When dolphins began washing up dead by the dozens on Lake Tefe in Brazil’s Amazonas state, hydrologist Ayan Fleischmann was sent to find out why.
What he and his colleagues discovered was startling: a brutal drought and extreme heat wave that began in September 2023 had transformed the lake into a steaming cauldron. The lake’s waters reached 41 degrees Celsius, or 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit — hotter than most spa baths.
Their findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, spotlight the impacts of planetary warming on tropical regions and aquatic ecosystems, and come as the United Nations’ COP30 climate talks kick off in Brazil.
We don’t have too many more years before this is common throughout the globe. Remember that this is a canary in a coal mine, or the first domino to fall. It is not going to stay exclusive to this lake, this country, or this hemisphere.
I’ve gone through the stages of grief when it comes to climate change more than I’d like to admit. I wished the evidence I saw was wrong. I hoped the predictions were incorrect. Yet here we are, watching river dolphins boil alive and people saying, “huh, that’s weird. I wonder why that happened.”
I can’t stand more than a half hour in a jacuzzi and that’s in an air-conditioned room. I know that we’re in an extinction event and I shouldn’t be so attached to our living species, but my heart hurts to hear this news.
Grief on climate change is a very real thing. I recommend the book “climate, psychology, and change” if you’re interested. It at least made me feel less alone.
Anger subsided all the other emotions for me as far as climate change. There were people who knew. There’s something along the order of magnitude of 100 people who chose to obfuscate science and sacrifice us all for profit. I hate those people. I can’t even feel sad because I hate them so much.
Thank you for suggesting that book. It looks potentially helpful.
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Or a dolphin in a jacuzzi.
We are the extinction event
Yes but the next species can learn from it 👍
Remind me the deadly heat wave told in the book The Ministry for the Future when the whole town go to the lake to find freshness and only found jacuzzi conditions
This is my first time hearing that dolphins reside in lakes. Natural inlet.
Basically, this time, they swam right into a boiling pot.
We are so royally fucked.
It’s a lake but connected to river tefe https://share.google/h4LF3AdItJKiZ8BwM I assume they can be disconnected if drought happen
Yup we’re swimming into a boiling lake ourselves, metaphorically speaking
Scientists have been telling anyone who would listen, for decades, in the most dire terms, of what was going to happen and how badly it’s going to happen and everyone was like “nah they don’t know for sure and they’re exaggerating and being ridiculous” and yet the same people are still going to have the utter gall to act completely surprised pikachu face when it starts actually happening and try to convince us that no one could’ve possibly predicted this.
except the scientists. who predicted this.
Propaganda has made it so a significant portion of the population takes it personal if anyone anywhere dares to even try to suggest that they might know better than them about something, even if they’re an expert on that thing. And as a response, they will do the exact opposite out of spite.
Imagine how different things might be if Bush didn’t steal the 2000 election from gore
But South Park said Al Gore was just seeking attention.
They actually did a follow-up episode about Al Gore being right, and everyone had to apologize to him!
I don’t know how often they admit that they were wrong, but I thought that was big of them
First off fuck Trey Parker and Matt Stone for their dumb take on it at the time, climate change is real and I agree with An Inconvenient truth for the most part (one lake he highlighted as drying up in the US was actually drained by intensive agriculture wells - everything else accurate). But his biggest failing was setting up a carbon trading company literally at the same time he was telling everyone climate change was real, and that the best measure to deal with it was governments setting up carbon trading.
Of course as soon as people whom are wary of this huge claim learn that he has a profit motive, then they’re going to suspect he is only trying to line his own pockets.
All he had to do was spread the message and not be greedy, but he couldnt help himself.
I think his biggest failing was that the Supreme Court picked Bush as president even though Gore won Florida and thus the election.
That was definitely impactful, but I can’t blame gore for that failing, it was a coup subverting democracy.
The judges that helped Bush secure the win were also permanently enshrined in the US’s broken legal system: John Roberts, Brett Cavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett.
There are river dolphins, even.
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I vacationed one year in Ecuador/Galapagos and spent a few days at a an amazon river lodge and they have pink dolphins. They’re pretty cute/small!
Lived in the Mississippi bayou and in drought conditions ocean water backs up into the lakes and wetlands. I swam with dolphins 30 miles north of the coast some summers.
was you born on the bayou? Is mississippi as big a shithole as it seems?
My bet is that they had also been drinking.
Drinking on the Jacuzzi is fun until it isn’t
Never done it. What should I be wary of?
Very easy to get drunk very fast
Like, less alcohol required?
Man I’m gonna need a jacuzzi. It takes a phenomenal amount of alcohol to get me drunk and I’d like it to be cheaper
It’s also dangerous because the hot water causes vasodilation, and combined with alcohol it’s much easier to get light headed and pass out or otherwise injure yourself. Many people die this way. Also shouldn’t have sex in the hot tub, and there’s a whole list of reasons for that which I will let you research on your own.
Ah okay, I’ll do my drinking after the hot tub then. Or instead of it since I don’t even own one
Mmm sous vide dolphin.
Poaching rare and endangered meats mmmm
Fuck you, take the upvote
Clearly the solution is to add Spacer’s Choice Lemonade Stands.
