Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25526068

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

I'd agree with that, inequality is just another toxic symptom of our current civilization, like pollution, climate change, environmental degredation etc.

We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

“I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.”

I'd clarify my postion as, surely it's obvious civilisation can't last but humans will, what comes after ? Interesting qiestion but entirely irrelevant

Beneath the ocean's surface, a symphony ripples and rolls, ricochets and hums—and whales pour their songs into the deep soundscape like streams of molten silver.

Deep within the noise, a 32-mile-long cable stretches out from the California coastline along the seafloor, tethered to the ground 3,000 feet below the surface. At its end is a two-inch-wide metal cylinder standing on three legs. This hydrophone, an underwater microphone, can record and trace the ocean’s shifting harmonies for years on end.

In a study published earlier this year, which traced more than six years of acoustic monitoring in the central California Current Ecosystem, Ryan and a team of researchers found clear patterns in whale song across seasons and years. By chance, the recordings began during a massive marine heatwave unlike anything seen before in the region.

The study documented whale songs beginning in July 2015, and revealed that different species responded differently. Humpbacks have a more diverse diet and were able to adapt to harsh conditions; their songs didn’t change. But blue and fin whales feed almost exclusively on krill, and their songs were detected less often than years prior.

The heatwave reduced the food whales rely on and triggered harmful changes in ocean chemistry, allowing toxic algae to bloom. “It caused the most widespread poisoning of marine mammals ever documented. These were hard times for whales,” says Ryan.

As prey became scarce, blue whale vocalizations dropped by nearly 40 percent alongside a collapse in krill and anchovy populations, the recent study showed.

The elderly population in South Korea surpassed 10 million for the first time, Statistics Korea said Tuesday.

Those aged 65 and older stood at 10.12 million as of November last year, accounting for 19.5 percent of the total population of 51.81 million, roughly one in five. That also brought the average age of the population to 46.2.

Amid an aging society with a super-low birthrate, the elderly population has steadily increased in recent years from 8.71 million in 2021 to 9.61 million in 2023, while the working-age population continues to dwindle.

Those aged 15 to 64 stood at 36.26 million last year, down 283,000 from a year ago, with the number of children also dropping by 199,000 to 5.42 million during the same period, further worsening the demographic imbalance.

The Stargate Project – a joint venture by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank – is a $500 billion investment announced by Trump in January toward building, ultimately, 20 such massive OpenAI data centers across the U.S., with Stargate Texas being the first. During the press conference unveiling the plan, Trump pressed Altman, who took the stand next, to speak about how Stargate will cure cancer. It’s not clear what Stargate will actually accomplish as a massive data center, outside of a vague stated mission to “elevate humanity.”

Stargate is the highest-profile case, but it’s part of a larger phenomenon: a surge of AI and cloud storage data centers to Texas, attracted by the only independent energy grid in the country. Texas has always taken a business-friendly approach to the grid, offering cheap energy and often loose regulations on groundwater pumping. Energy and water are what make data centers run, usually 24/7 once they’re turned on. Data centers need water to cool their processing servers, which is actually a more difficult task in hotter states like Texas. They could use air conditioning to do this, but energy is generally a more expensive commodity than water.

When operational, Stargate will use enough energy to power 750,000 homes. To sustain such a huge demand, OpenAI is building its own natural gas power plant to power Stargate. The emergence of these mega data centers that require their own power plants have become another concern for experts on water resources.

The average, midsized data center uses 300,000 gallons of water a day, roughly the use of a thousand homes. Larger data centers might use 4.5 million gallons a day, depending on their type of water cooling system. Austin has 47 such data centers, while the Dallas-Fort Worth area hosts the majority in Texas at 189.

It’s been difficult for HARC and experts like Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, to extract transparent water usage reports from data centers. “Their use could be horrific relative to local use, or it could be extremely minimal,” Mace said.

In a white paper to be released this month, HARC estimates that data centers in Texas will consume 49 billion gallons of water in 2025. They also project that by 2030, that number could rise up to 399 billion gallons, or 6.6% of total water use in Texas.

Most data centers use an evaporative cooling system, in which the servers’ heat is absorbed by water. The heat is then removed from the water through evaporation, causing the water to be lost as vapor in the air. The cooler water then goes back through the machines, and this loop is regularly topped off with fresh water. After all, evaporation renders the water saltier and unusable after four or five cycles. “Then they dump the water, and it goes down the sewer,” Mace said.

This water loss is significant when, even after the devastating flooding earlier this month, nearly a quarter of the state remains in drought conditions.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Rafael Méndez Tejeda and Pearl Marvell

Archived link

False and misleading claims about extreme weather events spread unchecked on social media are putting lives at risk, new research suggests

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) - which analyzed viral posts on the social media platform X, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook - found that when a storm of false and misleading claims about extreme weather events, the platforms' algorithms amplify conspiracy theorists while sidelining life-saving information.

CCDH looked at the 300 most-liked posts on X, YouTube, and Meta about extreme weather events in the U.S. like Texas floods, Hurricane Helene and the LA wildfires.

Key points:

• False or misleading claims about extreme weather were viewed 221 million times across all platforms.
• Community Notes or fact checks are almost entirely absent on viral posts spreading false claims during major disasters.
• Social media companies are profiting from lies about extreme weather events.
• On X, 88% of misleading extreme weather posts were from verified accounts. The platform enables paid subscriptions for five of these accounts – which combined have 14 million followers
• On YouTube, 73% of posts were from verified accounts. YouTube displayed ads next to 29% of misleading extreme weather videos.
• On Facebook and Instagram, 64% of posts were from verified accounts. Meta is sharing ad revenue with three content creators pushing misleading claims, enabling them to share in Meta’s revenue from ads near their posts.
• ‘Superspreaders’ of false claims and conspiracies online, like Alex Jones [a U.S. far-right radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist], get more views than official information during extreme weather events like the LA wildfires.
• Alex Jones’ false claims about the LA wildfires amassed 408 million views on X – more than the combined views of posts from 10 major news outlets and 10 key emergency agencies.

As calls grow to keep fossil fuel influence out of UN climate talks, campaigners say Edelman’s partnership with the oil and gas major raises an alarming conflict of interest As calls grow to keep fossil fuel influence out of climate talks, campaigners say Edelman’s partnership with the oil and gas giant raises an alarming conflict of interest

New findings from studying over two decades of satellite observations reveal that the Earth’s continents have experienced unprecedented freshwater loss since 2002, driven by climate change, unsustainable groundwater use and extreme droughts.

The study, led by Arizona State University and published today in Science Advances, highlights the emergence of four continental-scale “mega-drying” regions, all located in the Northern Hemisphere, and warns of severe consequences for water security, agriculture, sea-level rise and global stability.

Water scarcity is a major issue in Iran, particularly in arid provinces in the country’s south, with shortages blamed on mismanagement and overexploitation of underground resources, as well as the growing impact of climate change.

Tehran’s provincial water management company called for usage to be reduced by “at least 20 percent” to help ease the shortages.

In a statement, it said “the reservoirs of the dams supplying water to Tehran are currently at their lowest level in a century”, following years of steady decline in rainfall.

The study: Long-term air pollution exposure and incident dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

crosspostato da: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/39332565

[...]

Myanmar is not listed among the countries with the largest rare earth reserves, despite intensive mining activities, especially in Shan and Kachin states.

This clearly indicates that while Myanmar may “produce” rare earth minerals, it does not “own” the resources. It serves primarily as a transit point for initial extraction, with the minerals being sent to other countries, particularly China, for further processing.

[...]

The true source of China’s rare earth dominance lies in Myanmar’s border regions, where Shan and Kachin states are emerging as key centres for the mining of rare earth elements like terbium and dysprosium. These areas are experiencing rapid and uncontrolled growth in mining activities.

In Shan State, rare earth mining has proliferated, particularly in the town of Poke, which falls under the influence of the United Wa State Army (UWSA). The number of mines has increased from just 3 in 2005 to 26 in 2025, an eightfold growth in just one decade. The mining technique used, “ore leaching,” has led to chemical runoff contaminating major water sources, including the Kok and Sai rivers, which flow into northern Thailand.

In the northern part of Myanmar, Kachin State, areas like Pang Wa, Manse, Momok, and Loy Ja have become intensive mining zones. In 2023, over 300 mines were operating, with more than 3,000 extraction pits. After the 2021 coup, production surged by 40%, and China purchased 41,700 tons of rare earth minerals from Myanmar within the same year.

[...]

Pianporn Deetes, Director of Southeast Asia Campaigns at International Rivers, stated in an interview with Bangkok Business that the cross-border pollution crisis is severely impacting millions of people in Chiang Rai, who are facing risks to their lives and health due to heavy metal contamination, particularly arsenic, in the Kok River, which flows into the Mekong and Sai rivers.

“Local residents can no longer engage in traditional activities like fishing or operating tour boats, and farmers are worried that rice grown using water from the Kok River may be contaminated with arsenic, as rice tends to absorb arsenic well. Additionally, there have been reports of fish with unusual parasites, which correlate with mining activities disturbing the soil.”

She further called for the Thai government to urgently negotiate with Myanmar and China, using various measures, including economic, diplomatic, and even food-related pressures, to halt mining activities. “If the soil continues to be disturbed and mining continues, the people of Chiang Rai will be ‘slowly dying.’ The restoration of rivers contaminated with heavy metals is extremely difficult and time-consuming, as seen with the unresolved issue of the Klity Creek contamination, which has persisted for over 30 years.”

Archived

• China's proposed coal mine developments risk creating an oversupply and derailing climate goals, according to Global Energy Monitor.
• The scale of China's coal ambitions threatens to overwhelm its own, and global, climate goals, with the country accounting for 60% of all proposed mine capacity worldwide.
• Without drastically scaling back plans for new mine capacity, the world could see a massive rise in potent methane emissions that would make it all but impossible to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, said Dorothy Mei, project manager of the Global Coal Mine Tracker at GEM.

[...]

More than 450 sites are in development across China, with nearly 40% under construction or in test operation, according to the California-based researcher, which promotes clean energy use. If they are all built, their combined capacity of 1.35 billion tons a year would surpass that operating in Indonesia and Australia, the biggest exporters of the fuel for power generation and steelmaking.

The scale of China’s coal ambitions threatens to overwhelm its own, and global, climate goals. The country accounts for 60% of all proposed mine capacity worldwide, and its buildout alone would generate 80% of the methane emissions tied to planned projects, GEM said. Methane is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

“Without drastically scaling back plans for new mine capacity, the world could see a massive rise in potent methane emissions that would make it all but impossible to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Dorothy Mei, project manager of the Global Coal Mine Tracker at GEM.

[...]

If she raises climate change at a party, “at some point someone says, ‘Look, you’re being a bit of a Debbie Downer’ … it was nice to sit in that room with other people, no one was hysterical, no one was over the top, no one was crazy [but] people weren’t going, ‘Oh, calm down. It’ll be fine.’ ”

https://sarahwilson.substack.com/p/table-of-contents

Algae blooms in the Baltic Sea are caused by the rapid growth of phytoplankton, often triggered by high temperatures and nutrient-rich waters due to eutrophication. These blooms can be harmful, leading to oxygen depletion and toxic conditions for marine life and humans.

Archived

The global landscape of energy investment is experiencing a significant shift, with coal-fired power plants receiving unprecedented attention despite international climate commitments. Global approvals for coal-fired plants have reached their highest level since 2015, marking a dramatic reversal of the anticipated decline in fossil fuel investments.

China stands at the forefront of this coal renaissance, having commenced construction on approximately 100 gigawatts of new coal plants in 2024 alone. This massive expansion represents a capacity equivalent to the entire existing coal fleet of countries like Germany and Japan combined.

[...]

In 2024, a “resurgence” in construction of new coal-fired power plants in China is “undermining the country’s clean-energy progress”, says a joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

[...]

This surge in coal investment presents a stark contradiction to global climate goals. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal remains the largest source of energy-related emissions, accounting for a staggering 45% of the global total. The continued expansion of coal capacity threatens to undermine international efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

[...]

Petrostates and well-funded lobbyists at UN-hosted talks are derailing a deal to cut plastic production and protect people and the planet

Bulgaria, the EU's poorest country, has decades-old pipes -- some laid before World War II -- while water theft and poor resource management amplify the consequences of climate change.

"Every other drop is lost before reaching the tap," said Emil Gachev, a researcher at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

In mid-July, water interruptions affected more than 156,000 people in the country of 6.4 million, which ranks worst in the EU for losses in supply networks.

Archived

China needs to cut steel output from the coal-powered blast furnace process by more than 90 million metric tons from 2024's level to achieve its green steel target this year, researchers said in a report published on Tuesday.

The global steel industry is responsible for around 8% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions and China accounts for more than half of global steel output.

[...]

China has lagged far behind its global peers in terms of electric arc-furnace steel share. The average share is around 30% globally, 71.8% in the United States, 58.8% in India and 26.2% in Japan, [a report by the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air] said.

From 2021 to the first half of 2025, China's blast furnace capacity utilisation rose from 85.6% to 88.6%, while electric-arc furnace utilisation fell from 58.9% to 48.6%, it added.

[...]

"A credible strategy to curb emission-intensive production and rein in excess capacity would not only tackle the sector's structural issues but also ease global tensions," said Belinda Schaepe, an analyst at the Helsinki-based centre.

[...]

Climate science deniers are flooding social media with false claims during extreme weather events, drowning out reliable information and putting lives at risk.

A new report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which researches and campaigns against online hatred and disinformation, finds that anti-climate figures are increasingly spreading false information about wildfires and hurricanes fuelled by climate change.

Authoritarianism is not a genetic destiny. It’s a psychological response to fear, uncertainty, and social threat, a reflex born from the very human desire for order, cohesion, and identity when the world feels unmoored. People don’t wake up yearning to silence others, tear down institutions, or cheer for strongmen. They gravitate toward authoritarianism when they feel the social contract has failed them, and when the tools of democratic deliberation feel powerless to protect what they value.

(the rest of the article / blog is also good)