"The report, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), builds on years of research showing there are nine systems and processes – the planetary boundaries – that contribute to the stability of the planet’s life-support functions.

"Thresholds beyond which they can no longer properly function have already been breached in six. Climate change, the introduction of novel entities, change in biosphere integrity and modification of biogeochemical flows are judged to be in high-risk zones, while planetary boundaries are also transgressed in land system change and freshwater change but to a lesser extent. All have worsened, according to the data."

Are these conditions ANDed together, or ORed together, to determine whether we're irreversibly screwed? And if it's ORed, does this mean we should have given up twenty years ago?

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess we DID kind of give up twenty years ago. At least.

Just to live long enough to witness humanity topple over the edge.

Would be quite the finisher to a lifetime during several world changing events.

It's sad that it took such a short amount of time from industrialization until crossing these thresholds, and the amount of resources and time to fight back will be significant. Of course there will be a lot of bickering amongst ourselves before we even become effective.

I had to look up Planetary Boundaries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries

Seems 2 are left assuming we breached Ocean acidification: Ozone depletion and Atmospheric aerosols.

Nice to see the US is the only Country not in the "Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants". Not that it seems to matter too much. I believe nothing will stop us from reaching 3C.

Seven_of_Nine-Let_the_fun_commence.gif

When I read the title, but not yet read the text, I wondered what that meant - "Earth May Have Breached Seven of Nine Planetary Boundaries".

If you still accept Pluto as the 9th planet, then I thought the title referred to the solar system.

What I imagined the title meant was that man-made volatile industrial chemicals, synthetic organics that do not occur naturally, have diffused outward far enough to cross the orbit of Uranus. For Uranians and Neptunians, detecting them would be an indicator of life elsewhere.

Admittedly, I completely misunderstood the title, but that is now an intriguing question. Since we first started making synthetic chemicals in the latter half of the 19th century, are there any that could have diffused that far at detectable levels? Keep in mind that other than nuclear and the most powerful of conventional explosives, none would have had the high impulse of rockets and spaceships, so Voyager and New Horizons exhaust don't count.

Any thoughts?

Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One

We have all the warnings in the universe pointed at us, every day for decades now, and still, we barely move the needle on trying to stop ourselves. Being down here in the low-middle of the economy, while being told we're all gonna die, constantly, gets a tiny bit depressing at times. It's important. It's an existential threat. It's a political and corporate football that gets tossed around for profit and bullying, but it doesn't seem like anybody with the power to affect real change actually believes any of it. Because if they did, they wouldn't be meh'ing out on the bit where they, ya know, affect change.

I'm wondering if anything about climate change really registers to the big movers and shakers. Will they ever notice? Or will they just keep moving themselves away from the worst impacted areas and then preaching at us that *we* all have to change, but they're not gonna because there's more profit to wring from the system before it all shuts down? We truly have prioritized greed over everything, even life itself.

Earth can fully regenerate itself in a span of ~10 years.

End of civilization is coming.