Ask Lemmy

Emerging evidence of abrupt changes in the Antarctic environment

...evidence is emerging for rapid, interacting and sometimes self-perpetuating changes in the Antarctic environment. A regime shift has reduced Antarctic sea-ice extent far below its natural variability of past centuries, and in some respects is more abrupt, non-linear and potentially irreversible than Arctic sea-ice loss. A marked slowdown in Antarctic Overturning Circulation is expected to intensify this century and may be faster than the anticipated Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowdown. The tipping point for unstoppable ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be exceeded even under best-case CO2 emission reduction pathways, potentially initiating global tipping cascades...

This is just an example from today, but overall the climate news from recent years scares me more than anything else. Insect counts are plummeting globally, wildfires are getting noticeably worse everywhere, all of the ice is receding, ocean currents are destabilizing as the temperature patterns in the air and the water shift, and crop growing seasons are changing. I get the impression that the predicted climate changes are not only happening now, but are accelerating noticeably.

Unpredictable food production is bad bad bad. If you watch the series Fall of Civilizations, one of the most common elements of collapsing societies is destablised food production (not necessarily no production, just irregular). If this happens globally, everything stops and people start dying in large numbers.

Personally, this is the only political issue that really matters. Every other thing that people argue about is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.