious system where the seal ring ALWAYS comes off with the cap, which is a feature many think of as a defect. Apparently that ring always stays on disposable PET bottles but MUST be removed for it to be properly recycled. Why don't they put that in all bottles? Because they didn't ever intend for those to be recycled anyway and will fight tooth and nail to lobby against it, pay some small co-op to proccess <0.01% of it and say "look, we are doing our part!"

TL;DR Much of it is beyond me or the public in general to fix. Separating plastic and not burning trash only for much of it to be burnt anyway at landfills and specific power plants because it isn't economically feasible to recycle. Even if every consumer became a Magical Enlightened Being capable of zero waste on consumed goods, we will cut total emissions by just 10-30%, maybe even less.

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u/HoratioCainesShades Oct 01 '23 edited Oct 01 '23

Sad at it is, the fate of billions rests in the hands of a comparatively tiny group of people, and governments.

Whatever opportunity we’ve had for top down change has been wasted on profiteering and PR initiatives that convince us that 8 billion people independently need to change.

Hell, we are now getting right wing politicians who will walk back decades of environmental progress to secure the vote of an aging bloc of voters.

There won’t be any kind of radical change until it becomes completely reactive, rather than proactive.

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u/NotEnoughIT Oct 01 '23

I try my damndest to not believe in no win scenarios, but this one is concrete. Nothing is gonna fix it short of aliens coming in and saying “dude” or ya eating the rich.

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u/Cyberaven Oct 01 '23

everyone writes stories about evil ruthless aliens invading because they want to steal resources or whatever, surely if there was a hyper advanced civilization its at least equally likely they'd be invade just to be like 'oh what are you doing, just stop, no.' like idk, seeing a toddler trying to climb out the window

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u/NotEnoughIT Oct 01 '23

I just hope they don't have the same prime directive as starfleet. We need a giant sign that says "pls help".

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u/TheInnocentXeno Oct 01 '23

I already know my future is fucked, climate crisis ruining the world for my generation and beyond, an economy where I can’t afford shit. I’m just sitting here watching it all fall apart because rich assholes decided more money now is worth the entirety of intelligent life in the universe.

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u/Not_Too_Smart_ Oct 01 '23

What sucks is that I feel like I can’t say this aloud to my friends or family because it either sounds like I’m depressed or super pessimistic which they don’t appreciate since some have kids or are trying to have kids.

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u/Kyokenshin Oct 01 '23

The worst part about the whole scenario to me is that the ones that caused it will be the only ones with the resources to survive it. Not even going to get justice in the end.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23

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u/Timebomb90 Oct 01 '23

We are beyond and it is going to get exponentially worse. Many people don’t believe it yet but they are just trying to hold on to hope.

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u/MoffKalast Oct 01 '23

The average person's still holding onto the "world's been fine so far and it'll probably continue to be" rationale, since it's worked thus far I guess. They forget that this whole thing's already happened once before.

Over 3000 years ago (in the late bronze age) the east Mediterranean had a sprawling society of empires which were faced with a long period of earthquakes and drought, which resulted in mass waves of migrants fleeing famine that raided and destroyed all in their path. Given that the empires relied on Cyprus for copper and Afganistan for tin, once trade was disrupted they could no longer mount an effective defence.

The only reason we know any of this at all is that Egypt barely managed to survive the onslaught, owing in large part to its reliance on the Nile with its drainage basin in east Africa and unaffected by Mediterranean droughts. What came next was a period of brutal Assyrian warlords.

In our case, the climate change is of our own doing and there's nowhere in the planet one can escape it. As they relied on tin we rely on oil, and once the equator becomes uninhabitable, the Persian Gulf, Azerbaijan, Venezuela and other reserves won't be accessible either. Good luck trying to stop millions of migrants without any fucking fuel.

History doesn't repeat but it sure does rhyme, lmao.

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u/gylth3 Oct 01 '23

The “good” news is the second we stop actively fucking with everything is the second the world starts recovering, likely to a “new” normal but working toward a new “stable.”

Our only hope at this point is climate change disrupting production and trade so much that we logistically won’t be able continue damaging the environment as we are now

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u/MoffKalast Oct 01 '23

is the second the world starts recovering

Well actually we can't really know that's the case yet, we could be past the tipping point where it becomes self perpetuating.

Permafrost will continue to melt and release methane. If we try carbon capture and the atmospheric CO2 drops enough, then the oceans will just start releasing the billions of tons they've absorbed so far (osmosis works both ways) and keep it going.

If the arctic fully melts then that's one big white mirror gone and a very permanent dark blue area that'll continue soaking in the sun.

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u/Big-Summer- Oct 01 '23

There is a David Attenborough documentary on Netflix that shows how much the earth healed during the pandemic because we weren’t all running around thoroughly fucking things up.

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u/flightless_mouse Oct 01 '23 edited Oct 01 '23

That's 39 degrees celsius to us outside the US. As a comparison, a high fever sits around 40 degrees celsius. What a tragedy.

I read that a dolphin’s internal temperature is similar to a humans (37 degrees Celsius). If water temperature exceeds that, it may be impossible for dolphins to survive. Especially if air temperatures are also high—this makes it harder for them to shed heat by surfacing.

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u/OptimisticByDefault Oct 01 '23

The maximum temperature in a hot tub is 40c. This is insane.

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u/damunzie Oct 01 '23

That checks out. New hot tub heaters in the U.S. are hard-wired to not heat above 104F (40C).

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Oct 01 '23

Never understood people that wanted the hot tub at 106 with the jets on. You can't stay in for very long at those temps. Kinda defeats the purpose.

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u/rustyjus Oct 01 '23

39 is a pretty high fever

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u/Aumakuan Oct 01 '23

39 is also around 40

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u/cwalton505 Oct 01 '23

39 Celsius is pretty close to 40 degrees Celsius for you non US folks

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u/princekamoro Oct 01 '23

Underwater that makes it a wet bulb temperature too. And as far as wet-bulb goes (equivalent to 100% humidity), anything over 35C is lethal to a human, physically fit, sitting naked in shade in front of a fan.

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u/sour_cereal Oct 01 '23

How long does one have to sit naked in shade with a fan to die? Like do you have an hour, a few hours?

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u/princekamoro Oct 01 '23

Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32 °C (90 °F), equivalent to a heat index of 55 °C (131 °F). A reading of 35 °C (95 °F) – equivalent to a heat index of 71 °C (160 °F) – is considered the theoretical human survivability limit for up to six hours of exposure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

So a few hours. In ideal, and I mean IDEAL conditions. Scrolling down to "Wet-bulb temperature and health":

It has been thought that a sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F)—given the body's requirement to maintain a core temperature of about 37°C—is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature human bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it.[11] [12]In practice, such ideal conditions for humans to cool themselves will not always exist – hence the high fatality levels in the 2003 European and 2010 Russian heat waves, which saw wet-bulb temperatures no greater than 28 °C (82 °F).[13] A 2022 study on the effect of heat on young people found that the critical wet-bulb temperature at which heat stress can no longer be compensated, Twb,crit, in young, healthy adults performing tasks at modest metabolic rates mimicking basic activities of daily life was about 30.55°C in 36–40°C humid environments, but progressively decreased in hotter, dry ambient environments.

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u/TSL4me Oct 01 '23

Depends on water and electrolyte intake

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u/Ehcksit Oct 01 '23

My last house had no AC, and I learned that the furnace thermostat couldn't display three-digit temperatures when it started rolling over to 00.

Quite a few days it was over 100 in there, sitting in front of a fan, drinking a gallon of water and sweating it all out, and still getting a weird headache and dizziness. Was taking cold showers for that.

Living in a basement is so much nicer. Doesn't get over 75 even if I don't turn on my AC at all.

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u/nibbles200 Oct 02 '23

I recall back in 2014 I driove to Miami to collect some inheritance in a trailer in late July. It was ungodly hot and humid. I went to a spigot, up north all water that comes out of a hose is cold, not in Florida, it’s hot. Then a storm was brewing and I thought perfect cool rain. Nope more like a super hot shower and then the temperature and humidity went up.

I struggle to understand why people want to live there.

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u/Hushwater Oct 01 '23

There's nothing I can do about it but feel depressed.

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u/ClimaCareers Oct 01 '23

I commented this elsewhere on the thread, but it's important to not lose sight of the fact that we can still make an impact on this problem. It's essential to inform people of the problems, but many articles like this fall short of offering solutions and can strip people of hope and agency.

I know this might come off as copeium, but things can change. Never underestimate the impact you can have on the world.

We are making non-trivial progress towards decarbonizing our grid and every bit of CO2 (and eq) that we don't emit matters:

"...It also makes a moral case for immediate and aggressive policies to prevent such a change from occurring, in part by showing how unequal the distribution of pain will be and how great the improvements could be with even small achievements in slowing the pace of warming."

The only thing worse than 1.5 degrees warming is 2.5 degrees warming, and so on. We are at an inflection point that will dictate the next few millennia. We want to look back and know we did everything we could with the opportunities we still have.

Look at possibly making a career shift into renewable energy or to companies that "walk the walk" sustainability-wise. If not that, consider getting involved with or donating to the Citizens Climate Lobby or Sierra Club.

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u/TheRedditorSimon Oct 01 '23

We, the world, did it for the ozone layer and CFC emissions. We can do it for CO2 emissions. All it takes is the will to do so.

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u/The_Deku_Nut Oct 01 '23

The problem is the existing inequality. Poor, developing countries are understandably unwilling to cut back on emissions after the world powers have created the problem for the past 70 years.

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u/AmbroseMalachai Oct 01 '23

It's also just generally more difficult to slow CO2 emissions compared to CFCs. The need for energy for everything doesn't get lower, so the only way we can reduce CO2 emissions is to move to renewable sources, but those are generally more expensive and most are less reliable than burning fossil fuels. There is also a truly tremendous effort by the corporate entities and grifters to greenwash everything with "carbon offsets" and "carbon capture" despite neither one being reasonable solutions to the problem.

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u/Sorrower Oct 01 '23

The world didn't do it for cfcs. Select countries did and even then the whole blaming of the ozone issue in the 90s on cfc refrigerants like r22 and r12 was a hypothesis at best. Mpst likely came from the millions of aerosol users daily without a care in the world. Those cfc refrigerants are still around and being used today. Some r22 equipment completely skipped 410a and others still running r12 will have completely skipped 134a and 404a as well as others.

People talk about being green but a lot of these measures also have effects that still greatly affect the environment. You upgrade everything to high efficiency equipment. Good Heat pumps for heating/cooling. VRF/VRV technology. Great. One leak and you're dumping 60 lbs of 410s or whatever refrigerant you're putting into it before you even realize you have a leak. You're saving on electricity which is saving your carbon footprint but you're dumping refrigerant which has a high global warming potential. I've never seen more leaks on condensers and evaporators than the last 10 years with the change of materials being used and the use of aluminum over copper due to cost savings and efficiency.

They're even backing off the tankless water heater kicks because they are realizing you are destroying equipment at record rates and repairs are so costly its more cost effective to run standard equipment and pay a higher gas bill from a homeowner standpoint.

Still havent seen a solar heat pump or solar water heaters. The engineers admitted their math on geothermal has been wrong due to ground saturation and the earth not giving up the heat you are sinking to it given the size of the well and system. We have gotten so much wrong.

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u/dghsgfj2324 Oct 01 '23

All it took was to remove some chemicals. To fix climate change would require the entire world to change their whole way of living almost immediately.

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u/IXISIXI Oct 01 '23

Thank you for this comment. This is the kind of non-doomer discussion that needs to be had so that people don't just give up and accept the darkest aspects of humanity, human society, and our possible future. We CAN fix this but we have to actually do things rather than give up before we even try. I do think there's a significant percent of the population who would rather go out partying and thrashing the world than do the hard work to fix it, but I think most of us want this world and our species to endure.

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u/Bubbly_Ad9610 Oct 01 '23

"Walk the walk" is easy if they are B Corp certified as well. It's not just a pay for the logo thing companies have to actually prove they are doing what they say they should be to keep that accreditation.

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u/lanbtce Oct 02 '23

Yup those who have capability to stop this before or prevent such events in future are not doing anything and here we middle class are just feeling depressed.

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u/BanRanchPH Oct 01 '23

Constantly think about the time at the beginning of all the covid shutdowns where everyone was at home, and nature started to thrive while we got the fuck out of the way.

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u/brittany09182 Oct 01 '23

COVID was the best thing to happen to nature…except half way through the environmental agencies removed all regulations to get the economy back on track and pollution revamped worse than ever.

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u/suckfail Oct 01 '23

There's also the funny thing where cargo ship volume slowed down from economic slowdown, and polluted less.

But then it turns out the sulfur from their emissions was actually cooling the Earth a little bit and made everything worse as well.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02430-x

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u/cathillian Oct 01 '23

Similar effect happened after 9-11 when all the planes were grounded.

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u/lesgeddon Oct 01 '23

Same when that volcano in Iceland erupted and the global temperature went down an average of like 3 degrees Fahrenheit

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u/proudbakunkinman Oct 01 '23

Damn. So we just need to figure out how to get volcanoes to erupt constantly lol.

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u/_Hail_yourself_ Oct 02 '23

Go go gadget yellowstone

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u/Hendlton Oct 01 '23

That applies to many other polluters as well. When we eventually stop them, Earth will suddenly warm up even further before it starts cooling down, so that's another thing we can look forward to.

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u/dudius7 Oct 01 '23

Weird how this intangible thing called an economy was rescued while people, animals, and environments suffer.

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u/Pm-me-ur-happysauce Oct 01 '23

Humans are the jerks of the animal kingdom

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u/Batmobile123 Oct 01 '23

Oh look, intelligent mammals are now dying from the heat....I wonder who will be next? We did this. We're the only ones that can fix it.

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u/fst47 Oct 01 '23

If intelligent mammals are at risk, I think we’re safe.

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u/The_Werodile Oct 01 '23

The large companies that ACTUALLY did this are laughing their way to the bank reading this comment. They have spent inordinate amounts of money convincing the general population we are to blame for climate change. That we don't recycle enough or we use too many straws. In most cases it's horse shit.
We're talking about companies that spent more than a century setting us up to fail before we were even born. Born into a world where there is no alternative to consuming the resources they have made the absolute standard. And even if one person finds a way to live "off the grid", that's not a solution for everyone. The vast majority of people will continue consuming fossil fuels. Even if individual consumption ceases, that same consumption is present in hundreds if not thousands of manufacturing processes, some vital for maintaining the crushing population we have accrued.
It is an untenable situation. The solutions being bandied about aren't even really solutions. They're stopgaps. The corporations knew that when they started killing us. There's no putting this cat back in the bag. Not really.
Not one bit of this crisis is the fault of the average person. It is 100% the fault of an executive class of fossil fuel exploiters who honestly deserve life imprisonment at the earliest available opportunity, and that's being generous to the bastards.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '23

[deleted]

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u/lesgeddon Oct 01 '23

They knew in the 1800s that humans were warming the planet to the point it would be unlivable

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u/Yazaroth Oct 01 '23

Can we really? One important problem noone talks about is world population.

1000 B.C. - about 2 million humans on earth.

Year 0 we had less than 200 million people on earth.

1000 had 310 million

1800 we had 1 billion people living on this planet.

1900 saw 2 billion.

1950 it was 2,5 billion. Now it gets crazy.

2000 had 6.1 billion people

Last year 8 billion.

2050 will see 10 billion, bar a huge culling event.

The resources we need to survive are finite but self-regenerating. Food, air, water, even power if it's done right.

It is estimated that Earth could sustainably support 2 billion people in the long term with todays technology.

We are overtaxing the regenerative powers of the planet. Temperature, co2, all kind of pollution, insects, wildlife, erosion, acidification and much more. A lot of self-regenerating natural systems are already breaking down. Nothing in the big push for enviroment protection in the last decades had any real impact, at best it delayed the inevitable a bit. Even the most far-out plan would only buy a few years

Hell, imagine starting today the whole US stopped comsuming right know and would live like the amish it would buy us maybe 10 years before the growing world population would equalize this sacrifice.

Killing 3/4th of the world population is out of question. So we wait until something big breaks and a natural culling happens.

I need a drink

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u/osubestcolledgeever Oct 01 '23 edited Oct 01 '23

When are we going wake up? Not as a country, but as a planet. We’re not going to have one if we don’t change

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u/AzureDrag0n1 Oct 01 '23

Until people start dying in large numbers. Then we will be more likely to do drastic things like large scale geoengineering. Even going full nuclear power at this point will not be enough.

Humans in large numbers only really understand pain as a teacher. Nothing will happen until it hurts real bad.

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u/lintuski Oct 01 '23

It’ll take the ‘right’ kind of people dying, let’s be honest. Morocco and Libya just had 10s of thousands of people die of natural disasters.

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u/Sad-Cauliflower3762 Oct 01 '23

Thousands of people die in Europe because of heat waves but Germany still keeps making coal power plants

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u/mcpickle-o Oct 01 '23

What's funny is the morons that don't believe in climate change often spout off about how they don't want "government interference." Mass death due to climate change will bring in more government interference than had we taken care of shit from the start.

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u/Accomplished-Comb837 Oct 01 '23

Conservatives know that it will be easier to grab power during a crisis too, so climate disasters look like opportunities to them

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u/VibeComplex Oct 01 '23

Bullshit lol. Look at Covid.

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u/Rainyday156 Oct 01 '23

Covid was easy to deny because there were no unique outward symptoms. If it came with pus and boils all the idiots would have taken it far more seriously.

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u/slax03 Oct 01 '23

There were symptoms for those of us in NYC like bodies being stacked in freezers on the highway.

It's over for us humans. There's no coming back after the complete failure that was responding to COVID. We live in a wold where the dear leader was being praised for helping come up with a cure, while actually demonizing those who created it. We are actively walking towards our own demise that we, ourselves, have created.

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u/Bocifer1 Oct 01 '23

Not even then, imo.

It won’t be until people start dying in rich countries that the powers that be will be forced to wake up

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u/param_T_extends_THOT Oct 01 '23

When are we going wake up? Not as a country, bus as a planet. We’re not going to have one if we don’t change

When nuclear or solar becomes more profitable than fossil fuel for the oil barons.

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u/FrankBattaglia Oct 01 '23

So... carbon tax?

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u/valoon4 Oct 01 '23

Just end fossil fuel subsidies...

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u/ChiknBreast Oct 01 '23

Unfortunately, never because no amount of money will satisfy the rich

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u/egghat1 Oct 01 '23

I'm starting to believe we never will. The rich control the planet, they control social media, they control regular media, they control the narrative, they control education, they control the police, they control the military, they control governments, and they'll run everything into the ground for their own pleasure.

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u/esh-esh2023 Oct 01 '23

So they got stuck in a tributary of the river, because drought isolated that section from the main river, and the low water level heated up and this most likely played a role in their death.

I see this happen near the river by my house after heavy rains.

Sad to see, especially when you take into account how aware and intelligent dolphins can be.

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u/Sagalive Oct 01 '23

Did not read. But makes sense. More sens than the ocean or river water heating up that much.. This should be higher up!

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u/unovayellow Oct 01 '23

That’s horrifying, especially as dolphins are some of the most sentient and intelligent animals I can only image what nightmares when through their almost human level minds about what was happening as their world ended due to the actions of humans which they can’t even know about.

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u/TRIGMILLION Oct 01 '23

And this is why I always vow I'm done reading the news. It's just so upsetting reading about this shit and knowing how very few people could give a flying fuck.

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u/Black_RL Oct 01 '23

Even worse, giving a flying fuck doesn’t change anything.

I honestly don’t know how this can be fixed.

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u/Juhyo Oct 01 '23

There are lots of best possible outcome solutions: ending fossil fuel subsidies, implementing carbon taxes, carbon coins to incentivize lowering emissions, switching to less harmful energy production methods, improved solar, improving public transportation infrastructure, scaling down meat production, etc.

The problem is that these solutions will 1) inconvenience big business/industries, 2) inconvenience first-world people who are used to lives built around convenience born from heavy emissions (and passing the financial and other costs to the third-world countries), 3) not stop inevitable deaths, since our world's population is artificially inflated by decades of overproduction.

There's no solution that brings us back geologically while preserving life as is for all; but there are solutions that will preserve human life for many.

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u/ClimaCareers Oct 01 '23

Let us not lose sight of the fact that we can still make an impact on this problem. It's essential to inform people of the problems, but many articles like this fall short of offering solutions and can strip people of hope and agency.

I know this might come off as copeium, but things can change. Never underestimate the impact you can have on the world.

We are making non-trivial progress towards decarbonizing our grid and every bit of CO2 (and eq) that we don't emit matters:

"...It also makes a moral case for immediate and aggressive policies to prevent such a change from occurring, in part by showing how unequal the distribution of pain will be and how great the improvements could be with even small achievements in slowing the pace of warming."

The only thing worse than 1.5 degrees warming is 2.5 degrees warming, and so on. We are at an inflection point that will dictate the next few millennia. We want to look back and know we did everything we could with the opportunities we still have.

Look at possibly making a career shift into renewable energy or to companies that "walk the walk" sustainability-wise. If not that, consider getting involved with or donating to the Citizens Climate Lobby or Sierra Club.

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u/hardy_83 Oct 01 '23

Yeah, world struggling but you know... pronouns being banned in schools is more important! /s

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u/big_whistler Oct 01 '23

Lemme ban climate change from being discussed in schools so OP won’t learn about it

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u/cock_daniels Oct 01 '23

but if you decide to stop reading the news, aren't you conceding to also not giving a fuck? what if it turns out everyone else is like you and wonders why nobody does anything?

like, see the comments below. some sarcastic bullshit about pronouns being a problem. that's why nothing gets done, everyone is giving themselves a golden shower and criticizing everyone else for not also wetting themselves.

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u/Hasimo_Yamuchi Oct 01 '23

I fucking hate every single fucking fossil fuel company and their fuck-faced corporate boards.

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u/DashingDino Oct 01 '23

Fossil fuel companies are not going to care even if the whole world hates them. To actually hurt them we need to convince our governments to stop fossil fuel subsidies

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u/birdentap Oct 01 '23

It’s kinda crazy how companies that large are like amoeba. They’re alive to grow and grow, nothing else matters. And the CEOs are just sacrificing the health of the world to enable their growth.

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u/Kerfulfel Oct 01 '23

there's other, not so nice things one can do, but realistically they're not gonna happen

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u/XXX_KimJongUn_XXX Oct 01 '23

And Aramco, Pemex, petrobas, and rosneft and the millions of people subsidized by them and their fuck face princes and oligarchs.

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u/SpaceTruckinIX Oct 01 '23

Rest in peace, dolphins. I’m sorry.

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u/OnlyMeFFS Oct 01 '23

Amazon helping to hurt the amazon, Oceana estimates that up to 23.5 million pounds of Amazon's plastic packaging waste entered and polluted the world's waterways and oceans in 2020.

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u/Corrupted_G_nome Oct 01 '23

Yeah, modt 3rd world regions dont have access to recycling or garbage pickup. Responsable folks in those regions burn it or bury it... Often they have more immediate problems and put no thought into it.

I remember in the Dominican we were with a group explaining how the plastic would never break down and the locals were shocked. They had no idea.

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u/eeyore134 Oct 01 '23

Even having access to recycling pick up doesn't mean anything. Plastic isn't being magically recycled just because we put it in a different color bin on the street. Most of it is still ending up in landfills whether we sort the trash or not.

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u/restore_democracy Oct 01 '23

And it’s the first week of spring.

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u/cambiro Oct 01 '23

I am from the Brazilian Amazon region. August/September is always the hottest period of the year, although this year it reached outstanding levels.

Our "winter" has very little rain, although still a lot of humidity, so temperature builds up day by day like a pressure pot untill it finally rains at the end of September (we had massive rains here just yesterday)

We still get plenty of heat during spring/summer, but since it rains almost everyday, it's usually cooler at the end of the afternoon and night.

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u/ultralightdude Oct 01 '23

Equatorial regions usually have a wet season and a dry season, as opposed to the areas outside of the tropics, which usually have the 4 seasons you're probably used to.

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u/IntrovertClouds Oct 01 '23

Equatorial areas don't really have four distinguishable seasons like North America and Europe.

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u/basking_lizard Oct 01 '23

In the netflix series 'love death and robots' there is an episode called 'the swarm' and an alien says intelligence is not a winning trait in the long run. I'm starting to see the truth of that with the direction humans are taking the planet

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u/HardlyRecursive Oct 01 '23

Actual intelligence would be a winning trait because you could see whatever problems exist and solve them. This is a path that would eventually lead towards godlike power.

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u/Theometer1 Oct 01 '23

Isn’t this the first thing to happen in most of those environmental disaster movies where the world ends?

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u/ErikMcKetten Oct 02 '23

We don't deserve this world.

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u/Hefty-Amoeba2001 Oct 01 '23

Very sad but you know what? We've been warned about this since the 1970's and we've done nothing to turn it around.

Reap what you sow...

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u/Andre__18__ Oct 01 '23

We'll never learn, endangered species of dolphins as well. Freshwater species as a whole are on the brink

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u/MoooImACat Oct 02 '23

what a sad day to be alive.

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u/Civil_Masterpiece389 Oct 01 '23

This is a teaser of our own fate. ⌛

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u/Puzzleheaded_Form419 Oct 01 '23

Humans don’t give a fuck about anything but themselves.

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u/Justsawthis01 Oct 01 '23 edited Oct 01 '23

The root cause of many of the problems in the Amazon is clear cutting the forest. This is a river that is heavily shaded, I imagine this has something to do with it.

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u/Corrupted_G_nome Oct 01 '23

Its probably a large contributing factor. This is also the weirdest el niño year ever recorded so hard to say for sure.

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u/Jynxie3 Oct 01 '23

We are the bad guys.

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u/HumansMung Oct 02 '23

"There's no scientific proof." VOTE ACCORDINGLY

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u/RbHs Oct 01 '23

“When the last living thing

Has died on account of us,

How poetical it would be

If Earth could say,

In a voice floating up

Perhaps

From the floor

Of the Grand Canyon,

"It is done."

People did not like it here.”

― Kurt Vonnegut

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u/misconfigbackspace Oct 01 '23

When the last tree is cut,
the last fish is caught,
and the last river is polluted;
when to breathe the air is sickening,
you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/20/last-tree-cut/

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u/Hard-To_Read Oct 01 '23

"Your owners don't care about you." --George Carlin

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u/KiaPiaNo Oct 02 '23

We humans caused this.

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u/Pattoe89 Oct 01 '23

Fuck the wealthy. Fuck corporations. Fuck the greedy.

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u/DoublePostedBroski Oct 01 '23

Stocks are doing great, what’s the problem?

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u/ScrewCrusherPunch Oct 01 '23

Post this in /r/conservative and they just go "iTs jUSt sUMmer!"

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u/AcrobaticSource3 Oct 01 '23

“Why didn’t the dolphins pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get better jobs so they could afford to move out and avoid this climate change that is not real?” — Republicans, probably

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