We've known this was a potential issue since the 60's. The 1860's.

As of the 90's, scientists were saying that increased CO2 presence in the atmosphere could lead to global warming. The 1890's.

I still think about Bernie Sanders’ debate with Hillary where they were asked the top threat to America. His response wasn’t terrorism or drugs or crime. It was Global Warming.

He pointed out that global warming was causing a lot of worldwide problems related to resource scarcity. I found it interesting and wonder how much worse it has gotten since 2016.

Yeah... Gets pretty old pretty quick hearing my older relatives scepticism around climate change while our seasons get visibly more extreme year over year.

Heatwaves of >30C were literally unheard in my area when I was younger, yet now they occur multiple times in a single summer.

And same with the cold snaps in the winter. It was rare when I was younger, and now it also happens multiple times a winter.

Its like people see all this and yet still can't put two and two together that maybe this is the climate change scientists have been crazily screaming into the apathetic void about for the last half a century.

And worse still, some will say "its natural for the climate to change over time". Which is true... OVER CENTURIES of geological time!! These extreme climate changes over the matter of a couple of decades are not the same as the natural shifts in climate over time!

It is what it is.

Scientists and experts have tried for 50+ years to warn about it but now it is what it is.

The Greenhouse Gas Effect should have been enough. Altering the reflective properties of the atmosphere and increasing the energy budget of the planet surely must be a terrible idea.

But do we know that it is a terrible idea?

They looked back in time to show that historically more CO2 means increased temperature and changes in the climate system that we may not want.

They looked forward in time to simulate how our emissions will lead to a hotter climate and how it might change in ways we might not want.

They even took all these models that admittedly vary and depend on initial conditions and assumptions and they combined them all so that we aren't sensitive to only one kind of model and method.

Still, people think we cannot know such things.

It is what it is. But one thing I do know for sure is that we have lost the excuse to go back and question things. We can't say "If only we were warned". "If someone really knew, why didn't they say anything?" "Why weren't they more persuasive?" This has been screeched about for most of our lives. Every single person on the planet knows about it. Any skepticism and doubt has been explicitly against the advice of those who know. We chose not to listen.

It is what it is, but I will spend what little money I have and what little democratic say I have to move us into a world with less emmisions. It may be too late, but I'd like to be able to sleep at night.

So fucking selfish man....

Do you people not even consider that billionaires got to buy another yacht? Or another island? You dirty communists just want to stop these billionaires from owning a 65th yacht just so you can what? Not sweat to death? .... fucking selfish people...

https://xkcd.com/1732/

This graph should be the easiest to understand explanation anybody needs.

A friend of mine went to Ireland one summer about 20ish years ago. Never once did it get above 20 degrees and it rained most days. Someone I know in Mexico grew up in a town where the architecture is designed around rain. The buildings downtown all have roofs overhanging the sidewalks because it used to rain most days, so they designed things to shelter pedestrians. The place also had an airport, but it was unusable most of the time because it was too foggy / rainy. These days it only rains occasionally and can be mid-30s for several months of the year.

There are a lot of places where people used to need heating in the winter, but the summers were brief but pleasant. Now, in a lot of places the winters are still brutal, but now summer days get so hot that air conditioning is also a necessity.

But, what worries me most is farming. Farmers need predictable seasons. If they know the summer will be warmer and dryer they can sometimes switch to different crops. That doesn't work if there's unpredictable weeks-long rain when it's time to harvest.

Humanity is resilient, and humans will survive. But, being a living human in 2226 might be awful. Enjoying the outdoors might just not be something people can't do anymore. All the natural ecosystems of the world might have collapsed, and people just eat nacho-flavoured protein paste and dream about what it was like to eat a raspberry.

In a very real sense I'd say this sort of thing belongs in Leopards Ate My Face.

There are a lot of these people who are all of a sudden "Oh, this was not just doomsaying on the part of some radical scientists, this is a real thing." Now that they're actually experiencing the consequences of the last 40 years of complete and total inaction, they are expressing their regret. And, I'm sorry but you all voted for this. You all actively decided to ignore the problem because it was not affecting you at the time. And you didn't really think it would ever actually affect you. And now that it is, you're sad about it. And a lot of these people were even mocking people like Greta Thunberg for her anger at the complete indifference to the global climate crisis we were headed towards. And, to that and them, I say fuck you! We all tried to warn you and you simply ignored us. And now we are all in the same sinking boat together. And for my money, you deserve any and all hardships that you experience due to this climate crisis.

One of the frustrating things is people acting like they were engaging this discussion in good faith decades ago. They've gotten away with being extraordinarily selfish for most of their lives, and now turn around and go oops.

This had already been explained to them and they refused to listen when the whole world depended on it.

Is this guy better than someone still denying it now? Sure, whatever. We're still allowed to be mad at them for the damage they've done, like a vandal who suddenly stops and apologizes.

Good news! Once the Atlantic current collapse occurs the UK will be cold as hell, too!

It's okay, here at O'hare we understand your needs for fresh, cool, breathable air. So for a limited time only, begin your household's membership to our circular air delivery service at the low price of $299/month.

Don't let those evil billionaires fill your lungs with smog, choose O'hare Air today!

It clicks anew for people every single day, my brothers and sisters

i miss snow

For me personally the tipping point was when research showed large amounts of methane escaping the thawing ice. We really can't reverse something on that level, we're on damage control and assholes are still refusing to control for damage.

Outdoors is a lost cause, time to start digging tunnels.

Well, I maybe have good news for this person... AMOC collapse is an anticipated effect of global warming and it would paradoxically make it much, much colder in Ireland. As in "Ice Age" colder.

South Park mirrors this. Since its a show which acts as social commentary and pokes fun at current events, they did Al Gore dirty and made fun of him for supposedly believing in imaginary climate change (man bear pig). 10 years later, they made episodes saying he was right.

Many people got the message, however wrong, that it was nothing to worry about for 100 years, and read things like "2.1C" and figured that wasn't very much.

Of course, our public education system being dismantled by the billionaires hasn't helped at all. At least, it hasn't helped we the poors, they're getting exactly what they wanted.

How to win over the masses, though? Most people know about climate change, they'll say it's terrible and something should be done, but aren't ready to make any personal sacrifices to do something about it. How do we get them to give up eating meat or taking planes

people wernt alarmed when most countries abandoned thier climate goals/initiatives like years ago.

I remember a staff training session, the trainer said "some people see the problem coming" and pointed off in the distance. Then she held her fist to her forehead and said "some people, 'guys we have a problem'."

Some people have complete inability to entertain the hypothetical. Ted Talk https://youtu.be/9vpqilhW9uI

Yeah, I have no sympathy. If you can't handle me flaming you for being a sleepwalking dipshit then you haven't fucking learned anything, you're just jumping on the zeitgeist because you're a fucking parrot.

I've had nightmares about climate change since I was about 10 years old. I'm 32 now. I have been watching everyone around me sleepwalk into this as if nothing matters, now I'm expected to feel bad for this fucking monkey because they've suddenly woken up?

No, fuck that and fuck them — this type of person is the reason fascism is winning around the world.

"It's not real until I notice it" is, unfortunately, a feature of human psychology. The good news is that the evidence is undeniable now and more and more people are waking up to the fact that our way of living is unsustainable. There's still hope we can rise up and rein this in before complete collapse.