I am prone to fatalist climate doomerism. But is it really too late? | First Dog on the Moon

14 comments

1. The IPCC tends to be the most conservative in their projections, which usually means the most optimistic (compared to someone like James Hansen). A couple years ago, the CO2e (all of the other GHGs converted into their CO2 equivalents) was 534 ppm, which comes with this implication:

   *Note: The IPCC suggests that a constant concentration of CO2 alone at 550 ppm would lead to an average increase in Earth’s temperature of ~3°C (5.4°F).*

   [https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/](https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/)

   In February, Leon Simons calculated CO2e at 560 ppm. When he recalculated it again in May, it was 573 ppm. Since there’s no effective technological method of capture at this point, it would seem that at least 3C is locked in.

   3C of warming is considered catastrophic, FWIW.

   *At 3C or more of heating by 2050, there could be more than 4 billion deaths, significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states (with resulting rapid, enduring, and significant loss of capital), and extinction events.*

   *Sandy Trust, the lead author of the report, said there was no realistic plan in place to avoid this scenario.*

   [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/economic-growth-could-fall-50-over-20-years-from-climate-shocks-say-actuaries](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/economic-growth-could-fall-50-over-20-years-from-climate-shocks-say-actuaries)

   With the recent acceleration of the warming rate, the projection for 3C is as early as 2054, as late as 2065, depending on which dataset is used. And emissions are still increasing.

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3. I’m sorry but this weird “”Things are horrible but so what they’ve alsways been” is just not factually correct.

   This is not feeling, not story, it’s scientific evidence:

   Depending on the proxy, we are currently pumping CO2 5 to 20 times faster than during the largest dying in the history of life.

   [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum)

   “With available information, estimates of the carbon addition range from about 2,000 to 7,000 gigatons.[^([44])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum#cite_note-Zeebe2009-44)[^([48])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum#cite_note-Panchuk2008-48)[^([49])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum#cite_note-Cui2011-49)”

   That took about 200 k years

   We are at 41 Gigatonnes at about 200 years:
   [https://climatechangetracker.org/igcc/yearly-total-human-induced-net-CO2-emissions](https://climatechangetracker.org/igcc/yearly-total-human-induced-net-CO2-emissions)

   So no, things have NOT always been that horrible.

   It’s like sitting in a burning house while saying “why the negativity, my fireplace has always seen fire”

   I don’t feel helpless or doomy, it’s just that we really need to acknowledge the severity of the situation first and it seems to me people haven’t.

4. What is the difference in between doomerism and just being realistic? It feels like there’s a lot of delusional optimism that ignores reality on the same level of climate deniers. 

5. It’s taken many years, but I no longer see humans as a special feature of nature. We are one species of many.

   I don’t want to see us go extinct and I don’t want my daughter to have a miserable life

   Paradoxically, I also understand our species has evolved with certain characteristics that may not be up to the challenge of adapting to climate change. The dinosaurs weren’t up to the challenge of adapting to a world after the asteroid hit.

   But life did go on, and whatever the truth may be the only thing for me to do *today* – right now – is make choices for my own personal self that do the best I can with the resources available to make everything just a little bit better in this moment.

   And really, what else has anybody ever been able to do?

6. Too late for what?

7. the fact that you can scroll through this sub and read one horrible headline after the next should be telling us everything we need to know

   we are the frog sitting in water, the temperature slowly rising

   by the time we cook, it will be too late

   the science is clear. the action or inaction by the hypercapitalistic sociopaths is clear. anti-scientific propaganda has spread like cancer. 

   to my knowledge the only thing that could safe us now would be nothing short of a miracle

   anything we are doing now to soften the blow is nothing but hospice care

8. No

9. Yes. It’s been too late for awhile.

10. Hello, anyone monitoring the sub able to point people in the direction of agreed status? This seems divisive and most worrying.

11. As a philosophical Absurdist, I think adopting the perspective of Camus’s Sisyphus is appropriate: we will never get that boulder up the hill, but let’s find peace and purpose in the struggle of trying to do so.

12. Before major environmental and civilizational collapse we would certainly begin to do solar geoengineering.
    We’re rather certain that the side effects of reflective aerosols are minor in general but especially in comparison.

    To be fair, we should already be using it, given we’re at 1,5C. Realistically though, getting to large deployment could take a few years, because planes have to be retrofitted, then ultimately new ones designed and built, airports, treaties.
    It’s very unpopular though, not least because it perfectly ties in with the chemtrail conspiracy.

13. I hate this framing of doomers. I have no expectation that this can be solved. No belief that humanity has a future. The level of action needed to address the climate crisis and all its adjacent crises is of a scope that would dwarf humanity’s collective effort to kill itself in World War II.

    We’re not going to solve this crisis. We’re certainly not going to solve it by transitioning our system to renewables, expecting that we will continue to enjoy similar levels of convenience and luxury afforded to us by the burning and processing of fossil carbon.

    However, this knowledge does not stop me from speaking out and making changes to my own life. And I believe we should be doing everything in our power to bring this system to a stop. Many of those things are not currently able to be said openly, but as fascism rises and people begin to wake up to what is happening, there will be people taking those steps.

    Will the revolution solve our problems? Likely not, but perhaps we can collapse in a gentler manner than what fossil industry-led leaders are driving us toward. Perhaps we can work to ensure some animals, plants, and fungi are able to survive what we have done to the planet and preserve their lineage for a future that’s less chaotic.

    It’s insane to me that someone can recognize that what we are dealing with is fossil fascism and expect that it can be excised from the world through electoral politics.

14. No its not too late , but the only people served by that rhetoric are the fossil fuel lobbies. They want us to give up – we can not.

    Moreover, it is not a simple yes/ no answer. It is a sliding scale of damage. Every fraction of a degree we can stall and reduce will have significant impact in the habitability of the planet.

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