A decade ago, It was predicted that we would hit 1.5°C between 2050-2060, and even as recently as 2 years ago the prediction had moved forward to between 2030-2040.
The next decade or two are going to be very… interesting
The IPCC calculations were always criticized for being overly optimistic. Anyone following this debate knew that we would hit 1.5 C sooner rather than later.
We are definitely going to hit 3 degrees in our lifetime, once the melting tundras release their methane store.
Melting tundra releases methane, accelerating the increase in temperature. Rising temperature reduces polar ice, making oceans absorb more heat, accelerating heating. Climate pattern changes cause more frequent and larger wildfires, accelerating heating.
There are probably processes that work to reduce heating as it increases that I’m not aware of, but there are a lot of positive feedback processes which is concerning.
I believe the IPCC 1.5C was criticized because it included effects of a carbon sequestering process that hasn’t been invented yet. That’s pretty optimistic.
There are probably processes that work to reduce heating as it increases
Nuclear war, for one. In a more naturalistic vein, asteroid strike or massive volcanic eruptions. People worried about climate change just refuse to look on the bright side.
Which is why I support the idea of setting up bases on the Moon and/or Mars.
Everything is accelerating, and nobody gives a fuck to do anything before it’s too late. I hate the argument that NASA doesn’t push its budget to prevent CC or even Space X. Because stopping CC is a global effort on a colossal scale. It’s not going to work until it’s too late. Might as well get off this rock.
Edit: Very fucking optimistic of you all
If anyone is curious about what 3C looks like, here’s a solid video on how a 3C world would look.
https://youtu.be/uynhvHZUOOo?si=yk8rvR1Bg3t4aKGe
It’s 16 minutes so as a TL;DW: Not “extinction event” but extremely bad. Areas of the globe will simply become unlivable - and these areas tend to be highly populated. The resulting mass migrations and shortages of water/food will lead to conflict, often between nuclear powers. End result: humanity will keep on living, but it will be a significantly more deadly environment and a significantly more conflict-prone political environment. Economic collapse will hit major metropolitan centers.
If watching the video bums you out try to focus on the absolutely bonkers cool sideburns the climate scientist has. Cheered me up a little. Like a handsome person telling you that you have a bad disease.
Anyway, vote for climate-positive outcomes wherever possible and consider joining a climate lobbyist group. I’m a member of this one but I’m sure there are others.
what’s worse is that it’s actually 1.6 C
it says in the article here
Data released last week from Copernicus, a branch of the European Union Space Programme, shows August was 1.59C warmer than 1850–1900 levels, following a 1.6C increase in July.
Yes but only for a couple of months, averaged over the whole year it’s significantly lower than that. Probably still on track to hit the annual average of 1.5 sometime in the next 10-20 years. Still definitely a dire situation but not entirely out of left field based on the recent estimates.
The recent records have now lifted the year-to-date global temperature to the end of August to 1.35C above pre-industrial levels, just 0.01C behind 2016 — the current record holder
Yeah, it’s honestly horrifying to see the lack of reaction around the world. If you live anywhere near the coast, you better get the fuck out or tell your kids to.
I’m already telling people to get out of Florida*. I expect multiple Katrina-level events over the next 15 years. “Florida refugees” is going to become a common phrase.
Orlando might be more likely to survive than Miami or Tampa, but do you really want to be in the city surrounded by devastation?
We, as humans, seem to have lost the ability to plan more than 20 years into the future. Florida is still building in areas that are going to be crushed, and the only reaction is from insurance companies.
We’re not trying to prevent it. We’re not building any kind of defenses or contingency plans. We’re not encouraging people to move out. We’re not preventing people from moving in. In fact, we’re building new and encouraging people to move IN to Florida. It’s full on head in sand.
It’s nice by the coast though, I’d just put aquatic pilings under my house and have a ruggedised shelter built into it. Even if I live to a hundred and fifty with all the ice melted my land will still be under less water than the intercoastal platforms we’ve been routinely building since world war one.
Supposedly the new stringent heavy shipping emissions controls are having an impact on the greenhouse effect. Reduction of sulfur dioxide which had a reverse greenhouse effect is warming the oceans up more.
“Carbon Brief analysis shows that the likely side-effect of the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050. This is equivalent to approximately two additional years of emissions.”
So this may be our first example of the threats of NOT enacting terraforming for climate change will have.
It proves that creating cloud cover will impact ocean temperature. There are methods of doing this without creating acid rain. Just spray ocean water as a fine mist into the air and you should get some nice fluffy clouds. We have the capability to cover entire oceans in cloud cover to mitigate global warming.
Obviously this would have some unpredictable impacts on weather patterns, but we’re already dealing with that no matter what we do. We’re at a point where we’re desperate enough to try some crazy schemes like this.
After September 11th and the COVID lockdowns, scientists noted an increase in global surface temperature due to the absence of contrails. So yes, this is actually something we are already doing!
Sulfur dioxide however is an even more effective reflector of sunlight compared to water vapor. And don’t forget, water vapor is itself a very greenhouse agent that contributes toward planetary heating.
Hank Green had a pretty decent video in this.
https://youtu.be/dk8pwE3IByg?si=lmRdxCnQS6OtYkqL
We can do the same thing without the horrible pollution that ships produced.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/dk8pwE3IByg?si=lmRdxCnQS6OtYkqL
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I believe by “interesting,” you mean “moist.” At least, for everyone above/below ±35° latitude.
Also, I hope you enjoyed photosynthesis while it lasted because once the permafrosts at ±60° latitude thaw, we’re in for a tough time.
Hate to break it to you, but everyone in the world is either above or below ±35° latitude.
I can’t quite figure out if it’s supposed to mean everyone within 35° of the equator latitude, or everyone outside it.
They’ve been saying that literally since the 60’s?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand they’re still wrong.
I have kids. I am fucking livid that the assholes who pretend climate change isn’t happening have decided to sacrifice their kids and mine on the altar of making a quick buck.
You can’t eat money, assholes. And you can’t bring it with you when you die. If the future is nothing but more and more severe weather to the point that civilization collapses under the strain, then I hope you live long enough to see it and are unable to hide from reality anymore.
They think they do. No amount of money will protect a person from the collapse of a civilization. Never has, never will. Their plans are very much predicated on the assumption that markets will somehow magically continue to function after the general populace has lost all faith in them
What about the ultra rich that have built bunkers and have their security outfitted with locking, exploding collars to keep them in line?
I forget who, but some consultant said that they did a talk with a small group of the ultra wealthy that are doing this.
Edit: This is what I was referring to https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff
Why did you choose to have kids knowing what kind of future they would have? This is the reason I didn’t, and also to reduce my footprint in the world. I mean even 20 years ago, it was obvious nothing was going to change. So I don’t know why somebody would willingly have children these days.
No… its simply not. Maybe Jimmy John and Mary sue having a dozen offspring in missouri are a slight part of the problem but your average person have one or two is not the problem.
As with everything in this world: Its the corporations. They are the problem. No amount of reuse, reduction, or recycling by any individual would even register on the graph of emissions/carbon footprint when compared to even a tiny company
I do agree that its irresponsible to subject yet another human being to the future we are careening towards
I mean, I get what you are saying, but if for a few generations only every 10th family would have only 1 child, GHG emissions would fall drastically. Having a kid basically more than doubles ‘your’ own carbon footprint.
Is this the only, the necessary, or the preferred way? Ofc not. Is it the biggest impact I can personally have on global warming? It is (voting, protesting, buying local & sustainable helps, but whatever you are doing the kids are doing it too).
It’s sad bcs there are so many ways we could solve this (at least achieve carbon neutrality, tho we need more than that now), but short-term profits of the current elite would suffer a little tiny bit so we can’t do it.
But additionally now we do need to prep to mitigate consequences and damage control (on top of green/ESG investments) … I wonder if all those profits will be used to finance this …
117.7 tonnes of Co2e per kid per parent per year in the USA (58.6 tonnes average when including all the poorer countries).Wynes et al. 2017
A conservative estimate is that we need to emit less than 2.1 tonnes in total per person per year to try to prevent catastrophic Anthropogenic climate change. Girod et al. 2013 (life expectancy/2050).
117.7 > 2.1
We need a fertility rate of about 0.01 for several decades.
Human overpopulation is not only the biggest contributor to push us into a climate-change tipping-points cascade, it’s also the root cause of almost all its other causes. It’s also the root cause of unsustainable habitat loss and pollution. It’s also the root cause of factory farming and industrial fishing, which causes more pain and suffering every year than all other atrocities ever committed combined.
As for corporations, they’re not burning the planet for shits and giggles - they’re psychopaths doing it because billions of people are choosing to buy their goods and services, which they want but don’t actually need.
Don’t worry about climate change, the US is hell bent on starting global thermonuclear war very soon. We can go fast and crispy instead of slowly choking.
It’s just announced plans to get rid of Mutually Assured Destruction and install nukes in Finland. Then they said they don’t care if their latest weapon ATACMS is used to attack civilians in Russia. This has been a red line for a long time, they just pushed it.
We’re closer to nuclear armoggedon now than ever in your lifetime before.
This is why we have 2A in the US. Maybe we should start thinking about using it.
Every 2a person I’ve ever met who talks this way wants to shoot the wrong people.
It’s almost like maybe we shouldn’t rely on the lowest common denominator to resolve complex nuanced issues, huh?
You’ve never talked to a single socialist, anarchist, leftist, etc. about civilian firearm ownership before? It’s very commonly thought of as a necessary evil to prevent systemic oppression. Maybe don’t spend so much of your time talking to trumpers and neoconservatives?
To wit: there is no “right people” to want to shoot, and anyone who thinks there is probably has their own tribalism issue to work out. Community defense specifically does not have a target right up until the point someone else is an aggressor, and ends when violence is no longer needed. This is why you never saw “antifa burns down trump supporter’s house” or whatever in the news.
Yeah man, that Thomas Jefferson guy was a real unhinged fuckwad.
We had a good run. Good luck to the next species to dominate the earth. May you avoid religious dogma, find an economic system that respects your natural environment, and a political system that respects the right to live a clean and healthy world.
Mosquitos are like “that species was delicious. I wonder what the next one will taste like”
we probably taste like shit… they sit around the campfire and remember the good old days of fresh, free range Dino blood as far as the proboscis could poke… not this Walmart meat they get now…
I dunno, they seem fucking determined to get as much of my blood as possible, little fuckers.
@Gsicht @Sterile_Technique And “pragmatic” solutions to the climate crisis. Oh wait …!
I mean, we left the planet. We created art. We did some good, and life will diversify again after we’re gone.
and life will diversify again after we’re gone.
Here’s hoping; but that’s far from a safe assumption. The kicker about the changes we’re making to this planet is that a lot of them are positive feedback loops, so even if 100% of humans just got thanos-snapped out of existence RIGHT NOW, meaning a complete stop on fossil fuel consumption, deforestation, etc; the damage we’ve already caused will continue to get worse on its own with no further input from us.
So how far can those feedback loops go until they’re broken naturally? They might stabilize; they might just carry on until this planet is molten.
There will for sure be life after the last human dies, but given a few thousand more years, even the most resilient of critters could still be fucked because of us.
we did just waste a good few million years of evolution though (let’s say 65 million accounting for the rise of mammals). earth isn’t going to be habitable forever, from memory there’s less than a billion years left before the temp would increase with the expanding sun enough to make liquid water impossible. feels like we kind of shot earth in the foot a bit here
There were a couple of hundred thousand years of humans managing not to fuck up the entire planet, before the two centuries of doing so for the sake of money.
There were periods in which we were nicer to the planet, but we’ve always been pretty horrible to each other. Even at the stage of civilization we’re at now - with all the advancements and comforts etc - we’re still going to war with each other just for the hell of it; murdering each other over shit like skin color or what we find sexually attractive; not only profiteering off the suffering of others, but actively manufacturing suffering to profiteer off.
We really are horrible.
Realistically, extinction would be sweet relief compared to what is actually in store for humans with climate change. More likely that we hang around in smaller communities and death / suffering is even more widespread.
I mean realistically it’s all going to hell sooner or later. You’ll start with millions of climate refugees, closed borders, violence. Then climate wars (a wall with machine guns isn’t going to stop people who have no other way to survive). And if a country with nukes (like India) finds itself uninhabitable then things are really going south. Next up you have a possible nuclear war and the end of humanity as we know it.
Sure, a small amount of humans might survive, but civilization will go down in chaos. Even areas that are inhabitable and have plenty of water will break down, because the local infrastructure can’t support hundreds of thousands of refugees forcing their way in.
You’ll start with millions of climate refugees
Millions? If only.
I’ve seen estimates which say at least a billion by 2050:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-world-s-forgotten-victims/)
I wonder if primates are incapable of building a global economic system that doesn’t end in disaster
Hope everyone enjoyed the coldest summer of the rest of their lives.
eventually boil us alive!
eventually? https://www.wired.com/story/india-deadly-combination-heat-humidity/
eventually? don’t trip in the street https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/heat-wave-second-third-degree-burns-illness-heat-exhaustion-rcna95107
sorry, eventually was like 2005. we’ve entered the lethal zone and it’s only going to get worse.
The humid areas will suffer and become uninhabitable first. As the wet bulb temps get higher than normal body temperature, and make it impossible for the natural human evaporative cooling system to work. - basically sweat won’t be enough to keep cool anymore. And youll essentially have to walk around in a bubble with a dehumidifier to survive.
