Microblog Memes

Not to be that person, but my parents are completely incapable of comprehending this.

Not intellectually, but pragmatically and philosophically. They're like 60 years old, and even if it affects them in their lifetime, they'll be "dead in 20 years".

And on a low level, they're kind of right because most ordinary people aren't to blame for this, so shaming "parents" makes no sense.

Shame the international petroleum conglomerates, plastic producers, shipping, etc. You know, the actual emitters in the billions of gigatons.

Your parents ignored this

I've been hearing about climate change consistently since the 1980s. Multiple iterations of liberal (and moderate conservative) politician have campaigned on a variety of (free market) mechanisms for capping or curbing carbon emissions. We even had a huge surge in R&D for green energy alternatives and electrification - first in the 70s and then again during the gas cost explosion of the 00s - that is (thank fucking god) finally paying off.

So I won't say they "ignored this". I will say that we had a very wealthy, very influential minority entrenched within the political class that profited enormously from fossil fuel extraction and deliberately suppressed decades of prior efforts to reduce emissions, both domestically and globally.

The Boomers weren't blind to climate change. They weren't even apathetic. They were outmatched, outplayed, and outspent. Much like with slavery in the 1800s and women's liberation in the 1900s and human rights in the 2000s, this is a fight that liberals have spent a lot of time losing. What wins they achieved felt significant in the moment, but remained dwarfed by the stubborn intractability of their wealthy, reactionary opposition.

The scary thing is, this graph is probably far too conservative.

Evidence is now emerging that indicates that warming has accelerated dramatically in the last 2-3 years. As in, we may see more warming in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 50, with +3℃ happening just after 2035, and +4℃ happening by some time around 2040 to 2050.

You know what happens around +4℃? The extinction of all megafauna - animals larger than 45kg. Like humans. The entire ⅓ of the planet between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn will experience lethally high wet bulb temperatures across all regions for at least several weeks out of every year, rendering it permanently uninhabitable for the 4+ Billion people that currently live there. India is currently flirting with that reality.

And with that heating inertia, 2100 may see +8℃ temps, which essentially means ice-free poles year round (once things calm down), with palm trees and alligators at the North Pole. Of course, by that time chaotic weather and resource exhaustion will have killed off all remaining humans.

And the lovely thing about “moving parts” is that they all have this little thing called inertia… the faster they move, the further they go. And +8℃ is very close to the +12-15℃ that a Venus Scenario would be triggered by.

Past warming events have been “similar” in that they have gotten just as warm, but they took hundreds of thousands of years to get to the same place, allowing entire continent-wide ecosystems to quite literally migrate across thousands of kilometers to adapt. Our changes are happening in less than 0.01% of that time scale, giving ecosystems no time at all in which to react. So our biosphere will get slaughtered along with us, and will be unable to compensate in time.

And with the biosphere becoming overwhelmed by rapid changes, there goes the “friction” that could do something about that “inertia”.

And the worst part is, we still haven’t moved off of the worst-case-possible “business as usual” path. We are swan-diving into the worst possible future. Thanks to billionaires addicted to fat profit margins and who control all of the processes, we are utterly failing to generate the change needed to save ourselves, with CO2e production - purely human sources, excluding the feedback loops in nature!! - CONTINUING TO ACCELERATE.

Fun times. I just might live long enough to see humanity go extinct.

Finally, this is the first time I saw this graph that DIDN'T use logarithmic scale for time - which makes this sharp spike look "natural".

Sam Altman (OpenAI) is a Millennial. So is Zuckerberg. LLMs are one of the big energy sinks right now, reaching 1,000 terawatt-hours by 2026 and the current rate of use is doubling every year. For comparison, total global commercial (excluding industrial and transportation, so, office buildings - lights, AC, computers) energy use is 50,000 TWh.

It's still being ignored. Boomers are out of the work force (if not politics), and Gen X is just starting to retire. Between Millenials and Gen Z, they hold 32% of the voting power in the US, the same as Boomers. And Gen Z is only just entering voting age, at 8%.

Half the voting population is under 50 and global temperatures keep increasing. There's every indication sticking your head in the sand is a cross-generational behavior.

Not just ignored, but vehemently dismissed as “woke” quoting the fossil fuel lobby almost verbatim. Repeatedly. Over generations and overwhelming scientific consensus.

Did they ignore it? Yes but the only reason they ignored it was because...

1. The oil industry (and other adjacent industries) did their best to make sure everybody doubted the science of climate change

2. Governments (the U.S gov't in particular) took the oil industry's side and subsidized their ventures

3. Libertarian think tanks (like the Heritage Foundation and ALEC) took money from Big Oil to misinform the public about climate change and its connection to fossil fuel burning.

The average person hasn’t ignored it. Most people have made major changes to their consumption over the past 20-30 years without noticing it.

• LED lighting instead of incandescent or CFL lights.
• TVs are flat panel instead of tube (same for computer monitors)
• Electric cars are way more prevalent
• Most electronics use rechargeable batteries instead of single use
• Consumer goods contain fewer harmful chemicals

Change is being made, it’s just going too slow because individuals have very limited options while a handful of corporations are responsible for the vast majority of pollution. We’re not ignoring it, we lack the ability to make reasonable change to the situation.

Imagine finding that people your own age ignored it too, like they're doing right now.

Next generation is going to post this map but with higher temps

Our parents didn't ignore it.

Our Governments, and the corporations who bribed those governments, just didn't give a shit enough to listen.

AI is going to fix this by increasing the scale of the Y axis.

At what point on this graph is ecoterrorism justified?

And people think I'm crazy for starting an algae farm... There is no quick fix. "Science will figure something out"

I am part of that science, and I can barely afford to scale beyond what I consider my carbon footprint.

narcimalgae on YouTube, although the algorithm killed it (500 to 6 views on my last video)so I may move to peertube soon.

I may be nitpicking here but I think people are misinterpreting the caption.

They aren't directly saying, "your parents ignored this and now we're fucked"

It's saying, "IF your parents ignored this and you found out, you'd be mad"

Implying that, "YOU should not ignore this, because what will YOUR children think of YOU?"

A lot of people are focusing on saying "uh well my parents aren't to blame" or "they wouldn't understand" but that's not the point of the message.

You dont understand. The poor billionairs need their money nowwww!

I don't think this is gonna be a very popular response but here's my 2 cents after reading a lot of comments.

We are all products of out time. I'm not gonna blame ordinary people for believing what they were told when it was the general consensus at the time.

That doesn't excuse that behavior today. Today we know better.

But when my parents grew up, burning your garbage in the fire pit was considered recycling. It was the norm.

Today my parents and grandparents don't burn plastic in a fire pit. Because today we know better. But I don't think they ignored it 40 years ago. They just didn't know better.

Good thing we educate people on how to do what we can. Unfortunately, what individuals do doesn't matter much.

In school I did a project on climate change and in that research, I found that 1 single coal PowerPlant in Germany, released more co2, sulfur, monoxide and what not, in 1 month. Than every single registered vehicle in Sweden combined, does in a whole year.

So being a good citizen and taking my bike to the store and work instead of car (even during winter). Feels like a fart in the wind knowing that. Not to mention cargo-ships and what they use on international waters.

Relevant xkcd

People of every generation were told it doesn't matter and that it won't be a problem. With the advent of social media and associated algorithms, the village idiots are loud, organised and getting others to bark at the moon with them.

No you don’t understand.

Jesus.

That’s all, any questions will be met with a holy sword to the clavicle. Jesus!

Phew, looks like the industrial revolution just saved us from falling below the safe climate zone! /s

And we're just meme posting ab it xD
At least our parents weren't pretending