So we have 100 years to do something...

[BooseysMom]

Antarctica on the news today. Deep channels of warm water have been discovered under the glaciers which are causing the accelerated melting of the Thwaites glacier causing an apocalyptic rise in sea levels leaving major cities to become uninhabitable. Apparently we have 100 years before this happens.
I was already depressed about the increase in virus cases. But this is truly terrifying.

Yes but we have to do something right now to stop it happening.

Exactly... my title wasn't very well thought out sorry!

There's a long lag for effect. Any changes we do now (and we won't make any, really) will only have an impact decades in the future.
I'm sorry, it's probably not the news you want to hear.

theconversation.com/if-we-stopped-emitting-greenhouse-gases-right-now-would-we-stop-climate-change-78882

@MondayYogurt.. that's ok really, just thanks for replying. I kind of know as a species we're screwed by our own greed. Thanks for the link too.

I sometimes do wonder why there is such a race to reach Mars and beyond.

Yeah, any Martians living there would see us coming and scream RUN!! 🤣

I already am fully aware our children will have a terrible life due to climate change. My advise to them will be enjoy yourself while you’re here and don’t reproduce.

i already am fully aware our children will have a terrible life due to climate change. My advise to them will be enjoy yourself while you’re here and don’t reproduce

It's good advice, sobering but true. As soon as you reproduce, the worry really starts.

Rare good news:.Sandra Goldman in today's Times has a welcome article on repair and other ways of not being a mindless consumer. At last, all sorts of initiatives. The comments bit suggests the Times readers are ready to go along with a change from endless supplements on the equivalent of " twenty good fun ways to poison the well "

Where will the first politician in this country grasp the need to forget g.d.p.? Consumerism must stop, not be encouraged at all cost.

On a less good note, the bbc merely granted a fleeting mention on radio 4 to the discovery that the arctic methane sink is leaking worrying levels of gas in an unpredicted side effect of ice melt.

@20mum... I had lost this thread and rediscovered it just now when someone PM'd me about it. So thank you for posting here. Really interesting and some good and bad news. Also I heard someone with a good degree of sense and actually lacking self gain and greed talking about the need to change the current mindset of increasing the value of individuals' houses to enable others to gain a foothold on the property ladder. Not directly associated with climate change but the need to think outside the egotistical box is essential now and this report really highlighted it.

@BooseysMom Thanks. I heard another snippet, today, and have not yet searched it. W.H.O (I think?) have at last said world governments must stop obsessing with G.D.P, (the middle letter is N O T a letter 'O', after all!)

I remember someone (Sultan of, King of, fabulous rainforest covered realm) said (ten years ago?) that he was stopping measuring anything but his people's wellbeing, that the wildlife mattered more than keeping an army to threaten other countries with. He said increased consumerism and wrecking the environment in hope of attracting tourists or sell off the true wealth of their country was not the way to make people healthy or happy.

Apparently, WHO or whatever it was have made a sensible list of what a country ought to measure, e.g. public wellbeing in health, education, happiness, life satisfaction, community cohesion, social inclusion, etc. I'm looking forward to tracing it, after banging on for years about the crass stupidity of boosting debt to boost spending to boost junk buying to boost landfill and boost human misery and damage to the planet, and all, all in the name of worshipping the false idol of The Economy.

@20mum..i couldn't agree more. The false belief that we all must work to boost the economy is just facilitating greed and destroying the planet. We weren't here first, the planet was, and it will be the planet that survives, even with the terrible crimes being committed against it.

And that Sultan or King should be the next President.

Yikes. Terrifying. But people will tell themselves "don't be daft, that won't happen" and carry on as normal. What can you do except hope you and your children are dead by that point so as to be unaffected?

Resurrecting this old post. So we have much less than 100 years now to sort the climate catastrophe. I am so depressed about it. COP26 ought to be Conference of Pillocks!! I know I will get shot down for saying this but it feels too big now. It's like everything we do every day is so ingrained in us as a society ..the plastic tat, the petrol driven cars, everything is geared up around endlessly consuming and everyone has to change dramatically the way they live. But we could no way afford an electric car so we have to keep our 20 year old car going. We haven't been on a plane for 15 years so hopefully that offsets it.
I wonder how this will all end, if it does and when. It's time to change but don't we always say this and then just plod along as we always have!

Do the best you can personally

Take it to work , make little suggestions if you see something

The more we each do, the more normal caring and acting becomes , it can turn into a giant snowball effect

I would rather try and perhaps fail than not try at all

@bordermidgebite.. thanks for your post. I do what I can, even taking the plastic milk bottles home from work as they won't pay for a recycling contract. I feel it's useless really.