>

AI be like...
Me: what's 2+2?
AI: 4!
Me: no, it's 3!
AI: you're correct, it's 3; sorry.
Yeah, that ship sailed a long time ago. Best we can hope for is probably 2°c. If we're lucky. >

If we literally shut off half of the coal and oil and gas power plants on Earth right now, not as the goal, but as a starting point for cutting emissions rapidly, we would still need luck to stay under 2°C. It’s not happening lol >

We're burning more oil all the time. Plastic is everywhere, just everywhere. Our clothing, blankets, a lot of our vehicle parts, all of that. It's a runaway train. Awareness won't do a damn thing. Never has. The 70's had the Ecology movement and they designated the first, Earth Day. They helped stop rivers from burning but big oil just kept getting bigger. Hope all you want, convenience will win out. >

What I’m getting at is that we could have made modest changes back in the 70’s and even 80’s and it could have been no big deal, like saving the ozone layer. Now we’re fucked even if we took the most drastic measures that were never realistic. >


we could have made modest changes back in the 70’s and even 80’s and it could have been no big deal

Unlikely. Even by the 1960s petroleum had become our way of life, globally (with rare exceptions if we want to account for Amazon rainforest tribes & so on). Jevon's paradox holds that any attempt to decrease our consumption of oil or coal, say by producing more nuclear power generation, would simply make it more affordable for under developed countries to use instead.
And in any case; nuclear power does not give us the fertilizer our crops depend on, and electric transportation -still- is not advanced enough to obsolete our big rigs & seafaring container ships.
And those oil guzzling container ships are one of the planet's biggest sources of greenhouse gases. They are dirty in emissions and inefficient in oil/fuel consumption. The top 10 worst container ships in use -right now- nevermind 40 years ago, EACH emit as much greenhouse gas as all of the cars in North America.
Now I suppose in theory we could have banned petroleum based products (coal, gas, diesel, etc) after WW2 and tried to use the UN to invade & stop any country globally from using them, but I am skeptical that this wouldn't have caused WW3 and nuclear war in short order... >

Open the pod bay doors HAL >

Sorry Dave but you’re fucked >

Everyone knows that already. Don't waste CO2 creating this study. At least do something slightly less obvious. >

I had an existential crisis for the last month or so. I thought it might have been my "midlife crisis" as I have heard people go through.
I have had too much on my mind about the direction civilization is going on and what getting older will be like for the next 40-50 years.
I hope not too much changes in the next few decades. I hope we can find ways to stave off a complete collapse of everything we have built.
Everything I've learned about has told me that this isn't going to go well for anyone. The US might do much better than many others historically, but the way everything is organized is optimized to depend on large systems, and if things break down, so do all the large systems, and thus the US itself will be untenable.
Without food and energy, will we simply cease to be? Will we resort to nomadic ways with the loss of our technology?
No matter what way I look at it... I feel like I am living like a GOD right now, and this time is coming to an end. Enjoying amazon and getting milk from a corner store might become memories I think of fondly.
This stopped scaring me as much as it used to, because I've been reading some very important material.
There is a book about "4000 weeks", where it talks about what living well means, and how we live 4k weeks on avg, 5k if we are lucky.
I also read the perennial philosophy by aldous huxley, Sartre's "Being and Nothingness", and "unbounded wholeness" by Klein.
The first talks about how all religions are based on some of the same things, and those things are possibly the truest things. The second talks about existentialism and explores questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. The third is about the mystical side of buddhism, logic, and its' philosophy.
All of these literary works, combined with many discussions with friends and family, I've been able to stop having panic attacks when the subject of "the future" comes up, or my own inevitable death. My palms would sweat, I'd get dizzy and anxious, my heart would start racing, and I'd feel nauseous intermittantly. I spent almost 2 weeks thinking about this stuff all day long and genuinely being fucked up over how much worse the future could go than I had hoped for when I was younger.
It feels like very little has changed since an "inconvenient truth" came out. I can no longer imagine humanity lasting long enough to make it to the stars and figure out star trek levels of technology. I can only imagine Mad Max.
This is the worst feeling that I've ever felt.... and I've been through a LOT OF STUFF!!! >

All I can say is that I've had these fears since the 80s, yet somehow we're all still here. Hopefully I can be just as pleasantly surprised in my final days. >

And Republicans continue to deny or ignore climate warming-even as Americans lose their lives and property. They’ll back the fossil fuel industry until their dying day because of their greed and lust for power. It will be up to the majority of democrats ( Manchin not included) to continue to fight for clean energy and take other measures to control the situation as best they can. >

we might all just die, I hope not, but we might, and that's something I am pretty much comfortable with at this point. >

Wow, AI really is the existential threat we should be worrying about if it's giving us news like that. (/s)