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It would not be the first time heat in southern Italy got this bad. I think that's a reason why people trust the prediction. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/11/sicily-logs-488c-temperature-possibly-highest-ever-recorded-for-europe

For example...

Go look at your local Walmart and it's bazillion products. They expect to sell almost everything in that store multiple times within a month. All that generates enormous waste on a scale that's literally impossible for the earth to sustain for another 100 years without total ecological collapse.

We're living in the single most polluting decade in human history, every decade, since all of us were born. Even if the entire Lemmy user base become subsistence farming monks, the factories would just keep churning out poison unphased.

I'm not saying it's bad for people to try and consume more responsibly. I'm just saying it doesn't make a difference over any meaningful time period until there's a radical change in how our global economy functions.

Environmental catastrophe will continue until we literally cannot ignore it, only then will we do anything substantial about it. Unfortunately that's just how our society works.

Apparently there are still loads of people who don't understand this simple fact and think everything that is done to make the world a better place is for climate change.

Why would that be orthogonal? Most plastics are created using crude oil and natural gas feedstocks - the creation of these single use plastics directly impacts climate change.

Yes, we are in an ice age, seeing as there are frozen poles. But we are changing that, soon there will be no frozen pole caps and with that, the ice age will have ended. We are creating our own hot period.

Btw. it can only be an interglacial period if the glaciers return after. It's a descriptive term, not a prescriptive, and there is no reason why the current warm period should be seen as interglacial.

Because climate doesn't just change without a cause, it needs a driving force. Earlier hot periods were caused by volcanic CO2 and the change happened slowly, over millions of years. Earlier cold periods had a number of different reasons, from nuclear winters after asteroid impact, ultra-high plant growth with not enough O2 consumers or global darkening due to the ash of a supervolcano or even the changing tilt of earths axis.

There is no natural reason for the current warm period to turn into continental glaciation, let alone end so early and so fast, let alone the entire ice age, that has created temperatures that humans are comfortable with, just melting away around us. We have likely ended the ice age entirely, as much heat as we trapped in the atmosphere.

Climate changes more rapidly right now than it ever did before bar the impact of ecocidal asteroids and the consequences are dire. We are heating up the planet and there is no force cooling it. If we want to stay even a little bit comfortable, we should drastically reduce the amount of energy trapped in our atmosphere.

the messaging has been consistently toned down in the hopes people would listen.

My guess is its even more than this: deadlines were extended to not let people fall into inaction. The tipping point always close enough so that its dangerous, but still far away enough so that there is still hope. It is a ploy analogous to the fascist "the enemy is strong enough to be dangerous and weak enough to be thoroughly defeated."

This scene is far more realistic, I think. But as you can tell, it doesn't play very well with either the audience or the media.

Maybe it's more about already being able to see the results of climate change.

Rivers drying out, ice sheets and glaciers melting, oceans heating up, desertification, water shortages, etc.

And with everything it seems like we're "nearly" at a breaking point. Cities running completely out of water, crops failing because of the heat or forests dying or burning, etc.

At least it feels like we're not that far away from a really bad time than anticipated.

We usually do not have AC here (for example in Germany). Not even in hospitals, schools, elderly care, etc. The solution of our government, after many people already died because of heat, is to make shelter rooms somewhere in the city where you can go when it's getting too hot. That's how "prepared" we are.

Also, the majority of people here do not own a home but instead are dependable on their landlord to do something against the heat. Which is obviously not happening. So instead those people who have the money for it start buying free standing AC units. Which need a pipe to hang out of the window and are highly inefficient.

you will probably not be entirled tobhealthcare in Europe either then.

Usually the idea is that you pay as a worker into the healthcare system. If you never paid in here you will probably have to fo dor private insurance and you'll be faced with similiar rates like in the US because the age of entry is crucial for the rates of private health insurance