• Krauerking
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    8 months ago

    It was a joke from a user back in the reddit r/collapse that used to argue that any day now we were gonna get in a feedback loop so bad that we would be “Venus by ______”.

    Honestly they might have also might have meant it in a joking way but I’m actually not sure. They had the most unhinged comments and I just was remembering them while reading through the article.

    • Muehe@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      They had the most unhinged comments

      Don’t know the user, but apparently they just believe humanity might end any day now and nobody is even realising. Which to be fair is a somewhat of a fair assessment? One I have to keep at the very back of my mind in order to not constantly scream at everybody around me, so I feel this fishmaboi. The worst thing is that GHG emissions could have triggered the cascade inevitably leading to such a feedback loop decades ago and we wouldn’t even know yet, because the cycles of the systems involved are so long. I mean sure, “Venus by Sunday” is a very weird way of framing it, but the danger seems to be rather real sadly. Consider that we don’t need to be at Venus levels but just approaching them enough in order for society to break down. The hothouse earth scenario is rather long-term, but the feedback loop itself would probably be characterised by rapid global temperature shifts on the magnitude of 1°C per year (!) or more in either direction, as climate subsystems fail, rebalance, thereby get others to fail, therefore fail again, and rebalance again or fail permanently. This would take time to settle, which would probably be deadly for globalised society, might be deadly for humanity as a species, and already is deadly for a multitude of other species despite “the feedback loop” not even really having started yet.