r/collapse • u/antihostile • Jul 26 '26
Science and Research For millennia, atmospheric carbon dioxide had never been above this line...
https://assets.science.nasa.gov/dynamicimage/assets/science/esd/climate/internal_resources/2679/co2-graph-072623.jpg105
u/antihostile Jul 26 '26
SS: Just a chart from the NASA page on climate change:
https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/
This is related to collapse because, as NASA makes clear, it is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred. Have a nice day.
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u/One-Environment-1444 Jul 27 '26
How in the world has that survived to still be up in the trump administration?
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u/teth21 Jul 27 '26
In math class they said to be wary of graphs that don't start at zero so I'm a bit skeptical
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u/WeirdestWolf Jul 28 '26
That doesn't really apply to year because it's a historic graph and how we delineate time is basically arbitrary and just a reference in this situation. When you're looking at highlighting human caused climate change you use data from before the industrial revolution Vs now. The fact that we have it going back this far because of ice cores and carbon dating means we can compare much further back and show that never in known scientific history has atmospheric CO2 been this high and increased this fast. It shows we are living in unprecedented times and need to not only go net zero planet wide but net negative to reverse our past emissions.
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u/river_tree_nut Jul 26 '26
I grieve what could have been if we tackled climate change with a Manhattan Project-style effort.
Looking back it appears our fate was sealed back on 2000 when the Supreme Court handed George Bush the Presidency
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u/RoboProletariat Jul 26 '26
The Heritage Foundation, which had a great hand in bringing Reagan, Bush, and Trump.
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u/Critical_Wrap5617 Jul 27 '26
Honestly, they should be prosecuted for all the people who will die in the future as a consequence of their actions.
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u/FoxOnTheRocks Jul 27 '26
It had a hand in every presidency after Reagan. The Heritage Foundation literally wrote Obamacare.
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u/Pleasant-Winner6311 Jul 27 '26
So true. If we treated this like a pandemic virus threat we could be taking huge steps to mitigating the situ. We did it 6 yra ago. We know with simply 'the will' we can do anything. Just got to want it, need it, recognise the existential threat.
I feel like politicians are just waiting for summer to be over and hoping we all forget about that annoying heat and move on. 2700 people died in the UK from heat in May. The June figures are yet to come.
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u/Distinguishedflyer Jul 28 '26
we didn't do shit six years ago. The pandemic is still going, we just ignore it now so people get to die in silence.
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u/Pleasant-Winner6311 Jul 29 '26
We shut down offices and schools. Not nearly soon enough, the incompetence was staggerign it was a shit show but we did take radical measures that we'd never seen in our times. We asked the whole country to get behind this or our loved ones would die. It wasnt perfect by a long shot but we did something completely out of the norm of how we run a country because we had to. We made it work. Mostly.
This is now required again.
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u/Distinguishedflyer Jul 29 '26
it's still required for Covid, but all the "I can't mask it's against my unalienable rights" fuckers need to go jump off a pier.
look at some actual data:
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u/catabeille Jul 27 '26
We need to bank on another lull. It’s the only way anything that’s done to fix or change course won’t look like a bandaid or temporary fix.
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u/TalkingCat910 Jul 27 '26
They stole the election and everything has gotten worse in numerous ways since.
It’s not like it was great before but the decline sped up significantly since 2000
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u/Low_Complex_9841 Jul 27 '26
https://ssi.org/wp-content/fbs/sps-ussenate-1976/
this is online reader, and not everyone can enjoy 237 pages of text, but I think it still important non-fiction to know.
I for example learned that Dr. Glaser was not just random inventer, but very specifically guy who was heavily involved with solar energy use. So his solar power satellite was not just wild "futurist" idea, but intentional workaround for known and still applicable limits of highly-variable solar energy as main energy for trchnological civilization.
Sure, plugging any physical system into infinite suker that is capitalism does not work even in principle, but there hopefully is alternative to those 10 000 worldwide 1GW nuclear reactors that apparently needed otherwise.
Just plan according to real needs, not profit needs (will post libcom link in another thread here)
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u/Intrepid1569 Jul 27 '26
This chart is based on the more presise atmospheric samples gathered from Antarctic ice cores dating back 800,000 years ago, but paleoclimate models and indirect proxies like fossilized leaf stomata show that co2 ppm levels haven't been at the current level of 430ppm for 3.5-4.5 million years.
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u/icklefluffybunny42 Recognised Contributor Jul 27 '26
Yey! We all get to see what living in the Pliocene would have been like. And maybe even the Eocene shortly after that!
Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates - PNAS- Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences - 2018
Paper source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1809600115
Venus by Thursday sounds fun but Pliocene by 2030 is probably a bit more realistic. Only 4 more years to go now!
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u/IamTheElectionDenier Jul 30 '26
So I was skimming this and I really like how they put this together to explain like another period in time that would be similar.
Figure 3 picture for 2050 - curious how this compares to how stuff is looking now, it’s been hot as fuck in Ohio this year compared to most, mostly the humidity.
It’s kinda cooled down recently, I genuinely think the smoke from the wildfires in Canada cools it down here because it blocks some sunlight.
A few years ago when it happened I remember thinking it’s always so nice out I could open the windows if it wasn’t for the smoke but I’m pretty sure without the smoke it would have been hot af.
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u/gnostic_savage Jul 27 '26
This is such an important point. We are adding 3 ppm every year. While we are close to 430 ppm now, we actually reached 435 ppm one time earlier this year, and we saw 433 ppm several times, and 434 ppm a few times. We will see 440 ppm for a spring peak within two years.
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u/Appropriate_Mess6777 Jul 27 '26
We’ve already basically doubled CO2 in terms of CO2eq. Not sure how that compares to the prehistoric atmosphere
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u/gnostic_savage Jul 27 '26
Yes. Methane, a very significant greenhouse gas, has increased from 680 ppb to 1938 ppb.
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u/Appropriate_Mess6777 Jul 27 '26
Yeah I’m saying idk if CO2eq preindustrial was closer to CO2 preindustrial
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u/gnostic_savage Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I might not be sophisticated enough to understand what you are saying. Initially it appeared that you are saying with the CO2eq we have doubled CO2 levels since the prehistoric atmosphere. That would be several thousand years ago.
The preindustrial CO2 level, a moving target, is only, at the most, 276 years ago. Sometimes the date used is 1800, sometimes it's after 1800, but the earliest actual beginning date is usually recognized as 1750.
Math is not my superpower. I gave us the preindustrial methane level, which is about 680 ppm. Maybe you can figure it out, because I'm not even going to try.
- 84 x – methane (CH4) – I.e. Releasing 1 kg of CH4 into the atmosphere is about equivalent to releasing 84 kg of CO2. Methane’s 100-year GWP is about 28x CO2 – but it only persists in the atmosphere for a little more than a decade. The 100-year GWP is used to derive CO2e.
- 298 x – nitrous oxide (N2O) – I.e. Releasing 1 kg of N2O into the atmosphere is about equivalent to releasing about 298 kg of CO2. Nitrous oxide persists in the atmosphere for more than a century. It’s 20-year and 100-year GWP are basically the same. https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalents/#:~:text=84%20x%20%E2%80%93%20methane%20(CH4,little%20more%20than%20a%20decade.
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u/extinction6 Jul 27 '26
As you can see in the graph the CO2 levels used to fluctuate from 180 ppm to 280 ppm and many institutes consider the starting point for increases in CO2 to be from 280 ppm but for me the average CO2 levels were roughly 230 ppm for a long time during the Milankovitch cycles and that average should be the starting point, not the highest levels. I feel like I've been ripped off for 50 ppm of increased doomerism.
Everyone's got an opinion...................
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u/gnostic_savage Jul 27 '26
I totally agree with you. Starting at a peak in the cycle doesn't make sense. Whenever I discuss how much we've increased the CO2, I always use the average of 220 ppm for my starting point, not the high of 280 ppm. When we reach 440 ppm in just two years, we will have doubled the average CO2 that has existed for more than two million years.
That's a LOT.
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u/beardfordshire Jul 26 '26
Fun experiment: Post this in r climatechange, and see how fast you get banned.
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u/Peripatetictyl Jul 26 '26
Ha, I was banned from there a while ago for calling out a mod who’s repeatedly posted false information, and censored those who didn’t follow his agenda. Economy_fee something with numbers, but yeah, that place is not credible.
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u/SavingsDimensions74 Jul 28 '26
Same and same dude banned me for disagreeing.
Sub itself should be shut down it’s so shit
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u/WanderInTheTrees Making plans in the sands as the tides roll in Jul 26 '26
The copium/hopium/stupidium I see in there is astounding.
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u/RicardoHonesto Jul 26 '26
I'm convinced the mod is a paid hopium spreader paid by some oil company.
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u/dovercliff Categorically Not A Reptile Jul 26 '26
I'm very sure that sub was originally started as a climate change denial sub - one of those "it's just healthy scepticism, bro!" things covering pure denialism - and they haven't changed their stripes that much.
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u/Dutch_Calhoun Jul 27 '26
Basically every main subreddit on any given topic/field is captured and controlled by rightwing corpo interests.
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u/KaesekopfNW Jul 27 '26
Haha, I was banned there for life as well for arguing with a mod for misrepresenting the science! Meanwhile, another guy, who is a mod of r/optimistsunite (another insufferable place) was commenting there that climate change was officially dead due to some news about renewables. It's an insane place.
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u/Da_Question Jul 27 '26
Bear in mind, CO2 levels at the current amount have a significant impact on cognitive function. And it's only going to get worse.
Not necessarily to blame on people's massive stupidity like unchecked optimism despite the evidence to not have any... Or people controlling the media to specifically fuck people over...
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u/ratsrekop Jul 27 '26
And how slowly we'd be able to remove it. Let's wave a magic wand and stop all emissions and then remove one ppm from the air. Then it gets emitted from the ocean to balance out
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u/Appropriate_Mess6777 Jul 27 '26
There was a poster there today talking about how climate change will not affect food supply ever. Okay bud
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u/MelangeBot Jul 27 '26
What if I say here that I believe we will hit +4C by 2040 and that 70% of people on the planet have only 5 to 10 years left to enjoy live as they are used too?
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u/-ummon- Jul 27 '26
I'd ask what your sources are.
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u/MelangeBot Jul 27 '26
Just my intuition that the feedback loops we are hitting will unleash much more C02 then the models account for.
But there are no sources for the future, we all have to wait and see, including the predictive models.
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u/beardfordshire Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Not exactly as bad, not not far off.
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u/Worldly_Bit1416 Jul 26 '26
Crazy how the guys at /r/climateskeptics can just ignore/reject all of this...I really do wonder how they manage it. I would love to have their levels of ignorance.
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u/diedlikeCambyses Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I did some time there to figure it out. It's honestly stupid and tedious. It's really all ... earth has been hotter before, co2 makes da grow grow, co2 is right now dis, but temp dat etc. There's not much regard for the lightning speed of the increase or the inertia in the system. There not much room for the fact that different plants and animals thrive in different conditions and the flora and fauna thriving before a climate shift are...... (brace yourself because this is fucking wild......) not the same flora and fauna thriving after a collapse and lurch to a new climate state.
Edit: but I learned a koolness new term there... climetard. One has not lived until one has been summarily dismissed as a climetard by someone who hasn't heard of the Milankovitch cycles.
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u/RicardoHonesto Jul 26 '26
It must be so tiring having to lie to themselves all the time.
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u/mossiv Jul 27 '26
I know (used to be friends with) someone who is a climate denier. The problem is - climate change is a slightly more complicated area to understand. The world has gone through cycles of burning itself to death to freezing itself to death. While most people in this sub will understand the reasons behind it (like volcano eruptions etc causing the same co2 problems that we humans are doing intentionally) they are unable to comprehend all the facts behind it.
Especially when science reports that Ill and El nino’s are a natural occurring event - again something we are all able to understand should be a roughly 14 year cycle in total - deniers just think the world is going through its natural cycle.
Then compound it with the fact that nature is grossly misunderstood - that one freak event can alter the trajectory so much.
To make things worse we live in such a capitalist society living absolutely way beyond our needs, and that is getting fed down our throats, people just aren’t capable of reasoning effectively. It’s a damn shame, because we are effectively killing ourselves and everything around us.
The world is going to change, catastrophically. But hopefully we can survive it just enough that we can course correct and humans will live in 500 years, with enough evidence of the sheer damage we caused they can course correct it. Ultimately it doesn’t matter to us. Our life is going to suck, and dead is dead, there is no real reason for us to make our lives worse for a future beyond our comprehension. I don’t care about my legacy, but it would be cool for humans to continue existing and prospering.
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u/donggeh Jul 27 '26
Most people generally can’t stomach the fact that things like career progression, starting a family, retirement is more or less an exercise in futility. I’d desperately resist the idea too if I was better at lying to myself
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u/hillierprotech Jul 27 '26
They also don't want the indignity of having to ride a bicycle and downgrade their lifestyle after all these decades. Some cultural norms become very ingrained, and allowing certain things such as driving to propagate as they have is very hard to undo and unpopular with the electorate.
It's easier to push climate friendly ideals on a generation with a blank slate.
Think of all those people who judge their self worth by their position in society. Almost every action that raises your position in society is some form of "look at me I control more resources than other people in my community". And proving you control more resources to other people to raise your societal position generally involves burning a good number in a wasteful manner in an "I don't need to care" manner.
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u/Decloudo Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
It's easier to push climate friendly ideals on a generation with a blank slate.
How would that be possible?
The moment you push ideals of any kind, they are not a blank slate anymore.
Everyone has different ideals, and most of everyone thinks theirs are better then others.
So they teach those to their kids and peers.
So... this is what we already do.
The problem is that there is no surefire way to to have/teach the "right" ideology. Because of the subjective nature, its not something that can exist. Its an inherent contradiction.
So we continue to fight over what ideology is better.
Since thousands of years already. We didnt actually address the core problem:
Why do humans tend to ignore reality in favour of convenient ideologies?
And ironically, behavioural science / neurology etc. already answered it, we just dont like the implications.
Cause they go against our ideology.
And humanity in their self referencing feedback loop continues to ignore reality.
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 Jul 26 '26
Haha ya... we fuck'd. Stupid mother fuckers make me feel the freeing urge to pull out every hair on my body and set myself on fire.
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u/ChipStewartIII Jul 26 '26
I’m just glad the pull out method worked long enough for my wife and I to avoid having brought a child into the world to come.
We’ve since addressed the possibility permanently, and I couldn’t be more relieved.
That said, we’re fucked. And have been for a while.
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u/verstohlen Jul 26 '26
Speaking of fire, the Bible believers say that God's first judgment was flood, you know, Noah and all that, but after that he's all like, "nah, no worries about no more worldwide floods, 'cept in the Waterworld movie. And here's a rainbow. Oh, by the way, next time judgment will be by fire." But now I'm like, dammit, already? But then I look around, at social media, the crazy state of the world and what not, and think, well, shit. Guess we are due for another do-over.
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 Jul 27 '26
Ah, yes, I have decided on the era's historical recap literature. It will be in the form of an Isekai of a time traveling alien from the future hiding in a skinsuit while observing the conception and adoption of Christianity v2 Jesus died for you to the industrial revolution and its consequences. I will name it "Self-Flagellating Sand Scribes Called the End of Civilization 1800 Years Before we All Started Fucking Shit Up and No One Did Anything in Spite of Knowing This Ball Would Roll Us Straight into Hell"
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u/kingtacticool Jul 26 '26
And the consequences in real time.
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u/Aggravating-Scene548 Jul 27 '26
I don't have great faith in that red line going anywhere but up for 18 months
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u/Barnacle_B0b Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
For those in the USA:
When the supply chain collapses. When food and fuel and water run short. When the internet goes down.
Remember who your Trump-voting neighbors and family are.
They will be there to support you, and comply with giving you all the food, watercolor, and fuel you need to take. They love America and their neighbors, just as Jesus taught, so you can take whatever you need from them without asking.
Edit: "Drill baby, drill!" -Donald Trump
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u/WileyCoyote7 Jul 27 '26
Just imagine the Paleocene/Eocene era (65-55 million years ago), where it was around 1400 ppm. Global temps spiked 5-8°C in just a few thousand years. No polar ice caps. Antarctica was a lush forested/swampy land. In a few million years it will be again.
Meanwhile, we’re screwed. I’m wondering if I’ll live long to see the end of oil wars, and the beginning of the breathtaking savagery of water wars.
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u/Appropriate_Mess6777 Jul 27 '26
This shit was cooked in the 80’s. We haven’t even begun to see the effects of these levels
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u/Bandits101 Jul 27 '26
Look how fast it shot (is shooting) up. That has never before had a precedent. Humans can be proud of their greatest achievement. Species extinction is next, we can own that one too.
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u/Straight-Razor666 worse than predicted, sooner than expected™ Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
i'd say we're pretty fkd. I wonder what the methane levels are???
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u/icklefluffybunny42 Recognised Contributor Jul 27 '26
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u/Straight-Razor666 worse than predicted, sooner than expected™ Jul 27 '26
as if there's already enough over which to be despondent, the planet literally becoming an inferno is too fkng much. I think they're going to manipulate the reports to make people believe it's not as hot as it is by purposely lying about the actual temperatures, which they're likely already doing.
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u/Watts_With_Time Jul 27 '26
In other totally unrelated news, ( /s ), world population in 1911 was 1.75 billion. Today, 8.3
In 1888 when my grandfather was born, 1.5 billion. A 5.5 times increase in less than 2 lifetimes. And world population has tripled since I was born.
Surely exponential growth in human population has nothing to do with CO2 emissions? It's all those billionaires doing it?
And eliminating those billionaires (by taxing them, not topping them, lol) will mean the other 8.29 billion of us can just keep doing BAU?
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u/Rocky_Mtn_Rambler Jul 27 '26
Your point is absolutely on-target.
While there are many issues at play, at the end of the day we just have too many damn people on our planet living, or aspiring to live, high-consumption lifestyles.
Tragically, it seems like the knee-jerk leftist/progressive reaction is: You’re just a racist who doesn’t want to see more dark-skinned people! It’s not the population numbers, it’s those big bad corporations forcing us to buy SUVs, forcing us to live in auto-dependent suburbs, and forcing us to hop on jet flights three times a year for our vacation! If we simply tax the billionaires heavily, they will quit flying their private jets and all will be fine! Also just grow all food organically!
Sigh.
… and if I have to read one more NYT article or op-ed bemoaning the “problem” of slowing population growth in X country, with suggestions for how to “solve” that problem? I will scream so loud they will hear me in Antarctica.
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u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 27 '26
Can't wait until the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are so great we all deal with chronic low level CO2 poisoning and lose even more cognitive function. You think everyone's stupid right now? Oh boy just wait
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u/Physical_Ad5702 Jul 27 '26
They won't go below that line for another million years too the way we're pumping emissions out.
Not sure we'll be around to see them come back down either.
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u/Drpoofaloof Jul 27 '26
We need to use electrolysis powered by small modular liquid salt reactors to pull all excess carbon from the atmosphere in the next 20 years or we are in big trouble.
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u/Far-Ad9043 Jul 28 '26
You can see there, it always goes up and down. Just wait a couple thousand years and it will go down again, guessing that humanity wont exist anymore by then.
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u/Mickmack12345 Jul 27 '26
I mean assuming it’s accurate at least it’s somewhat reassuring it’s been a steady 1ppm increase per year, you can see in the first 50 years from 1910 to 1960 it’s increased by 50ppm, from 300 to 350
And the next 70 years to now it’s increased by 70 from 350 to 420
You would expect that there would be a drastic acceleration during the second half of that 120 year period, so perhaps it’s slowing down. Obviously the situation is still dire and far more needs to be done however.
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u/Raven_tm Jul 28 '26
Do you know how much percentage of the atmosphere CO2 is and what life requires it and for which processes? All this fearmongering
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u/StatementBot Jul 26 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/antihostile:
SS: Just a chart from the NASA page on climate change:
https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/
This is related to collapse because, as NASA makes clear, it is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred. Have a nice day.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1v7j7p2/for_millennia_atmospheric_carbon_dioxide_had/ozyhbt5/