this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 107 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah but why did they need to get political about it?/s

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh how right/wrong they were... 😮

[–] [email protected] 106 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

At that level of co2 production, they were probably right about the timetable. What they couldn't predict is that co2 production would rise so dramatically with automobiles and industry in the decades after that. They were at 7 billion tons a year then. We are over 36 billion tons a year now, over 5 times as much. That has clearly expedited the effects on the climate.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago

That's so cool to know! Oh wait I mean hot, and also not, well anyway thanks for sharing:-P.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

What they couldn't predict is that co2 production would rise so dramatically

interestingly enough in the early 1900 there were more electric cars than ICEs in north america

[–] stoy 64 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

That was probably fairly accurate at that time.

Look at the historical data here:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

BTW, the large recent drop in co2 emissions, covid.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

"large"... If only. Barely a drop in the bucket.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I never thought I'd say this, but looks like we need more pandemics!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is actually a thought that some climate deniers have. "Climate change is a hoax to control you, covid was the trial run".

Unsurprisingly, the people who say that publicly tend to be funded by oil.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Why doesn’t anyone ever think COVID was sent by God to give us a reprieve and a chance to get our act together, which we’re now squandering?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Good news! We're continuing to shit on our biodiversity safety net.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Whenever I think about this article, I think about how they could not have possibly known how emissions would grow, and they were perfectly reasonable to frame it this way. And if things stayed at that rate, we would have been able to do something about it so easily when we started getting worried

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago

It's a good thing someone noticed this back then, and the world dumped the coal industry. Imagine how fucked we'd be now if this was completely ignored.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (1 children)

While kicking The can down the road, you come across a sign.

BRIDGE OUT AHEAD

What do you do?

  1. Continue kicking the can, I'm sure it'll be fine.
  2. I don't believe in bridges.
  3. Even if God let the bridge collapse, which he wouldn't, I'll go to heaven if I fall and die, so who cares?
  4. Pick up the can and go find a dumpster.
  5. There's squirrels in my pants! Jump to safety!
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yes, all of that. In that order.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Woke. Cancel them. Get politics out of my newspapers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

They have already been canceled.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago

Because they never account for exponential consumption growth. It was "a few centuries" at current consumption.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago

The thing that really gets me about these ignorant fuckers is it's not just the indisputable math, it's that we've observed the proof not just in our ecosystem, but on Venus. You can't even pretend we don't know how these systems work in at least a general sense.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Aren’t there still people trying to suggest that we still don’t know if climate change is scientifically understood/proven? This is crazy that we knew about this so long ago!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not seriously, no. Are there people lying in order to betray their entire species for absolutely no benefit? Yes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

No benefit? No, of course not. But for more money to the shareholders of the oil and coal companies which some politicians either are or get payed by. OF COURSE! They will do it gladly with a smile.

Renewables aren't funded anything close to what governments of any country spend on oil and coal companies, and that's for the benefit of the very few people who own them.

Didn't we already figure out the whole climate change story way back long ago? And the only reason why we didn't do anything about it were studies funded by the oil industry so that they absolutely have to show there was "no link" between our CO2 emissions and the global temperature? Because I'm pretty sure that's the story.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Solé's fantastic and extremely recommendable book "Phase Transitions" covers this as well. Quoting Janssen et al.: "even when the group is faced with negative results, members may not suggest abandoning an earlier course of action, since this might break the existing unanimity."
"More generally, the underlying problem here is why complex societies might fail to adapt [...]. Even if there is some social perception of risk, short-term thinking often prevails when facing long-term vulnerabilities. Such undesirable behavior is often favored by a combination of incomplete understanding of the problem, together with the misleading view that all changes are reversible."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

misleading view that all changes are reversible

That is chilling.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Kind of the opposite in this case no?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago

To be fair, in 1912 it was not at all obvious at which scale humanity started to burn everything after 1950.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Only one century has passed since then, so we're still good. It's pollutin' time!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Idk why but captain planet popped up in my head when I read the last sentence.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago

And this is when the topic was published by a newspaper.
If memory serves, the fist scientific publications were from the 1880s.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That may end up being correct. The models predicting the most catastrophic effects are often showing that for 2100, which would be nearly 200 years from the publish date.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

And my friends and family wonder why I'm not having kids. I'm sure eager to bring new life in right before one of the most cataclysmic events of humanity, that's for sure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It said a few centuries, not a couple.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

what's the difference?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What's funny about that newspaper excerpt is that it is word-for-word plagiarized from a picture caption in earlier article in Popular Mechanics, March 1912

The reporter for Rodnen and Otamatea Times must've been on tight deadlines!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

It's Rodney, the district just north of Auckland in New Zealand

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

just could not imagine the scale at which human civilization would escalate. Apart from that, spot on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

That's like 30 years after the concept was first understood. Even now the concept is downplayed so people don't reject it outright

And even today, almost no one truly understands the implications of exponential growth... I'd give them full marks

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

The German Federal Public Radio (Deutschland Funk) has a Radio Documentary Series, about particular historical Topics called "Der Rest ist Geschichte". Mostly academic experts explain the topics from the academic view for "common" people. They made a interesting one about the History of the Knowledge about the climate crisis.

Aus der Dlf App | Der Rest ist Geschichte | Klima und Krise – Seit wann wir von der Erderwärmung wissen https://share.deutschlandradio.de/dlf-audiothek-audio-teilen.html?mdm:audio_id=dira_DLF_15dd044f

Afaik there is no English version :<

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

1&1/10th is indeed a very few centuries.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Technically correct is the best kind of correct.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

WARKWORTH was Wokewarth, am I right?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Gramma was a toddler.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Humanity: Hold my pint.

[–] filcuk 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why did they not print the whole of 'Affecting' on a new line, that's bothering me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Liang hadn’t made his hyphenation algorithm yet :(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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