Post source: https://mas.to/@advisorybriefs/110769955083302457
Data source: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
The hottest 21 days so far!
Seriously! I give it pretty good odds this runs for a full month, then we’ll probably get some relief with days that are only near record-breaking 🥵
And then the inevitable day or week or so where it’s unseasonably cold before we barrel into another couple months of record breaking heat. But during those weeks I will be told innumerable times “so much for global warming! This idiots don’t know anything!”
We’re at the top of the curve, we’re going to see record breaking temps till November, and then it’s summer in Australia.
Why’s this guy so horny about climate change?
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Not true. Fake news. Everyone knows that for the first few hundred million years after Earth first formed the average surface temperature was 80C (176F).
“ever recorded” - there was nobody around to record the formation of the earth.
Um in case you’ve been under a rock George Santos obviously kept perfect records for the last 4.5 billion years.
God did! /s
Unfortunately he isn’t sharing his historical datasets sets with the wider community. :(
Also when the impactor that hit us to form the moon melted the surface of the planet I bet it was pretty toasty.
Exxon is working on it. Give it another decade.
hands in front while looking high
Aliens
Weren’t there already some 82 C temperatures recorded at ground level already? I seem to recall a post here in the last couple of days saying that people ended up in hospital with burns and such from contact with very hot pavement.
Not as hot as ‘we’ were 13.7bn years ago!
Keep it up everyone! We’re going to show Mother Nature who’s really in charge.
We just had the coolest three weeks for the next 100 years! Awesome!
I’m sure our winters will be more extreme now too
I’ll always upvote this, until The End comes
All I can picture with these posts is the SpongeBob montage when Mr Krabs decided to go 24/7 and everything looking increasingly disheveled
Yes, the planet was destroyed in the name of insatiable capitalist greed.
But for one shining moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders!
(and just to be crystal clear, not you)
The planet will be fine. It’s us that should be worried.
For the love of christ, stop saying that. Every single time someone makes this comment. We. Get. It.
Do we? Because the absolutely astonishing sense of self-importance humans have would indicate otherwise.
Other beings live here, and while humans fuck humans over in the name of greed and power, we bulldoze entire ecosystems without any consideration for the other creatures that lived here whatsoever.
No, you’re wrong. Most humans live, act, and speak as if the entire world, hell the entire universe, should be bent to better serve our naive, entitled species exclusively.
It’s a thought-terminating cliche that serves to downplay the problem because “hurr durr the animals will be okay” (even though they actually won’t since we’re in the middle of the Anthropocene mass extinction, but never mind that) and to act as a derailment tactic.
This is the best explanation I’ve seen for this
I don’t read it that way, quite the opposite. So, so many people act like this is mostly about protecting the climate or the environment or animals, not about protecting our way of life. The way so many frame it as protecting the earth makes it so easy to make it sound optional.
But the world will be okay, it doesn’t need protecting. It’s the 8 billion humans that RELY on the world AS IT IS NOW that will be fucked. It’s human protection, not ecological protection.
Nature will inevitably adjust. This isn’t the first mass extinction and it won’t be the last. I’m more concerned about agriculture and how the changing climate could lead to mass starvation, refugee issues, etc. The animals can inherit the Earth after we blow ourselves up with nukes.
There are a lot of people still waking up to the situation so I think it’s worth saying even if you personally have heard it many times.
I’ll stop saying it the minute people stop saying we’re destroying the planet.
Only an idiot thinks that when we say *we are destroying the planet " they literally means the planet will explode or something. It’s clear that we mean the only part of the planet that is meaningful for us, the biosphere.
But it’s the idiots that CONSTANTLY argue that the world will be fine. The framing of it as protection of animals/the planet/the climate makes it incredibly easy for people to pretend it’s optional, not directly related to them. This isn’t a hypothetical point, EVERY SINGLE climate discussion I’ve ever witnessed some mouthbreather has argued that “the climate will continue to exist, it doesn’t need protecting”.
What needs protecting isn’t the planet, the ecology, the animals or plants, it’s US. It’s ENTIRELY an US problem.
Which we also won’t destroy. Life on earth will adapt, but we’re making it inhospitable for ourselves.
Well, I guess all the life forms that are going extinct through the Holocene/anthropogene extinction event, which humans caused, don’t matter?
Sure there will be life on earth and it will adapt, but don’t act like we’re not taking down whole families of plants and animals with us… because it’s already happening.
Honestly, I really don’t care about what happens to the planet after all humans are extinct…
Look genius- we know the planet will be just fine. When ppl say we are destroying the planet we obvious (except to you) are talking about our own survival on the planet.
Again Sherlock, nobody is talking about the frame of view of random animals that may or may not be fine. We are only talking about our frame of reference.
If you actually considered the semantics of “technically some people will still be alive but living in a mad max like apocalypse or jellyfish will be fine” means that our biosphere hasn’t been destroyed for humans you are being ridiculously pedantic.
I’m sure that will make all of the plants and animals feels better…/s.
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People have refused to say that for centuries.
Agreed, we and other land mammals will suffer greatly, but life on Earth is hearty and just as the great George Carlin said, once we’re gone, the planet will heal itself from the failed mutation that was homo sapien.
The one thing that makes me feel better is that all those greedy billionaires will also be dead.
in the name of insatiable capitalist greed
The communist and socialist countries aren’t using any less oil either. We can’t fix a problem if we are blaming random things.
The path forward is nuclear and renewables for the next decades while we wait for grid-scale energy storage problems to be solved.
There are no actual socialist countries, but if you’re referring to, for example, the Scandinavian countries, they use far less oil per capita than the United States.
No, Scandinavian countries just have a healthy government. Countries like China have awful, awful climate impacts, much worse off than most other countries. Though, them and France at least have started a nuclear build-out, which is needed to 100% de-carbonize the grid.
China manages to be the manufacturing hub of the world AND have a lower carbon footprint per capita than the United States. We don’t have time to keep pointing fingers and making excuses, we need to be making changes.
I… don’t think we disagree? China has a corrupt communist government. I was specifically referring to socialist governments, and the ones that are frequently (mis)labelled as socialist are doing a lot better on oil consumption than either China or the United States.
If you’re splitting hairs about communism, socialism, and “mislabelling” (even though socialism is a generic term that encompasses communism…?), why are you describing China’s government as communist? Communism is (ideally, at least) stateless, and like all socialist idologies it is fundamentally anti-capitalist.
You’re right that the Nordic model isn’t socialist, though. It’s a blend of social democracy and corporatism.
Countries like China have awful, awful climate impacts, much worse off than most other countries.
Except that isn’t true
How is it not true? Per capital they are lower but that doesn’t mean much when you have over a billion people. I think a more accurate sentence would be most industrialized nations have awful awful climate impacts.
It’s a bit disingenuous to blame a country for having high emissions when it has 10x the number of people
That means it needs 10x the amount of electricity, vehicle fuel etc.
By the same logic, the Vatican City is a world leader in climate policy.
Should we start comparing China with the Americas and Europe combined? Because that’s a more like-for-like comparison
Which is why I said a more accurate sentence would be most industrialized nations have awful climate impact. Diluting their impact behind a per capita graph is misleading. Also out of all my travels in the world China has been the only country I could visibly see that impact without having traveled to it or even being super close. The morning chemical smog I’d see in Korea on a regular basis compares to nothing else I’ve seen and I’ve lived in some pretty dirty regions.
China isn’t socialist by any academic definition.
The communist and socialist countries aren’t using any less oil either. We can’t fix a problem if we are blaming random things.
I’ve come to accept that there isn’t hope to stop the runaway train of unchecked capitalist greed, at least not without the hard lesson of collapse and rebuild, and that means there will be apologists like you screaming that the ship (Our habitable world) isn’t sinking as you’re waist deep in ocean(city destroying weather events, crop failures, heat deaths, fresh water crises, etc).
That used to bother me, but I’ve come to appreciate you as the comedy relief you are in this tragedy. So by all means, keep crowing about how competition between humans in matters of life and death are “healthy” and how the capital markets will save us from the capital markets that don’t care about any future that is more than a fiscal quarter out, and will do anything they can get away with against the species for an extra nickel for shareholders.
I’m sure the benevolence of the sliver of the population that came to own almost everything through Extensive, merciless exploitation and
sociopathy“rational self-interest” will swoop in to save you and your loved ones for your devotion.Nobody is willing to tolerate a drop in quality of life for the climate. Third worlders like the Chinese have finally gotten a taste for a little meat with supper and they aren’t going to give it up so easily.
I don’t even think this is inherently capitalist. It’s a human issue. Obviously capitalism messes up incentives - so companies like ExxonMobil will deliberately lie about emissions or what have you and create PR campaigns to influence people into more carbon emissions.
So capitalism definitely makes it worse in that regard - but the ultimate cause of this is 8 trillion humans who want access to smartphones, cars, globalized consumer products, laptops, A/C, etc
The only real way to reduce carbon emissions to a point it won’t inevitably fuck up the planet is not to have humans exist in a large scale industrial society. Go ahead and campaign on that as a politician. It ain’t happening. We’re burning this bitch to the ground.
For what it’s worth, it’ll take a couple of centuries before we really start to feel the effects in full. Sure, a few unusual heatwaves here and there seem serious but it’s nothing like what’s coming.
In torn between following my dreams and dedicating my life to attempting to help the climate crisis by going to school and inventing some tech to help
and giving up entirely, coasting through life with my stable government job, and drinking to forget until the day I hang myself…
This world is fucked, should I even try? Or should I just hope in reincarnation?
Well if no one does anything it won’t be better should reincarnation come around.
I think Dr. Seuss has some pertinent wisdom here.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
Its not really a matter of if I care. I cannot sway billionaires, the ones who put us into this situation. I cannot make them stop destroying the planet. They do not care what I think, and they are solely motivated by profits. Nothing else. They have no morality, no sensibilities, no sympathy, and they have absolutely no desire to do literally anything about the unfolding climate crisis. They don’t care. They’d double emissions in a heartbeat if they’d make a few cents off of it. God knows they’ve done it before, and they’ve done much worse for much less money.
Until the money billionaires have stolen from us is rightfully given back to us, we have no means of intervening directly ourselves. The only other option is insurrectionary revolution. Those in the ruling class have shown us consistently over the last 150 years that they have callous disregard for the environment and for the future of humanity. They have shown time and again they will ignore all warnings, they will dismiss all concerns, they are apathetic to human life, and are solely focused on the accumulation of stolen wealth. There’s no middle ground here. If we want to do something meaningful to mitigate this crisis, the billionaires and the ruling class have to go.
If it gets too hot, they’ll just buy a bigger AC unit. Then a bigger one. Then they’ll move underground. Until that gets too hot as well.
There was a meme floating around a while back with a quote from some native american fellow saying something along the lines of ‘only when the last bison has been killed,[…] the last tree has been felled, will they realized they can’t eat money’.
Their power of the rich only exists as long as the rest of the people are giving it to them. We as a collective are not able to break away though. At the end of it all apathy goes both ways. They are apathetic to human life, the rest of humanity is apathetic to human life. It’s a self perpetuating system. The ‘fuck you, got mine’ mentality is the one to blame here and perhaps it’s one of the traits that brought us so far.
And, for all the good and bad it’s brought us, we conquered the planet (grey connotation intended there) because it was ‘never enough’. For instance, some creatures could fly. We couldn’t. So we fixed that by keeping birds in cages as pets and by inventing powered flight.
Undeniably, we’ve gotten ourselves in quite a pickle with this mentality, but I propose here that they are the inevitable result of humanity. Hoarders have been around since humanity started killing each other for resources (see monarchies as an example). They are probably not fecking off too soon. And I don’t believe eat the rich is a solution because people will just eat the closest rich person and change the definition of rich to ‘has a bit more than me’ to justify it.
Are they going to go just because you say they have to, or will action be required?
Assuming it’s action does that happen with apathy or do you have to care?
Caring a “whole awful lot” does not start and stop with green initiatives by the people.
The “do you care” flow chart boils down to two directions:
- No > then it doesn’t matter
- Yes > then what are we going to do about it
Which branch gets to what you’re talking about?
Depends, how likely do you see a socialist insurrectionary revolution happening?
To be clear, I do care. I’d like to have a good life. But I cant snap my fingers and magically radicalize the entirety of the world. I do my best with the limited platform I have, but I’m only one radical anarchist.
I’m not saying you can or that you’re expected to. Just like a single rain drop doesn’t make a flood.
But if every rain drop got discouraged from falling because it can’t make a flood all on its own we’d have been in droughts earlier and more often.
As far as likelihood, I think we’ve been approaching a revolution of some kind or another for a couple decades at least. It could be a violent one like the French Revolution, or a cultural one like the Industrial Revolution. Time, events, and people will make that determination, but the visible unrest with income disparity grows more obvious on a pretty regular basis.
Which book is this from?
The Lorax which is really the most applicable one here.
If you haven’t read it I’ll also suggest The Butter Battle Book if you’re interested in morality that boomers retroactively want to have not taught their children
I have, just many moons ago. I’ll take another read. Very pertinent
The problem isn’t tech to help the environment, as far as I can tell. It’s more getting the people in charge to actually do something about it.
I think the French once invented a device for that, I forget what it was called.
Guillotine
Hmm… a baguette?
Hon hon hon
So, your answer to climate change is to kill people? Other than that idiotic proposal, which others do you have that people should implement and which would end climate change?
Seeing how we’ve known about it for decades and this is the amount of progress we’ve made towards slowing/fixing it… idk maybe I’m just being cynical, then again Covid really showed us just how much the general public doesn’t care about their well-being and other’s wellbeing
I had a slight glimmer of hope at the start of covid-19, when people were dazed and confused and isolating and waiting for a vaccine. At the very start, I actually thought humanity is proving we’re not that bad.
The rest is history now.
IMO, it’s always better to try. Worst case scenario is that nothing changes, so no worse than if you didn’t. The only sane choice in that kind of situation is to pick the one with a chance for improvement.
In my experience, giving a shit about what you’re doing has a bunch of positing knock-on affects as well. You just end up feeling better about yourself. In your specific scenario it sounds like trying would also afford you the opportunity to live a happier life, and that’s worth chasing. The world is fucked, but scientists keep saying they if we act soon it’s not so fucked they we’re past the inflection point to un-fuck it.
Would you really want to be reincarnated onto this sweat box of a planet?
Lots of planets out there, maybe another has life, and you can be snail-like creature on beta-kapsilon 114-3b
I want to be a brain slug when I grow up.
It’s looking more and more depressing on that front too…
Apparently we’re discovering that our type of star system with its long periods of stability and lack of local disruptive bodies is incredibly, incredibly, rare… There are a (literal) astronomical amount of systems out there so there’s no way we’re the only one with life, but it’s really looking like there could only be a “handful” of others out there :/
All it takes is one
If you have the energy to try I’d say do so, but be careful not to overexert yourself. When it comes to doing good or altruistic things that don’t have a lot of direct value to us, we all have different amounts of energy. If that energy runs out, people burn out and stop doing anything. With that in mind, try to do small things here and there. For following your dreams, I’d say to my knowledge we only live once and you should do something you enjoy, and it’s possible at any age to change careers, but it’s important to be realistic and build a plan before making the jump.
Listen to Kim Stanley Robinson’s interview on chapo trap house. Something comes next, we just can’t see what that is.
Maybe a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.
One could argue that we (humans) are doing exactly what we are meant to do and that the climate change isn’t a ‘problem’ on the grander scale.
Change is only ‘bad’ based on perspective. Climate Change could also be the pressure catalyst that drives evolutionary change. The pressure exerted on coal underground could be considered ‘bad’ for the coal but it also drives the transformation of coal into diamond.
This is exactly why I dislike the phrase climate change. Outside of academia, it should be ‘climate catastrophe’. Or maybe ‘sixth mass extinction’. Those are much less ambiguous.
Mate believe me i’m thorn between the exact same feelings…
It’s hard to find a balance in an unbalanced world, a world that is demanding us to work hard to fix important problems and to create new and different possibilities.
At the same time a lot of us are just needing social interactions to the point they are starving: a lot of people of my generation grew up with technology ( the specific capitalist kind of technology that wanna keep you glued to the screen even if it’s hurting you) and are really in the need of some real human contact.
Finding a balance is incredibily hard, there’s this will of finding truth: true actions, true relationships, true help.
But at the same time the actions required to find solutions could take us a lot of time, mental and phisical resources…
But from as i see it now, i feel good if i can live one good day with the people i love even if rarely, than living with the consciousness i’ve never even tried to do something to change the world and create a better future for me and for them.
I mean what’re you gonna do?
The water is getting warm, so you might as well swim 🤷♀️
Moving past tipping points. With permafrost melting, sea ice melting and not reforming, and fires in the boreal forest, the feedback loop is developing. We are going to blow past 2 degrees C way faster than anyone predicted.
Honestly, anyone paying attention saw this coming since 2010.
We had twenty years to avoid this: by massively switching to nuclear power in the 90s and 00s.
We missed that exit ramp. By 2010 it was clear that 2 degrees was unavoidable.
The choice now is, do we limit it to 2-3 degrees warming, or do we go straight to 4-5 degrees?
It will take at least two decades to transform our industrial world economy.
4-5 degrees? You are optimistic. I bet I get to see 3 degrees in my lifetime as we will blast by each and every exit ramps. Not only that we’ll also be drifting on the highway, because it looks cool.
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They were being conservative because they didn’t want to be accused of being alarmists.
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Switching >50% of the power to wind could have happened any time in the last 80 years for far less than any one of the various failed nuclear transitions.
Hell, the first commercial solar thermal installation was over a century ago and the first attempt to bring PV to market was george cove in 1906. One abandoned nuclear reactor worth of investment could have moved either down the economic learning curve to replace coal.
I live in the SW US. We could probably provide power for most of the US with all the sun we get here and all the empty space without much of a hassle. The great thing is that it would likely be far less expensive than a good number of the alternatives.
“Nuclear power scares me”
Welcome to the result. It’s sad, because nuclear power was the way, but instead we propegandized against it and continued to use it as a boogie man.
Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily, ignoring there’s over 400 nuclear power reactors that are still active, 93 in America… But no… “Chernobyl” and the discussion ends.
Also Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors … nah can’t consider things have changed since then.
Now we have people using another nuclear plant in Ukraine as an example, and again the fear rises. They’re trying to weaponize the plant, but somehow it’s “Nuclear power” and not the fact some fuckheads are planning to destroy it in a destructive fashion that’s the problem.
Somehow dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.
Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors … nah can’t consider things have changed since then.
Things have indeed changed, now construction regulations are far tighter. This is good because the risk of a Chernobyl event is far lower, but at the price of extreme cost overruns and project delays
Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily
So is it better to start a nuclear project and hope it can start reducing coal & NG emissions 10 years from now? Or is it better to add solar and wind capacity constantly and at a fraction of the price per MWh?
There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems
Somehow Dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.
I think you’re forgetting that once the waters from a dam break dry up you can rebuild…a nuclear accident has the potential to poison the land for generations
There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems
And in ten years… it’ll be too long to add nuclear … And in ten years it’ll.
Solar and wind works in some places, it doesn’t work in all places, and the goal is to start moving away from Coal and Natural gas, it’s a long process no matter which way you go, but starting to add more nuclear capactiy so in 10 years we can use it, isn’t a bad thing.
“It’s too late” has also been a refrain about Nuclear, but hey, in 2010 if people started to go nuclear, we’d have that capacity today, instead it was too late then, and we can only go solar and Wind… and we’re still lacking.
Solar wind thermal energy works almost everywhere that humans thrive and it’s cheap
The comments are full of nuclear bros who think nuclear is the answer. Something about sun and wind not working everywhere.
The best time to ignore the nuclear industry scammers and spend the money on renewables instead for 10x the return in clean energy was 1942.
The second best time is now.
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starting to add more nuclear capactiy so in 10 years we can use it, isn’t a bad thing.
Unfortunately this is only true if the money tied up building a reactor for 10 years doesn’t take away from the budget for wind and solar projects. If it isn’t then you’re literally stealing clean energy from the present to hopefully get roughly 1/4 that rate of power production in a decade
The problem is that Solar and Wind doesn’t work as a viable solution everywhere, so if the choice is between do nothing or start nuclear, you go nuclear.
Instead America has done neither and waited as have many countries.
If Solar and wind can work, and they are as fast as you say, of course you go wind and solar, the problem is that’s not the case in many places.
I am not here to argue with you or to persuade you to change your opinion. I am only here to provide you with some information and facts that you may find useful or interesting.
You are right that solar and wind energy may not be viable solutions everywhere, depending on the availability of resources, the cost of installation and maintenance, the environmental impacts, and the social acceptance.
However, there are also many challenges and risks associated with nuclear energy, such as the disposal of radioactive waste, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the safety of nuclear power plants and fusion devices, and the potential for environmental contamination and human health hazards in case of accidents or mishandling.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, renewable energy sources accounted for about 20% of U.S. electricity generation in 2020, while nuclear energy accounted for about 19%. Solar and wind energy grew at the fastest rate in U.S. history in 2020, while nuclear energy remained relatively stable³. Some studies have suggested that it is possible to supply about 75-80% of U.S. electricity needs with solar and wind energy, if the system were designed with excess capacity and storage⁴.
Nuclear energy is not a renewable source of energy, as uranium is a finite resource that will eventually run out. Moreover, nuclear energy is not carbon-free, as the process of mining, refining, and preparing uranium emits greenhouse gases. Nuclear waste is also a major environmental problem that has no permanent solution yet.
I hope this information helps you to understand some of the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy compared to solar and wind energy. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share them with me. 😊
(1) The Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy - Physics | ScienceBriefss.com. https://sciencebriefss.com/physics/the-disadvantages-of-nuclear-energy/.
(2) Advantages and Challenges of Nuclear Energy. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/advantages-and-challenges-nuclear-energy.
(3) Advantages Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy - NRC. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0813/ML081350295.pdf.
(4) Various Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy. https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/Disadvantages_NuclearEnergy.php.
(5) U.S. Energy Information Administration - EIA - Independent Statistics … https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48896.
(6) Study: wind and solar can power most of the United States. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/mar/26/study-wind-and-solar-can-power-most-of-the-united-states.
(7) Pros And Cons of Nuclear Energy | EnergySage. https://www.energysage.com/about-clean-energy/nuclear-energy/pros-and-cons-nuclear-energy/.
(8) Nuclear energy: what it is and its advantages and disadvantages. https://www.endesa.com/en/the-e-face/power-plants/nuclear-power.
(9) Renewable Energy | Department of Energy. https://www.energy.gov/eere/renewable-energy. (10) U.S. renewable energy use nearly quadrupled in past decade, report … https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/11/09/renewable-energy-solar-wind-biden/.
(11) Wind and solar power producing record amount of U.S. electricity. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2022/03/03/wind-and-solar-power-producing-record-amount-u-s-electricity/9353259002/.
Where?
Show the data.
What place on earth is nuclear more viable than renewables?
No vague gesturing. Hard numbers.
So is it better to start a nuclear project and hope it can start reducing coal & NG emissions 10 years from now? Or is it better to add solar and wind capacity constantly and at a fraction of the price per MWh?
It’s better to do both!!
Nuclear is not more expensive than solar and wind. And today’s paradox is solar and wind are cheap because oil is cheap…
Besides, comparing the 2 is totally misleading. One is a controllable source of electricity, the other is by nature an unstable source, therefore you need a backup source. Most of the time, that backup is a gas plant (more fossil fuel…), and some other time it’s mega-batteries projects that need tons of lithium… that we also wanted for our phones, cars, trucks etc. Right now, every sector is accounting lithium resources as if they were the only sector that will use it…
And then you have Germany, that shut down all its nuclear reactor, in favor of burning coal, with a “plan” to replace the coal with gas, but “one day”, they’ll replace that gas with “clean hydrogen” and suddenly have clean energy.
There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems
So we’ll have very very exactly the same conversation 10 years from now, when we’ll be 100% renewable but we’ll have very frequent power outages. People will say “we don’t have time to build nuclear power plan, we need to do «clean gas/hydrogen/other wishful thing to burn»”. And at that time, someone will mention that we will never produce enough of these clean fuel but … How many times do we want to shoot ourselves in the foot??
I think you’re forgetting that once the waters from a dam break dry up you can rebuild…a nuclear accident has the potential to poison the land for generations
In the years to come, we’re going to lose much more land just because it won’t be suitable for human survival, and that will be on a longer scale than a nuclear disaster. Eliminating fossil fuel should be the sole absolute priority, and nuclear is one tool to achieve it.
It’s people like you who present a false dichotomy that are the really evil people in the world today.
We can do solar, wind and nuclear. One does not preclude the other, contrary to your false dichotomy.
In fact, we must build out a minimum level of nuclear - it is the only mandatory technology required to stop climate change, because it works 24/7.
We can add as much solar and wind to the system as we would like, as long as the grid can handle it.
Grids with a lot of hydro will not require much nuclear, e.g. Iceland can do entirely without it and Sweden only needs a small amount. Grids with little hydro will need a lot of nuclear, like France.
This was true in 1990. It is still true today and it will still be true in 2050.
Budgets are a real thing. If you tie up $28.5 billion constructing say, the Vogtle #3 and #4 reactors, you are taking away significant amounts of money that could have already produced working wind and solar installations that would produce far more power. Stating that reality doesn’t make me “evil,” get a grip.
Additionally, with upgrades in high voltage transmission lines and grid-level storage systems the need for nuclear or fossil fuel baseload in the future is going to be far less than you expect
Obviously, regulations must be changed to make nuclear affordable.
But yes, misguided people like you and those who opposed nuclear in the 90s are causing a mass extinction even that is gearing up to become the biggest in the history of the planet.
If that isn’t evil, then I don’t know what the term evil means anymore.
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Actually we can make nuclear molten salt reactors (working small scale stuff exist for long decades). Since the medium is liquid, it has much better utilization of the fuel, there is no pressurized radioactive water reservoirs (which is the actual issue with current reactors), to stop the reaction, you drain the fuel circulation into a container and you are done, no need to supply water to prevent criticality.
But since those molten salt reactors could not be used to create plutonium for weapons, the current reactor design was chosen during cold war era.
They have some drawbacks, like slow startup times, but the cons it provide are incredible.
MSRs and LFRs are horribly unreliable and don’t last. There hasn’t even been a successful demo reactor and the technical issues for running one safely at full power long term don’t even have proposed half-solutions.
There are a few testing facilities like chinas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Experimental_Fast_Reactor and it was already tested and producing power. And they are planning to start a functional plant connected to the grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600
So it seems much more than a half-solution…
You’ve now swapped from molten salt reactors to sodium cooled ones while pretending they’re the same thing.
CFR has also never run without using U235 as its main fuel source.
Mind-boggling stupidity as always.
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Theyve had to start shutting down nuclear reactors in summer when water levels get too low,
This is a fake news. Period.
Some reactors had to REDUCE THEIR OUTPUT because otherwise they would exceed the temperature increase they’re allowed to cause in the river, this to preserve life in the river. No reactor was shutdown because of a low water stream.
What happened last year is a systematic defect was found in an external protection layer, and the decision was made to fix all the reactors having the same potential defect at once. The work took longer than expected, and that caused France having very limited capacity for months, causing worries about power outage.
Not to say it could never happen in the future, but it didn’t yet.
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No, I don’t mean to destroy life in the river. I mean to highlight the difference of impact between going from 90% of your capacity to 0% in one information to reducing from 90% to 80% or even 70%. Shutting down a nuclear reactor is quite a big deal in terms of operations. Restarting it is not like turning back on a switch either. Claiming a reactor was shut down makes it sound like a much bigger deal than what it was.
cheaper and vastly safer alternative techs are available?
That’s the problem “cheaper and vastly safer” alternatives AREN’T always available. People continue to talk up Solar, and Wind, but they’re not viable for a majority of users of coal and natural gas plants. To produce the power that Nuclear does in square mile of land, you need 50 square miles of solar at least, and over 360 square miles for Wind. And that’s also saying you need viable places, because Wind turbines can’t just be thrown up anywhere, nor can solar.
Coal and Natural gas is more efficient by a factor of at least 10 in land space.
If you’re in the middle of nowhere, that’s viable, if you live in a big city, that’s going to become a problem quickly.
The statement that “cheaper and vastly safer alternative techs are NOT always available” is not accurate. Solar and wind energy are becoming more viable as technology improves, and the land requirements for these technologies are not as significant as they once were. In addition, coal and natural gas are not as safe as they are often made out to be. Coal mining is a dangerous occupation, and coal-fired power plants can release harmful pollutants into the air. Natural gas is also a fossil fuel, and its combustion releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The cost of coal and natural gas is likely to increase in the future, as the world’s reserves of these resources dwindle. The environmental impacts of coal and natural gas are also becoming increasingly well-known, and public pressure is growing for a transition to cleaner energy sources. The development of new technologies, such as battery storage and smart grids, is making it easier to integrate renewable energy sources into the electricity grid.
In conclusion, there are a number of reasons to believe that cheaper and vastly safer alternative technologies to coal and natural gas are becoming more available. These technologies offer a number of advantages over traditional fossil fuels, and they are likely to play an increasingly important role in the global energy mix in the years to come.
Inkai uranium mine produces about 40W/m^2 in fuel for the actively leeched land where everything is killed by the sulfuric acid and vehicle movement.
If you include the 15km buffer where you can’t live or eat anything it’s about 20W/m^2
Solar averages 20-50W/m^2 with current tech.
Rooftop solar uses no land. Agrivoltaics can have negative land use (adding the solar reduces the amount of land needed for the crops under it). Roughly 30m^2 of roof + 30m^s of facade or wall is sufficient for the average high income country european’s final energy use.
Solar uses a strict subset of the materials needed for a nuclear plant, so land use from the uranium mining is in addition to construction.
Like every pro-nuke lie, your land use pearl clutching is the oppksite of the truth.
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The answer has been clear. The wealthy that cause this will continue to rape the planet for short term profit to feed their insatiable greed machine, the peasants who will suffer the most who could destroy the global oligarch class in a day will continue to labor for them in exchange for minimal subsistence until we die of climate change induced natural disasters, heat stroke, or starvation, and the global oligarchs will flee to the luxury bunker complexes they’ve been building to continue to live like modern Pharoahs, protected from the destruction they wrought.
Humanity chose greed and greed worship, because humans would rather daydream about becoming the greedy fuckers and living in the decadence and gluttony of their masters, than of breaking the wheel, rejecting the owners and stripping them of their wealth/power, and working together sustainably for the future of the species.
A great many of us peasants actually resent our tax dollars going to the underpaid teachers that try to foster society’s future in the face of apathy and greed. I think you’d have to be blind to have any hope for humanity getting wise without the painful, clearly needed education of civilization’s collapse. In an age where humanity’s technology can literally destroy the world, we need to learn the hard way that actions and inaction have consequences for the species.
We can’t learn that until we’re hungry and can no longer delude ourselves into believing everything is fine by staring into a screen.
The question on my mind is at what temp will global economy and our current civilization start to implode, as at that point we will probably stop emmiting as people, cities and possibly states literally die off…and than will probably be the new norm…
Looks like it’s happening already. Natural disasters are on the rise, costing billions, insurance companies start bailing out of some area. I was also wondering if international help would come back every year to address a fraction of the wildfire in Canada, Spain, Italy, Greece, and soon pretty much everywhere.
Pretty sure the cost of the disaster is soon going to be unbearable and we’ll start abandoning places and infrastructures instead of rebuilding (not officially, of course, we’ll just “push back until conditions allow to rebuild” and forget about it as more disasters will occur).
It will be a slow death, though.
It would take that long for developed nations, there are countries that are still in their industrial revolution and that’s not even counting the ones that actively oppose this kind of thing like Russia and China.
Sadly the inflation of the 70s followed by high interest rates froze nuclear plant building, and when it could have picked back up, Chernobyl put a final mail in the coffin.
Honestly I think the only thing that will stop it is mass death and destruction of the industrial economy.
Right now my biggest hope is a volcanic winter to give us a little reprieve.
We’re going to need to make all the changes now. Energy production, energy usage, energy storage, transportation, manufacturing, carbon capture and so on. We’re going to need to do all of it, and we’re still in big trouble. My guess is that within the next 100 years the human population might take a dive because of climate change.
I think a few scientists at Exxon Mobile predicted this in the 70’s in their worst-case scenario reports.
Where I’m from, we were massively talking about it in the 80s when I was a kid. It promply stopped by the end of the 90s. Then all of sudden, we don’t hear much about it.
It’s so fucked up to be told all your life that your are insane to believe in climate change, and then about 40 years later, most people talk about it as if it was a given.
We should not be anxious about climate change, we should be furious.
It was being talked about in newspapers a century ago. The fossil fuels companies have known for a very long time, and have been suppressing it for a very long time, hiring many of the same people involved in suppressing evidence that tobacco causes cancer. We should be torches and pitchforks in the street livid.
Yeah, I remember the topic from school in the 90s, where it said “if we don’t start to do anything about it soon, it will have serious catastrophic consequences in about 30 years”. And now here we are.
I was a kid in the early 2000’s and I remember that page from the science book that we were reading during class, and it was also already alarming us about climate change/global warming. And like you said, here we are…
Nobody stopped talking about it.
Its that the channels that we watch news on have now been fragmented / specialized to the point where we can “watch the news” and only get right wing propaganda.
I remember this also in the 80s. But we were mostly worried about the ozone. Then that got figured out, more or less, and we got stuck with reduce, reuse, recycle.
Same generation here. I really think boomers and their selfish politics are greatly to blame for lost momentum.
Fuck generational politics. There are class, gender, and racial divisions within each generation. We have more in common with working class and oppressed boomers than with ruling class members of our own generation.
Welcome to the British Petroleum summer heat wave. Next up is the Exxon Mobile Hurricane season.
Fun fact about the Exxon Mobile Hurricane Season, oil and gas platforms can get insurance against a storm in the Exxon Mobile Hurricane Season, but homeowners in Louisiana can’t get any homeowners insurance due to the expected severity of the named storms in the Exxon Mobile Hurricane Season.
Louisiana: come for the resources, leave the problems behind.
And the shoreline!
Time to get out the guillotines. Socialism or extinction.
Porque no los dos?
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Nah all the people with guns in America won’t allow that to happen in the USA. Every member of the US Military is also sworn to uphold the US Constitution and defend it against all enemies, foreign or domestic.
Maybe you could end up with a handful of socialist states trying to make their own idea of a socialist system work, but if the conservative-dominated states who produce most of the food won’t trade with you then you’d be stuck importing food.
The reality is there’s nothing any of us can really do about it. It’s up to the mega-polluters like industrial plants and international shipping companies to make changes where it counts.
I have no idea how many US service members there are in the US but it’s a non issue for two reasons. One, the US population far outnumbers them and two, I bet when the fighting starts there would be a lot of desertions because it would mean killing their friends, family and fellow countrymen.
Pessimistic defeatist attitude won’t get us anywhere.
Edit: oh and before I became a socialist my friend who is in the military (and has been for a while) reminded me how effective guerrilla warfare is. See: Vietnam and Korea.
You goobers are vastly underestimating the support for socialism in the USA if you really think that’s any kind of realistic possibility. It’s a sad delusion and you’re wasting your energy.
I’m not pessimistic about it, I’m glad. I don’t want socialism anywhere around me. I would shoot any of you who try to do anything like you’re describing about taking over the US government, because I too swore the oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution. Liberty will be defended, and you will fail. Fuck communists and socialists, you are barely better than Nazis.
The military is communist FYI.
The US Constitution is the highest law of the land in the USA, and it doesn’t give a shit what you think.
Some variation of that idea was used in at least two Supreme Court opinions and by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. But sure, feel free to speak on behalf of the Constitution itself, O mighty legal scholar.
Personally, though, I don’t need a legal justification for breaking the law when it impairs my survival, because I’m unwilling to sacrifice my survival or my conscience for the sake of obeying dead men. People who don’t recognize that laws can be wrong are, frankly, horrifying, because they have a tendency feel justified in doing horrible things.
That’s exactly us that could push and work to make those changes happen, you have more power than you realize. And that’s probably OUR responsability to make those changes happen, because we all know fossil-fuels companies won’t decide to stop selling their resources after their saw some of their most proficuos years (just look the datas for 2022, it was the most profitable year for them).
You say red states produce all the food yet red states only survive off of subsidies from blue states 🤔
Actually, California produces a ton of the US’s fruits and vegetables (like, 90%+ of a lot of fruits). Just not cereal grains. I bet the costs could probably grow their own food if it came to that. Were there no trade between the states, the middle of the country would have plenty calorie-wise, but not the most varied of diets.
In what way would socialism prevent extinction, environmental degradation, or global warming? It might even make things worse, as capitalists only exploit the earth and its people to make profit. Marxism has a goal to expand industrialization to relieve humanity of harsh labor and to provide products for all people. The love affair with development is as much a capitalist value as it is a Marxist infatuation.
Hopefully I’m not mistaken, but I’m going to assume you are asking in good faith.
Capitalism is an ideology of infinite growth. Capital is only invested for growth, that’s the whole point…so corporations have to consume more, produce more, sell more, or capitalists will take away their capital investments. Think of it this way, you’re a capitalist (by which, I don’t mean someone who believes in the idea of capitalism…I mean someone who makes the bulk of their wealth with capital investments instead of labor) with millions invested in an oil company – that oil company realizes that we need to phase out the use of fossil fuels for the sake of the planet – so they announce a plan to limit production (and therefore profits).
Your capital is how you make your money, so if they announce a very finite upside (with a real possibility that in a decade or two, their whole business will dry up), you will quickly take your millions and move them somewhere else. And you won’t be alone – think of the bank run that Silicon Valley Bank had once everyone suspected the bank would have solvency problems. And before you know it, that whole company has lost trillions and fails almost immediately.
Now repeat this while coal, commercial beef farms, and down the line of the worst industries for the climate.
The corporations that are the main source of climate change causing emissions also know that if any one of them chooses to do the right thing for the planet, other, less ethical corporations will see blood in the water, and take over their portion of the market; and nothing will change for the environment, all that CEO will have done is put thousands of their own workers out of business.
Socialism, by contrast, is not an ideology of infinite growth. At it’s core, it’s an ideology of collectivism – we all need to take care of everyone else – this includes making sure everyone has a habitable planet to live on. The government can make sure all companies play by the rules, for the benefit of all humankind, not just do as they do now…ask nicely for the corporations to be nice, and then shrug their shoulders when nothing changes.
Well put. I think David Harvey explains this kind of thing in more depth in Rebel Cities. I’ll explain his work not as a correction, as I agree with you, but to add to what you said as a different summary might help you people who haven’t heard this before.
There’s a chapter on the ‘surplus capital absorption problem’. The successful capitalist ends every day with more money than they began with. What do they do with the extra, the surplus?
They can spend some, sure. But there are only so many things to buy. And if they don’t invest, inflation will make them poorer and their competition will become more competitive, stealing their resources, labour, and customers. Part of the surplus, then, must be invested.
But what in? Everything is already owned by someone. So that leaves new industries, and the destruction of other things that already exist.
New industries implies that it’s possible to keep building and building forever, leading always to use more and more scarce and harmful resources.
And destroying things only to re-build them isn’t always very nice for the people who live in and use those things. Destructive wars, and consumer goods that break every three years and can’t be replaced, are terrible for the environment.
But all this is the essence of capitalism. A system where commodities are produced for their exchange value, not their use value. This the ‘commodity form’. It’s the exchange of commodities for money that creates the opportunity to profit. It’s this profit that allows the successful capitalist to end every day with more money than which they began. The problem of climate change cannot be solved within this capitalist logic.
The essence of Marxism, one might say, is the critique of the ‘commodity form’ and everything that flows from it. (This is what Marx works out in Capital, Volume I.)
The essence of socialism is the attempt to dissolve the commodity form, to produce things for their use value, not their exchange value. When society makes things on the basis of need and use, several things can happen: no more war; we can make consumer items that last and that can be repaired; we can build habitable, green homes for people to live in, not for property developers to speculate; etc, etc.
The essence of communism is the society that comes after socialists have fully taken us beyond the commodity.
Hence the argument: socialism or extinction.
Why are you defining socialism only as full Marxism?
You’re confusing the means with the goals. Marxism is about making the economy work for people (rather than the other way around). Industrialization was the obvious means to that end in Marx’s time, but any sane person trying to run an economy today would prioritize making sure people have a planet to live on over just making more stuff for them to consume.
Capitalism is fundamentally different because it’s highest goal isn’t to make people’s lives better—it’s to increase privately held wealth. Capitalism can’t pivot to prioritizing survival over private wealth, because if it did, it would no longer be capitalism.
Please read the book Socialist Reconstruction that was put out by the Party for Socialism and Labor. The sentence that you have starting with “Marxism” is not factual and completely debunked by not only the chapter on farming, but any of the chapters that touch on climate change at all.
Your heart is in the right place, but telling someone to read a book they already know they’re going to disagree with has got to be one of the least effective ways of persuading anyone. People read books about things they already think are worthwhile, not to convince themselves they’re wrong and some stranger on the internet is right.
I know I just don’t have the mental energy to argue with a chud right now
I don’t agree with everything in it but you might want to read Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism. You’ll find that Marxists aren’t infatuated with growth for growth’s sake, nor with growth at the expense of the environment.
The industrialization needed to carry out the Marxist project has already occurred. Capitalism is a religion of infinite growth on a finite planet just for growth’s sake.
Still, about half of the population of earth is in desperate need of basic necessities
You’re not wrong my friend, but it is because of hoarding by the capitalist class, as well as their willingness to destroy things rather than see the poor have them, as it would lower their perceived “value”. See: grocery stores and fast food joints throwing perfectly good food in the dumpster vs. giving it away, luxury brands like LV and others destroying handbags and what not to keep them artificially scarce, etc. We can make it happen with the industry and tech we have today.
How do I say r/antimeme here?
Homer was right –https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-heat-wave-latest-forecast/story?id=101598235 – it’s the hottest 21 days/3 weeks now. 🥵
In Germany it’s colder and wetter than usual while in southern Europe they’re boiling. Crazy weather.
I’m not too mad about the colder weather. It’s been too dry the last few months anyways.
The weather will be more like a monkeys paw…u wish for a bit more rain…here is some floods instead…
Yeah, I know. But currently I got the sweet end of the lolly.
Well the big shaft of the lolly might be just around the corner, enjoy it while it lasts, I’m sure it will enjoy you when the time comes…depressing…
Sure, but what else can I do? Recycle more? I’m almost vegan already, but that won’t help much. So I’m enjoying the rain while it falls.
Oh I don’t mean to imply you can do or have to do anything… Haha. Sorry if it came off that way. Just making depressing comments…
The more that climate change continues we will see more and more extremes of weather. So cold places might get colder and hot places hotter, as well as more extreme/frequent storms. It’s not a super great time for the environment
Yeah, same here in NL, rainy summer so far
Yeah the problem I have is when ppl say climate change doesn’t exist because today is moderate, meanwhile they ignore the droughts and floods elsewhere. I’m happy for our farmers and our rivers but next year could be completely different.
England, cold and rainy.
Just like the last several millennia there lol I remember the Brittons melting last year though right?
Don’t worry guys, I’m sure this is just natural weather fluctuation and has nothing to do with us messing with the climate for the past however many decades. We couldn’t possibly be suffering the consequences of our own actions (or at least the actions of a few with too much power). /s
Nah don’t worry bro. I separated my plastics from my trash so it’s fine now obviously.
Yeah well this is frightening. In 25-30 years I will retire and now I need to raise the chances that I will live in a home with air conditioning in a country that – currently – hardly has buildings with air conditioning because it was not a necessity up until now. This will be an uphill battle. I don’t want to die prematurely in a summer heat wave…
They make air conditioners that are relatively cheap, pretty easy to install and take up virtually no space these days. Usually wall mounted.
That’s all well and good until your AC breaks, hits its heat transfer limit, you lose the ability to afford it run the AC, or your electricity goes out because the grid is overloaded because everyone else is also running their AC.
AC is band aid, not a solution.
It’s normal to use AC for billions of people already, so it is a solution to our reality as it is.
Where I live, I’ve been in need of AC my whole life, which has spanned multiple centuries already.
If your grid is overloaded, get some solar panels and make your own power off-grid. If your air conditioner breaks, buy another one or keep a spare one on hand. That’s what the fuck I’m gonna do, because AC is great and I love having it.
It’s normal to use AC for billions of people already, so it is a solution to our reality as it is.
A solution would end the problem. AC does not do that. In fact it is the opposite since heavier AC use leads to higher energy use which ultimately means more greenhouse gasses.
It’s a band aid. It allievates the symptoms, and only for those who can afford it.
The solution is to end our production of greenhouse gasses.
If your grid is overloaded, get some solar panels and make your own power off-grid. If your air conditioner breaks, buy another one or keep a spare one on hand. That’s what the fuck I’m gonna do, because AC is great and I love having it.
Not everybody can afford that.
So you’re saying you’d be the first to die lmao
That’s not even close to what I was saying.
The guy I replied to said he didn’t want to die from overheating since he doesn’t have AC.
I replied and said that they make affordable and easy to install AC now as a direct and immediate solution to his issue of not wanting to die from overheating due to not having AC.
You come along and say this is a bandaid solution and makes things worse. Okay sure, that’s true for society as a whole on a large enough timeline, but not true for this individual person in the near future.
So I interpreted this as you saying you wouldn’t install AC in his shoes, but also don’t appear to have an alternative course of action in order to not overheat and die due to not having AC, therefore you’d be the first to die.
You should get some guns then, if it is the only room with A/C, I see the country moving into the room and you moving out the window.
This is why all climate change predictions come with predictions for escalated war, famine, violence. Human ‘civilization’ may have just been a result of a resource glut.
I’m glad I’m old enough that I remember much more seasonally appropriate weather, if nothing else. It was really snowy in December when I was a kid in the 1980s and I think I only saw one green Christmas that whole time, while green Christmas is just normal now. We also didn’t have air conditioning until I was in my teens, because Canada had cooler summers, and for the odd hot night you’d just sleep in the basement. Eventually we moved to a house that had central air, but I don’t remember needing it the way we have the last 20 years.
I don’t have air conditioning now, but it hasn’t been a bad summer in Ontario so far heat wise, somehow we’re missing the big heat waves everyone else is getting. I’m lucky I get a lot of tree shade.
I remember one white Christmas when I was a kid in the 90s since then it’s never snowed.
It’s so sad.
Just waiting for that sea level rise to kick in. There’s plenty of anchorages that are still too shallow for my boat.
This is the kind of dark humour we need! Winter’s are still too cold I will continue to idle my car on workdays to do my part for your boat lol
Don’t worry, the ice is melting too!
Big brain time - research where the new shoreline will be with sea rise and buy the land all around there. Wait a few years and boom - beachfront property.
But this snow in my hand not melting is proof it’s all a hoax . /s
Dreading what’s to come.here in France. We’ve got rain and 25 c ATM while rome and Spain are burning up. Sure it’s going to come our way shortly.
I had to put on a coat the other day. So clearly global warming is a conspiracy to make the world a better place for no reason. I’m not having it, that’s why I burn a barrel of crude oil every night in my garden.
yeah two weeks ago it pained me to leave the house cause the heat was unbearable.
I live in NW FL, I’m active outdoors and quite used to the heat. I haven’t mowed my yard in over a month, it’s 3’ high. Can’t go to my camp in the swamp, my favorite thing.
My gf is from the Philippines and it’s too hot for HER.
