40
The historic U.S. heat wave is rattling climate scientists. Here's what they have to say
(www.sfchronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
40 points (97.6% liked)
Climate
8459 readers
288 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was just thinking about this: In an alternate universe we'd only be 1 year out of Hilary Clinton's 8 year war on climate change. Think about that protest-non-voters.
The Democrats were in charge for half that time, so surely they must have done half the work during that time, right?
Imagine believing campaign promises.
News flash: When the person before you says they'll go to war on climate change and loses, you don't copy the same platform. Nope. You stay the fuck away from it. And guess what? Biden won.
bigger deal is gore. I mean his campaign climate change was a major focus back in the 90's and 100% 911 would have been stopped since the clinton administration was well aware of the dangers of alkaieda but bush did not want to listen to the outgoing administration. The patriot act is literally a work around for a president not doing their job. Then keep in mind that bush junior had two supreme court picks before the citizens united decision.
Folks, you once had a president who put solar panels on the White House.
He negotiaded with Iran and GOP politicians sabotaged him.
He was actually a nuclear safety expert.
Both.
But imagine Gore, then Obama, then Clinton. We would actually have progress!
oh yeah but we got so fucked with the hanging chads. I mean with the progress we could have made it would have made it that much harder for them to take hold and then also like obamas administration would have leaned that much more left and it might have made a huge difference with internet laws and things may have been pretty different for swartz and snowden. Manning might not have even been a thing given we would not have the multiwar. Might have had a better canidate than hilary at that point to.
Her winning in the first place is very unlikely, but being re-elected? Even more unlikely. More likely we'd still be 1 year into Trump's second term.
I wonder if Trump would be able to run again if he lost in 16. His first term really allowed him to consolidate his power. Basically reshape the RNC, make Fox News his personal megaphone, and make all the wealthy donor contacts that fueled the next 6 years.
However it's not like he was a runaway train that first primary. It was a highly contested field that he probably only came out of because there were so many options. So if he never wins that first election, I wonder if he'd have the momentum to go into a second one or if people would view him as a loser. It's hard to say. So much of what we just take as common knowledge about him now was relatively unknown back then.
Would pundits have spent the intervening years just tearing him apart? Would the people he beat in that primary be circling like wolves? With the party brass view him as the reason they lost and try to distance themselves? It's really hard to say.
Yeah let's just give up. Fuck the environment.
This is a theoretical alternate timeline we're talking about.
Indeed it is, and your reply was "unlikely unlikely!". I'm gonna peace out.