77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming—And They're Horrified
77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming—And They're Horrified | Common Dreams
"I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South," one expert said.
"I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years," Gretta Pecl of the University of Tasmania told The Guardian. "[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future."
But, reason to keep fighting:
Others found hope in the climate activism and awareness of younger generations, and in the finding that each extra tenth of a degree of warming avoided protects 140 million people from extreme temperatures.
The Global South? Those people aren't going to lay down and die. They're gonna climb North, as they should. And then we're gonna have to decide whether to shoot people approaching the borders or accept a huge population influx. Given our political reality, I think there's a good chance we try the first option at first.
Right wing parties are already massively strengthening Frontex. They're fully aware what will happen, but still not willing to kill our emissions. "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
Yup. Sadly the truth. And then probably cry about all these migrants bothering them "for no reason", and that it's hard to find a good reef to dive in on vacation.
People will be fleeing famine, uninhabitable areas, rising sea levels and wars. The areas that can support life will grow smaller, more valuable and crowded.
What worries me is that combined with anti immigrants sentiment. I fear beaches of dead as people are prevented from fleeing. I read a SciFi with that and it chilled me as I can see it happening.
Prevented from arriving is how anti immigration works, not leaving. Jesus. Think. If you can.
Will we be assholes if when this happens we be like. WE FUCKING TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN, but y’all more concerned with arguing over pronouns and protests (I support both).
hear hear! please stop fighting over the petty things and get to work on the things that matter. electing a president that will fight climate change is far more important than what happens in the middle east.
I mean the ones that think that trans people shouldn't have human rights also tend to be the ones who don't believe in climate change so...
I get your frustration. I feel it myself. Still, I fear, calling people assholes won't be helpful and prevent folks from admitting they did wrong. At the same time, it can always get worse (hotter) and I think it would be best to win as many people over as possible, to do the right thing.
I don't know. We're fucked anyway, I guess.
We've tried nothing and we're all out of options.
I have a postmortem science degree, but hobby in studying paleontology/pre-history. It took a rise of only 10°C and excess pollution to wipe out over 83% of all life on the planet between the Permian and Triassic eras. Entire chains of life just wiped out. Carbon dating, sediment layer study, fossil records, they all show how screwed me are if we keep this up. The earth will survive, it always does, but it took 30 million years before life recovered.
Humans need to learn from the past, see the consequences of what most would think is a small change, but the ones in power don't seem to give a shit.
If you don't mind me asking what does postmortem mean in this context? I have this funny image in my head of a skeleton studying for a degree lmao
Worse. Normal people don't give a shit. Even the ones that are on the team that buys into it don't want to give up much to fix it.
That's part of the issue, but the even bigger problem is that people fallaciously think they have to give up much to fix it when the reality is a combination of (a) they don't, and (b) the changes that they do have to make actually represent an improvement in lifestyle, not a deprivation.
For example, Americans who've been brainwashed for decades by GM propaganda about the "open road" and car-dependent suburban "American dream" and whatnot have to be dragged kicking and screaming into higher zoning density and walkabilty, but once people have it they realize they're happier, healthier, have more free time, etc.
Could you help me understand how we differentiate the latest warming temperatures being related to climate change and not just another period like the one you mentioned?
To be clear, I fully believe that climate change is real, but sometimes when discussing it with people they will be of the camp that things are cyclical and just natural. I want to better arm myself for these arguments.
Mass extinction events have a cause. The Permian/Triassic one I mentioned, is generally agreed to be from unusual movement of earth's crust, creating severe volcanic activity. The eruptions caused CO2 and pollution, meaning greenhouse gasses built up. The heat shifted water currents and the temperatures, mixed with acid rain, decimated life in the oceans.
Humans are basically the volcanoes in modern times. Yes, the earth goes through normal changes, but these temperatures are increasing at a speed that, to my knowledge, has never happened. There is a way of teaching kids about how long the earth's had life, that visualizes it pretty well. If all of earth's history were to fit on your arm, shoulder to fingertips, if you gently scratched your fingernail on something rough, you'd erase all of humankind. We have barely existed on earth, but are throwing it off balance like never before. (With the exception of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, but that's a whole other tangent)
Having taken years of pathology/physiology classes, it really feels like the earth is a body, and it's getting a fever to try and deal with an illness... us.
Lmk if you need any sources. I can't exactly copy my books or the ones from my old college's libraries, but there's plenty of studies/resources out there if you're nerdy enough to dig 😊 (fossil pun)!
I have a fun snarky way to handle “cyclical” people. If they say it’s cyclical I’ll say “so there will be dinosaurs.” And if they ask what I mean, I say “it’s a cycle, so there will be dinosaurs again.” If they say no, I ask if the continents will come together again. It’s an argument towards absurdity to point out that the world is always changing, as is the climate, so there is not a “cycle.”
but the ones in power don't seem to give a shit.
Conservatives also don't give a shit.
The majority of people on both sides of the spectrum don't give a shit. People need to stop acting like this is just politicians, or CEOs, when it is the vast majority of the voters & potential voters. You'd see a lot more votes towards green parties & candidates if it were different. But the truth is, most people don't want to lose their comfortable lifestyle. Real climate action would affect us all, in our lives, in the prices we have to pay for products, in the products available to us, how we move around, etc etc.
I think they give a shit.
Enjoyment counts as giving a shit.
The used the wrong language even though they need to because they need to be accurate.
"Global South" and "by 2100"
Billionaires: oh so not in my yard and not in my lifetime? Great! Drill baby drill!
Let's stop climate change!
Let's stop it at 1 degree!
Let's stop it at 1.5 degrees
Okay, we might get to 2.5 degrees, but the economy!
This will go on until we get to around 5 degree and most parts of the world have become uninhabitable and most animals and vegetation has gone extinct and we've locked ourselves in perpetual wars due to water and food shortages. Sounds like a shitty B movie, but this is what I truely believe we will end up with.
If it makes you feel any better, once it gets that bad, society will eventually break down and our CO2 levels will naturally return to normal over the next several centuries while the Earth is reclaimed by nature as we go extinct.
yay
Finally some good news
I’m hopeful economies and governments will collapse before 3 degrees and measures will be put in place. I’m not extrapolating a utopian future. Before we get to the point where the world reacts, there will be many wars, migration and fascism. But as it gets worse, I’m hopeful groups will work together and fight for a better future.
Sounds like a shitty B movie, but this is what I truely believe we will end up with.
And we'll deserve every bit of it.
I read this headline and think, "this will happen and still nothing will be done."
Fun fact: a lot of mining companies have been incorporating climate change projections into their closure plans for years now, using RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios. Hey, we are using a thermal cover to make sure this gargantuan pile of mine waste rock doesn't cause metal leaching/acid rock drainage issues later on: we'd better over-engineer it to take on higher-than expected warming, given that we'll be liable for it for the next 100+ years
It's certainly interesting, but I feel mostly sad thinking that it's just BAU for everyone, even when everything is dying. Such a great example of it.
I 'like' the part where they acknowledge and plan for it yet everyone is still squabbling about if it's even happening
Bit of a misdirect in the headline. This was not primarily a scientific projection. This was a political reckoning by scientists who had recently suffered the bureaucratic pain of serving on the IPCC, and voluntarily responded to a survey.
As one climate scientist put it:
"As many of the scientists pointed out, the uncertainty in future temperature change is not a physical science question: It is a question of the decisions people choose to make," Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote on social media. "We are not experts in that; And we have little reason to feel positive about those, since we have been warning of the risks for decades."
Change never comes from politicians first, but these are people who are zoomed in on whether politicians are changing their minds.
They're not going to change their minds slowly over time. It's gonna be nothing at all until the electorate is too loud to ignore, and then suddenly 100% of officials will claim they've "always condemned fossil fuels", "from day one", and "in the strongest terms possible".
We've seen time and again that policy changes tend to bubble just below the surface for long time and then suddenly emerge with multiple changes happening in quick succession.
I was of voting age when just saying the word "civil union" in the context of gay rights was political suicide, and I'm not that old. Things can change quickly. Keep your hope alive and keep agitating. We can do this.
we need some people, either hacking or inside job, setting the temperature in all conference rooms used by any politicians worldwide 2.5 degrees C higher than normal.
Oh, if only.
The shitty thing is they'd start wearing lighter clothes, and use it as a campaign point that it's not that bad, actually. Power appears to be a hell of a drug.
Then we get inside people to give them 1/4 of their catered food that they ordered so they can be warmer AND hungrier.
Let. Them. Fight.
It's all just scare tactics, they'll say.
Also, that feeling of power.
Ah, the entire collection of S. Harris' Global Warming cartoons, though lumped together with other environmental topics, is worth linking.
More like +10.5°C in room A and -8°C in room B.
There was a powercut this week in a large part of Mexico (I know because of family from there). They're getting rarer now as Mexico has really tried to get its grid uptogether. The downside of countries like this having more stable grids is more people and business installing aircon systems, which just means more energy used, more emissions.
The funny thing is there are ways to passively cool areas. You can literally install shading over windows and walls that face the main sun. Last year in the UK we had a few days where it was over 35C. Nobody here has aircon. So that heat is a shock to us. But I managed to cover the outside of open windows with reflective bubble wrap insulation cut into sheets.
I also installed a small solar system on our shed to run a fridge freezer out there. The funny thing is the half inch stand-offs actively created significant shading and the inside of the shed really cooled down to where we could sit in there and chill out or do tasks without melting. When I realised this I started looking online for research on solar power and shading and found agrovoltaics. Solar panels over farm crops such as fruit in hotter regions mean less watering needed... its more spread out than usual solar farms as it has to let the sun in a bit more to the food but its something that needs to be done more.
I also read of people ignoring their energy policy for their home electric and installing grid-tie solar. They use sheds, stands in their garden, conservatory roofing etc, and usually just a few hundred watts of solar. Typically homes have a fuse rating of 30-50 amps. One 300w solar panel grid tied is not going to be anywhere near that, but will mean up to 300w of clean energy. Energy companies should just allow these systems, even provide them if its a problem or worry to them. You can buy this stuff off amazon for a few hundred quid.
Haha and Italy just banned agrovoltaics!
Perfect place for it too. All those grapes will be sour.
Isn't the opposite? Only agrovoltaic (panels at least 2 meters over crops) is allowed
Also, and it's kinda insane to me that not more people do this: just grow any plant on the sides of your house. If you are worried about your walls build a cheap metal fence a few centimetres before that wall. It's the cheapest insulation you can get.
Wild wine, ivy, anything that will climb and live more than a year would work.
it's the same in vietnam, where it reaches 40c. many do not use ac
Mexico City is having water issues.
I remember being there in 2013 and the rivers and streams were all dried up. They were quite worried about farming.
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Seems low.
22% of climate scientists are likely funded by big oil. The other 1% are just normal stupid.
I can see some climate scientists just saying that 2.5C won't be as dire as others predict without being stupid or paid off. There are often contrarians and sometimes (not often, but sometimes) they can be right, so it's healthy to have them even when there is broad consensus. It's how we came to accept ideas like plate tectonics.
So sure, maybe some of them are paid off (I doubt any of them are stupid since they have scientific degrees), but maybe some of them just disagree about the predictions for whatever semi-legitimate or maybe even legitimate reason and that's fine. It's worth exploring why just in case they could be right. The thing is, they're scientists who are dissenting, not just some random guy on Facebook, which is why it's worth exploring them.
There's definitely some in there that think 2.5C is optimistic.
To be fair we don’t know what the bottom climate scientists think. They be closer to 100%.
We're close to blowing past 1.5c
I think we'll blow past 2.5c
I think we'll be looking back, waving longingly to the incredible hulk ending song, to 5c
Because the world doesnt exist to serve the 8 billion humans. It exists to serve a few thousand rich and business owners. . which means as long as there is profit to be had, the killing of the planet and the population will continue not only at pace, but ever accelerating
Aren’t we past 1.5c? Thought we’re just waiting to see if it’s sustained
Well it looks like a bunch of have a lot of self defense-ing that needs doing
I'm only horrified for all the non-human life we're continuing to decimate on the way out.
Humans don't even seem to tolerate one another as we recklessly decimate this world with technologies we're just smart enough to develop and then immediately use with the same consideration for consequences as a monkey being handed a loaded shutgun, supposedly in humanity's name.
You want us to survive so we can keep a perpetual underclass subsisting in misery? So we can point fingers and call this group and that nation and this gender and that race the problem over and over and over? We are the problem, sorry. Long term, our self-destruction will be a W for the Earth. It will take millions of years, but our mother will eventually clean up our mess we left behind, and continue on like we never existed.
And from my perspective and decades of observation, that is for the best, including for our "everything will be great, once those humans I don't like are shown their place" in perpetuity species.
I've been living in coastal Southeastern Texas for 44 years. Im 46. In 2017 my county rezoned us as a flood zone because of the Havey flooding caused all the poor planning. An entire section of the state reclassified because "interstate highway" needed to be bigger.
They've been building the same 50ish miles for at least 27 years. All they've managed to do is ruin what was naturally occurring barriers and eroded our ability to maintain habitation. Or to expect a reasonable ability to protect against a disaster.
We're leaving 3.4 acres my grandfather bought in 1986, and gave my sister and I in 2007.
And that's just MY story. We had 375 neighbors in my area and at least 30% have moved on since 2017.
And that's just one coastal city, in one state, in one country, on one continent.
I don't have a lot of fantasy about humanities future.
What we need is a Ministry for the Future without a killer heatwave killing millions.
While the developed world rests on its laurels having already developed key technologies that insulate from the worst effects of climate change, the Global South is attempting to push through rapid industrialization to achieve the same effects, bringing with it public infrastructure, electricity, robust food supply, reliable transportation, healthcare...
Meanwhile, the developed world looks at the Global South and says "ah, but why aren't you being greener about it? despicable! how dare you raise emissions?" while simultaneously restricting the free trade of essential green economy components like solar panels and batteries. The fact is, we don't actually care about climate change. Our political entities and economies are not structured to reward innovation in that space, so we simply end up pulling teeth to push through minor advances. Germany used to be a world leader in solar panels before it stagnated due to political pressure. The US used to be a world leader in developing nuclear before it stagnated due to political pressure. Japan used to be the world leader in batteries before it stagnated due to, well, Japan.
While the developed world rests on its laurels having already developed key technologies that insulate from the worst effects of climate change
But this isn't true. Can we fight temperature changes? Sure, we have air conditioning and heaters.
There's lots of things we can't isolate ourselves from. Natural disasters, for example. We see forest fires and floods on a yearly basis, and it's getting worse. We'll face droughts, and diminished crop yields. It'll be particularly bad for all the areas near the equator (which are also incredibly populous and export a lot of food), and what will happen then?
Famine yes, probably, but likely also an exodus away from these areas, which I'm sure will go well as countries are known to welcome people seeking a better life with open arms. We'll face humanitarian tragedies. I'd be surprised if there won't be camps, and with that comes disease. Maybe we'll even see another pandemic.
Aircon won't shield us from that.
We keep doing it because we have to do it, so [the powerful] cannot say that they didn't know," Ruth Cerezo-Mota, who works on climate modeling at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told The Guardian. "We know what we're talking about. They can say they don't care, but they can't say they didn't know.
It seems to me that we are at such a stage that no matter what we do, there is no turning back. We are doomed, lucky not likely in my lifetime.
Maybe im too optimistic, but i think its more current society as a whole is doomed, but humanity will probably survive and maybe even recover, hopefully smarter and less profit driven.
And even if we don't make it, at least the Earth will survive, and maybe the next civilization wont be so greedy.
Global warming is funny in that there is a threshold at which runaway reaction evaporates all water on the planet and changes it into inhabitable wasteland akin to other sad space rocks.
I don’t know what are the chances for that but I feel if it is anything above 0.1% then it is too fukin big of a chance.
I don’t want to risk that the scientists completely missed the mark in some computer simulation or missed some vital, crucial info and this is the actual scenario, those things are awfully hard to model and predict. Maybe the rate of change is so meaningful that it kicks in some bad stuff that would not happen if the rate of change was hundred thousands years. Who knows at this point. Climatologists are fumbling around in confusion
That won't happen, CO2 and warming has been much, MUCH higher than it is now or probably will ever be.
What will happen is that loads of animals will die because they won't be able to adapt quick enough. Thought that we had many extinctions now? Try a hundred times more.
What will happen is mass crop failures due to extreme weather, and water shortages. Humans being the assholes that the are will not focus on an actual solution, they'll just start wars over the scarce resources to make it even worse.
Humanity actually might go extinct if we let it ge tbad enough.
There are still many people out there claiming it's all fake. Can we please just make them extinct?
It begins with wiping out the brainwashed. Theoretically, this should allow democracy to correct the problems, but i suspect the owners will just stop pretending they operate within the bounds of democracy at that point and go all out authoritarian to prevent themselves from being dethroned. Then we wipe them out.
0.1% chance would be huge. That kind of probability is an unacceptable risk even just for a personal injury, let alone the destruction of all life on earth.
Oh shut up. This is just moronic.
The good news is that almost all lines of evidence lead us to believe that is unlikely to be possible, even in principle, to trigger full a runaway greenhouse by addition of non-condensible greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, our understanding of the dynamics, thermodynamics, radiative transfer and cloud physics of hot and steamy atmospheres is weak. We cannot therefore completely rule out the possibility that human actions might cause a transition, if not to full runaway, then at least to a much warmer climate state than the present one. High climate sensitivity might provide a warning. If we, or more likely our remote descendants, are threatened with a runaway greenhouse then geoengineering to reflect sunlight might be life's only hope. ...[2 sentences cut to meet arXiv char limit]... The runaway greenhouse also remains relevant in planetary sciences and astrobiology: as extrasolar planets smaller and nearer to their stars are detected, some will be in a runaway greenhouse state.
Goldblatt, Colin; Watson, Andrew J. (8 January 2012). "The Runaway Greenhouse: implications for future climate change, geoengineering and planetary atmospheres". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 370 (1974): 4197–4216
We have a huge geoengineering greenhouse experiment running on earth as we speak with unclear final outcome. But at least the science of climate will become clearer during this experiment that’s for sure.
It’s not that outlandish as one would instinctively think considering we have no idea why warming accelerated so much in the last years. It’s a good reason to act, among many others. However before that would happen obviously humanity would be long gone anyway.
Also from interesting bits as of now theoretically our GHG ppm is the same as when there was no ice on Greenland and sea level 10 m higher. It seems we are now merely waiting for the delayed reaction because even if we would stop all emissions we would also have to remove the GHGs to avoid it.
Another interesting thing is that scientists are intentionally underplaying some things to not appear ‚alarmist’ because it was figured out that this would have opposite and unhelpful effect to climate action. Except for James Hansen.
In any case it’s useful to know what is the absolute worst scenario and what huge GHG numbers do to the planet(s).
Global South
Yeah, right. How is Europe's food security going nowadays?
It's not like anyone's going to do anything about it.
Someone will. We will. Our current trajectory is unsustainable.
It’s only unsustainable if you want everyone to survive. Too many people are quietly okay with losing a few billion strangers due to their certainty they’ll be fine.
That's what I said a good 25 years ago when I learned about climate change. It went through a bunch of name changes, there have been multiple world meetings about it to see how much further we could push it up to sustain "our economies" and the few little suggestions that came out of that were completely ignored so that we could have the next world economic forum or whatever.
If any politician would actually do something REAL, I'd support it. I have not seen anything beyond "well let's try to change cars to electrical over a 20 year period but also dump nuclear power so effectively all electrical cars still run coal". We. Need. To. Stop. Using. Cars. Car use needs to drop by 95%, THAT would make a difference. Start converting 90% of car infrastructure to park, bicycle infrastructure and public transportation like trains and busses. Convert cargo trucks to electrical, start investing like crazy in nuclear power plants. Push companies to either let employees work from home or pay tripple tax. Tax the shit out of anyone earning more than 10 times the average. Start adding sulfur solutions to kerosine so that airplanes can start spewing it in the atmosphere to lower temperatures... Any of those are solutions, I haven't seen any of it.
Nobody is going to do anything because politicians are dumb egocentric assholes that only care about their own reelection.
We're fucked in the next 30 years or so
If Trump gets elected, we'll be fucked within 10. I'm honestly thinking at this point that maybe we should just all vote for trump. Get it over with, kill this world, humanity is a failed experiment.
I don't like this mindset, because while there are plenty of businesses, billionaires, and governments that keep burning coal to keep their cash flowing, there's plenty of scientists, activists, engineers, governments, and organizations that are making a difference. We shouldn't be discrediting the hard work of people who are trying to save us or at least delay doomsday.
There are models that predict as much as 4 C
Shhh… don’t tell anyone. At 4 degrees Antarctica becomes the refuge of humanity. There’s a reason Trump wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark.🇩🇰
Extreme weather will make a lot of places rethink their infrastructure and whether they should even move somewhere else.
Bye Florida.
Don't worry DeSantos is just going to outlaw hurricanes. Problem solved
Eh humanity had a good run.
No, no we didn't.
Yes, you did. Time to go, bye.
Yes, I can finally die, hopefully the afterlife is a thing that... exists
It is.
I just hope im gonna be as excited to see this „civilization„ fall as I think I am. Humanity is just fucking disappointing.
the problem is that we not only doom ourselves with the collapse of civilization but we doom so many innocent creatures who had nothing to do with this. the animals deserve better.
And we'll do nothing about it because everybody is looking at corporations and their government but not at themselves to change.
Literally every projection made about today, 20 years ago, was false. I swear yall have zero pattern recognition.
Was false... because it was optimistic seen from today.
The projections made by the Club of Rome in 1972 in Limits to Growth are still valid. Should we wait until 2040 to see if the computer simulations were true?
What?
What projections are you looking at? It is a few cherry picked ones? Generally the projections going back to the 80s are in line with what's actually happening, if anything they were optimistic.
Even if you don't agree with projection or that we're actually in-line with them, the correlation between carbon in the atmosphere and global temperature isn't disputable anymore.
So when did all you blowhards go vegan?
oh you didnt?
Ok then.
At this point it's whatever helps you sleep at night. A moral high ground will definitely help though.
Nothing an individual does to reduce is going to make even a droplet in the ocean of pollution.
If everyone on earth went vegan tomorrow we'd still be fucked 15 different ways.
I'm in no way a climate change denier and I too believe that the current path leads us there. However, isn't it normal for 80% of climate scientist actively researching this to think this way? Would they not spend their efforts somewhere else if they would think this isn't happening?
A survey among mathematicians showed that 80% consider that mathematics has the answer they're looking for.
We need to discuss hard data and proper research, not surveys.
Sorry... are you saying that a survey of what experts in a field think is happening is no indication of what is happening?
Apparently those brainiacs with their fancy book learnin' and expertise are useless. We must all sift through hundreds of thousands of pages of raw data before reaching any conclusions. The entire concept of career specialization is wrong! Throw it out!
No. I'm saying that "77% of Top ...etc" is a stupid way of conveying the importance of the information.
"I'm not a climate change denier but why does anyone care what experts think?!" 🙄
why does anyone care what experts think?!
That's not what I said at all, is it? I'm simply pointing out that we're reacting to a poorly written article which plays on our emotional side instead of discussing the actual facts. Yes, scientists doing research in an area believe that their research is going to confirm their hypothesis. That's how research works. In this case, I'm surprised it's not 100% to be honest.
The whole premise of the article is stupid. Not global warming, not the fact that we're heading towards more than 2.5C global warming by 2100, not the people answering the questions. What's stupid is the idea of "conducting an opinion poll" in that specific group.
If someone could convincingly scientifically back up their belief that climate change isn't going to be a big deal, they'd be swimming in oil company money to promote their work. There's definitely an incentive to research it if you think the other way.
hard data and proper research
Maybe the answer you expect is not presented in this article?
Or at least the expectation you are presenting is something an exact science would produce?
If they're not the ones to give us that data, who would? Polling experts in the field is different from asking fisherman if they think we should eat fish
What data though? This article doesn't contain data - that's my issue. You're right, it's not asking fishermen if they think we should eat fish. It's asking nutritionists if they like fish.
!collapselemmy.ml Is what you’re looking for.
There is no ceiling. It might go up 6 or 7C. The people who have the power to change things do not give a shit if the rest of us die. They don't care, and they won't change anything. That's the world we live in.
4C is basically Mad Max breakdown of society. Problem is self-correcting after that.
If there are survivors, they will be the dicks. Nature is heartless and unforgiving. It is truly survival of the fittest.
They (selfishly) believe that allowing the problem to flourish is what will get us to solve it.
They're not wrong. There's just way better, more humane approaches.
So you're mostly right. Because they know they have the wealth to weather the discomfort in comfort. But it is accurate that humans historically are fucking aces at reacting and kinda piss poor at proacting.
Yes, they are wrong. Because we don't know if there are positive feedback loops that will take us beyond survivable temperatures once we've crossed an invisible line.
Even the ultra-rich won't survive +5C because the entire concept of "wealth" falls apart when society does.
Oh, you’re hot? Return to work. Our buildings are kept cool for your convenience! 😈
That’s the next play
uh no florida has already made the next play, and it was to repeal all protections for outdoor workers against the elements
in other words the next move is literally "Fuck you, die", apparently, so, good to know we're past the bullshit and can get on with actually solving the problem properly.
Not really. Economies started to slow down and crash when warming gets over 2°C and CO2 production crashes with it.
Finally some good news on the climate. Our ability to fuck the Earth will mostly go away when our civilization collapses. We might even get a second Genghis Khan cooling when everyone dies.
There is a problem of lag. By the time temperatures are high enough to force the economy to stop, the amount of CO2 will be sufficient to continue pushing the temperature up considerably.
The problem is that feedback loops start to kick in above 2°C so it doesn't matter if the economy crashes.
In fact, in some cases that makes things even worse. One example is that without smokestacks and ships pumping out sulfur dioxide the albedo of the atmosphere will rapidly drop, which might cause immediate and rapid warming over a period of only a few years.
We could be pushed past 2.5°C or even 3°C without industrial forces contributing at all.
Source? (The past tense make me think you're quoting a paper)
I mean they might care when billions of people try migrating in to more northern countries.
As a citizen of one of those "more Northern countries", that is one of the things that concerns me.
Well, renewables seem to be saving our undeserving asses, just by virtue of finally getting cheap.
Yes and no. Renewables are now cheaper than other forms of energy but cost isn’t the only issue.
There are practical limits on how many renewables projects we can build and integrate at a time. We’re not even remotely close to building them fast enough to save anything. We can’t even build them fast enough to keep up with the ever increasing demand energy.
Nuclear is expensive as fuck but we need to be building more of it as well as renewables because we can’t build enough renewables fast enough to avert the catastrophe, and that’s about the only other tech we have that can generate energy in the massive quantities needed without significant greenhouse gas emissions.
Not if, when
This why argued we might as well make it worse maybe we will suffer a bit less is unlikely change is coming in time anyways