Since last July, Earth’s average temperature has been at least 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

As global temperatures spiked to their highest levels in recorded history on Monday, ambulances were screaming through the streets of Tokyo, carrying scores of people who had  collapsed amid an unrelenting heat wave. A monster typhoonwas emerging from the scorching waters of the Pacific Ocean, which were several degrees warmer than normal. Thousands of vacationers fled the idyllic mountain town of Jasper, Canada ahead of a fast-moving wall of wildfire flames.

By the end of the week — which saw the four hottest days ever observed by scientists — dozens had been killed in the raging floodwaters and massive mudslides triggered by Typhoon Gaemi. Half of Jasper was reduced to ash. And about 3.6 billion people around the planet had endured temperatures that would have been exceedingly rare in a world without burning fossil fuels and other human activities, according to an analysis by scientists at the group Climate Central.

These extraordinary global temperatures marked the culmination of an unprecedented global hot streak that has stunned even researchers who spent their whole careers studying climate change.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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      5 months ago

      It amazes me how long the messaging is muted. Permafrost started releasing methane in the twenty teens and folks still seem to think we will keep it below 1.5 or even 2 if we stop emitting.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Climate scientists straight up said they don’t want to talk about the higher temperature cases because they think people will just zone out.

        In other words the bulk of us are not expected to survive that scenario.

        So in true human fashion we’re going to work like we’re limiting it at 2 degrees “because it has to stop there.”

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    2027: Atmospheric Fireballs Incinerate Thousands, Scientists Warn Climate May Be Unstable

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    5 months ago

    But have you considered corporation’s rights to use the equivalent of a small country of electricity on the latest money making boondoggle?

    Do you know just how much cheaper you can make things for in a third world factory that doesn’t have to obey our stringent environmental regulations, and then shipped halfway across the world on a big dirty old boat? Those are important savings that we could be passing onto our most valued customers - the shareholders!

  • thisNotMyName@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Who could have guessed??? Anyway it’s important to think about the economy now, but only short term of course! /s

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Obligatory reminder that mother nature has killed civilization before and can do it again whenever she wants.

    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I hate that I’m part of the problem. I’m a human, and humans are parasites. We burn through the resources and destroy the things we have. I cannot go somewhere else and be a “good” human because we’re all on the same destructive bus.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        We don’t even have the power to stop it. If we elected a radical green government in any one free democracy today, it wouldn’t slow down any other country or foreign corporation. For example we’re not stopping things like burning the Amazon without military intervention at this point and that would likely cost just as much climate damage as burning the Amazon.

        At this point I’ve unbuckled my seat belt and I’m hanging half way out of the car so I can at least have some fun when we go over the cliff.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I will admit that we’re unlikely to care if civilization ends. Because it’s very likely we’ll die in the first wave.

        • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I know this labels me as a bad person, but I can’t really root for us anymore. We were handed dominion over paradise, but it was never enough, and even now, as the writing is on the wall, most of us lament our plight rather than the innumerable species, different but not inferior to homosapien, living in generational homeostasis that we’re going to take down with us while singing woe is us.

          I reject rooting for such a vile home team, merely because it is the home team.

          I take infinite solace knowing that while we will decimate surface and shallow water life, even our toolbox of horrors can’t sterilize our mother, and after she’s dealt with us, she will heal in just a couple million years, nothing to her 3.8 billion year old story of life, and paradise will be restored, until the next macro-cancer evolves at least. We weren’t even the first, though we were the first that we know of with a choice. The Carboniferous period gave way to an ice age mass extinction due to trees doing the opposite of what we’re doing, capturing too much carbon before the life that could decompose them efficiently had evolved. This is where much of our lovely coal comes from.

          Wasn’t their fault. They were trees. We can do better, we know better, our brightest have been begging us for a century to heed the data, we just won’t stop.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    We can’t see or judge the tipping point anymore because we already passed it.

    It’s like looking for that highway road sign without realizing you drove past it half an hour ago.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Deniers will never see it and climate scientists will never admit it because people will just zone out.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        Deniers are the people in the car who saw the sign and didn’t tell anyone

        Scientists are the people in the car who told everyone about the sign they saw 30 minutes ago but everyone ignored them and didn’t believe them.

  • Railcar8095@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I love how my boomer father complained for 15 minutes about how fucking hot it’s been of late, to then just add “… And for sure THEY will say this is all climate change” and then explained how golf courses were better for the environment than forests because they have more green surface per unit of land.

    I usually rebuke, this time I’ll let old age do it’s thing

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Somebody was trying to tell me how golf courses manage water better than nature. They absolutely could not understand that a golf course in the middle of the desert has obliterated nature and is diverting water from the larger ecosystem.

  • DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    I’m commuting by bike, consuming less, composting everything, recycling,and doing all sorts of other shit, but these rich assholes gotta make a huge profit so here we are. It’s infuriating and depressing but what can I do? Just fucking die from heat stroke I guess.

    • b161
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      5 months ago

      We literally need to start composting the richest arseholes.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    And lots of fauna and flora of actual value will be lost, but neither humans nor their beloved piles of metal and plastic shite will be counted among them.