"the difference between human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization"
Literally nobody is predicting any of those things, except propagandists and doomers. I would urge you to broaden your media intake to more mainstream sources, because it is not mentally healthy to be living a life under such falsehoods.
The comment section is full of clueless numpties that do not understand what 4 degrees REALLY means, and think it won't lead to collapse.
When the world was 4 degrees COLDER Chicago was under 900 meters of ice. Toronto was under two Kilometers of ice.
Do you think that would cause collapse of civilisation? How are you going to adapt to a glacier covering all the farmland? No technolgy, not even nuclear bombs, can remove the billions of tons of ice that would be covering all the farmland. We could not even protect cities, the moving wall of ice would buldoze every structure we've build and then whoever didn't freese to death would die of famine.
We are headed for a 4 degree change in the OTHER direction. That's what we are headed for by the end of the century
The biggest mistake climate scientists have done is communicated their change in terms of degrees, so people think about their everyday experience with weather, which obviouslty changes much more than that, and think they will just sweat a bit more in the summer.
To be very specific: people who think increase isn't dangerous need to look up web-bulb temperature [1].
There are regions of this planet where an average 4 degrees increase will mean that for periods longer then 24 hours, multiple times a year, the wet-bulb temperature will exceed 35 degrees C. That is unsurvivable by human life. Your only options in that environment are to not be in that environment by either escape or technological means.
There are cities built in areas where this is a risk, and if it happens they will just be depopulated: it is not possible for millions of people to escape an urban area under a heat wave. If they're somewhat built up, then they might survive it provided the electrical grid holds out - which, as recent experience globally should show - is questionable. Remember: under these conditions, no repairs to external infrastructure are going to be possible - you would need active refrigeration to move around outside and survive. We are not remotely adapted to that sort of hostile environment.
Most likely we are a decade or two out from a climate-forced mass casualty event, probably in the Indian subcontinent, with more minor (slightly less mass death) occurring in parts of Asia earlier.
We have missed every single target that we'd need to hit to limit the warming to 2C.
We have 28 years left and emissins are still increasing. We have to reduce emissions by like 40% per decade, which is not happenning at present.
We have to replace every car on the road, which takes 20 years. That means in 8 years every new car has to be electric, and that's not happening either.
You misread their statement. They said "8 degrees". With 8 C increase in temperature, what they described could very much happen. We expect 4 C worst case, which is why we do not need to worry about extinction. I think they are saying that we do not need to worry about more than 4 C increase exactly because people in the past fought for the cause, and if they stopped fighting the same way today some people feel resignation and want to stop fighting, even 4 C would have been too optimistic. The fact that people in the past did not resign themselves to the status quo is why we do not need to worry about an 8 C increase.
That's... one man's opinion and at the absolute extreme end of accepted science. You will find a person willing to have a view on anything if you look hard enough.
If you read mainstream publications, then you will gradually form an opinion, which is that there is a climate emergency, but not that humanity will be destroyed.
Climate doomerism has been a catasrophe, because it means many people have "given up", when things can actually be done. The doomer propaganda jumped off the deep end, and the mainstream media should have called them our on their absurd nonsense years ago.
Humanity probably will not be wiped out, but the current global civilization will collapse like it happened to many other civilizations before because they reached the ecological overshoot. I also thought that something "could be done" on a large scale, but after studying the problem in depth (starting with the IPCC report), I began to prepare on the community level for the impact in the next 10-20 years. That's the only area where something can be done.
By the way, BBC is not a reliable source, like other neoliberal propaganda they bet on continuing "business as usual" while coming up with some innovative solutions (so-called "techno-hopium").
Your reaction surprises me. What is so strange about "preparing on the community level", which would mean things like making sure your township is not expanding into areas that would be destroyed by newly severe forest fires or hurricanes or floods. Or that your city forbids certain types of lawns or agriculture because droughts are getting more severe. Or just having a more independent electricity/water/sewage in your house because the municipal systems do not have the backups they will start needing.
All the things you describe are good and beneficial for society. The problem was that you are preparing for an "impact" in 10 years that is not being predicted by anyone, except doomers and propagandists. You believe that the BBC is "neoliberal propaganda". That is your right, but you will alienate the vast majority of people with such extremist rhetoric.
Slow down for a second, I am not the person to whom you originally responded, I am just a passerby that is surprised by the intensity of your reaction given there are fairly reasonable interpretations of the passage you quoted as a reason to not bother having conversation with OP. We do know that droughts and fires and hurricanes will be more severe over the next decade or two, so it seems reasonable to call it "impact", their severe dislike of BBC notwithstanding.
Same. Samsung as a brand is dead to me. It is their right to update previously purchased TVs to show adverts. It is my right to consider their brand toxic swill.
Hardening does not start at choosing the right tools or networks, hardening begins with gathering information to inform yourself and others in order to stay up-to-date so that you can deal with current and upcoming threats. Tools, extensions and Co. are just a workaround until someone build the right system, that starts by voting and supporting the right politicians and organizations.
Firefox also requires setup (installing uBlock for starters). I find that setting up Brave is not any more work, and then it is indeed a pretty good browser.
I suspect it's to do with copyright law. Copyright is extremely strong in Japan and there is a cultural pressure not to do the "wrong thing". Preserving old games etc is legally ambitious and this is often ignored in the west. EDIT: person below me posted the same opinion!
Reddit is a psychopath corporation. It actively promotes clownish propaganda, misinformation and conflict to make money from clicks. The homepage is thousands of people screaming hate at each other. I can't think of a corporation that has done more to degrade US society than Reddit.
When they go public soon, they're going to lock all the user-generated content behind their mobile app, and remove access from the website and APIs. Thanks for the content, suckers!
It's a curate's egg situation. "Only a little bit of our product contains the largest tech scam of the 21st century". Once a small part of your product is infected, the entire product is corrupted.
They created their own currency. They pay you that currency to view ads. You can take that currency and hold it, or exchange it for dollars, every time it pays out.
Is it basically the same as a centralized loyalty program? Eh, sort of, but once you have your points, you can go sell them to anyone else, off platform. It's an improvement in usability over any sort of reward points in the restaurant and ecommerce industries. I dont think BAT is a scam. There isnt a promise that holding it will make you rich. There is actually an economy for it, as advertisers are buying it for a reason, vs it just being something that people buy hoping to later offload on to the next sucker.
And it is optional. Don't turn it on, and the product isnt infected at all.
I think the piece was fairly well written, though you can tell he doesn’t have a great deal of respect for him. Musk has honestly said and done a fair amount of clownish things, so even if you wrote an article merely listing them with no commentary it would look ridiculous
Regardless of bias, anyone who interacted with Twitter in the past 10 years must have known about the bot problem. Complaining about it after you've signed the deal just seems suspicious. It's not as if Musk is a very trustworthy figure either
Musk said the large number of bots was why he was buying twitter in the first place. If they can prove that the number of bots is less than the 40-90% that Musk claims will he pay extra because it is a better asset than he thought?
I consider YouTube comments to be an example of "toxic positivity".
YouTube are using AI to only show "postive" comments first, but the overall effect is a bizarre cultish "uncanny valley" approximation of how a real community react.
Youtube comments are useless for both criticism (generally censored, either by the video creator or by youtube itself) and praise (virtually always vacuous.) The only thing they are good for is adding context or relevant anecdotes. E.g. a video about an engine may have comments from retired mechanics who've serviced that engine before.
It really depends on what kind of content you're watching though. For wide swaths of content on youtube, there is nothing worthwhile that can be said in the comment section, either because youtube wouldn't show that sort of comment, or because there's earnestly nothing to be said.
Literally nobody is predicting any of those things, except propagandists and doomers. I would urge you to broaden your media intake to more mainstream sources, because it is not mentally healthy to be living a life under such falsehoods.