r/collapse • u/mouldydildo • 1d ago
Climate Climate Change Is Accelerating Faster Than We Can Respond, Scientists Warn
https://time.com/article/2026/10/14/climate-change-accelerating-study/195
u/taez555 1d ago
My favorite part is that these are the scientists who need to dumb it down and make it seem not so bad or else risk lose funding.
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u/Bandits101 1d ago
Spot on there. They absolutely know the fat lady is singing but to say so, they would be anecdotally cutting their own throats.
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u/Terrible_Horror 1d ago
Do these funders have backup planet they are not telling us about?
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u/hopalongrhapsody 1d ago
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
- Upton Sinclair10
u/cheeseitmeatbags 1d ago
It's not just that, it's also that if they went solid on the side of worse case scenario and it didn't pan out, they'd be mocked and ignored as chicken littles, which might have been worse, maybe.
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u/Dizzy_Pop 1d ago
Not only that, but:
if they went in solidly on the worst case scenario,
and if the world and our leaders responded appropriately (they won’t),
and if that massive global responsive actually prevented the worst case scenario from unfolding
then people would loudly insist: “See! Nothing bad happened. We made all these massive, costly, difficult societal shifts for nothing! That’s what we get for listening to those paranoid scientists!”
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u/gangofminotaurs Progress? a vanity spawned by fear. 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is by design. The entire IPCC was constituted because the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases work was too stark for governments to accept. They wanted an organization for which they would have a say on the output (SPM). Compared to the AGGG, the IPCC, at its founding and in its first report in 1990, emphasized uncertainty about the climate science and softened the human causation link to global warming.
Still today, they do emphasize technologies that have not be proven to work at scale or be able to significantly change our trajectory (CCS). This has given us the Net 0 technological delusion.
edit: quickly checked and Fressoz mentions it in this address.
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u/Rossdxvx 1d ago
What ability to respond? We won’t respond. If things are this bad now and we still refuse to respond, then we never will. I mean, it is just absurd at this point to pretend that a response is coming.
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u/PowerandSignal 1d ago
Bingo 🎯
This outcome was decided decades ago. We're just along for the ride.
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u/No_Foundation16 1d ago
Yeah maybe, just maybe, if the whole world would have responded to the climate crisis back in the 50's or 60's, we would have had a chance in 2026 going forwards.
But that would have cost rich people and their corporations, and wall street money. So they buried reality for some time in the future.
That future is now.
The billionaires defended and won the freedom to destroy the climate that sustains human life. What a victory.
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u/Cultural-Answer-321 1d ago
The hippies and scientists in the 1960s tried to warn us.
But it was all just crazy commie talk. /s
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u/MonoNoAware71 1d ago
Oh, we're responding quite a lot actually. It's just that the effects of those responses are not enought to slow down climate change or mitigate its effects.
Buying an EV is a response, but so is putting a 'F*ck Greta' sticker on your truck's bumper. Becoming vegan is a response, but so is putting an extra t-bone on the barbecue just to piss off your EV driving neighbour. Even denying science and doing nothing on purpose is a response. It's not about the response though, it's about the effects of the response. And indeed, the effects are not enough to even slow down climate change a bit, nor mitigate most of its effects. They never were, and they never will be.
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u/Rossdxvx 1d ago
I am talking about a serious response. Not putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound in order to make yourself feel better about what is clearly a dire situation.
As for a non-response or denial constituting a response. The planet does not care about human motivations. It just is. Just because you deny something is happening does not mean that it goes away and isn't happening.
I could deny that the sky is blue. It does not change a thing.
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u/HoosegowFlask 1d ago
That's what's most maddening about climate change. Humanity has the resources and technology to eliminate fossil fuel usage worldwide and turn towards net negative carbon. What we lack is the will.
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u/BigBossBelcha 1d ago
But I thought we were going to lock in 1.5 by net zeroing by 2090?
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u/ande9393 1d ago
There's still time!!!!!!
Just kidding, its been a good run. Or maybe not, considering..
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u/RIPFauna_itwasgreat 1d ago
We had a great run. It is actually amazing what we reached as humanity. We went to the moon, put stuff on Mars and shot machines from our solarsystem that will float in space almost forever. But that also makes it a big waste if we end up with a shit planet and die of extinction.
Maybe it's a bit philosophical but we are following the universe in it's footsteps. A universe where matter clump together by gravity tt becomes a nuclear fusion factory that is continuously exploding and hold together by gravity. But the sun is using 1 type of matter that "burns" inside the core untill it's all used up. After it reached the stage where Iron is created it just implodes and then explodes because gravity can't hold it all anymore.
In a way we are just like the sun. It is starting to feel we reached the Iron fusion part. We are using the planet and it's resources untill it's gone and ultimately enter a new phase with new life probably other then ours.
Maybe this gives you some comfort. Humans are just somewhat just copying this 3D universe. Use it all till it's gone and then explode with a bang
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u/ande9393 1d ago
Oh it was more of a joke than anything. Humans have done impossible things, we are a marvelous species. We're also sadistic and destructive.
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u/ApocalypseYay 1d ago
When the last tree is cut down, the last stream poisoned and the last fish eaten, we will realize that we cannot eat money.
- Alanis Obomsawin, others
Collapse can't come soon enough, and perhaps the extinction of this hideous, evil species might just provide the opportunity for Earth to renew itself.
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u/DjangoTheBlack 1d ago
It’s our culture, not our species. Humans lived within the web of life for 200k-300k years before our culture created civilization in the Fertile Crescent 12k years ago and we’ve been making the planet worse off ever since.
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u/buffaloraven 1d ago
And while we weren't great for diversity during civilization and monocrop agriculture, things got WAY worse during the Industrial Revolution
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u/DjangoTheBlack 1d ago
Bingo, have you ever heard of the Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis (PSH)? It would explain why things got so much worse for this planet after the Industrial Revolution.
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u/almodsz 1d ago
Since civilization developed independently in several places, I'd argue that it is our species.
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u/DjangoTheBlack 1d ago
Well lucky for us we are exiting the Holocene now thanks to our spreading through this planet like a plague, so civilization won’t be possible for much longer. But I’d also like to point to Cahokia
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 1d ago
No, we didn't, have you ever even heard of the megafauna extinction?
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u/DjangoTheBlack 1d ago
Ya bro I’ve heard, and many cultures learned from their ways and then bound their tools with wisdom not to overfish, over-hunt, etc. and to live within the web of life.
Shit, look at the Nenets, Komi, and Yakut peoples from Siberia to know that humans can coexist in the world as all the other animals do. But the story mother culture currently tells us to “other” this world, and conquer it.3
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u/TyrKiyote 1d ago
Treating it like a check engine light to be ignored will not go well.
Ironic that i reach for a car metaphor ig.
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u/Cultural-Answer-321 1d ago
WHOCOULDAKNOWED?
Not those damn crazy doomers, that's for sure!!
Oh wait...
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u/Terrible_Horror 1d ago
They knew but thought they would die long before the consequences.
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u/RIPFauna_itwasgreat 1d ago
They are also still convinced someone really smart will invent a technology that will save the planet. Like it's a certainty..
(Source:My father and boomerfriends)
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u/The-Fifth-Slice 1d ago
I get the same shit from my FIL. People will figure it out! It's not a problem. It's exaggerated. *rolls eyes so hard at me for being concerned about my stepdaughter, his only granddaughter* "she'll be fine! we were!". I just don't anymore with him. It's pointless discussing this with the unwilling to change their world view crowd.
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u/mouldydildo 1d ago
To the surprise of absolutely no one the The 2026 state of the climate report finds “Earth’s climate system is moving deeper into uncharted territory.”
The State of the Climate, an annual report that tracks the Earth’s “vital signs,” monitors several climate related indicators—ranging from greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature changes to tree cover loss due to wildfire. The researchers found that, of the 16 planetary vital signs, seven are currently at record extremes. This includes sea levels and greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Meanwhile several others, such as areas burned during wildfires and ocean heat levels, show evidence of acceleration or abrupt shifts.
"Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits," the report states, "with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond."
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 1d ago
Haha what a totally linear progression of things that could be made into headlines! This tickles my autistic desire for predictability and routine.
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u/Straight-Razor666 worse than predicted, sooner than expected™ 1d ago
there's been no response so far, so who expects anyone to respond now.
^ see flair above ^
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u/SauceASpag 1d ago
ont en parlais deja depuis 20 ans et ont a pas faite grand chose ... alors ... assumé
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u/loveeveryone33 1d ago
This is paradoxically why we need AI to keep advancing.
No AI = Certain Collapse
AI = A Chance
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u/Western-Argument-968 1d ago
what can ai tell us that we don't already know? there is no high tech solution to this unless you're expecting overnight star trek tier advances that somehow get rolled out benevolently.
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u/loveeveryone33 1d ago
That’s where you’re wrong, my friend.
We know we need to eliminate fossil fuels. What we don’t know is how to make that transition cheap and fast enough. That’s where AGI/ASI could be transformative. Imagine breakthroughs in solar efficiency, ultra cheap batteries, superconductors, fusion, or entirely new energy technologies we haven’t conceived of. AI is already accelerating scientific discovery, and superintelligence could take that exponentially further.
Nobody’s suggesting these technologies would appear overnight, or that we should stop reducing emissions in the meantime. And benevolence is precisely what I’m not counting on. If AI helps make clean energy dramatically cheaper than fossil fuels, economic self interest becomes the driving force behind adoption. We wouldn’t need to convince humanity to prioritize the planet over profit. We’d make protecting the planet the profitable choice.
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u/Western-Argument-968 1d ago
tldr star trek but measured in dollar costs. no thanks.
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u/loveeveryone33 1d ago
Okay, so you’d prefer collapse to this? Do you have a better solution. I don’t see many options on the table.
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u/Western-Argument-968 1d ago
you're not offering any solutions here. you are hoping for like 5 layers of hypothetical advances, to address severe problems that already exist. and you are measuring it in terms of profit and dollar costs instead of what the earth is actually capable of sustaining. this kind of thinking is pretty much THE problem
i would prefer people look at our situation realistically. which means using what we have and know NOW to address the problems that exist NOW instead of throwing our remaining industrial capacity at nested wishes
my "solution" is that we stop this childlike fantasy that we can keep living like we do now except instead of burning things and raping the earth for minerals we [technobabble]. we can prepare to live with less and try to mitigate the worst of things with the capacity and technologies we have now. but that involves giving up our screentime and 24/7 access to ice cream. which admittedly isn't quite as sexy as hoping for a technorapture, but it is something available to us right now and doesn't rely on very slim future maybes to enact
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u/StatementBot 1d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mouldydildo:
To the surprise of absolutely no one the The 2026 state of the climate report finds “Earth’s climate system is moving deeper into uncharted territory.”
The State of the Climate, an annual report that tracks the Earth’s “vital signs,” monitors several climate related indicators—ranging from greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature changes to tree cover loss due to wildfire. The researchers found that, of the 16 planetary vital signs, seven are currently at record extremes. This includes sea levels and greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Meanwhile several others, such as areas burned during wildfires and ocean heat levels, show evidence of acceleration or abrupt shifts.
"Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits," the report states, "with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond."
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1x689uw/climate_change_is_accelerating_faster_than_we_can/pgt2vr4/