2025 was the third hottest year on record

Aerosols, Shipping, and Geoengineering

• Debate over claims that reduced ship sulphur emissions and resulting cloud changes significantly accelerated recent warming.
• Some see this “pollution was masking warming” narrative as exaggerated compared with massive CO₂ emissions; others note ship emissions are large and that aerosol cooling is central to leading geoengineering proposals.
• Stratospheric aerosol injection is discussed as likely inevitable but technically daunting (altitude, gigaton-scale mass, added CO₂, acid rain, short-lived effects) and politically risky, even war-triggering.
• Alternative geoengineering ideas (solar gliders, ocean fertilization/plankton blooms) attract both interest and concern about ecological side effects and past anoxic extinction events.

Mitigation vs Adaptation and Distributional Impacts

• Some argue we should accept warming and focus on adaptation (resettlement, restructured agriculture), trying only to slow the rate.
• Others stress severe impacts on poor and hot-region populations, with resource stress, conflict, and forced migration likely long before areas become literally “uninhabitable.”
• There is anxiety that feedbacks (permafrost, changing carbon sinks) might push the system to a worse equilibrium even if emissions fall.

Practical Solutions: Technology, Policy, and Personal Choices

• Technologically, many see renewables, electrification, nuclear, and eventually fusion as sufficient; the bottleneck is political and economic, not engineering.
• Policy suggestions: carbon taxes, fuel taxes, heavy airline taxes, rail build-out, stricter standards for data centers, ending “clean coal,” and pricing externalities globally.
• Some emphasize lifestyle shifts (less driving, plant-based diets, fewer cars overall), while others argue individual “personal responsibility” is structurally constrained by car-centric design and economics.

Politics, Collective Action, and Global Equity

• Climate change is framed as a classic collective-action / prisoner’s-dilemma problem, with incentives to “defect” by keeping fossil-fuel advantages.
• The US is frequently singled out as a pivotal actor: historically largest cumulative emitter, fossil-fuel influence center, past Paris withdrawal, and key to enforcing global coordination.
• Others stress that all countries are actors, but with vastly uneven responsibility and capacity.

Data, “On Record,” and Trust in Science

• Some want to inspect raw data; others point to extensive open datasets (NASA, Copernicus, etc.) and well-documented methods.
• Skeptics question adjustments and the meaning of “on record” (satellite era vs since ~1880), while others respond that recalibration and homogenization are standard scientific practice, not conspiracy.
• There’s pushback against climate denial talking points (e.g., “CO₂ is just plant food,” volcanic emissions dwarf humans, urban heat bias), with calls to engage the actual greenhouse mechanism.

Targets, Tipping Points, and Doom vs Action

• Several argue that “carbon neutral by 2050” is a distraction; what matters is limiting overshoot above 1.5°C and avoiding tipping points.
• Many think 1.5°C is already essentially unattainable, but every tenth of a degree still matters; doom-induced paralysis is seen as politically convenient for fossil-fuel interests.
• Some express resignation that humanity will burn fossil fuels until uneconomic, hoping falling prices of solar, batteries, and EVs eventually win on pure cost.

Attitudes, Coordination, and Lived Experience

• Observations of local warming (e.g., needing less winter heating) are offered as anecdotal confirmation of the trend.
• Others note humanity has rarely coordinated globally on difficult sacrifices; the CFC/ozone case is cited as a rare success that demanded little lifestyle loss.
• There’s visible frustration at the level of denial or minimization in the thread, but also recognition that lack of meaningful action—rather than outright denial—is the majority stance.