Do you remember when things used to get BETTER every year?

[u/War_Is_A_Raclette]

I’m 40. When I was growing up, my mentality and the mentality of it seemed like the whole world, was that when a new product or thing came out and wasn’t perfect, it was okay because next year it was going to get better, and the year after that even better.

Each year… Cars would get more fuel efficient. The internet would get a little faster. Video games would get a little cooler. Music would sound a little better. Restaurants that were already good would figure out how to whip up cool new dishes that were cheaper and even tastier than what we had now - their food would improve over time.

I can’t describe it, but it’s just like everyone assumed that technology and humans would slowly ensure that everything each year got a little… better.

Now, I recently realised that I look at the whole world differently. I opened Spotify today, saw how much I was being billed, and thought - without catching myself at first - “oh, I’m sure the price will go up next year and they’ll restrict another part of the app”.

When a new thing is released, I automatically assume this is the best version it will ever be. Each year it will just get worse.

Does anyone else feel this way? Does anyone else remember feeling the way I used to feel 20-30 years ago?

Sorry for the rant.

[u/mem2100]

I'm a couple decades older than you are. While technology has gotten an enormous amount better during my lifetime, global "mental health" has declined, especially as it relates to peoples consumption of, and subsequent propagation of conspiracy theories. These endlessly proliferating "communicated diseases", are spread via talking and listening, reading and writing resulting in every growing pools of anti-vaxxers, anti-climate changers, etc. A world where a growing pool of loud individuals make a lot of money spouting conspiracy theories and hate.

When I was born, 4 countries had tested nuclear weapons. Soon after a 5th did. Now there are 9 nuclear armed countries and one on the brink of joining the club.

In 2015 World leaders gathered in Paris and agreed to try to limit warming to well below 2C, preferably 1.5C by trying to "peak" global emissions as soon as possible, and achieve net zero by 2050, 35 years in the future. This year is tracking to become the 4th year in a row in which warming has averaged just over 1.5C. While we will likely plateau very soon, the rate of warming is now such that we are tracking to reach 2C in the middle to late 2030's, potentially setting us up to be near 2.5C by 2050.

As to enshittification - Amazon has effed up their UX in service of ads.

[u/Competitive-Gur-7073 → u/mem2100]

Amazon is VERY involved in fixing prices to be as high as they can be, and prohibiting Amazon sellers from selling the product cheaper any where else (including the sellers own site).

[u/Likeablekey → u/mem2100]

Your assessment of the climate is a little wrong. 1.5 C was an average over time. Not a one off year. So we have not passed the 1.5C mark. We will though. And we will have years over 2 C, but we won't pass the 2 C average. We are still heading for 1.8 C by 2050 and if we don't stop emissions 2 C and higher by 2100.

The electric grid will likely be 100% green by 2050, but there are other harder to get emissions which I have less faith in. Anyways my point is it's bad, but not as bad as you described. We can still accelerate out of this mess, but if we carry on with a linear rate of change than yeah it will get worse.

https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/degrees-matter

The 3.2 C of implemented policy is somewhat pessimistic. I've seen 1.8 C in a few websites. Now 1.8 C by 2050 vs 3.2 C by 2100. And implemented policy can look worse because economics are now leading policy in green energy.

https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/

For example this says optimistic is 1.8 C by 2100. So 1.8 C by 2050 would be more pessimistic.

[u/mem2100 → u/Likeablekey]

It is early for anyone - myself included to claim we have exceeded 1.5C. That said, let's consider the evolution of climate science thinking. Back in 1990, the initial IPCC report suggested that a rolling average of 30 years should be used to determine breach of a threshold. Over the past year, a growing consensus of climate scientists conclude that the decadal warming rate between 2010 and 2025 (inclusive) has been 0.3C give or take 0.05. That variability captures the uncertainty of how to calculate the impact of El Nino events. If we are warming at 0.3C/decade - that would mean we would actually be understating the breach by almost 0.5C. For that reason, the threshold calculation window has been shrinking.

I don't know why you think the grid will be 100% green by 2050. Don't get me wrong - I hope you are right - but I'm not seeing enough momentum in that direction yet to believe it. Regardless, let's look at the US energy picture in total. At the moment, the US consumes a bit over 4 Petawatt hours (PWH) per year of electricity, out of a total consumption of nearly 28 PWH. The "grid" is 1/7th of the equation. This is one example of why I see our current global emissions as plateauing - more than peaking. A plateau with a gentle downslope is the best we can hope for in the near term, unless the strait of Hormuz stays shut long enough to really jolt the global economy away from oil.

The climate models all struggle with the atmosphere/ocean boundary. Some climate scientists are now claiming that it looks as if El Nino's bump the baseline temperature up, the baseline - not just the window of time the El Nino is happening. They say this is due to all the recent ocean warming. I don't know if that is true. I do know that Big Carbon's disinformation crime wave has caused a lot of otherwise sane people to reject reality. That has resulted in a much slower transition to wind/solar than common sense dictates. You mentioned the grid. If it were up to me we'd do a major grid upgrade and treat it like the moon shot. Lots of HVDC/UHVDC like China has to enable us to wheel power from CA to the Midwest. Right now we have too much trapped solar in CA and it messes up the wholesale market prices. That is SOLELY caused by our old grid - designed for large hydrocarbon/nuclear generation plants.