this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth's atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm).

By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm.

This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million.

"This problem is not going away, and we're moving further and further into uncharted territory, and almost certainly, very dangerous territory."

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[–] Paragone@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

There is a direct powerlaw relationship between CO2 & Earth's stabilization-temperature..

There's a gotcha, though:

Methane is about 82.5x as potent as CO2, at the 20y scale, & it's up, too..

Remember that scientific-paper which was held-back/suppressed until sooo many had vetted the math, that then it was allowed to be, but was attacked by many?

It stated simply that methane lost through leaky shipping ( of methane ), etc, was sooo harmful, that there wasn't any way of justifying continued methane-usage..

The current planetary-equalization-temperature, given the chemical composition of the atmosphere, is over +8C.

All the models which contradict that, & which simultaneously contradict the actual MEASURED temperatures in the still-accelerating punctuation-between-temperate-planet-and-hot-planet-equlibrium-climates, are wrong, no matter how "politically established" they are.

Feynman was right: "the exception proves the model/rule/theory IS WRONG."

At +4C, India becomes mostly-uninhabitable. China has ZERO problem with that.

So does most of California, & Texas, & Saudi Arabia.

+9C is where we're currently anchoring onto, and at this point it's just nihilism ruling the world, lording the final "days" over the subjects-of-the-"titanic"-regime..

Saudi Arabia, obviously, will simply take whatever other-territory it needs: it is a kingdom, not a civil-rights regime.

Who will Texas war against, to take territory permanently from them, when it's becoming uninhabitable?

Somebody, certainly..

Criminally-negligent own-species-icide, is what humankind's doing.. for sake of .. distractions, ideologies, & other "political" drugs/delusions..

===

Here is the paper which ignores the methane, including only the CO2 ( of the part that I read, of it )

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19798

Adding-in the methane puts planetary-equlibrium-temperature, on the numbers I ran a year or 2 ago, between +8 & +9C.

Now, of course, the numbers are worse..

===

.. shruggeth ..

EITHER a portion of humankind is going to evolve, fast, relentlessly, drivenly, for most of this century,

XOR The Great Filter will force-extinguish this world's human-category kind from Universe.

I believe that that same species-"puberty", aka The Great Filter, controls ALL such populated-worlds, forcing maturation-or-extinguishment on every last one. Given the ratio ( who WON'T tolerate change/growing-up, and if it means killing the world, then they're going to at-least be the rulers of the death of our world, breaking evolution from transforming the world, .. vs .. all who honestly-will evolve, no matter what it costs ) on this world, I'd be surprised if more than a small percentage of worlds which reach the Industrial Revolutions survives the subsequent Great Filter..

when .. when adult-technology combines with animal/tribal/political population who now utterly-dominates their own ecology: the previous condition, nature always recovered, is sooo ingrained, that unconscious-mind WON'T ALLOW that consequences/accountability COULD EVER touch it, & it's willing to kill the entire world, to prove that it doesn't have to grow-up/change: it, unconscious-ego, is "god", in its own "reality"..


If nothing-else, it certainly is educational to be caught in a world that is devoutly deranged, ideological, rejecting empiricism for "religious" ( political ) reasons, even to the point of everybody must die..

good motivation to break the reincarnation-prison that "life" is, the perpetual cycle of getting-caught-in-messes, life after life after life..

Not compatible with the New Age religions, that view, obviously..

but when you're on a bus being driven by a murderous gang of drunks, & you can't break their control of the vehicle, then crashing is inevitable..

one becomes tired of reincarnation, after it has abused one enough..

The Nature paper's the single most-important document in the whole climate-issue: powerlaws rule nature, & discovering what the powerlaw is that relates atmospheric-CO2 to planetary-equilibrium-temperature discards all the bullshit-models ( seriously: leaving-out Greenland ice-melt until the 2020's, & wondering why there's "The Cold Blob" all around Greenland, & why the oceanic-predictions don't work right.. that isn't science, that is politics ),

but until the methane also is included, even it is mis-assessing, significantly.

The more people who get the underlying-powerlaw, who get the law ruling this planet's punctuation-between-temperate-to-hot-climate, which has only begun, the better.

The stuff about reincarnation, .. it was reincarnation-memories which broke all the Abrahamic-religions, for me: evidence broke the ideology of those religions, falsifying 'em all.

Took years to adapt-to, so-great a worldview-change..

I'm only leaving that in, because among White culture, such truth isn't usually spoken, & if anyone needs that perspective, to break the assumptions/ideology of Western habitual belief, then maybe just seeing a different perspective will give them some leverage.

_ /\ _

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 27 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Right now, China is the problem. Historically it's been the USA, but right now it's China.

The upcoming problem is India.

More specifically the problem is coal. China and India are ramping up their usage of coal whilst the rest of the world is phasing it out.

Yes, those countries are also building clean sources of power, but coal is about 55% of their primary energy each. 80% of Chinas primary energy comes from fossil fuels and 90% of India's. Their rate of new coal outstrips their use of wind and solar.

The earth cannot support the huge populations of these countries unless they are powered by something other than coal. Even oil and gas would be a huge improvement. These two governments hold all the power on this issue.

[–] PigsInClover@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The problem is these numbers are based on the country of origin of emissions and don’t take into account the demand/consumption that is driving those emissions. China is a huge exporter and the US is a major importer of Chinese goods. US consumption is driving a lot of China’s emissions

By not being a manufacturing economy, we’re able to offset the appearance of our emissions when the data is tracked this way

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

China is the one choosing coal to fuel it's exports. It's the government that has to change policy.

[–] Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is one place where tariffs are reasonable policy. Coal costs less than renewables but has a higher environmental cost. Products made using coal energy cost less because of this externalization/excess environmental cost. Tariff can be set to account for the environmental cost making goods produced with renewables price competitive with those produced with coal.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago

Yup. Also the whole reason China produces the majority of the rare earths isn't because there's some cave that only exists in China they come from. It's because processing rare earths involves toxic waste and it's cheaper to do it when you're willing to just dump the toxic waste on the ground, which is what they do in China.

Environmentally motivated tariffs makes a lot of sense, if companies aren't gaining a competitive edge by being environmentally irresponsible, they will start being more responsible. Trying to appeal to the morals of corporations isn't going to get anywhere, there needs to be a financial incentive for them to do things right.

[–] Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does the USA still lead in per capita emissions?

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, but it's coming down. Also, it doesn't really matter.

Fact is, the planet doesn't care about per-capita. It cares about absolute tonnes of CO2. When 3 billion are increasing the burning of coal, 350 million reducing their coal use isn't really significant.

[–] Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

There have been five previous mass extinction events (that we have evidence of) and the planet and life are still here. Planet doesn't care at all.

Per capita does matter because non-USA citizens are not going to voluntarily accept having a lower standard of living so USA citizens can keep their higher standard. If the Chinese population consumed as much resources per capita as the USA it would take four planet earths to sustain us.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago

I'm not saying they need to have a lower standard of living. I'm asking them to have a better standard of living. One without air pollution. Generate the power without burning coal.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah the attitude of "let China fix this" is really annoying. Don't people want to be the world leaders in fixing a global problem?

Also "just let China fix this" means only China will have all of the skill experience with the technology that we'll all be using in the future. Why would you want that? It's just laziness plain and simple.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago

It's not "let china fix this". The technology can be developed anywhere. It is being developed everywhere.

However nobody can stop China burning coal other than Xi Jinping. He is the world leader that can make that decision. All anybody else can do is try to convince him.

[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago

Just an extra 35% since 1960. WCGW? /s

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 34 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] riquisimo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago

I thought this was from "don't look up," but they respected him too much for that.

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Welcome to the post-developed world, folks. Hope you made good use of that free fossil energy to make the world a special place for every living being on the planet...

[–] arin@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

When was the last year co2 didn't get worse ?

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

2020 since the pandemic shut everything down. There was a one year respite.

Basically at this point the only thing that might make things go down would be something on the scale of covid but deadlier that would make the ultra wealthy scared enough to keep things shut down long term.

[–] BenjiRenji@feddit.org 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Before that it was the 2008 financial crisis.

I wonder if Trump's tariff chaos is causing enough economic shrinkage to bring another year of slight slow down.

We really need to decouple economic activity from CO2 emissions or we're just left hoping for the global economy to be in peril.

[–] arin@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ironically tariffs on Imports would be good for cutting global emissions. But people will starve and economy collapse.

[–] BenjiRenji@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I rather reduce emissions without people starving, but radical environmental laws are apparently a no go... radical tariffs on the other hand.. all good?

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

The "let them eat CO2" policy. Yeah, it's insane, global warming is a solvable problem. We have the technology needed already, we're just lacking in a willingness to change. The powers that be are going all in on stagnation while facing a crisis.

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The last thermal maximum had rain forests at the poles and it was estimated that carbon was being emitted far more slowly. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ldLBoErAhz4

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Rain forest at the poles? What did the North Pole look like at that time?

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

We aren't totally sure. Rainforest isn't the correct term but it was probably lush and green. The evidence we had is vegetation on Antarctica approx 90 million years ago. That also has the caveat that 90 million years ago, Antarctica was further north and didn't intersect the south pole. North Pole today is an ice sheet, so probably was a thinner ice sheet back then too.

[–] acidrobot@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

This is depressing