Anyone else see that huge changes are happening right now and we’re still sleep walking?

[RudsyFarmer]

its Interesting to me that life is just carrying on while there are huge, seismic shifts occurring globally that will impact us. It’s like the start of the pandemic actually. When I read the paper and Covid had been found in China and I thought, ah China, that’s along way away and within a couple of weeks we were at the beginning of lockdowns and my joke about hoarding pasta became a reality.

We’re about to have a heatwave in October. We now have wildfires as standard in Europe every summer and mass migration of people from continents that are starting to become inhabitable are overrunning areas of Italy and Greece. More and more people will start moving away from devastated land in search of more temperate weather, food, housing and employment.

This isn’t something that will be happening in a decade. It’s happening right now. The places that used to grow our food are going to start conserving the food for their own people. I want to feel positive but I can’t see how times are going to get better from here. I read the news and it feels really, really fucking bleak.

No, the Gulf Stream is a set of ocean currents. There has been a recent prediction that one, minor arm of it may stop, possibly, but of course the papers reported this incorrectly as a claim that the whole system was going to stop.

Why should the earth stay the same? Humans are a blip in time and will die off eventually by war, climate change or an asteroid. Good riddance I say!

Totally agree. It’s not about saving the planet, it’s about saving the human race and I think we’ve proven we’re not deserving (as a race).
Until there is a globally enforced policy nothing will change. Evidenced by the rise of nationalism when Covid hit.

What do you mean when you say nothing will change? The U.K. has halved emissions in recent decades, and the PM has just reaffirmed the commitment to hit net zero by 2050. We have the world’s largest offshore wind farms, and are in the process of installing the latest generation of turbines in a new one.

This claim that nothing is being done keeps getting trotted out, but it’s not true.

Well, if we can "see huge changes" we're not "sleep walking". What do you mean?

I thought a lot of the wild fires were found to be the result of arsonists. Selective reporting conveniently didn't highlight that until interest in the fires died down.

I find the reporting on so called extreme weather events to be inflammatory, anxiety provoking and irresponsible. I can remember a summer in maybe 2007 or 2012, (or it might even have been 2009 I forget which) in which we were described as having an 'Indian summer' it was hot right through to the end of October with major London parks like Greenwich being described as 'dust bowls'

Yet now the reporting is 'THIS IS PROOF OF A CATASTROPHE, hottest September etc. Well from memory I can recall quite a few hot Augusts and hot Septembers. Admittedly last summer with the extreme temperatures was nasty, but my mother was pregnant with my brother in the 1976 heat wave and tells me how awful it was.

We need responsible balanced reporting that includes a wider breadth of scientific analysis. We're really missing this. I frankly think it's not just reporting on climate issues, it is politics as well as other areas. There is almost total homogeneity of thought and that concerns me greatly as it starts to affect our personal liberties. Due to this really important things that will impact us are also overlooked.

Well a super volcano eruption is an extinction level event so what's the point in worrying about it? Global warming is happening as is the mass extinction of insects, inclluding all pollinators, which is the most worrying thing. I read at least 10 years ago that the plum crop somewhere in China had to be pollinated by hand because the crap they pump into the air and water had killed all the bees. Of course the ocean and air systems are globally linked, its a fundamental concept in earth science. To suggest that what happens in Australia doesn't affect us in the UK is just dumb.

But no-one’s suggesting that, are they?

The trouble with the idea that most of us are 'sleepwalking' is the idea that if you could get the reality over to everyone and 'wake them up' that suddenly the problems would be solved. The true reality is much more difficult to handle that most people have at least a basic understanding of the issues but need to ignore them, as solving one problem affects another area of life we'd rather not have affected, and each of us have our own areas we'd want to protect so getting to an agreement would be extremely difficult.

Eg, (very simplified) do you tackle climate change when it means you have to cut back on resources, say your 4 person family has to live in a 2 bed flat? Or that there won't be enough resources to give anyone chemotherapy ever again? Or you won't be allowed to have children (or your children won't) to manage resources?

As a global society we've reached the point where to protect our life in the future we'd have to drastically cut our standard of life now and very few people would welcome that. 'Fiddling while Rome burns' might not be the most sensible idea but it's the easiest to stomach.

I actually don't know as I skim read and went off on a tangent of my own. Oops.

I guess when I mean sleep walking I mean that people have this idea that a change of government is going to change things and I hear that being discussed so much on here. A change of government will have no effect on these massive fucking issues coming over the hill right now. It’s like trying to build a wall to stop a tsunami. We just have no clue what’s coming.

It’s hard to understand exactly what point the OP and others are making.

Maybe they are just upset that more isn’t being done about carbon emissions, which’d be sensible and reasonable, but then bringing in gravity and super volcanoes seems a bit weird.

Again, the U.K. has halved carbon emissions, is committed to net zero by 2050, and is rapidly phasing coal completely out of our energy production.

What do you mean by implying that nothing is being done?

A Heatwave? 22 degrees top temperature for four days, then back down to 15…..

👀👀👀 scary

Brilliant post

*I find the reporting on so called extreme weather events to be inflammatory, anxiety provoking and irresponsible. I can remember a summer in maybe 2007 or 2012, (or it might even have been 2009 I forget which) in which we were described as having an 'Indian summer' it was hot right through to the end of October with major London parks like Greenwich being described as 'dust bowls'

Yet now the reporting is 'THIS IS PROOF OF A CATASTROPHE, hottest September etc. Well from memory I can recall quite a few hot Augusts and hot Septembers. Admittedly last summer with the extreme temperatures was nasty, but my mother was pregnant with my brother in the 1976 heat wave and tells me how awful it was.*

Climate and temperature are not the same thing.

I find the assumption that "everybody" doesn't know that some things are in a mess a bit patronising.

I live 2 hours from Naples and, trust me, our news programmes are full of Pozzuoli tremors (nothing new, Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There , which must be about 25 years old mentioned Pozzuoli being one of the planet's most seismic hotspots, kind of for the last couple of thousand years)

Likewise, the government makes damn sure we think the whole country is being overrun by immigrants when the fact is that Italy, like many other countries has a shortage of nurses, doctors and Amazon van drivers etc.

The immigrants aren't getting on those boats because of global warming. They're getting on them because people traffickers are taking their money and telling them there's a job and Utopia the other end.

Otherwise known as an Indian Summer, NOT a bloody Heateave!

Why on earth are you catastrophising something perfectly normal OP?

With an attitude like that, I can only presume you don't have kids?

Most people here do have kids, or at least give a tiny shit about their fellow humans. So it's not great advice.

What’s your advice then for people worrying about supervolcanoes?

OK the wildfires- i live on a peat bog, generally we are safe from wildfires no matter how they start because the ground is too wet for a fire to take however when we get extreme heat and dry weather it burns, yes it needs something to trigger it first, arsonists, idiot with a bbq but the weather directly affects how much damage is done, it's not a fire starting that is the issue with climate change but the damage done and climate change affects how easily the fires can be brought back under control.

Fires being started by arsonists does not mean you can discount the fire, without climate change it would have been a lot smaller.

I think things are being done as you say but many will still be surprised by mass displacement

I don’t think people will get how chaotic and overwhelming it will be until it happens

And then not many will help, as countries will deal with their citizens first (Med to Italy is a good example of the start of this)

So both things at play for me

Read about it. Get informed. Don't turn away from difficult topics, investigate then. Look at credible sources and try to understand what is happening.

Nothing is “happening” with supervolcanoes, and they aren’t a difficult topic.

Are you trying to imply that there’s something going on with them?

Tbh for me someone saying "we are sleep walking into <insert detailed catastrophe and why it will happen that shows THEY arent sleepwalking at all>" makes me shut off because it just smacks of "I know all these things that no one else does"....bit patronising.

I think humans are remarkable and ingenious and resilient, and we will come up with solutions. There will be big breakthroughs in clean energy.

It would help if we could direct more time, money, and intellect away from devising ways to fight each other and instead direct the best minds to collaborate on solving our shared problems as Earthlings.