Think things can only get better next year? Think again.
Seen the Boston Dynamics dancing robots?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw
It's not CGI. This is CGI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKjCWfuvYxQ
The dancing ones are, regrettably, real.
The question is: once they take all the terrible jobs in mail-order vendors' warehouses, and in Asian sweatshops, away, what will those people do?
Apart from die in the hundreds of millions due to climate change, of course.
I do find it bleakly amusing that as NYE approaches, people are digging up their old tweets:
https://twitter.com/JonnElledge/status/1209412430356525057
«
December 2016: Thank god this terrible year is over.
December 2017: Thank god this terrible year is over.
December 2018: Thank god this terrible year is over.
December 2019: Thank god this terrible decade is o
»
We screwed the pooch. It is going to keep getting worse. The climate is destabilised. The world governments agreed in 2015 that we had a margin of 1.5º to fix things. Well, 1.2º of that is gone now.
https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1343965820028858368
Stuff is going to get weirder and less predictable from now on. Unseasonal heat and freezes. Hurricanes, monsoons, droughts, dust-storms, etc., where they don't normally happen, or disproportionately many of unusual force.
Massively hot summers in regions where the crops can't take it, but we won't be able to grow crops that can take it, because they'll be coupled with massively cold winters like we've not seen for centuries. Forested regions burning, even in relatively moist areas. Where I am, with woodland about 50 metres away, the intensely-managed forests are full of dead trees, killed by bark-boring beetles or the fungi they carry -- but that's probably because the trees were weakened by unusual weather. Some trees are standing, marked in fluorescent paint, but there are big heaps of logs everywhere too. The woods look superficially healthy, but they're not.
Everyone noticed that you don't get so many insects splattering on your visor any more, even in high summer? That's because about 85% of the world's insects have died since the start of the 20th century.
All the surviving forests are falling silent:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/15/insect-collapse-we-are-destroying-our-life-support-systems
Because all the wild birds are starving to death:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/26/mass-die-off-of-birds-in-south-western-us-caused-by-starvation-aoe
60% of wild vertebrates have died out since 1970:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/30/earths-wild-animal-population-plummets-60-percent-in-44-years
All wild animals on the planet now comprise about 4% of the total:
https://xkcd.com/1338/
The rest are farm animals.
FTAOD I do intend to sound panicked, and to make anyone reading this feel the same. Brexit doesn't really matter. All that argument over fish? Irrelevant really as they're plummeting worldwide:
https://www.geographyrealm.com/study-finds-staggering-decline-in-marine-fishery-biomass/
The 3 photos in this academic paper show the collapse since 1957 well enough that you don't need to read it:
http://sedarweb.org/docs/wsupp/SEDAR23_RD_10_McClenachan_09.pdf
Shorter version, more pics:
https://psmag.com/environment/fish-stories-the-ones-that-got-away-3914
All that's left are tiddlers.
We are forcing fish to breed smaller and younger because we kill all the big ones.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fishery-changed-cod-breeding-study-1.481761
We kill the small ones too but then throw the dead bodies back in.
https://www.oceanographicmagazine.com/news/overfishing-dead-fish-discarded-uk/
Brace yourselves. 2021 will probably be worse than 2020, and 2022 will be worse than 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw
It's not CGI. This is CGI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKjCWfuvYxQ
The dancing ones are, regrettably, real.
The question is: once they take all the terrible jobs in mail-order vendors' warehouses, and in Asian sweatshops, away, what will those people do?
Apart from die in the hundreds of millions due to climate change, of course.
I do find it bleakly amusing that as NYE approaches, people are digging up their old tweets:
https://twitter.com/JonnElledge/status/1209412430356525057
«
December 2016: Thank god this terrible year is over.
December 2017: Thank god this terrible year is over.
December 2018: Thank god this terrible year is over.
December 2019: Thank god this terrible decade is o
»
We screwed the pooch. It is going to keep getting worse. The climate is destabilised. The world governments agreed in 2015 that we had a margin of 1.5º to fix things. Well, 1.2º of that is gone now.
https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1343965820028858368
Stuff is going to get weirder and less predictable from now on. Unseasonal heat and freezes. Hurricanes, monsoons, droughts, dust-storms, etc., where they don't normally happen, or disproportionately many of unusual force.
Massively hot summers in regions where the crops can't take it, but we won't be able to grow crops that can take it, because they'll be coupled with massively cold winters like we've not seen for centuries. Forested regions burning, even in relatively moist areas. Where I am, with woodland about 50 metres away, the intensely-managed forests are full of dead trees, killed by bark-boring beetles or the fungi they carry -- but that's probably because the trees were weakened by unusual weather. Some trees are standing, marked in fluorescent paint, but there are big heaps of logs everywhere too. The woods look superficially healthy, but they're not.
Everyone noticed that you don't get so many insects splattering on your visor any more, even in high summer? That's because about 85% of the world's insects have died since the start of the 20th century.
All the surviving forests are falling silent:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/15/insect-collapse-we-are-destroying-our-life-support-systems
Because all the wild birds are starving to death:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/26/mass-die-off-of-birds-in-south-western-us-caused-by-starvation-aoe
60% of wild vertebrates have died out since 1970:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/30/earths-wild-animal-population-plummets-60-percent-in-44-years
All wild animals on the planet now comprise about 4% of the total:
https://xkcd.com/1338/
The rest are farm animals.
FTAOD I do intend to sound panicked, and to make anyone reading this feel the same. Brexit doesn't really matter. All that argument over fish? Irrelevant really as they're plummeting worldwide:
https://www.geographyrealm.com/study-finds-staggering-decline-in-marine-fishery-biomass/
The 3 photos in this academic paper show the collapse since 1957 well enough that you don't need to read it:
http://sedarweb.org/docs/wsupp/SEDAR23_RD_10_McClenachan_09.pdf
Shorter version, more pics:
https://psmag.com/environment/fish-stories-the-ones-that-got-away-3914
All that's left are tiddlers.
We are forcing fish to breed smaller and younger because we kill all the big ones.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fishery-changed-cod-breeding-study-1.481761
We kill the small ones too but then throw the dead bodies back in.
https://www.oceanographicmagazine.com/news/overfishing-dead-fish-discarded-uk/
Brace yourselves. 2021 will probably be worse than 2020, and 2022 will be worse than 2021.