Even if we achieve full decarbonisation, the damage already done won't go away. This would be a last resort, though because no matter how much research you do, it'll never be possible to really predict what would happen.
I think it's funny that you can't really prep for this. It's going to be a slow collapse, slowly churning and making it impossible for anyone to survive. As critical infrastructure fails, food, water sources dry up, and the only solution anyone is capable of giving: "Try biking to work". Realistically it should be "get ready for an apocalypse." No amount of prep will leave you untouched.
the only solution anyone is capable of giving: "Try biking to work"
I hate this so much, too. We keep seeing these pushes for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint, but it's not the individuals who are responsible for climate change; it's the corporations who continuously skirt emissions laws and lobby for looser regulations on their industries who are polluting the planet en masse. We could all bike to work for a year, and it wouldn't even make a dent to offset the environmental damage caused by a single luxury cruise ship in that same span of time.
actually the largest source of emissions in the US is personal vehicles. I have no idea where everyone got twisted around thinking their emissions amount to nothing.
Many of us live in very rural areas with limited public transportation and really no safe or practical way to bike anywhere except within the confines of the small rural village/city. I drive 10 miles to work each day and back (20 miles total). There is no way I could do a bike even if I were younger and not disabled.
When I was young my small village had a couple of markets where you could buy basic food and supplies. Those have all disappeared and we have to drive 10 - 20 minutes each way to get to a decent grocery store (aside from a couple gas station options).
The system has been collapsing for years. I hate it.
I didn't think this was true, but according to the EPA in 2021 it is
Personal transport road vehicles are the largest category of transportation which is the largest source of greenhouse emissions, accounting for roughly 15% of total us emissions.
The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars, medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans. These sources account for over half of the emissions from the transportation sector. The remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector come from other modes of transportation, including commercial aircraft, ships, boats, and trains, as well as pipelines and lubricants.
Heavy duty trucks is broad, and includes semi trucks, buses, tractors, etc
I'd be curious to see those commercial vehicles broken out, and the question answered for how much impact personal transport has on us emissions
Any vehicle exceeding 26,001 pounds is considered heavy-duty. Examples include city transit buses, mobile cranes, cement mixers, refuse trucks, and tractors designed to pull refrigerated trailers, dry vans and other equipment.
Read further down and it breaks down transportation emissions too. 58% from personal vehicles. Transport is the largest source of emissions, and personal vehicles are the largest source of transport emissions. Especially all our damn trucks.
I mean I don't think it's useless. I just think we all fucking know who the biggest polluters are. And how we still don't have carbon caps is insane to me. Edit: fair enough check blazers comments
This isn't my area of expertise, but as I understand the present climate crisis, it's actually misleading to say we're "nearing the point of no return" as so many of these kinds of articles do.
Every single day we pass a brand new point of no return because every day we keep pumping fuel into positive feedback loops that are already in motion. Not only will biking to work not do shit; but even if humans just went extinct right now and all industry/pollution/etc came to a 100% stop, the climate will still continue to (albeit more slowly) spiral into new extremes. What we're feeling today is the 'find out' stage of climate inaction decades ago; and the damage we're doing today won't be be tangible for decades to come.
Best case scenario is the coolest of an array of hellscapes - we're in damage control mode. Rather, we should be in damage control mode; what we're actually in is grind-away-at-our-9-to-5-while-we-watch-oligarchs-consume-our-planet mode.
Why do you think the Saudis are pouring so much resources into these experimental line cities? Even they know that the system they helped create and benefited from is unsustainable, and building a self contained city in the middle of the desert is them testing the hypothesis of, can you build a habitable zone for humans in the worst case scenario of environments?
It also ties into why there are so many billionaires who are obsessed in advancing space travel as quickly as possible. Even they are starting to get nervous about the Earth they have created and will have to live in.
It's terrifying. I think one of the problems we face in getting people to demand change is that the collapse so terrifying and unthinkable that people don't allow their minds to dwell on it for long.
I'm sure this guy has pissed off more than his fair share of powerful people in the past, so I find it slightly hard to believe that he wouldn't have considered the safety of his family prior to venturing on the most flamboyant slap in the face to the most powerful man and known assassin in his country...yah know??
Yeah, but....it's Putin. Even if it weren't, it's kinda 101 for your opponent to go after your family if he can't get to you.
If this was for real, I don't understand why he even took the deal. I expected if Prigozhin was going to revolt, he was fine with all or nothing. He already went traitor on the guy who windows people all the time for less. You don't regain anyone's respect after that even in normal circumstances, so I would have thought he'd really have nothing to gain and everything to lose from standing down.
I can't remember where I read that Prigozhin has a history of using histrionics to get his way. Based on what happened, I have no problem believing that he was just bluffing for a better deal from Moscow, and I think he probably got it.
Military operations in Rafah could lead to a slaughter in Gaza. They could also leave an already fragile humanitarian operation at death's door," said U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths. "We lack the safety guarantees, the aid supplies and the staff capacity to keep this operation afloat.
"The international community has been warning against the dangerous consequences of any ground invasion in Rafah. The Government of Israel cannot continue to ignore these calls," he said in a statement.
Talks involving the U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar on a Gaza truce ended without a breakthrough on Tuesday as calls grew for Israel to hold back on its planned Rafah assault.
"My sincere hope is that negotiations for the release of hostages and some form of cessation of hostilities to be successful to avoid an all-out offensive over Rafah," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Tuesday.
"That would have devastating consequences," he said.
The war in Hamas-run Gaza began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. In retaliation, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza that health authorities say has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians with thousands more bodies feared lost amid the ruins.
More than half Gaza's 2.3 million people are sheltering in Rafah, many of them penned up against the border fence with Egypt and living in makeshift tents. Griffiths said they are "staring death in the face."
"They have little to eat, hardly any access to medical care, nowhere to sleep, nowhere safe to go," he said. "I have said for weeks now that our humanitarian response is in tatters."
One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, according to two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators.
Aspartame, used in products from Coca-Cola diet sodas to Mars' Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, will be listed in July as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" for the first time by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organisation's (WHO) cancer research arm, the sources said.
The IARC ruling, finalised earlier this month after a meeting of the group's external experts, is intended to assess whether something is a potential hazard or not, based on all the published evidence.
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume. This advice for individuals comes from a separate WHO expert committee on food additives, known as JECFA (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization's Expert Committee on Food Additives), alongside determinations from national regulators.
However, similar IARC rulings in the past for different substances have raised concerns among consumers about their use, led to lawsuits, and pressured manufacturers to recreate recipes and swap to alternatives. That has led to criticism that the IARC's assessments can be confusing to the public.
JECFA, the WHO committee on additives, is also reviewing aspartame use this year. Its meeting began at the end of June and it is due to announce its findings on the same day that the IARC makes its decision public - on 14 July.
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume.
So I'm getting the sense this is about as meaningful as "Known to the state of California to possibly cause cancer".
I'm really not a fan of this extreme level of caution when it comes to public health warnings. There comes a point when people will simply stop listening to you entirely if you constantly tell them that everything they do has some 0.00001% chance of harming them. Then, when you try to warn people about genuinely concerning risks, people will simply ignore you.
A few years back there seemed to be a plethora of studies which were "Consuning <insert hot liquid> increases chance of throat cancer".
You would have to go to the source report (if lucky the bottom of the article) to find out it increased the risk by 0.1% - 0.5%.
When you factor in only 2,300 people in the UK (70 million) get throat cancer each year and the biggest risk factor was smoking and non smokers are pretty much within statistical error bars.
It makes the report uninteresting and only useful in a "someone already looked into this" way and yet a month would go buy and there would be a new article .. who knew chicken soup causes cancer...
A weird, super-hot celestial body is breaking records and challenging astronomers' understanding of the boundary between stars and planets.
The object, called WD0032-317B, is a brown dwarf — a type of bright, gaseous "protostar". Brown dwarves typically have a similar atmospheric composition to Jupiter but are 13 to 80 times larger. At that mass, these objects begin to fuse hydrogen isotopes in their cores. However, they aren't quite massive enough to spark the kind of full self-sustaining stellar fusion that powers stars like our sun — think of smoldering charcoal rather than a lit wood-fired oven.
Brown dwarfs usually burn at around 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius). That's fairly cool compared with most stars, whose surface temperatures reach about 6,700 F (3,700 C).
But WD0032-317B, which is 1,400 light-years from Earth, is not like most brown dwarfs. In a paper published to the preprint database arXiv and accepted by the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers measured the object's surface temperature and found it was a blistering 13,900 F (7,700 C). That's hot enough for the molecules in its atmosphere to fall apart into their component atoms. It's also several thousand degrees hotter than the surface of our sun.
The thing about an old president is that even if he grows senile, there's the entire rest of their administration that generally have the same goals in mind as them.
idk who rumor mk Ronnie is, but presidents assign who is on their team, most presidents assign people who are educated on what they're assigned to, and most presidents receive advice from those people on their topics of expertise in the first place.
Yeah you found the mobile user. “Most” is past-tense, now. But you know, I’m old so I obviously know nothing and haven’t been around to witness watergate and on.
Oh, I see, sorry! What I mean is the days of most presidents receiving advice from educated, and also, being advised by graduates who buy the corporate agenda aren’t exactly “receiving” and what they are receiving is questionable. This is rushed because I’m running late, will be willing to continue later.
Again, my apologies. Was thinking n about this as I worriedly shopped for food and realized I can’t afford to eat!
Reagan had Alzheimer’s, and Nancy governed by astrology.
The “adults in the room” under tfg’s (He who shan’t be named) refused to govern responsibly, with General Kelly not only “losing” migrant children, but also shuttl*
Eta: shuttled then to a private adoption agency in which he was heavily invested, iirc. Idk if this is my device, 503 errors or both! Again, my apologies.
Nancy did definitely set Reagan's scheduling with the advice of an astrologer to the extent that the astrologer decided the exact date of the 1985 Geneva Summit, though Nancy partially admits it was a coping mechanism due to the assassination attempt on him, I don't think it's likely that it influenced the actual decisions being made considering that it was only leaked that the astrologer had an iron-grip on his scheduling to the point where they had to be consulted for Reagan to fly anywhere.
As for tfg, yeah, I mean I can't really say much, dude literally hired his son's girlfriend and shit so fair lmao
Though I also think it's fair to say that at least Biden seems to have educated officials where it matters, one of the pros of electing a guy who sees himself as having to do the actual presidential duties 'by the book' and that it hopefully reminds people of what an administration is supposed to be.
This also might be beside the point, but the snopes article on the matter say that there are definitely signs of Alzheimer's during Reagan's presidency according to one of his children as well as a journalist who seemed to imply he would have these sort of 5 minute "where the fuck am i" moments, but that the doctors checking up on him during presidency insisted after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's that even with the hindsight 'they never detected any evidence that his forgetfulness was more than just that' and 'there was never anything that would raise a question about his ability to function as President,'
I would say that they probably have had ample opportunity to come clean if they were simply trying to make the it seem like the Reagan years weren't a result of Alzheimer's
I hear you! I’m skeptical of the doctors’ claims, wrt Reagan; they may not want to discredit themselves, due or not. And I’ma skeptic in general, since working political memory, beginning with the Watergate debacle (ik it’s biased, but Rachel Maddow had an interesting reminder of the Agnew charges and how DOJ kept him from running, facing multiple charges).
I’m not arguing that Biden doesn’t have credentialed advisors, I’m arguing he’s too far right, and that’s evidenced by his voting record/Ms Hill’s complaints during the Thomas confirmation hearings. A singular recent example is the rail worker strikes, and that he supported industry, this “always been a union guy.” Yeah, in the Pullman Car Company union sort of way (10,000 Men Named George).
Biden is definitely more right than I want him to be, and he might even hide that he's more than that via the appealing to negotiating with the other side (though there are various motivations we can attribute that to, like wanting to highlight the point of the US political system or to show that the other side doesn't want to negotiate)
The unionbusting is definitely atrocious, and I don't really think he could de-escalate anything Taiwan, and the protectionism turns me the hell off, but outside of that I think he's doing good for a guy who was initially invited in as Obama's vice to appeal to the more conservative dems (*simplifying a lot)
The Dixiecrats?! Yep. I’m sorry, I just can’t get behind him (or Kamala). Wasted though it may be, I have to vote my conscience, whether that’s third party or write-in. I just wish (yes, ik) that everyone else who is dissatisfied would do the same.
Pfff I'm sorry I didn't mean dixiecrat i just meant like, 'way further to the center according to the American overton window' democrat type. I would still say he does a lot in terms of not making the country fall apart, does get a lot of deals through that matter for the average American (Build Back Better Act for example), has paved the way so that America definitely gets $15 minimum wage if it continues to go progressive, which I do think means having to get the democrats elected for the near future, as the overton window seems to also be decided by what president is in office (what with hatecrimes rising under tfg)
I definitely understand and appreciate your perspective. “American center” is economically right, ostensibly socially left, and that’s cool; they’re just willing to let us all starve to death on the streets, for “bipartisanship” and business, and that’s a real problem. I mean, Nancy didn’t even want to stop her party from insider trading or even bring it to a vote. These are just one example of a couple of serious issues, but we’ve all seen them wring their hands and claim they can’t do anything. I’m just disgusted with the whole lot.
It’s the illusion of choice, like one may give a toddler: would you like to have bacon or sausage with your breakfast? It’s the same product, different flavor.
Maybe in the worst funded public school system breakfast ever conceived …
Bacon is a cured pork- usually belly, and typically sliced.
Sausage is a seasoned ground meat… er… product… that might be cured or smoked or not, might be stuffed into casings or not, might (usually, unless specified,) be pork. Or not.
The two products are vastly different. And, in point of fact … Biden and the other two are also vastly different.
You might have had a point if you had said “it’d be like asking if you want cheap sausage or dogs shit.” I’ll let you figure out which is what.
Typical liberal. I’m left of that but thank you for the pedantry. It’s still pork and that goes to the wealthy and corporations, is the point. I’ll let you figure out which group works for the commoners.
This is actually what I find funny about conservatives. They paint someone like me as way extreme left anarchocommunist or something and its like. This is rediculous. Im just left of center and the party I vote for is just right of center. Your party is the one so extreme you see center as left.
I'm leftist too and would love for someone other than old centrist men to run the country but saying Biden and Trump are the same is just ignorant. One is a straight up racist, misogynist fascist who has done irreparable damage to the country, and the other is at least somewhat competent and has enacted policies like the COVID relief stipend and pausing student loan debt payments. Yes, he also is a shill for big companies and should be doing way more. But it does make a difference for millions of people. All you do by treating them as the same is discourage people from voting, and that voter apathy is what got us trump, and could get us desantes. Short of a political revolution, that still is our best way to enact actual change. Plus, those things aren't mutually exclusive.
So what's the solution? Again, voting is the only real way to get any change done right now, and while it's minimal, I'd rather have a politician that has a minimal good effect vs none at all. The right thrives on voter apathy, they want you to feel like both sides are the same so they can take power, strip away voter rights, and stay in power - exactly what's happening in conservative states like Florida and Texas.
Trust me, I want there to be another option, some sort of large-scale protest or revolution. But in lieu of that, the least we can do is make sure the minimal amount of damage is done.
Everyone who thinks a third party vote is wasted and holds their nose to vote for the establishment candidate could actually try voting third party. Robert Reich endorsed HRC at one time and he currently urges us to vote third party.
Last time I voted third party, trump got elected. So until we at least get something done about the supreme court I'm not doing that again.
Telling people to vote third party in the current political atmosphere is just trying to divide a party's votes. You can say you voted on your principles from as high a tower as you want as the world burns when the worst case scenario happens.
Why is that the option, though? The majority of people who complain about the choices probably know who they'll vote for even if it's not a great choice, but how are these 3 the absolute best our country has to offer? Who's pulling the strings to force this choice down our throats?
In the end, the fault lies with the structure of the democratic process itself. The system of party delegates who then choose the presidential nominee from each political party, the first past the post electoral system by state (instead of a nationwide popular vote system)... These are all ways to effectively make elections in the US less democratic. Looking back at the founding fathers and which social and economic class they represented, the conclusion is that this supposedly flawed democratic system was implemented by design, allowing them to put a hand on the scales and tip the balance of power in their favour. Compare this electoral system with the representative democracy of western European countries for example, and you'll see some differences.
By buying out news media they control the narrative. Now they're coming for the platforms to control the narrative of public discourse
There's protection for these things from government ownership, because these are how democracy works. If you control the flow of information (or worse, convince them of false facts), you can warp the consensus in a certain directions
One side is advocating all sorts of crazy shit (much of which they don't actually want) and spreading easily consumed nonsense to justify it, and the other side is pointing at them and going "this is who will be in charge if you don't go with us"
This whole thing is a performance - sure, they're actually competing and have slightly different goals, but all this fighting over social issues is just a way for them to act freely on the issues that actually matter. They don't actually care about abortion or trans people, they care about the money.
They just use hot button issues so they can give us a choice between people who are going to lie to our faces and screw us over, and we'll fight each other over them instead of attempting to actually change anything. The effects may matter for us, but no matter who we choose-they'll win and we'll lose.
When someone gives you a false choice, the only right choice is to attack the contrivance that took away your choice - we need to take back our media and organize
Monied interests. It’s a symptom of the system, give me a specific example and I can give you a specific group, but in general it’s the trending direction of the system
IDK, I think in systems. Maybe it’s an occupational hazard
The main fear with an old person is the instability it could cause if they grew ill. But the other two options are guaranteed instability. So I think I'll take my chances.
Castro kept her promise to repeal the ZEDE laws that allowed Honduras Próspera to establish its private libertarian city-state on the island of Roatán. Congress unanimously agreed that the ZEDEs represented a breach of Honduras’s sovereignty.
Thiel and his band of libertarian ideologues weren’t going to go down without a fight. Honduras Próspera launched an $11 billion ISDS case against the government of Honduras, claiming that its repeal of the ZEDE laws violated the terms of existing international treaties. That amount, $11 billion, represents about two-thirds of the government’s annual budget.
Honduras Próspera’s case has been roundly condemned all over the world. Elizabeth Warren and thirty-three other Democratic representatives wrote a letter denouncing the proceedings and calling for the elimination of ISDSs. The US magazine the Atlantic described the case as “neocolonial.”
Despite this condemnation, the case has not made international headlines. With the ISDS system so riggedly in favor of wealthy nations and powerful corporations, Castro’s government faces a difficult road ahead.
The ZEDE's which as I understand it, is like a free trade area/zone in the west but on steroids. Basically, investors can buy their own miniature nation to govern within Honduras, protected by Honduras but can't be repealed for at least 50 years. Now that Honduras is ousting their corrupt government officials, they obviously repealed the law establishing ZEDEs.
So now, investors are suing Honduras in what is going to be essentially a "court" of investors (ICSID, UNCITRAL or whoever) that will likely rule in the investors' favor (as they usually do).
It's like this was taken out of a dystopian novel.
I think the author makes some good points. I’m currently mortified at what’s happening in Gaza; the ridiculous forced relocation that isn’t feasible which will inevitable lead to the deaths of thousands of innocents is horrifying, and shows you that the Israeli military is going too far in its response.
But, holy fucking shit, abducting some 20 somethings from a rave, raping them, then parading their naked bodies around as you chant “Allahu akbar” is a completely separate fucking ordeal, and you’re delusional if you think those people “deserved it” because the rave was held on stolen ground. (another bizarre issue that makes me dislike the modern state of Israel - just fucking stop stealing land from these people, holy shit)
There is a mentality there that is just completely opposed to what I would consider the civilized world (yes, tankies, the civilized world - and, no, spare me your whataboutisms). Hamas literally fights for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of its own Caliph; a state in which they’ll be permitted to abuse humans and commit whatever atrocities they want - just like all of these Islamic caliphates.
I stand by all the innocents on both sides, above all. But, getting to the perpetrators, as much as I dislike the modern state of Israel, I possess no burning hatred for them as I do Hamas. They are animals.
Fuck I really hate this timeline…
Edit: Just to clear up my point, I’m arguing that Hamas does not seem to be fighting “for their freedom”, or anything noble. They’re fighting for the right to be monsters, and are using innocent people in Gaza as human shields to accomplish that. Fuck Netanyahu for propping them up in the first place, the piece of shit…
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