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Scientists are alarmed by signs of collapse in Earth's natural carbon sinks
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
215 points (99.1% liked)
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I had no idea this was possible, a tipping point I never imagined. Sounds like many scientists were as ignorant as I, assuming the planet would cycle as much CO2 as ever. And now even that foot-brake is slowing?!
Fuck it. I can only do what I can do. Seen the ecosystem collapse in my region over the last 20-years, seen it collapse on my front porch in the last 4. Always shocking to me that no one is noticing the collapse in our insect populations, and amphibians, and reptiles, and fish, and mammals, and... Young people have no idea how fecund our environment was, even in cities.
I see less life in the woods than I did in my suburban hood in the 80s. And it was all the more lively in my parent's time. Ran into some rednecks 4-wheeling down to the creek the other day. Old lady seemed shocked I was swimming in it. "Hell naw I ain't goin' in there!" Well, lady, not many snakes or anything else. I was thrilled to see 5 fish, and only 1 was mature. And of all my trips there, that was the first time I'd seen more than 1 fish! (other than minnows)
We first-world people are so disconnected from the mythical "outdoors" that we think all is well as long as gasoline costs $X and eggs cost $Y.
Who cares.
Oil money go brrrrrrrr
/S
Name a solution that isn't scientist militias. Ha! Impossible because now you're just thinking about scientist militias.
The irony is that if the weather goes to shit then how do these rich assholes think people will be able to drive around. Everything will be destroyed by climate change. No roads, no destinations to go to.
They don't give a shit. All they think about is making money right now. They'll sell their own mother if it means making an extra buck.
That's how these people think.
Exactly. And our society is structured in a way that promotes those types of people straight to the top of all decision making, in business and government.
Someone who makes altruistic decisions, well, their business would fail day one as they wouldn't be able to compete. And in gov't they simply wouldn't get any votes.
There are outliers of course, just not enough to have a big enough impact.
We're doomed lol.
Smoke 'em if ya gottem.
Its absolutely insane to me that 118 countries tries to rely on the thing we are destroying to save it. I know the carbon sinks are just there doing their thing. But that just doesnt seem like solid logic in a fragile system. You need to place the excess carbon elsewhere.
I read it like, we did rely on carbon sinks to keep doing their thing at a certain rate. Excess CO2 was a factor on top of that.
But now it seems we're seeing carbon sinks flat line, not keeping the steady state we had assumed was constant, unchanging.
If true, that's a hell of a tipping point. Am I reading you right?
I was more or less referring to relying on those sinks to hit carbon goals. I know they are there so its cheaper to include them. But we really need to be eliminating this completely without relying on nature. Especially if we want to continue our meddling as it is.
Does anyone have link to some more information on the science of why this is happening?
The article references a bunch of causes, like deforestation, ocean poisening affecting the ocean carbon pump, extreme heat etc. Are there any studies/data that try to break down where the impact comes from?
Mother nature said fuck this shit let em burn