u/Sad_Attitude9999

This article has 3 different titles depending on how you link it, post it, or even find it on a news aggregator. I picked the title that best describes the article. Sue me.

Published today on Bloomberg, the following article concerns global warming and the myriad consequences of fossil fuels that climate scientists themselves are shocked to see happening so quickly.

Somewhat off topic but when articles say we are x degrees over pre-industrial levels they are almost always referring to carbon dioxide. A more important metric - to whom it may concern - is CO2eq. This attempts to combine all greenhouse gasses into a single measurement. Based on CO2eq we are not 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels.

We blew past 2.0 over a decade ago.

I should have failed. I ran the numbers. I used a multi spore syringe and in the world of mycology this amounts to buying a lottery ticket. And I fucking won. Buddy. I won.

I am ecstatic. And I can't tell anyone because I just harvested one of the most illegal drugs on Earth.

And to be clear - I'm an idiot. I failed pre-algebra twice. My chances of success here were close to zero.

I had to be sober for months. Didn't want to - had to.

I know its pathetic but I have nobody else to celebrate this with. My family is strictly conservative christian. The fact that I learned how to heal myself is essentially devil worship to them. But I did it...

Devon is in the UK and while "village" might conjure images of a quaint seaside town - around 1 million people call this place home and around half a million are facing an ugly future indeed.

As mother nature reacquaints us with devastating coastal erosion and ferocious heat, residents have no choice but to watch as climate collapse destroys any remaining vestige of peace or comfort.

Collapse related because this is only a glimpse of the future for coastal UK residents. Even with the most conservative and optimistic climate projections, the UK is still in deep shit.

Super random but - has anyone else noticed that the Welsh actor Matthew Rhys looks like a less nerdy Dario Amodei - CEO of Anthropic? I can't be the only one that sees it.

Published May 30th on Plant Based News, the following article concerns the global health crisis fully underway due to intense animal agriculture spanning the globe. This has a particular focus on CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) brought to you by dear leader Uncle Sam and a hodge podge of international food conglomerates.

I generally avoid this topic on this sub because the mods and the mood of the sub can be unpredictable and this topic often brings out the worst in people. I sympathize with those who want to assign a moral judgement to this problem. Personally I don't find that appeal very convincing. What matters to me, and what should matter to our species, is logic. Is it logical to destroy the only habitable place for a billion miles in every direction, drive cancer rates sky high, play around with zoonotic disease, encourage and even subsidize deforestation, pollute the hydrological cycle, the soil, the AIR?

We avoid this topic for obvious reasons - for many of the same reasons we don't mention climate change at the dinner table. Because we know people don't want to hear it and even if they listen, they think they're being personally blamed, and even if they don't - deep down they know we won't change. Not until we're forced to change, and by then... well.

You know exactly how this story ends.

Published today on Phys, the following article concerns the soaring number of coastal flooding events in modern history. These events are roughly a dozen times more frequent due to rising sea levels globally.

Collapse related because sea levels will continue to rise - even if we magically hit net zero 30 years ago. There are a few exceptions - some small islands are actually slowly growing in size. This is a complicated process that has only recently been observed and it involves calcificying marine species and - overall it is statistically negligible.

The study itself was published Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

From the article:

"Climate change has also, on average, nearly tripled the number of days where the sea tops extreme flood levels since the 1970s."

That is shockingly fast. Less than a single lifetime.

Obesity is the headline but the fine print is that - with few exceptions - our governments likely don't care about our health, socialized or not. As long as we are alive and healthy enough to clock into work we're fine.

Published in May by The University of Auckland, the following article offers insights and much needed context for the global obesity epidemic.

Jezebel published an article in 2020 that explained how the obesity epidemic is largely misunderstood as a personal failure.

In a world where corporations control the media, the farms and the grocers - the incentive will always be getting us to eat more. More more more.

Collapse related because obesity will cause problems for healthcare globally and it will definitely become a financial burden but more than that - it won't be solved because there's no incentive to solve it. Just like climate change.

Published this week on The Jerusalem Post, the following article concerns the lack of climate preparedness in Israel, an issue which several Israeli scientists and public officials have been sounding the alarm on for decades.

Collapse related because Israel is in a region where any hint of instability can and has lead to widespread armed conflict - and climate change is the king of destabilizing forces.

Israel also has plenty of nuclear weapons and very likely a Nuclear Triad. And their official nuclear doctrine is essentially a dead man's switch. If they go down - they take their neighbors with them. If I can't have it, no one can!

From the article:

"The government has recognized for more than two decades that it needs a policy on whether and how to stabilize the Dead Sea’s level. It again acknowledged the urgency in a 2018 decision, which required an interministerial team to submit recommendations by December 2020."

Holy beauracracy, Batman

Thanks to the nationwide rollout of massive data centers, the US is now outspending China in fossil fuel derived power. These new data centers are being illegally powered by enormous gas turbines that are giving Chinese coal a run for its money.

Collapse related because despite the increase in renewables globally, fossil fuels are still king. And they are also increasing. We can spin it as "we're using more renewables" but the cold hard truth is we are using more energy.

I find it exciting that this will be the first truly global collapse. I mean sure, every civilization in history has collapsed before but it was always regional. This time it will be felt around the world.

What an inspiring achievement.

Published yesterday on Resilience, the following article looks at the ongoing collapse of civilization and the profiteers making that dream come true ever quicker. From wealth inequality to housing shortages, this analysis is based on Greer's concept of Catabolic Capitalism.

One part of the article that is especially collapse related:

"Rather than building new productive capacity, large pools of capital increasingly generate returns by stripping value from existing institutions. Private equity firms, for example, often acquire functioning companies, load them with debt, extract fees and assets, cut labor costs, and leave weakened organizations behind."

"Hospitals, nursing homes, local newspapers, retail chains, and housing markets have all been subjected to this logic."

There are 9 planetary boundaries within which our species has some chance of long term survival. Officially we have violated 7 of those boundaries. Maybe we are saving the last 2 for dessert.

Published recently on CounterCurrents, the following article is collapse related because it lists each planetary boundary and why they are important - and how badly we have screwed up so far.

From the article:

"Only atmospheric aerosol loading and stratospheric ozone depletion — the one boundary humanity has actually succeeded in stabilising, through the Montreal Protocol — remain within their safe zones."

I should note that while stratospheric ozone accounts for roughly 90% of the Earth's total ozone - tropospheric (ground) ozone is rapidly worsening globally due to heatwaves and air pollution. Currently over 100 million people in America alone are regularly exposed to harmful ground ozone.

Good news - we saved your children from skin cancer!

But as for their lungs... 😬

Published today on Counterfire, the following op-ed from author Lindsey German concerns the collapse of the Earth's climate. The world's leaders continue to show their inability, reluctance and indifference to respond to a problem that will surely never hurt their own children. Capitalism has been touted as a solution by all sorts of people - from the dinosaur elites to the crypto bros that just crawled out of their baby cribs.

Lindsey kindly lists all the ways we can adapt short term and help the most vulnerable populations in society. Then, as you begin to nod your head and get your hopes up - she proceeds to explain why none of that is going to happen.

Collapse related because the most powerful and influential people in the world couldn't give less of a shit about climate change. The few that genuinely do care still live in a fantasy world where they are the hero of the story and they will magically save us all from destruction.

Capitalists read the story of King Midas and think: "that's dumb, he should have asked for platinum".

Published today on Mother Jones, the following article concerns the issue of climate modeling. Natural sources of emissions are often overlooked, if not completely ignored. This has the unfortunate effect of nations overestimating how much time they have left to reduce their man made emissions.

A recent post mentioned that parts of Russia might become more habitable as the climate warms, such as in Siberia. I saw a video a few years ago that talked about this and while it was convincing at the time, I've come to learn that Siberia will most likely just become a giant swamp. This will result in enormous GHG emissions that make the planet even less habitable, despite small pockets being a bit more habitable for a very brief period. Consider that Siberia is larger than the US - including Hawaii, Alaska and all US territories. That's a lot of methane, baby.

Also shame on you Mother Jones, for making me include a quote after the unnecessary clickbait headline. You're better than this.

Published recently on Grist, the following article concerns the harmful and often life threatening risks posed by climate change - from direct exposure to heatwaves and wildfire smoke to more subtle factors like flood related mold and increased pollen. Climate change does not simply pose a threat to the old and immunocompromised - it is an equal opportunity destroyer.

Collapse related because every single system in our body is constantly being attacked by climate change and we are not adapting or inventing quickly enough to endure. In America this is especially egregious because the population actually faces a double whammy. In addition to environmental factors, lifestyle factors (and a corrupt food system) have led to nearly half the population now classified as obese. According to a 2025 study from Harvard - if you adjust the definition of obesity to be more medically accurate, roughly 70% of the population is obese. This means an already high risk population is entering a world where all the medical problems associated with obesity will be exacerbated by all of the environmental factors stemming from climate collapse.

Collapse related because of the urgency of the article about preparedness and adaptation. Published yesterday on The Council of Foreign Relations, this article zooms out to consider the global economic consequences that could result from the damage of a potential Super El Niño this year. Estimations are easily in the trillions, the only argument is how many trillions. Two whole Musks perhaps?

From the article:

"Extreme heat is the deadliest climate hazard, killing more people than floods, fires, and hurricanes every year. Without significant adaptation, heat is expected to cost the global economy more than $2 trillion annually by 2030 through lost productivity."

Published today on Jezebel, the following article concerns the growing threat of climate change. As the world's obsession with personal vehicles grows more and more, the risk of a literal hot box grows in lock step.

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From the article:

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"A pair of married San Francisco senior citizens, who tragically were found dead in their still-running car on the side of the highway in Northern California this week, having driven into an area under extreme heat warnings where the temperature had risen to 109 degrees in the middle of the afternoon. Judith and Wylie Sheldon, both in their mid-80s, had set out from their home in the Bay Area on a road trip up to Ashland, Oregon, for that town’s well-known Shakespeare festival, planning to meet two other couples for dinner that evening. They never showed up, and were ultimately found deceased on the side of the highway, somewhere north of the town of Redding, California."

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Collapse related because Judith and Wylie Sheldon are not the first to die and will not be the last. We are fast approaching a world where living indoors and traveling from A to B will require high emission climate control.

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Climate control... an ironic name for something we need because we absolutely cannot control the climate - only destroy it further.

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The Sheldons were headed to a Shakespeare festival. Old Will once wrote "the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream."

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We should heed his warning and reflect on how we got here.

Published recently by a media group directly funded by Qatar, a nation with one of the highest per capita carbon footprints in the world - the following article discusses how children are exposed to climate risks globally. In fact, children are the most affected group when it comes to any tragedy. It transcends race, gender, politics, economics. Nobody suffers worse than children.

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Collapse related because debates and forums are not moving the needle at all and, in fact, while we sit here and argue about if this is even real - the children of the world are only beginning to suffer.

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I suggest a therapist if this is overwhelming. No, really. I have no encouraging words but an expert might know how to spin this as positive or a hidden opportunity or some bullshit. Don't come here for that kind of advice because we are completely and justifiably fatalistic. Find someone just ignorant enough to say all the right things.

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Our children? Speak for yourself... my children have the best life imaginable - because I didn't bring them into existence. I'm an excellent father, thank you very much.

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This was published to The Hill recently. While it has some fantasy level BS about how great America has always been, it also shines a light onto the widespread pollution happening more every passing day.

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One part in particular is what makes this collapse related. The polls. We are polling Americans constantly about perceptions towards climate change and ecological destruction. As the article assures us - most Americans agree that climate change is real and is a serious problem.

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And while that sure is comforting - it doesn't translate into any sort of nationwide action. Mass consensus rarely leads to radical change. Americans are losing sleep over myriad issues but in my purely anecdotal experience - this isn't one of those issues.

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Even if the whole nation started freaking out about this as much as me - it still wouldn't matter simply due to constraints built into our political system. You can vote for people, you can vote for ballot issues, but you can't vote on things like climate policy or war. Your opinions and concerns on these issues are irrelevant to the big bad movers, shakers and decision makers. You will stand idly by while they plunder the Earth because you have no real political power in this system, such as it is.

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And so the collapse will continue - regardless if morale improves.

I want to be clear - I do not buy into the fear mongering around Ebola. I feel terrible for each and every victim but the only infectious diseases that make me worry about collapse are coronaviruses and the constant risk of avian influenza learning to easily jump to humans. That said -

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This article talks about how industrialization is leading to deforestation, which is making infectious disease more likely. This is not a new problem. The first time I heard about it in detail was from the 2012 book Spillover, which briefly covered the idea of environmental destruction increasing the risk of global infectious disease. This is no longer a novel idea. We are seeing it play out in real time and the evidence is stacking up very fast.

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Collapse related because this is a highly complex issue that leads to other highly complex issues that we are only beginning to understand - and potentially far too late.

This comes from the United Nations FAO. I could have simply flaired this under Food but because the article talks about the war with Iran I would say Systemic is more accurate.

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Crop yields are projected to fall tremendously this year due to a triple threat of El Niño, war and insane agricultural practices.

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Collapse related because food is pretty important for civilization. As the old saying(s) goes - an army marches on it's stomach and mankind is only 3 meals from anarchy. In this context anarchy is meant to be a bad thing, not a critically necessary ideology.

I've always liked psychological horror. That's not what I expected from this show. The trailer makes it seem like just another fun drama. It is so much worse.

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I highly recommend it but it is not an easy watch. It started out kind of funny but it quickly becomes extremely upsetting. When I reached the end of the last episode I was internally screaming and shaking.

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Alan Cumming gave the performance of a lifetime...