More than a hundred dolphins have been found dead in the Brazilian Amazon amid an historic drought and record-high water temperatures that in places have exceeded 102 degrees Fahrenheit [38.8 °C].

The dead dolphins were all found in Lake Tefé over the past seven days, according to the Mamirauá Institute, a research facility funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Science.

The institute said such a high number of deaths was unusual and suggested record-high lake temperatures and an historic drought in the Amazon may have been the cause.

The news is likely to add to the concerns of climate scientists over the effects human activity and extreme droughts are having on the region.

  • Tygr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If we stopped the economy and stopped all emissions worldwide, this progression would still occur for more than 2 decades.

    This is just the beginning for stuff we did since y2k.

    By the time we actually make serious change, it will be far too late.

    Happy Sunday. Enjoy football.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Forget the progression.

      Getting back to pre-industrial CO2 levels will take millenia if we don’t do anything.

      If we start spending 50% of our energy budget (and let’s say that energy generation magically became all renewables and nuclear starting tomorrow) on scrubbing all the CO2 out of the air, we’ll still need over a century to get back to pre industrial levels, and that is not counting CO2 storage and or conversions to (for example) plastics. If we include that too then it’ll be multiple centuries.

      Let that sink on for a second. No matter what we do, none of us, none of our children, none of our children’s children will ever see normal CO2 levels in their lives.

      And in the meantime we bake, loads of animals will die, food production will be fucked up, and we’ll get mass starvation which likely will trigger war for food resources.

      I’m painting a pretty picture, don’t I? I do fear it’s going to be even worse than what I see right now because until now, most climate change predictions actually turned out worse.

      We might stand a chance with atmospheric engineering. Start seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfides. They’ll cause acid rain over time, but at least block enough sunlight to stop us from cooking. It’s done before (80’s pollution, volcanos) and it works and we’ll need it sooner rather than later

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah that’s a major thing that people aren’t getting. Scientists writing the reports specifically published the lower possibilities because they saw earlier publications get tarred as extremist and ridiculous. So now that we’re actually getting consequences everyone is surprised that it’s happening faster and more violently than publicly predicted.

      • Tygr@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You painted a perfect picture. A wordsmith I am not and loved your version better.

        All of us on Lemmy collectively can’t make a fingernail dent into the problem. We have no power to stop it. If we did, we’re labeled terrorists against the economy.

      • Arbic@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Before the wars about food occur there will be wars about water. There are already assume pretty heated situations. Ethiopias grand Renaissance dam and it’s conflict with Egypt. All countries connected to Euphrat and Tigris have a big war potential too.

      • kungen@feddit.nu
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        1 year ago

        Start seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfides. They’ll cause acid rain over time, but at least block enough sunlight to stop us from cooking.

        Can you elaborate more about this? Don’t sulfides burn up into SO2, which is classified as a greenhouse gas?

    • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Don’t invest in the future, don’t have kids. Be here for a good time not a long time. Fuck the world.

      • Great Blue Heron@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        That’s kinda where I’m at, but I already have kids, and now they’re having kids. I worry about them.

        • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Because FUCK YOU you destroyed the fucking world and simp.for billionaires, corporations and dictators!

          This shit is NOT worth preserving let it burn the fuck down and die. Humanity is a failed experiment. Death is Inevitable just fucking embrace it, just don’t bring others into this shit fucking hole.

    • Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Sad part is we’ve more or less figured out on paper how to cut our emissions while retaining a fairly high quality of life. Not perfect obviously and we’ll lose a lot of the amenities people in developed countries have gotten used to, but to say the path to sustainability is uncharted is simply not true, and it could have been implemented 20 years ago, it can also be implemented today. But it would require gutting the wealth of the rich, totally overhauling the economy, government, and society as a whole, and everyone from all socioeconomic statuses agreeing that it should be done. So it’s basically impossible under capitalism. Most of the upper class/upper middle class people in the West won’t even entertain the idea of not owning a car, living in an apartment, or cutting out meat from their diets, let alone the radical changes needed for our species to actually be sustainable.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      By the time we actually make serious change, it will be far too late.

      Optimistic of you to assume that we will ever make serious change.

      • matter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We will, one way or another. At some point simply enough people will have died that we will stop making things meaningfully worse 🤷‍♂️

    • set_secret@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      2 decades is likely optimistic. 5 is probably more likely. that said at what point do we just reach absolute nihilism and just stop giving a fuck. We’re well past the point of no return. Our emissions are still INCREASING despite knowledge that it’s going to destroy the liveable planet as we currently know it causing mass extinction events.

      If we don’t have any sense of urgency at this point, I can’t see it starting anytime soon.

      Everyday we delay we make it worse. what’s worse than catastrophic?

      I’ll point out we did have a brief decline in emissions during covid and in 2009 during GFC but that was accidental becuse people stopped spending and travelling.

    • TheDorkfromYork@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’m surprised that there isn’t an open source guide on how to be an effective eco terrorist and what the most vulnerable global chock points are. People have gone to war over less.

      • K0W4LSK1@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Oh there are some out there just the people who want to go to war over this are poor

    • jabathekek@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      What also worries me is that there’s a lot of talk about the environment collapsing in a century; however, given how things are going, I’m starting to suspect these people are seeing exponential change and slapping on a more linear approximation to predict what will happen. No one really knows what’s going to happen, but we do know that it’s happening right now and all we can do is try to protect what’s left from the absolutely moronic shitheads that have their heads so far up their ass they look almost normal until they start speaking.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If we stopped the economy and stopped all emissions worldwide, this progression would still occur for more than 2 decades.

      The economy did basically stop for a month in March 2020, and pollution dropped incredibly.

      Change is possible. We just don’t want it.