World close to 'irreversible' climate breakdown, warn major studies

[Mountain Mule]

From The Guardian:

The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.

Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high.

He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”.

Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants are making astronomical amounts of money.

On Thursday, Shell and TotalEnergies both doubled their quarterly profits to about $10bn. Oil and gas giants have enjoyed soaring profits as post-Covid demand jumps and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sector is expected to amass $4tn in 2022, strengthening calls for heavy windfall taxes to address the cost of living crisis and fund the clean energy transition.

~snip~

Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “It’s a really bleak moment, not only because of the reports showing that emissions are still rising, so we’re not delivering on either the Paris or Glasgow climate agreements, but we also have so much scientific evidence that we are very, very close to irreversible changes – we’re coming closer to tipping points.”

Research by Rockström and colleagues, published in September, found five dangerous climate tipping points may already have been passed due to the global heating caused by humanity to date, including the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, with another five possible with 1.5C of heating.

“Furthermore, the world is unfortunately in a geopolitically unstable state,” said Rockström. “So when we need collective action at the global level, probably more than ever since the second world war, to keep the planet stable, we have an all-time low in terms of our ability to collectively act together.”

“Time is really running out very, very fast,” he said. “I must say, in my professional life as a climate scientist, this is a low point. The window for 1.5C is shutting as I speak, so it’s really tough.”

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It's so depressing to read stories like this, but hopefully we can use this information as a springboard to action and not a reason for despair. It's up to us Democrats. Vote in the upcoming midterms and keep Republicans out of the Whitehouse in 2024!

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. The mighty Mississippi River is drying up even....

Even here in Minnesota where the River begins, levels are lower than in previous years.

In other parts of the United States, the Colorado, the Great Rio Grande, Missouri, are drying up.

The Mississippi is a major waterway transport for Agriculture goods, not to mention River Cruises to historic places like...
Hannibal,MO
Galena,Illinois
Dubuque, IA
Memphis, TN
New Orleans, LA

So much depends on water for our lives. It has been said that the next World War just might be over araeble land and fresh water.

[Random Boomer]

2. True, despair is not a useful emotion....

I find acknowledgment and acceptance to be more on point.

I vote Democrat because it will hopefully win us some benefits in the short-term, for the here and now, this year, maybe next. I don't believe it will make any difference in the long-term of what happens by the end of the century (or sooner). There's no politician, Dem or Republican, who has enough power and authority to completely remake our society, financial systems and infrastructure, much less do it in a few years (assuming that we have even that much time left to effect change, which most likely we do not).

[Mountain Mule]

5. Yes, I tend to agree with you

I just hate to throw an article out there that is so profoundly depressing without adding a glimmer of hope - no matter how small.

Honestly? I think life on this planet - humans included - is in for one hell of a rough ride. I don't think our current civilization is going to emerge from this unscathed - especially since there will be no "emerging" for thousands and thousands of years. These are dark days with darker ones yet to come.

[GenXer47]

3. Russia actually wants global warming

because it will cause the tundra to become farmland.

[Native]

4. They really don't stand to win much from this - in return for some additional farmland,

melting permafrost will degrade infrastructure across 70 percent of Russia's landmass.

[Brenda]

6. I'd say we're already past it.

And yet it seems that most people are willfully blind to the reports and for fuck's sake THEIR OWN EYES. Who has not seen increasing extreme or outright catastrophic heat, drought, storms, floods or temperature swings over the years? No one.

Yet when young people, who have the most to fear, use extreme protest tactics like throwing soup or glueing themselves to artwork in a fashion they know will not actually harm the artwork...cue the indignation, the outright hatred of these poor kids who have a life of hell before them. I've seen people on DU say they are no different than ISIS or the Taliban.

Those young people want the adults in the room to DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, yet we have half-ass or no-ass progress by any nation.

It's really disgusting that the people with power and money and control of the media just keep playing the divide and conquer card to rake in the money and they keep playing dance music while selling us newer, bigger plastic junk and more extreme competitive, crude and ignorant entertainment to go along with the dirt-cheap toxic sludge they call food, biggie style.

[Random Boomer]

9. You call that "extreme protest"?

I call it inane, silly and self-defeating. Stunts like this set back the attempt to make people take climate change seriously. They are worse than doing nothing at all.

[bluedigger]

7. Congrats on 1,000 posts!

[Mountain Mule]

8. Thank You!

It took me long enough, didn't it?