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:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
1.7 million Hiroshima bombs of heat
These imperial units are just getting ridiculous. Can someone express that in type Ia supernovas of heat for us Europeans?
Type Ia supernova: 10^44 joules
Hiroshima bomb: 63 x 10^12 joules
So 1 coal mine is around 10^-24 supernovas, or 1 yoctonova.
To be honest, I won't double check that at all, but will just assume you put at least 10 minutes of effort into this.
I love you.
Zero supernovas of heat.
I see that you are a cosmologists.
Haha. Don't have to be a cosmologist to round that one.
I'll thank you just for getting it. I'm not a physicist, but my dad and a lot of my close friends in my youth were. I'm so glad that the general "well you're cosmology, doesn't matter if your're off a couple of orders of magnitudes" joke still holds up.
And people complain about doomers. We can't even get out of coal and we are talking "first world" nations. How the heck are we going to get off oil and further on natural gas. The fact that coal was not ended by 2000 much less 2020 and looks like 2030 is doubtful, its just crazypants.
The problem with doomerism is that idea that it's inevitable, and you can't do anything about it, even though the decision to burn is very much a human one.
Do you have any numbers or studies to support your claim?
I hear that all the time. I am a doomer and long for meaningful action, even if it makes my life harder.
I don't fly, hardly travel, live very simple without aircon or heating. Don't eat much meat.
I would love to travel. I enjoy driving, I have a thing for combustion engines. I most times sit out the heat and don't even turn on the fan. I like the taste of beef, yet never buy it. I do this despite me believing that it doesn't make much of a difference and it will certainly not save me.
Some rich person will pollute all I save during my life within a few minutes.
For real change, I believe, it must come from politics, not individuals. And forget about company's responsibility, they clearly don't care.
I just don't see this happening. That's why I believe we won't make it.
Yet, this realization has only made me restricting myself harder. Before I believed so, I lead a much more polluting way of life. "'Cause someone will figure it out"
I think like this: Knowing everyone must die one day, still in no way it justifies doing bad.
It's becoming more and more obvious that certain decisions have already been made which we can't walk back from. Those with decision making power continue to make decisions that lead us further down the climate change path. The problem with anti doomer rhetoric is that it fails to recognize that things are already very bad. Climate, ecosystems, societies are all complex systems, and complex systems have feedbacks and lag times. Things are out of our control. Those who don't recognize this are doing harm by working for things which in the end will be fruitless. Doomers aren't saying they have the answers, they're saying that everyone else definitely doesn't either.
That's the thing: we have the answers we need. It's largely a matter of getting into a position of power to implement them. That means kicking off a virtuous cycle of people working in decarbonization, empowering politicians who will do more, etc.
If our only problem was climate change I might have some sympathy for your argument. As you learn more about the total human predicament, you'll come to see that there is no escape from the predicament of overshoot of permanent carrying capacity. This moment in time is uniquely anomalous in the human experience, and no amount of technology will get us out of it.
If you haven't, I encourage you to read William Catton and really digest what he's saying. Then read the limits to growth, some Jared Diamond, and learn about all the other times civilizations have risen and then fell back into dust. Take your time, this is a lot to take in, but don't plug your ears and eyes to the reality we live in. You've got a lot of drive, if only it was focused on what might actually make a meaningful difference.
Been there. Read those. Don't expect to solve every problem in the world, but I can make a difference on a piece of it. That's life.
Its really not for most doomers. There are some that say fuck it but most I know what to do everything they can with the realization that its not going to stop the bad effects (given they are very obviously already happening) or even save us but its obvious things can be better or worse and lets have it as better as it can be.