Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

This is our latest attempt to get to the root of what men are going through—not just what’s happening, but why.

It’s worth noting that the later stages of capitalism, along with corporate greed and an evolving career landscape, affect all of us. But the exploitation of grifters in the manosphere is unique to men.

Think we missed something? Leave a comment and help us fill in the gaps

00:00 - Intro: What Happened to Men? Why are so many men falling apart? This isn’t just about loneliness or school stats—it’s about decades of lies, political betrayal, and a fantasy that was never built to last.

00:55 - Chapter 1: The Golden Era That Never Was The post-WWII American Dream promised men stability and status—but only for a select few. When the economy changed, the myth stayed, and resentment took root.

04:46 - Chapter 2: Reagan and the Great Betrayal Reaganomics didn’t just cut taxes—it gutted the working class. A new gospel was born: hustle harder, blame the poor, and ignore the billionaires laughing all the way to the bank.

07:30 - Chapter 3: The Masculinity Vacuum Once purpose disappeared, the grift moved in. Grievance merchants filled the void with rage, cosplay masculinity, and a monthly subscription box for insecurity.

10:46 - Chapter 4: The Right-Wing Pickup Artist The right didn’t rescue men—they monetized their confusion. Trump & Co. turned pain into politics and sold fascism in flannel.

14:30 - Chapter 5: How to Fix It (No Promo Code Required) No more gimmicks. No more gurus. Rebuilding manhood means ditching the cosplay, owning your choices, and choosing contribution over clout.

19:00 - Outro: Build Something Real The challenge isn’t to reclaim a lost identity—it’s to build something better. For those done chasing nostalgia, the work starts now.

archived (Wayback Machine)

Morning frosts have hit Serbian fruit production hard, mainly affecting early stone fruit varieties.

In the Čačak region, experts from the Institute of Fruit Growing report that 95% of apricot crops have been destroyed.

The damage varies by location, with Vojvodina experiencing more than 90% loss in lowland areas, while areas near Belgrade show 40-50% damage.

Cherries and pears have also suffered, with a complete damage assessment expected by the end of April.

Temperatures are expected to be up to two degrees Celsius hotter than average across the region, with forecasts for above-average rains, according to a monsoon outlook released by Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) on Wednesday.

"Rising temperatures and more extreme rain raise the risk of water-induced disasters such as floods, landslides, and debris flows, and have longer-term impacts on glaciers, snow reserves, and permafrost," Arun Bhakta Shrestha, a senior adviser at ICIMOD, said in a statement.

The summer monsoon, which brings South Asia 70-80 percent of its annual rainfall, is vital for agriculture and therefore for the livelihoods of millions of farmers and for food security in a region that is home to around two billion people.

However, it also brings destruction through landslides and floods every year. Melting glaciers add to the volume of water, while unregulated construction in flood-prone areas exacerbates the damage.

"What we have seen over the years are also cascading disasters where, for example, heavy rainfall can lead to landslides, and landslides can actually block rivers. We need to be aware about such possibilities," Saswata Sanyal, manager of ICIMOD's Disaster Risk Reduction work, told AFP.

Last year's monsoon season brought devastating landslides and floods across South Asia and killed hundreds of people, including more than 300 in Nepal.

At the landmark Paris climate agreement, nearly every country in the world pledged to a goal to limit warming to well below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, and work toward a more ambitious goal to limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). The hope is that such a limit will help Earth avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

However, a recent review suggests that even the more ambitious ceiling of 1.5°C may be too warm for the planet’s polar ice sheets and trigger massive sea level rise.

archived (Wayback Machine):

• Mongabay article
• review cited

“Specifically, if action in line with 2°C or 1.5°C pathways were to start in 2024, then global emissions would need to be reduced by an average of 4 and 7.5 per cent every year until 2035, respectively. If enhanced action … is delayed until 2030, then the required annual emission reductions rise to an average of 8 per cent and 15 per cent to limit warming to 2°C or 1.5°C, respectively.”[7]

No matter what you think of those numbers, the fact is that none of that is going to happen. Greenhouse gas emissions are going up, not down, and not one G20 government has shown any willingness to even slow down the increase, let alone go into reverse. The United States has withdrawn from the UN climate process, and Trump has cancelled climate change programs. If other big emitters don’t take up the slack, or just fail to carry through on their Paris Agreement commitments, 3°C will be passed, probably sooner then the climate models project.

archived Wayback Machine)

Fifteen years ago, smack in the middle of Barack Obama's first term, amid the rapid rise of social media and a slow recovery from the Great Recession, a professor at the University of Connecticut issued a stark warning: the United States was heading into a decade of growing political instability.

It sounded somewhat contrarian at the time. The global economy was clawing back from the depths of the financial crisis, and the American political order still seemed anchored in post-Cold War optimism — though cracks were beginning to emerge, as evidenced by the Tea Party uprising. But Peter Turchin, an ecologist-turned-historian, had the data

"Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent—and predictable—waves of political instability," Turchin wrote in the journal Nature in 2010, forecasting a spike in unrest around 2020, driven by economic inequality, "elite overproduction" and rising public debt.

Now, with the nation consumed by polarization in the early months of a second Donald Trump presidency, institutional mistrust at all-time highs, and deepening political conflict, Turchin's prediction appears to have landed with uncanny accuracy.

Scientists monitoring the world's largest penguin species used satellites to assess sixteen colonies in the Antarctic Peninsula, Weddell Sea and Bellingshausen Sea, representing nearly a third of the global emperor penguin population.

What they found was "probably about 50-percent worse" than even the most pessimistic estimate of current populations using computer modelling, said Peter Fretwell, who tracks wildlife from space at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Researchers know that climate change is driving the losses but the speed of the declines is a particular cause for alarm.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23230801

Climate models that give a low warming from increases in greenhouse gases do not match satellite measurements. Future warming will likely be worse than thought unless society acts, according to a new study published in Science.

So, worse then thought then, we are after all barely pretending to reduce emissions amd in many cases weve eschewed even that.

The new study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, looked at medical records for more than 3,000 children born in Colorado between 1992 and 2019. The researchers found that children who were diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of two and nine were more than twice as likely to live within five kilometers — about three miles — of dense oil and gas development compared to healthy children. The study also found that Children who’d been diagnosed with leukemia during this time period were between 1.4 and 2.64 times more likely to live within 13 kilometers (about eight miles) of dense oil and gas development.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23200651

archived (Wayback Machine)

Our alternative—the only alternative—is to work to slow the filling of our pool.

The Climate Bathtub Model

Farmer suicides have a long history in India, where many are one crop failure away from disaster, but extreme weather caused by climate change is adding fresh pressure.

Dwindling yields due to water shortages, floods, rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, coupled with crippling debt, have taken a heavy toll on a sector that employs 45 percent of India's 1.4 billion people.

Mirabhai's husband Amol was left with debts to loan sharks worth hundreds of times their farm's annual income, after the three-acre (one-hectare) soybean, millet and cotton plot withered in scorching heat.

He swallowed poison last year.

"When he was in the hospital, I prayed to all the gods to save him," said 30-year-old Mirabai, her voice breaking.

Amol died a week later, leaving behind Mirabai and three children. Her last conversation with him was about debt

The world’s oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are “running out of time” to protect marine ecosystems.

Ocean acidification, often called the “evil twin” of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.

However, a new study by the UK’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the Washington-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University’s Co-operative Institute for Marine Resources Studies found that ocean acidification’s “boundary” was also reached about five years ago.

The study drew on new and historical physical and chemical measurements from ice cores, combined with advanced computer models and studies of marine life, which gave the scientists an overall assessment of the past 150 years.

It found that by 2020 the average ocean condition worldwide was already very close to – and in some regions beyond – the planetary boundary for ocean acidification. This is defined as when the concentration of calcium carbonate in seawater is more than 20% below preindustrial levels.

The deeper in the ocean they looked, the worse the findings were, the scientists said. At 200 metres below the surface, 60% of global waters had breached the “safe” limit for acidification.

“Most ocean life doesn’t just live at the surface,” said PML’s Prof Helen Findlay. “The waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals. Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought.”

Although Caribbean island nations account for only a small fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, they are disproportionately affected by climate change. This has prompted calls for the world’s wealthiest nations to provide substantial financial support to help small island nations strengthen their adaptive capacity.

“We can’t make it the responsibility of these small island states, when the world’s richest countries have historically been the largest emitters of greenhouse gases,” Cloos said.

The study: What can be said about risks, vulnerabilities, and adaptation to climate change in Caribbean small island developing states (SIDS)? The case of Dominica. A qualitative study

It's a vicious cycle. As sea ice melts and opens new routes for maritime traffic in the Arctic, the environmental fallout caused by vessels burning fossil fuels adds to global warming, which in turn melts more sea ice.

A perfect example of this is black carbon. It's a sooty material emitted from gas and diesel engines that aren't completely combusted. Not only does black carbon pollute the air with particulate matter, but because of its ability to absorb light as heat, it contributes to climate change by warming the air.

When black carbon is deposited on ice in the Arctic, it takes away its ability to reflect heat.

On the Berkeley data, the PLF10 model estimates the final value at 1.41 ± 0.10 °C and final warming rate at 0.38 ± 0.14 °C/decade (2σ confidence intervals).

If the globe continues to warm at that rate, then we’ll cross the 1.5 °C limit of the Paris Climate Accord before the year 2030.

NGO says Afghan capital’s 7 million people face existential crisis that world needs urgently to address

The Mercy Corps report can be found here: Kabul’s Water Crisis - An Inflection Point for Action

Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone.

This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequences.

“The shelling, it’s an explosive wave, the fire makes everything unrecognizable,” a medic with the National Guard 13th Khartiya Brigade told the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in March. “When they get up, the forest is different, it has all changed.”

When you introduce war, you create fires that can’t be effectively extinguished. “You cannot fly aircraft to suppress fire with water because that aircraft will be shot down,” Maksym Matsala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, explained.

Forests and agricultural land are woven together across Ukraine, meaning wildfires also endanger the country’s food supply. Battle-sparked blazes destroy harvests and eliminate the trees that shelter cropland from drying winds and erosion that can lead to drought — leaving those on the military front lines and Ukrainian citizens at risk of food insecurity.

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