2024 was the warmest year since records began being kept 175 years ago. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s latest State of the Global Climate report:

  • Each of the past ten years set a new global temperature record.
  • Each of the past eight years set a new record for ocean heat content.
  • The 18 lowest Arctic sea-ice extents on record were all in the past 18 years.
  • The three lowest Antarctic ice extents were in the past three years.
  • The largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record occurred in the past three years.
  • The rate of sea level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began.[1]

There is no room for doubt: Earth is getting hotter. The question now is how hot will it get?

    • fake_meows@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      The conversation in the media has been training people to look at the wrong aspect of the problem.

      So basically you have the flows and the sinks.

      The flow here would be the rate at which more CO2 pollution is added.

      The sink is the total amount of CO2 that’s already in the atmosphere.

      Everyone keeps talking about allowing more carbon, slowing more carbon or somehow changing the growth of additional carbon.

      Future carbon isn’t what’s changing the climate right now. There is a huge time lag of around 15 years between when you dump CO2 into the atmosphere and when it starts actually moving global temperatures.

      Current day global temperature doesn’t actually reflect anything with the rate of pollution. What it is showing us is the total amount of carbon in the sink from 15 years ago.

      If you stopped all new carbon today you’re already on a ride to 10° that started way in the past. And it wouldn’t stop this from happening. The slowing of the rate isn’t even within the solution space. At all.

      Anyhow, going beyond the facts of what is going on, I think there are two real reasons why people talk about the flows even though these are irrelevant. And it’s two things, one thing is that is assumes that humans are not going to survive if we stop polluting, so adding more pollution is a baked in assumption. And two, we have NO ANSWER for how we can possibly clean the sink and put the entire global atmosphere back to the start. So if you start looking at the REAL problem you start having emotional responsibility and no possibility of solving it, and that makes people unhappy. It’s implicatory denial.