Oil and gas companies are awesome at branding. We need to be better. We should name the heatwaves after oil companies.
We should also name the hurricane season. So the Exxon Mobile Heatwave, and the British Petroleum Hurricane Season. The Suncor Forest Fires.
etc.
IIRC, a weatherman started doing this
I would love to see citation of this, any links?
Maybe they are referring to this… https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/meteorologist-heatwaves-oil-gas-companies-b2378915.html
yep, that’s it! thanks bud!
That just sounds like free advertising. No one would actually connect the Sunoco name to a forest fire…but Sunoco would get their company name repeated millions of times per day on web and TV network traffic free of charge. No thanks.
Trust me, calling a Hurricane season the BP Hurricane Season is not free advertising. A bunch of red hat-wearing cultists will love it, but the vast majority of the planet will understand the premise. And it will tick away at their dominance.
Or we can just carry on and let them open up public lands to drill baby drill whilst we watch average global temps rise.
I love this idea
We already have the Edison forest fires 🔥
Next time i see a comment on Reddit I will do this (so the normies who need to see it will)
You know what would really help? Not showing a nice happy vacation beach image with that headline. How about some dead fish, people sweating while doing manual laboue or bleached corals? For fucks sake.
(I know NBC doesn’t read Lemmy, just frustrated)
Every time I see these I see these climate change related issues (which is now multiple times a day), I get the same sinking feeling in my stomach like I’m behind on work and don’t have enough time to do it and I’ll soon be in trouble for letting things get too far behind. That feeling keeps me up, causes me stress, and is generally not a comfortable way to live. This just fucking sucks.
Don’t be too harsh on yourself, big corporations are the main cause of climate change. Unless we all collectively decide to give these companies a wake up call, I’m afraid there’s very little you can do alone
Big corporations…that we keep rewarding with our money, incentivizing them to not change what they’re doing. Human consumption is the largest driver of climate change.
Big companies only do what they do when they are paid to do it by consumers.
You’re being downvoted, but why? Human greed also extends to consumers. We don’t have to buy a thing because it was paraded around in front of us. I hate the “consumers have no agency, they have to buy stuff!” mentality. It’s morally bankrupt and just results in more finger pointing and zero action. Stop buying crap.
“Big companies only do what they do when the governments that they paid with bribes or “lobby” money look the other way while they fuck the planet up left and right like it’s a race to the end”
Fixed it for you. Stop excusing the rich, and trying to place the blame on the consumers, friend. It’s disgusting.
The blame is on everyone. But if consumers… you know… stopped consuming so much garbage food, electronics, packaging for their shitty food and shitty electronics, cars, gasoline, etc, maybe the large companies wouldn’t produce so much of it.
Such a bad argument again.
My friend. The corporations have spent BILLIONS of dollars making sure all my options are as thin as possible.
Tell me, friend. Where can I get the GOOD and HEALTHY food, the GOOD electronics? WHERE can I get these things WITHOUT spending the arm and leg that I DO NOT HAVE to spend? Enlighten me as to why you choose to blame the consumers whose options are LIMITED by the corporations….?
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Or switch to a seafood-based diet, which has a much smaller CO2 footprint than land-based agriculture.
“just eat seafood”. Brought to you by the comment thread on the article about the fact that the oceans are half way to literally fucking boiling.
Well, I can’t give you gold obviously, so here’s my first comment ever. That comment was fucking gold!
Yes, precooked meals are an additional advantage.
We already massively overfish, is that really your solution? It’ll mean more intense factory farming of seafood, creating huge amounts of water based pollution.
Not all types of fish are overfished, some (like haddock) are sustainable. Just as some crops are farmed responsibly, and others (like California almonds) are not.
Well, doesn’t sound it helps CO2 when you live in a landlocked country like I do.
Does your country have rivers or lakes? Seafood isn’t always found in a sea.
Seafood is literally always found in sea.
Is there anything reasonable that we (those who have interest in living “like before” and won’t die of age within 30 years) can achieve? I feel like many things are very out of reach, and the population is just too heterogeneous to agree on something. Older folks where I live just do not give a fuck, and elected someone whose major interest is in removing rights from people they actively hate. At least one big city where I live has been without water nor electricity for several hours (days?) because the heat has messed out the infrastructure, and I feel like even in my country barely anybody is talking about it… It’s just very discouraging, I want to shift my perspective, but it’s not easy.
Yes, there are things you can and should be doing.
People blaming ‘corporations’ while not doing anything themselves are a huge part of the problem. Out of the 100 largest corporations contributing the most CO2, almost all of them are fuel and energy based.
So, number one - drives less, or don’t drive at all. This might change where or how you live.
Number 2, buy 100% green power or install your own PV.
These 2 things alone can be contributing up to 50% of your own greenhouse emissions. This isn’t ‘corporations’, it’s us buying power and driving around.
After that everyday consumption is huge. So don’t buy shit to just throw it away. Only buy what’s necessary. Spend more on fewer things, and things that will last.
And finally, do these things because you care. If enough people make some changes. It starts to seem normal. Then others do it too. And vote.
The number of smart, tech savvy people here who think some boats and random companies are the source of impending catastrophe are sadly mistaken. The actual information on what’s causing and contributing is well researched and easy to find. You’ll be able to find an online calculator for your country which will give an averaged breakdown of your own emissions. You can use that to keep drilling into what actions will have the biggest impacts.
Everyone needs to make changes to the way we live. Some need to go first for others to follow.
New Oxfam research finds that just 125 billionaires are each responsible for one million times more greenhouse gas emissions than the average person. from here https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/who-is-responsible-for-climate-change/
When carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, flaring, and cement production are ranked by nation, “the US is by far the largest historical emitter, responsible for over 20% of all emissions, and the EU is close behind”. from here https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063443/responsible-climate-change-charts/
Corporations can’t do these things with the public being complicit.
We don’t hold politicians accountable and we just consume consume consume like crazy.
I hate to say it, but I keep avoiding articles about climate change for this reason. I can’t do it every time, obviously, but it just gives me such stress. We’re all so powerless while corporations destroy our planet.
Have you tried separating your recycling out? It’ll help offset the cruise ships that each put out around 250,000 cars worth of straight up pollution a year, without factoring in other impacts.
And thats just the cruise ships imagine how much cargo ships output, admitedly cargo ships actually serve a purpose. Cruise ships are idols to our decadence and hubris.
I dream of bloody knives and car bombs.
Praise our cargo ship overlords for bringing clothes that rip after the third wash and electronics that malfunction after half a year to us!
Joke aside, they are integral to the global economy, but we could cut back a lot on wasteful production and consumption, reducing the transportation needed.
I make sure to not litter.
Well thank fuck for that… I was worried for a moment there.
The solution to that, the systemic impersonal solution, is going to be ending the production of single use plastics. While there’s little you can do about recycling, you can imagine if you’ll be complaining about that.
Also if we removed single use plastics, but didn’t dramatically cut back on everything we do that uses them, then we’d create more pollution with alternative methods trying to fill the gap. A global change is unavoidable, whether it is chosen or forced upon everyone by circumstance.
This is part of the issue that a lot of people don’t get.
Plastics are, largely, petrochemicals. We have plastics because we have oil.
Use glass because it’s more recyclable? Glass is heavier and more fragile, meaning more cost to ship and more breakage in transit.
Yeah… we use single use plastics because they’re basically an industrial miracle production wise. Dirt cheap, super easy to use, innumerable applications… and all the drawbacks are post-production and someone else’s problem. A tough addiction to break.
Use glass because it’s more recyclable? Glass is heavier and more fragile, meaning more cost to ship and more breakage in transit.
Meaning more local production and collection.
Meaning more local production and collection.
That is incompatible with global trade.
I largely tuned out of climate change news a long time ago. I still care about it. I vote for it and have donated relatively large amounts of money to environmental charities. But otherwise nothing I do makes a difference.
Really? The feeling I get when I read articles like this is a resigned feeling of “No shit, we’ve only been hearing warnings of this for the past 30 years. People are fucking stupid”
There used to be plausible deniability. “Maybe it won’t really be that bad, even though we should be acting in case it is.”
Now it’s more of a “I wonder where the various lines are and how many we’ve already crossed, which one will be next, and how soon we’ll notice it.”
Have you noticed the number of insects is way down this year? Maybe I’m wrong. They do still gather in the lights (which might be another part of the fucking problem…) but there just doesn’t seem to be as many as there used to be this year.
The irony is that if we did act as if it would be that bad, it wouldn’t be that bad because we would have mitigated the worst of it, and it’d become a laughing-stock for non-critical thinkers.
See also: Y2K…or more recently, comparing COVID death rates for vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations.
The key is to learn to deal with your death anxiety.
That’s a lot easier said than done
Magic mushrooms can help.
You can only do so much. Life was set up this way for us by countless generations before us. You can reduce your energy requirements, reduce/reuse/recycle, but it will only help so much at the individual level. Never stop trying. Never stop trying to convince your friends and family to reduce their footprint. I bug my SO every time they put something recyclable in the trash or they buy something we don’t need.
But the world is burning because of greed and we can’t individually put an end to that. Live your life, do what you can, share love. It’s the best we can do right now.
This is the reason I finally pulled the plug on Reddit. Too much r/climate and others like that in my feed.
Now let’s see how long will Lemmy last. Ultimately I’ll just let myself die while playing Baldurs Gate 3 during a random heatwave in bliss ignorance of what’s going on in the ocean or Florida or Italy or wherever.
I like to look on the bright side, in that climate change will either wipe humans off the map or send us back to the Stone Age so we no longer have any real impact.
Both scenarios will heal the planet, animals will re-populate, and homeostasis will again be restored. Checks and balances. We’ll just be another animal that that got out of control, which nature corrected, like it’s done thousands of times over with every animal that’s ever been out of control.
A healthy world. I like that outcome, with or without us.
Now I wonder if some future intelligent race could ever come across us through archaeological digs, and we become that “highly advanced race that died out” that’s so common in fiction.
I don’t think you realize how much even stone age humans fucked up the planet. Half of Australia’s forests were burned down and most of America’s megafauna was hunted to extinction and the people who did it had little more than stone tools.
Yeah, I read Sapiens too.
Still, I suspect it’ll shift the balance of power away from us for long enough to allow nature to take back some control. As a species we’ve lost our way and we won’t stop until the planet is dead or it wipes us out. That’s the bottom line.
This could be the only planet within a million light years with complex, conscious life and we’re systematically destroying it for conveniences like single serve ketchup.
This could be the only planet in the universe with any kind of life, but humans have never been good at working together in large groups, we just can’t really deal with more than a few hundred people at most.
It’s amazing how positive solutions never come to the minds of anyone who talks about this.
Human expansion into space is a likely outcome too. Haven’t you considered that?
Hope in space industry being developed by the so hated corporations from the internet? Spear headed by capitalism? In a thread about climate change? On this site? You surely jest
Unironically it’s probably our only hope to save ourselves and nature itself, or what will be left of it if predictions pan out.
I know. People here have a hard on for hating corporations so big, it blinds them to the obvious truths
And the worst part is, average citizens like yourself aren’t a massive burden on the environment. It’s people like Elon Musk flying personal jets across the world for dinner, who are actively contributing to the death of the planet.
The jets are bad but what is worse are the handle full of billionaires and csuite execs who have the money and power to decide company policies and bribe politicians and governments: lobbying, independent expenditures, gala dinners, super pacs, incentives, revolving doors, private fundraising, paid speeches; to look the other way so they can pollute however much they want.
Nothing is Ethical under Capitalism.
Social Democracy is better but still exports the suffering to the global south.
Workers of the world must unite to over come the absolute insanity of the capital class.
Unfortunately, everyone participates and it adds up. If you want to compare such personal consumption like jets, then the rich account for about 15% of the global emissions.
Here’s a chart:
from this report: https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/carbon-inequality-in-2030-per-capita-consumption-emissions-and-the-15c-goal-621305/
The share of total global emissions associated with the consumption of the richest 1% is set to continue to grow, from 13% in 1990, to 15% in 2015 and 16% in 2030.
If you want to include the rich’s capital, which you should, because that has to change:
the bottom 50% of the world population emitted 12% of global emissions in 2019, whereas the top 10% emitted 48% of the total. Since 1990, the bottom 50% of the world population has been responsible for only 16% of all emissions growth, whereas the top 1% has been responsible for 23% of the total. While per-capita emissions of the global top 1% increased since 1990, emissions from low- and middle-income groups within rich countries declined. Contrary to the situation in 1990, 63% of the global inequality in individual emissions is now due to a gap between low and high emitters within countries rather than between countries. Finally, the bulk of total emissions from the global top 1% of the world population comes from their investments rather than from their consumption. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00955-z
But if you imagine that the petite bourgeois lifestyle of McMansion in suburbia, cars and driving around everywhere, eating boatloads of primary calories, and the rest of the consumption isn’t contributing, you should read more. Here’s a start: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3691-the-imperial-mode-of-living
Sorry but this is not true at all. Your regular average citizen demands products whose production, transportation, and disposal is responsible for massive amounts of emissions.
If you buy cheap Chinese shit off Amazon, or Big Macs, a new phone every year, you’re part of the problem.
- Be big business
- Spend decades chasing profits using any means necessary.
- Make so much money that the average person can barely get by.
- Sell them the cheapest shit possible that they have no choice but to buy cause they’re poor as fuck.
- Have morons on the internet blame the average person instead of greedy corporations/billionaires/government.
- ???
- Profit!
Feel free to skip step 6, there are no question marks. Every time someone blames consumers for the state of our planet, an oil magnate smiles while overlooking his fleet of luxury cars made out of silver.
This is a kindergarten level understanding. Do you think evil megacorps overfish the ocean because they just feel like it? Or deforest millions of acres to graze cattle just because why the fuck not?
No, they do it to provide for the demands of an always so hungry population in the most efficient way possible at the highest benefit possible.
It’s not a big secret
I don’t know what people expect. Shut down everything? 3 days and we have about 95% of the population die, tops 3 months, even less if people go bananas
Lol fish and beef are far from the most efficient way to feed people. In fact they are close to the worst.
Bro but have you thought on bananas tho
Just a reminder that warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico and Southern Atlantic = hurricane fuel. We are lucky El Niño is causing some wind shear in the upper atmosphere to break up the storms… so far. I recommend looking it up if you’re interested. Hurricane season has the potential to be devastating this year if the El Niño cycle weakens.
I wonder how much longer Florida lasts before being wiped clean off the map like New Orleans…
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TDIL El Niño was not just a one time thing
Does TDIL stand for To Day I Learned?
LOL we’ll cut them some slack and say it means This Day I Learned
2DIL
Yeah I did I triple take lol
I assume that’s 100° Freedom rather than 100° Civilised?
Nope, ocean is boiling.
You’re proving your own point wrong by asking this question.
Warmer waters means stronger storms.
Florida is going to go through some things.
This is why insurance companies are dropping out of the State, and yet I’d wager a good chunk of the population deny climate change exist.
They’ll blame the democrats. Somehow.
Warmer waters means more sea weed, red tides, algael blooms, mosquitoes, snakes, fish kills.
Florida is killing itself and us.
And much of the US Southeast in general. And probably the Northeast as well. But many people in the US can evacuate inland. Countries around the Caribbean Sea… not so much
Low-income households in the US are also disproportionately affected; cause it’s hard to evacuate your family without a car, or to rebuild your life after it’s been hurricaned away.
38,4°C for non americans.
Nah, I prefer the title without units. It allows me to imagine the oceans boiling, which would just cement Florida as being literal hell.
Don’t forget the Cayman Islands and Liberia.
Thank you.
Are we all gonna die soon? Serious question
We? No. We’ll just be uncomfortable. Our kids? They’re going to slowly cook to death as they’re running out of food/water/oxygen. Or, y’know, get blown up in one of the wars fighting over scraps of food/water/oxygen.
But look on the bright side: we’re on track to beat last fiscal year’s profit margin! If we do that, we’ll get a free company branded pencil and one ticket to use some leave-without-pay at you manager’s discretion – and the regional manager gets another vacation home!!
We will not just be uncomofrtable. There is going to be much more people dying to disasters than before and we are going to witness terrible wars in the next two decades
Mass famines and heat that kills without AC coming summer of 2024 or 2025. Won’t kill the global north too much yet, but it will be one of the biggest deadly events in history for the rest of the world.
Military journalist Gwyn Dyer reported on this almost 2 decades ago.
The global militaries have been planning for this for years. You see those ships with refugees from northern Africa? That volume is going to ramp up plus Mediterranean countries are going to exodus north to the Nordic states and immigration is going to lock the fuck down. People are going to die by the millions. Maybe not in 2 years but this is our future.
On the plus side, and I am fucking saying this sarcastically, at least it’s the “right people” dying which is to say those not white and those not rich.
People are already dying to the effects. We know climate change can cause more and higher intensity hurricanes, more droughts, fires, famines, wilder weather swings, floods, and wars and refugee crises, etc. We know these things are increasing and we know people are already dying to them now.
So while you can’t pin any individual disaster to climate change, we already know it’s causing deaths.
As for if we’re all going to die? Probably not all of us, so if you’re lucky and don’t mind you or your kids living in a Mad Max world, you can relax a little.
20years max.
Soon cosmically? Yes, very.
Soon relative to human life span? Very unlikely.
No. We have a long ways away before the human population will be wiped out due to climate change. Most likely around 100 or so years. The issue is what happens before then. Increasing temperatures will mean less water for crops creating food crisis. It will mean rising water level which means people living in low coastal cities will have to move. There is going to be mass migration which people do not like (Conservative fearmongering and look at how the homeless are treated). The food shortages and migration will cause unprecedented poverty. Poverty is correlated to crime so there is going to be an uptick of it. If we don’t cut our carbon emission by 2030, we are going to see water wars and food wars by 2050.
What do these food and water wars mean? It can mean a lot. The rich will most likely be fine and continue with their yachts and private jets which are the biggest contributors carbon emissions. There will be more and more wars breaking out and even 1st world countries will be affected. This can lead to use of nuclear weapons which will continue to cut the human population and make things less inhabitable. Over time the human population will be cut and climate change acceleration will most likely slow down but not fully stop. There’s also a feedback loop to the planet heating up. As polar ice caps melt and the planet heats up, it may naturally continue on its own until it equalizes. It can go up to like 10 degrees which, well, I hope i am not on the planet at that time.
Not everything is hopeless. We have a lot of bright scientists and we are in an era of unprecedented wealth. I do believe when it comes down to it, the world will unite and we will be able to mitigate enough of it and create solutions. Mass solar panels is a good one. Building nuclear reactors for the future use is another. Some solutions have been suggested like turning the sky white and other stuff. Public transit is another thing picking up and will greatly reduce carbon emissions. Just remember, a majority of the pollution comes from the use of private jets, yachts, and cruise ships. People will get hungry. There is one group of people who are at fault and I think the French found the solution to it.
We have a long ways away before the human population will be wiped out due to climate change. Most likely around 100 or so years.
You realize that would be the grandchildren of people alive today, right? That’s VERY soon lol…
No. We have a long ways away before the human population will be wiped out due to climate change…Not everything is hopeless. We have a lot of bright scientists…
I said something similar in a thread yesterday and got savagely shat on by everyone. The thread was about people literally not having children because they’re worried about climate change. I said have kids if you want, don’t if you don’t, but it’s insane to make such a major life decision based on some nebulous calamity that may or may not happen in your lifetime, or at all. I’m extremely concerned about climate change but goddamn some people are nuts.
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Spoilers: Third world war will start at October, to go through clueless and senseless deaths all around the world, for uhhhhhh…6 years’ish.
Then (not really sure beyond that tbh) we will have a worldwide apparition of Our Lady of Garanbandal… something something “folks will die of shame by witnessing their sins being committed”, etcetc. The antichrist will come, christians will be hunted like animals.
Demons will manifestate, wander around. Everyone will accept em as saviors, praise em, etc. Lucifer will claim victory, etc.
Then, 2nd cometh of Christ, etc, judge everyone, etc. Hell will close, etcetc. New Jerusalem, etc.
So um… yeah. 10 years at best, 20 years at worst.
The flying spaghetti monster beckons: we shall all return to the sauce! Some time after dinner, most likely.
R’amen.
No, we won’t. At least, the millennials are the last safe generation.
What will slowly die at 38°C are sperm. Hopefully, it will affect the reproduction of some roten brain about climate change.
On the upside, free boiled fish that takes no effort!
Maybe all those Republicans that recently moved to Florida because it is cheap will realize climate change is an issue when their home owner’s insurance ends, they are hit by frequent large hurricanes, are racked with flooding, and they get a wet bulb event or two every year that kills thousands of seniors.
Maybe but I doubt it.
Lmao the fish 😅
American temperatures really never do stop sounding ridiculous.
The Fahrenheit scale actually makes a lot of sense, unlike some other us units
Why don’t we just ditch both and use Kelvin instead
Nah let’s combine Freedom and Kelvin and use Rankine for even further confusion.
Say what?
Fahrenheit, but measured instead from absolute zero. Maximum confusion, but also maximum Freedom™ 🇺🇲 🦅 🇺🇲
How does it make sense?
It doesn’t “make sense” in a day to day sense. It made sense to researchers first investigating the properties of heat and temperature. 0F is a benchmark temperature that can be reliably produced with a mixture of water, ice and salt. The mixture will moderate itself by melting the ice such that the temperature stays at exactly 0F until the ice all melts. Why 1/180 the interval between freezing and boiling was chosen for the value of one degree, I dunno, but it’s probably similar to the reasons we use 360 degrees.
Celsius is the same, except with just water and ice - you don’t need to get some salt concentration right to reliably reproduce the zero, eliminating that as a variable. “Moderating itself until ice melts” is just something water does, no salt required.
Yeah, I’ve always wondered why they didn’t want to just use a frigorific slush without salt. I’m guessing that the salt version is more robust about maintaining its temperature, or it lasts longer, or something like that.
You can’t have water reliably below freezing without something like salt to keep it liquid? 0F is not serving the same purpose as 0C is. Not making an argument, just pointing out that they’re specifically after a liquid mixture that is below freezing for cooling things down to below freezing in times before refrigeration.
It’s about as equally arbitrary as describing Celsius in terms of 101325 Pa (“standard pressure” boiling point).
Americans are more used to switching units and scales as they relate to the topic at hand. Describing distance between cities in inches is dumb. Using Celsius for the weather is equally unwieldy as the units are not fine grained and despite the headline, we’re not even halfway to the boiling point of water on the Celsius scale. And likewise, if you live in a cold climate, even 0C isn’t super relevant as a floor. Things don’t even get uncomfortable until -10C anyway.
Speaking of Pascals, I feel “conversational” in Celsius and it kinda works but Pascals are even more irrelevant to daily tasks. Things don’t even get interesting until you get to 200 kPa and jumps of less than 100kPa aren’t very noteworthy. It’s like currency after massive inflation.
Because we have used it all our lives, that’s really it. We know water freezes at 32f and our body temp is around 98.6. The weather channel says it’s 70,80,90 every day and we know what that feels like. In a day to day contact we don’t have to covert to Kelvin or anything so the standard Fahrenheit scale works fine
You can do that with every unit though. How does that make any more sense than inches or ounces?
Meters and grams are a decimal system which makes more sense than non decimal systems.
The difference in temperature units is just the somewhat arbitrary starting points. And there are valid arguments for both.
There are more degrees of lived temperatures, and the difference between 68 and 73 is whether or not you need a jacket.
Inches and ounces are different forms of measurement so I’m not quite sure of the comparison.
I have been and lived in both the FREEDOM land and the rest of the world for a significant period of time 10y+, the “it has more marks on the thermometer” isn’t really a good argument, turns out there is no “71° time for a slightly warmer jacket” in reality.
there is no “71 time for a warmer jacket” in reality.
As an ohioan I strongly disagree with this statement
Beware of the upcoming hurricane season.
Overtemp gulf is going to create some monster storms.
And insurance companies are abandoning Florida in droves.
Yeah this was my first thought.
I swear, if those lizard lovers get their state destroyed and leave Georgia more vulnerable I’m gonna be pissed.
Holy crap. So coral bleaching in that area is basically guaranteed at this point. And some plankton and algae can’t really survive if those temperatures persist.
Also, as temperature rises, water holds less and less dissolved oxygen. At the same time metabolic rates of fish increase, which makes them require even more oxygen. The scary thing about that is at some point they lose the ability to get enough oxygen to sustain life, and then bam — the whole species dies in a day.
Remember those rivers of millions of dead fish? Yeah, it’s like that.
All of these things are bad, but the effect on phytoplankton is most frightening of all. Diatoms provide 50-85% of our global oxygen supply. Not only are rising temperatures a problem for them, but ocean acidification also eats away at their silica-based shells. But it does it slowly so by the time they die, they are in deep water where no other diatoms are around to reuse the silica.
Luckily, there are other ways of recycling diatom remains. The most notable example is the dried lake bed that used to be part of Lake Chad when that lake was far bigger and held many living diatoms. Due to natural changes in climate, the water dried up and that area is now part of the Sahara Desert. About 100 days a year, winds kick the ancient diatom dust high into the atmosphere where it is carried across the Atlantic Ocean and then it settles across South America.
This is a big reason the Amazon Rainforest is so lush. Diatomaceous fertilizer carried all the way from Africa. And since more plants means more photosynthesis, it causes a lot of water that would have otherwise been locked away in the ground to evaporate through transpiration. All of this excess water is blown westward towards the Andes mountain range. In narrower parts of the Andes, the dense Amazonian clouds overcome the rain shadow effect to precipitate across the west side of the Andes.
This rainwater causes erosion of quartz, which is ground into fine silica dust. As silt, this dust is washed into the Pacific Ocean, where diatoms absorb the silica and use it to reproduce. In a beautiful global balancing act, as diatom-heavy lakes in Africa dry up, the remains of those diatoms cause a chain reaction that ends up causing a huge increase of diatoms on the opposite side of the globe.
Great, right? It would be if we weren’t replacing so much of the Amazon Rainforest with monoculture farms which don’t have nearly the same evapotranspiration effect as the flora of the natural ecosystem. So, not only are we baking the diatoms, not only are we dissolving them with acid, we’re also removing one of their most critical reproductive resources.
It’s like we discovered how resilient the planet is and how hard it is to kill, and humans took that as a challenge.
Enjoy the oxygen while it’s plentiful.
That’s a great write up, thanks. Haven’t heard about the connection between the Amazon rainforest and African diatoms, that’s fascinating.
I thought lake Chad started to dry up mostly in the 60s. I went to read some more about that and I just can’t not mention that the original lake is apparently called Mega-Chad :)
Anyway, in case anyone else is interested to read about ancient microorganisms fuelling Amazon’s growth, here’s a really interesting paper that describes this system in great detail.
Does it help that the phytoplankton may adapt?
Adaptation of phytoplankton to a decade of experimental warming linked to increased photosynthesis
I mean yeah, it’s in a controlled environment, but it seems like encouraging news?
It’s encouraging, but we shouldn’t rely on it to fix our problems. The good thing is that there are many thousands of varieties of diatoms, each with their own odds of adapting and overcoming the situation we’ve put them in. I have confidence that the planet will survive. But whether enough of these phytoplankton will evolve in time to keep catastrophic extinction events from occurring is still very much in question. We should do everything we can as a species to protect their health.
No, we cant rely on it to fix our problems. Hell if anything it will adapt and then get exploited later on. Humans just ruin everything…
I wish we were better and hope that we will do a 180 and try to preserve what is left, but I wouldnt bet on it.
As much as I’m genuinely fearful of what we are going to endure in the coming years, especially the next generation, part of me feels like we deserve what we get. All we can do is prepare the best we can, cross our fingers, and ride the ride.
It’s pretty shitty that we’re taking everything else down with us, but it does give me hope that maybe nature will surprise us, and not all will be lost, even if it seems that way.
The only realistic way to “lose” O2 is to convert it into CO2. And even if enough CO2 were produced to extinguish humanity forever, there would still be plenty of O2 left over. So “running out” of O2 is not a serious concern.
Yes, in the long term, the planet will be fine. But bear in mind, our entire biology is based on converting O2 into CO2.
I mean, sure, a couple billion years ago, the global ecosystem had the opposite problem and single-celled archaea was suffocating the planet with too much O2. Those are the conditions that allowed animal life to evolve.
So, I take your point that the planet will still have O2 long after we flood the atmosphere with the millions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried deep underground. Plankton will have a comeback even if the vast majority of animal life on the planet dies of asphyxiation first. But at that point, the argument of whether we’ve “run out” of O2 is really semantics, right? If we haven’t “run out” of it, but our supply gets low enough that virtually all of us are dead as a result, I don’t place a lot of value in making that distinction.
I think you missed the point.
Our atmosphere is 21% O2, and less than 0.05% CO2.
If that changed by 1% to 20% O2 and 1.05% CO2, we would all die. But not for asphyxiation or lack of O2, because the slight reduction in O2 would be unnoticeable. The drastic increase in CO2, on the other hand, would be catastrophic.
Or the 2000 dead penguins washing up on the coast of Uruguay just a few days ago. Apparently starved to death, though the cause is still being investigated.
But yeah the phytoplankton and algae boiling to death is triggering a catastrophic change in the ocean that is going to domino in horrible ways and I feel like I don’t often see a lot of people mentioning it. It’s very scary how the collapse of aquatic ecosystems is playing out.
This is Fahrenheit, right? So ~38.3º Celsius.
If it was Celsius the sea would be boiling.
Nothing to see here, just making a stew in the ocean.
USA and their fixation with imperial 😂
To be fair it is an American news story about something happening in the US. But it should be proper procedure to write “100 degrees F” or something similar, just to denote the unit being used (adding a parenthesis with the converted C units after the F is too much to ask, I know).
I really wish the US would put Metric numbers in parentheses next to any Imperial numbers. I really want to have a better grasp on metric in my head.
As a nurse in the US, it’s a bit silly that we measure in Imperial and then have it converted to Metric for things like drug calculations. We have this awkward mix where we speak about mL in the same sentence as inches and feet.
I now can visualize about how much a few liters is, but still struggle with about how long a few centimeters is. I know Celsius only in reference to body temperature, but STILL have to convert to Fahrenheit if the Celsius reading is abnormal. Anything really above 38°C or below 36°C, and I start looking at Fahrenheit because I want a better understanding of how much trouble my patient is in. It’s rather silly and inefficient
US Customary. Temperature is the same as in Imperial, but fluid volume isn’t and the survey foot was different up until January 1st 2023 when the government changed to use the international foot.
TIL there’s an international foot. Which is probably only used by the US, I suppose?
Yeah, and muricans wont admit their own issues
That’s in fact the brain of RDS in the ocean of idiocy.
What… … … … Why is it soo warm? Iirc sea animals can’t live with temperatures like that!?
I don’t think humans can live in that very long either. 38 degrees is the temperature you have when you have a fever. I’m pretty sure if you expose yourself to that for a while you will die. Maybe a doctor can verify this, but it doesn’t sound good at all.
I don’t think humans can live in that very long either.
Humans have been living in places like the Sahara, which is even hotter, for millennia. It’s uncomfortable and requires adaptation but it’s perfectly doable.
You won’t survive even 24 hours in a 100°F hot tub 🤣.
I think I misunderstood the comment that I replied to. Sorry about that. 🤷
You can survive in a hot tub at much higher temperatures for hours, and people do it because they enjoy it.
?? Are you sure about that? I’m pretty certain that every hot tub at a public facility I’ve been to says to not exceed staying in for more than 20 minutes, and specially mentions to keep it lower if you’re old, have high blood pressure, are pregnant, or under the age of 16.
Isn’t part of the reason also because it’s easy to get light headed or dizzy and just pass out and drown?
I’m certain that even the most feeble visitors can withstand 20 minutes and the rest of us for quite some time longer, yes.
At least the ocean will be nice and warm when it floods their houses
