Public opinion on the WMO's climate change warnings is marked by deep anxiety and frustration. Many express a belief that significant change is unattainable due to the inaction of powerful entities. There is skepticism about current climate models and efforts, and a notable disconnect between knowledge and action. Criticism targets societal and political systems for failing to prioritize climate action, underscoring fears of severe future impacts.

Governments

Wealthy Individuals/Entities

Less relating to news but amazing for real time data is [the Copernicus climate change portal](https://climate.copernicus.eu/). You can track data trends at world level, regional or country level.

afinto

https://meteoalarm.org/en/live/  
        
https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/alerts-and-warnings  
         
https://www.bbc.com/weather/warnings/floods  
           
https://severeweather.wmo.int/  
          
https://eswd.eu/   
        
https://www.weather.gov/  
         
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo.php?basin=atlc&amp;fdays=7  
          
https://earthquake.ca.gov/  
            
Local and national television stations for news, weather alerts, and public safety advisories.     
      
Local and national radio stations for news, weather alerts, and public safety advisories.

Molire

Everyone I speak to just shuts down when I start talking about this. You can talk about anything else, but the moment you start talking about global warming people shut down. They know, everyone knows, but nobody can do anything- it is like everyone is paralysed because they know our life as it is will be over soon whether we like it or not.

shapeofthings

We’ve seen the farmers clogging the roadways with their mechanized equipment in protest. 

We’ve seen the hillbillies ejecting vast black plumes of smoke as they roll coal in their bloated trucks. 

We’ve seen the gelatinous masses that trundle up the gangplanks into the floating garbage heaps we call cruise ships.

We’ve seen the forest bulldozed so meat slaves can be packed into dirt plots and fed grain from another bulldozed forest across the world.

We’ve seen the endless stream of useless garbage, packaged neatly in garbage over wrap, trucked to and fro while always ending as it began: as garbage.

We’ve seen the transition from wood, glass, and metal to plastic. Plastic everything, everywhere, all the time.

And we simply ask for more, faster.

thehourglasses

Yerp. RCP8.5 was a pipe dream the entire time.

Mission-Notice7820

Reality is stranger than models. 

But what is truly unexplainable here are humans, more than half a century of warnings and agreements on that from all scientists in this fields and we keep pumping the accelerator. And then will be long faces and demand for urgent action and pointing fingers when this was our direct action all this time.

gmuslera

So that's actually it then isn't it? No way out ever if we had a miracle. I guess I can start moving on to acceptance now. 

[deleted]

I really wish more could be done but I’m working class poor. There’s very little I can do on my own and that’s the reality for a lot of people that would otherwise support green initiatives. The big talking point I like to use here in the southeastern US is litter. Loads of people enjoy hunting and fishing or the pretty landscape. It’s an easy opener to get people thinking about what they can do and what can do be further.

briancbrn

The methane feedback i think is going to be the most interesting to watch.  There's only so much mitigation to be done. 

It will be so painfully obvious to the future generations that it was human greed that fueled the ecosystem collapse that society will eventually evolve away from greed, recognizing it as a negative personality trait.

river_tree_nut

It's not a matter of 'biosphere consciousness' or 'global empathy', although both those things are blatantly absent.

The question is, can we invent some (currently deep sci-fi) technology to repair enough damage in time to stave off collapse? The answer is almost certainly 'no'. 

We are nowhere near any viable alternative to either business as usual or immediate collapse. 

There is nothing humanity could collectively do right now that would alter the locked-in temperature spikes and ongoing biosphere collapses. Not even if we all magically awoke tomorrow as perfect humans. 

Even removing all humans instantly wouldn't change that. 

The inertia of a planet's ecosphere is humongous.

Ghostwoods

Murranji

If the trackers are above the worst case scenario, then the scientists and reporters misjudged and mishandled the data and held back on their modelling of 'worse case scenario'.  

Maybe this will actually make them report data stoically and accurately, letting go of the hopium.

CerddwrRhyddid

""Nothing is more important than the fact that not only are atmospheric CO2-equivalent emissions not slowing, they are being increased faster than ever."

Of course there is .... the price of eggs is clearly more important to the voters. The US has voted, in no uncertain terms, for drill baby drill.

NyriasNeo

The RCP8.5 models and others, and expected some kind of technological breakthrough to stave off the worst effects.

kiwittnz

So, Guy Mcpherson is indeed right, this time around? How many years do we have?

xorwinx

Can someone bring back arthropleuras already? We got the climate for them.

Someones_Dream_Guy

I like to think that small bands of mobile tribes will survive in the northern latitudes… but then again it may get so hot that nothing survives

peaceloveandapostacy

On Venus... no one can hear you laugh last.

Taqueria_Style

Now would be a good time to hit the [improbability drive button](https://youtu.be/fxEqIt-NUSY?si=wBPoUVrU9vUU23Ge).

boomaDooma

I’m starting to celebrate at this juncture. Woe to man.

Happy New Year.

From u/ndilegid on [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/NTHE/comments/17nqd40/humans_are_now_functionally_extinct/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button):

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

Great post - thank you

This part of the [Hothouse Earth](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115) paper

&gt;This analysis implies that, even if the Paris Accord target of a 1.5 °C to 2.0 °C rise in temperature is met, we cannot exclude the risk that a cascade of feedbacks could push the Earth System irreversibly onto a “Hothouse Earth” pathway. The challenge that humanity faces is to create a “Stabilized Earth” pathway that steers the Earth System away from its current trajectory toward the threshold beyond which is Hothouse Earth (Fig. 2). The human-created Stabilized Earth pathway leads to a basin of attraction that is not likely to exist in the Earth System’s stability landscape without human stewardship to create and maintain it. Creating such a pathway and basin of attraction requires a fundamental change in the role of humans on the planet. This stewardship role requires deliberate and sustained action to become an integral, adaptive part of Earth System dynamics, creating feedbacks that keep the system on a Stabilized Earth pathway (Alternative Stabilized Earth Pathway).

How I wish we were on the stewardship path or even had it in our horizon. Maybe if a shock to the system happens, and the right people lose power.

guyseeking

https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/s/3AWe0z6obm

Prudent-Current1257

The0Goblin0Queen

bipolarearthovershot

In other news I invented a new math based on quantum theory and rhetorical analysis.

Only cost a pallet of water and the carbon of an hour conversation with chat GPT

But yet my GPT conversation is not even close to the carbon used for Elon and Trump to win an election.

Middle_Manager_Karen

Oh boy… another day to confirmed how fucked we are… seize the day my friends …

PS - why is H2O not talked about here as a GHG?

psychetropica1

Happy New Year.

From [this video](https://youtu.be/8C3a6PYUOi4?si=BMQIigt08lJ3g1Xp&amp;t=895):

&gt;We are committed. . . . We're committed to exceeding many of these tipping points. . . . **Government policy commits us to 3.2 degrees C warming. That's all the tipping points.**

&gt;Now, why can I say that's all the tipping points? Well, because, in actual fact, the most important tipping point paper was the [Hothouse Earth paper](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115), which was published by the late Steffen and a large number of other climate experts in 2018. That was actually a tipping point paper. Multiple tipping points, 10 or 12. Now, in the supplement to that paper, **every one of those tipping points is exceeded at 2 degrees C.**

&gt;***2 degrees C.***

&gt;We are committed by science . . . already to 2 degrees C, and more. And that's because we have a lot of inertia in the climate system . . . and **the scientists have been making a huge mistake from day one on this. The reason is, we're using global warming as the metric for climate change.** We know it's a very, very poor metric. And it's not the metric that we should be using. That metric is **atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations**, which is the metric required by the 1992 United Nations Climate Convention. That's atmospheric CO2 equivalent, *not* global warming.

&gt;Why is that so important?

&gt;Because global warming doesn't tell us what the *commitment* is in the future. And it's the commitment to the future warming which of course is *vital* with the regards to tipping points, because we have to know when those are triggered. So, if we were following climate change with CO2 equivalent, as we should be, then we would know that we were committing ourselves to exceeding those tipping points. . . . Earth's energy imbalance, that's the other one that we should be using. And that's increased by a huge amount, like it's doubled over the past 10-15 years.

&gt;So, when we look at climate change outside of global warming, when we look at radiative forcing, CO2 equivalent, Earth energy imbalance, we're committed, *today*, to exceeding those tipping points. That's terrifying. It's the most dire of dire emergencies. And **scientists should be** ***screaming from the rooftops.***

Konradleijon

Why would you have a " Guy McPherson was right" tag under your name OP?

  He clearly wasn't right, again and again and you know how I know that? We're still alive!

lightweight12

still , people will keep using the worst transportation in all metrics (the car ) . they line up by the millions cash in hand every day demanding their dino juice , while pretending it's the companies they send out to extract/ship/refine it who are responsible and should stop on their own (without any change in their grotesquely luxurious and consuming lifestyle of course )

or even worse "it should be done through political top down change" ... by politicians they have never and will never vote for somehow ?!? 

it should fall on non-drivers to stop them then , but they look on and let it happen ... it's a collective big shrug nothing we can do let's keep burning fuel for no valid reason

Karasumor1

We can only hope that human suffering, too, exceeds the worst-case scenario.




The following submission statement was provided by /u/TimeEstimate:

---

High-altitude, wispy clouds like cirrus clouds contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. These clouds are thin and composed of ice crystals, which allows most sunlight to pass through without significantly blocking the incoming solar radiation. However, the longwave infrared radiation (heat) that is emitted from Earth's surface is trapped by these clouds. This trapped heat prevents efficient cooling, particularly at night, when cooling depends on the planet radiating heat into space. Instead of allowing the heat to escape, cirrus clouds act like a "heat blanket," enhancing the greenhouse effect. Their presence in the upper atmosphere can exacerbate warming by preventing heat from escaping into space. While they don’t greatly impact incoming solar radiation, they significantly affect the Earth's radiative balance, particularly during the night or in regions with frequent cirrus cloud cover. This warming effect, driven by their heat-trapping properties, is an important factor in climate models, contributing to the overall trend of global warming.

---

 Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1hw5ogx/i_wasnt_worried_about_climate_change_now_i_am/m5ymvcm/

StatementBot

Sinistar7510

Pause for reality break:

Because, as we all should have learned by now, me included, expressing one's dismay on social media, doesn't change anything. Because typing is not sacrificing anything to make the world a better place. And that includes speeches too, like those fancy TED talks. Talking is sacrificing nothing, and some even get paid to do nothing but talk. This is why nothing is changing because these things, talking and typing, are not action. Only action, sacrifice, and joining the collective effort is needed now. Period. 

We now return to your regularly scheduled program.

BadAsBroccoli

I don't really trust the judgement of people who haven't been worried about climate change until now.

PhDresearcher2023

I'm pretty sure I saw this person defending capitalism a while ago talking about how the free market will fix everything

HardNut420

High-altitude, wispy clouds like cirrus clouds contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. These clouds are thin and composed of ice crystals, which allows most sunlight to pass through without significantly blocking the incoming solar radiation. However, the longwave infrared radiation (heat) that is emitted from Earth's surface is trapped by these clouds. This trapped heat prevents efficient cooling, particularly at night, when cooling depends on the planet radiating heat into space. Instead of allowing the heat to escape, cirrus clouds act like a "heat blanket," enhancing the greenhouse effect. Their presence in the upper atmosphere can exacerbate warming by preventing heat from escaping into space. While they don’t greatly impact incoming solar radiation, they significantly affect the Earth's radiative balance, particularly during the night or in regions with frequent cirrus cloud cover. This warming effect, driven by their heat-trapping properties, is an important factor in climate models, contributing to the overall trend of global warming.

TimeEstimate

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/s/bKV3aSbuoE

tmac022480

20 years is enough time for my backup plan.  Not sure about the planet

notroseefar

Sabina is grifter. Her grift is being a contrarian.

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I'm seeing a lot of comments interpreting this like this is emblematic of the class struggle within the Western world, but unless I'm mistaken, I don't see that as the main takeaway. 10% of the world's population is 800 *million* people.

This isn't just wealthy businessmen and oligarchs, this is also you, the middle class or even lower middle class American/Western European. This isn't just representative of the difference between you and Bill Gates, this is representative of the difference between people struggling to put food on the table in Togo and you.

TheWhomItConcerns

As someone from a developing country it's hilarious to see people in the comments from the west not realise the top 10% of the world population includes most of them!

LurkingTamilian

Top 10%, that's probably the vast majority of everyone in this thread folks.

Iron_Aez

OK. So following the link to where they get their emissions data, emissions are attributed by investment.


So if there's a power plant in a city that heats the homes of all the populace, all emissions are attributed to the power plant owner. Because clearly nobody else has anything to do with it and in fact they'd be delighted if the lights went off tomorrow.


So then, under a framework where having investments makes you 100% responsible for emissions they conclude that richer people are responsible for most emissions. Genius.


So when they talk about emissions without chunks of the population they mean also without all the things you buy from them, assuming you sit in the dark.

WTFwhatthehell

I’ve linked to the primary source, the journal article, in the post above, which is open source. 

High-income groups disproportionately contribute to climate extremes worldwide

Abstract

Climate injustice persists as those least responsible often bear the greatest impacts, both between and within countries. Here we show how GHG emissions from consumption and investments attributable to the wealthiest population groups have disproportionately influenced present-day climate change. We link emissions inequality over the period 1990–2020 to regional climate extremes using an emulator-based framework. We find that two-thirds (one-fifth) of warming is attributable to the wealthiest 10% (1%), meaning that individual contributions are 6.5 (20) times the average per capita contribution. For extreme events, the top 10% (1%) contributed 7 (26) times the average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 6 (17) times more to Amazon droughts. Emissions from the wealthiest 10% in the United States and China led to a two- to threefold increase in heat extremes across vulnerable regions. Quantifying the link between wealth disparities and climate impacts can assist in the discourse on climate equity and justice.

Here is a news release:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/07/two-thirds-of-global-heating-caused-by-richest-study-suggests

From the news release:

Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests

Paper in Nature Climate Change journal reveals major role wealthy emitters play in driving climate extremes

It has been clearly established that wealthier individuals, through their consumption and investments, create more carbon emissions, while poorer countries located near the equator bear the brunt of the resulting extreme weather and rising temperatures.

“We found that the wealthiest 10% contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1% and 0.1% contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the write in their paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, said: “If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50% of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990.” On the other hand, if the whole world population had emitted as the top 10%, 1% or 0.1% had, the temperature increase would have been 2.9C, 6.7C or a completely unsurvivable 12.2C.

mvea

One more time… Resist tyranny. Vote the bums out. Tax the oligarchs.

FileNetFound

I'm a scientist by trade, albeit not a climate scientist. 

However, the tone and tenor of even just the abstract of this paper shows remarkable bias - to the point where I'm surprised it's in Nature. 

This would be about as bad as starting off a Diabetes Paper saying something like : 

"Lazy, fatass, sugar-toothed, Americans get diabetes more than poor, oppressed, starving, Africans." 

True? Maybe. 

Appropriate for a Scientific paper? Probably not.

Hopeful_Ad_7719

I'm sure there are a lot of my fellow Americans who smugly believe that this isn't them, because they aren't ultra-wealthy.   But even an average American is easily within the top 10% globally.  This isn't a "those guys over there" issue, this is an "all of us" issue. This is why we can have such an immediate impact:  

1) Because we have the wealth to afford to change quickly
2) Because historically we have been the biggest culprits.


A generation from now, we'll be looking at Asia and Africa and begging them to change, but the opportunity today, right now, is in Europe, North America, and the most-developed areas of Asia.

StrengthToBreak

90% (or more) of the people reading this are in the top 10%, yet most posters seem to believe it's "the others" fault

if you regularly: fly, travel long distance for pleasure, never drive a car older than 5 years, eat meat, drink liquids out of single use containers, buy new clothes, etc and then say "it's those damn rich people's fault the environment sucks" you are 100% an asshole

dead0man

there needs to be legislation passed that prevents one person from having too big of an environmental footprint. It will be difficult to track, but at the same time, all vehicles have to registered anyways, private planes are obviously tracked as well. Yachts, same deal. It shouldn’t be too hard to estimate the output and essentially force these billionaires to comply with common decency.

Rymasq

Can we ban articles that talk about wealth at the global level? They have to throw out reality itself to try to make whatever point they're trying to make.

All economies are local, telling someone making 20k per year in new York as a beggar telling them they're part of the global elite is beyond stupid.

lazyFer

Just for mathematical sake, this would be approximately anyone making over $46k ish. 

This is pretty much all of Americans (except the low income class) and a lot of the developed world I assume??

SamL214

We will be seeing more advertising telling average people they need to take responsibility for climate change. The wealthy have more money to advertise and guilt trip normal people to set their thermostat higher in summers and drive their cars less.

DreadPirate777

I'm too lazy to read the whole thing.  Are we attributing this by consumption or production?

Are we assigning the emissions of delta jets to shareholders or passengers?

galaxyapp

Every problem seems to have the same root cause.

EvilAbacus

The big chicken manufacturer in NWA last I knew, for example, will leave refrigerated trailers idling in their lots for days to weeks. These things aren't electric but burn diesel fuel. They burn quite a lot of diesel in the summer. They could switch to either hybrid or electric refrigeration, but instead just choose to continue burning diesel.

doublebaconator

Now do a study on water usage.  My 15 min shower isn't hurting the earth like the billionaires filing their pools, or watering their grass when it's raining

NarwhalEmergency9391

The world's biggest single emitter of CO2 is the US military.

pathetic_optimist

There aren’t “too many people”; there is too much money going to too few hands.

ProtonCanon

Probably also true that if the wealthiest countries in the world did not invest, the poor in the world today would be much poorer. So this is a bit of a one sided hypothetical with no particular use other than outrage baiting. It is inconceivable that the world would be better if the poor today did not have access to the internet, global shipping to send them food/aid or the healthcare and medical advances obtained through investments.

phiwong

And then they try to take away our straws and plastic bags.

Affinity-Charms

Who creates and maintains these systems?... This whole post has tons of comments with big "ahhh you complain about Apple while on your Iphone!!!" vibes. It acts like the poor and middle class of western consumer hellscapes have any say in the system that is being perpetuated. We have about as much choice and responsibility as the person who is willing to work in a mine digging up cobalt to fuel said consumption. They could refuse, just like we could refuse to participate, but that isn't happening... The idea that anyone can use wealth alone to determine where fault lies seems pretty silly when this shite is entirely too interconnected.

Therefore it stands to reason, that the top fucks, who control the levers of our society bear the burden. Not some poor shmuck who has to live in a crappy city that was designed around cars, and despite that still has to sit in traffic for 2 hours driving one way just to get to work, just to be able to remain in a home, and have some food or whatever. From a clinical standpoint sure... that person might be responsible... but that is completely cutting out reality and the whys and hows of the situation.

gomicao

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns that global temperatures are likely to exceed the 1.5°C limit above pre-industrial levels between 2025 and 2029, increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events.

Global Warming and Climate Change Warnings by WMO

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

Highlighted Comments

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What the people want