Callum on Warpcast

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Thomas pfp

@aviationdoctor.eth

Heat truly is the silent killer. While I fully expect one large and very public event of wet-bulb temperature exceedance leading to mass casualties within this decade, lethal levels of heat quietly collect bodies in the meantime. 300 Muslim pilgrims just died in 49C/120F temperatures doing their lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj) which this year coincides with the hottest season. The story is barely registering in the news. See https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/19/middleeast/hajj-deaths-mecca-extreme-heat-intl-latam/index.html Then, people are dying one by one in isolated incidents, and heatstrokes are being suspected as the common denominator. See https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/19/climate/extreme-heat-brain-greece-tourists/index.html If this is happening to humans, despite their superior ability (in principle) to predict and shelter from the heat, imagine the silent consequences to the fauna and flora that can't escape.

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How long do you think we have before life actually becomes unsustainable and we face mass extinction from overheat? Where I live is actually making about 42 celsius and it's still fresh compared to other parts of the world. Rio sensation can reach over 50 celsius.

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@aviationdoctor.eth

We're well into the sixth mass extinction event, with global warming one of the causal factors (others include loss/fragmentation & degradation/pollution of natural habitat, overfishing/overhunting, & invasive species). There are two facets to extinction: a reduction in the number of living organisms overall (loss of abundance & food chain breakdowns), and the complete disappearance of some species. The abundance of monitored wildlife has already declined 69% from 1970 to 2018 (WWF, https://shorturl.at/GE71r), and up to 94% in LATAM. Anecdotally, people report virtually no insects anymore on their windshields compared to 40 years ago. That's the start of the food chain. As for species, they are disappearing 10–1,000x faster than the normal background rate of extinction (https://doi.org/f86ckd). Globally, 1.2M fauna and flora species are under threat of extinction, many before the year 2100. We already know that the 1.5C warming target from the Paris agreement won't hold. The rest is uncharted territory.

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This is interesting. We are somewhat aware we are doomed but they don't make it clear HOW FUCKED WE ARE. There's no other term. Now that you mentioned it, I really perceive less bugs on the roads and streets from when I was a kid to now. When I had ecology classes my professor told us we were about to reach the maximum support level or something like this (the maximum biomass earth can take) and this would lead us to mass extinction events. I was just unsure if they would be acute (such as the pandemics, which should have given the world more relief) or chronic (like slowly cooking) It seems like chronic is the way, unless we have something huge that wipes out lots of life from earth. Ty for being so informative! 50 $degen

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Yeah, it's probably a combination of things. One is that people generally don't enjoy hearing doomsday predictions. And so the media are also disincentivized to relay them. Another is that we individually feel powerless about these large-scale issues, so we'd rather ignore them. A third is that we delude ourselves into believing that these issues won't affect "us" living in OECD countries given our wealth and material comfort (normalcy bias). Yet another is that techno-optimists among us are wishfully thinking that we will innovate ourselves out of this predicament. And then there's the realization that global problems require global governance, and yet our primate brains are incapable of organizing past the boundaries of our cultural/ethnic/national/political tribe.

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For some reason - it’s weird - I actually feel more confident when discussing these things, particularly when they are so dire. It’s a weird confidence. It’s like knowing your enemy.

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