Temperatures above 50C used to be a rarity confined to two or three global hotspots, but the World Meteorological Organization noted that at least 10 countries have reported this level of searing heat in the past year: the US, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India and China.
In Iran, the heat index – a measure that also includes humidity – has come perilously close to 60C, far above the level considered safe for humans.
Heatwaves are now commonplace elsewhere, killing the most vulnerable, worsening inequality and threatening the wellbeing of future generations. Unicef calculates a quarter of the world’s children are already exposed to frequent heatwaves, and this will rise to almost 100% by mid-century.
Global warming is a test. We’re failing the test, so the warming is going to start accelerating until we learn our lesson
And I’d be ok with this. I see that humans are failing the test. I think it would be totally fair for us to take some really huge losses as a consequence of our collective hubris. But the thing that makes me sad and angry is that we’re taking down everything else with us.
There’s such a huge diversity of life, basically just minding its own business in a totally sustainable way. It’s been like that for billions of years. More than 1,000,000,000 years. But then humans work out that burning stuff is an easy way to do mass-production, and in less then 1000 years things start turning to shit - for everyone. That’s so unfair. If it was just our own house we were burning down, I’d say its fair. But we’re burning down the whole world. We’re already causing mass extinction, and by all predictions it is going to get much much worse.
Other organisms and natural disasters do that, too. Ice ages, meteors, waves of diseases. The difference seems to be we have the consciousness to predict consequences, then decide whether to embark upon a path of behavior, or continue it when latent consequences emerge. I guess the question ends up being whether the course chosen is “natural,” and how can we know, since plenty of organisms kill the host, while also surviving and even propagating? Then observation also changes the behavior of things. And we don’t kill everything. Just whatever life is left continues to evolve in expected and unexpected ways.
Mother Nature, Earth, or Gaia, is an organism. In my loose perspective, I like to think that this is it’s “fever” attempt at eliminating the virus.
And thereby eliminating a whole bunch of other species than just humans as well.
Although I’m totally in for the occasional misanthropy, I don’t like seeing it as “just a fever” anymore as too many species will go down. Life will probably persevere in the end, but so will probably a bunch of rich shitpieces, who are significantly responsible for this fever in the first place.
Our world has gone through many life cycles in the past. At the beginning, was darkness, at the end, probably the same (unless it’s a Futurama time cycle).
The earth will continue on and life will find a way. At this time, we, as humans, have screwed the pooch and now the pooch will screw us. We used the earth and culled it’s resources. We are taking no consideration to the world around us, and instead focus on ourselves alone.
All of the movies about aliens are true. Humans are selfish, greedy, parasites.
Our carcasses could end up being petrochemicals of the emerging life forms.
