Time is running out
Time is running out. Time is running out!
Sometimes I still have this sermon in my ears. But this post is not about a US president frantically searching for non-existing weapons of mass destruction because he needs a victory to distract from the aftermath of the dot-com bubble bursting.
This post is about our time, as human civilization, running out of options to stop a process that would drastically, and for the worse, change the life of billions of people.
To prevent a self-fueling process of climate change, scientists have long said that about two degrees (compared to pre-industrial times) is about he maximum that is tolerable for the ecosystem. Newer research has shown that maybe two degrees is even too high an estimate, as more and more feedback mechanism are researched and models refined.
That is why the 1.5°C goal was announced.
But time is running out.
In fact for the normal and pessimistic scenario, the time already has run out. We already have emitted more CO2 than is allowed in those scenarios. And even for the optimistic scenario we only have less than three years left.
And only 8 years left for the pessimistic scenario for 2°C.
This means, if we do not want our earth to heat up more then 2°C, we have only two options: Either stop emitting more CO2 than the earth can absorb basically now, or start to get CO2 out of the air in huge quantities.
Both of them don't look very likely.
You can have a look at the "CO2 clock" directly here:
https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock.htm
Or go to the German source website and scroll half a screen. You can click on the degrees and the three estimates.
It's a LOT worse than I thought. Just for the record, what will happen when we go over the limit? global overheat? as you said, both of them don't seem very likely :(
"Overheat" not.
But at around 2 degrees a lot of "kickback" mechanisms come into play. Meaning the heating will go on until e.g. 6 degrees, and that is of course the average.
More and more severe storms and draughts. Water levels rising for dozens of meters...
One such a chain is: Sun-reflecting ice on the poles melts, which results in more heat. It also reduces the polar water cycling which may stop global water cycling, huge amounts of fishes may die out, ecosystems collapse...
Such things.
I don't think that the temperature increase is that fatal in an out of itself for us humans but the water level increase and the polar melting is BAD, REALLY bad. Well, let's hope that either the major governments decide to do something about it or that at least we'll enjoy enough of what time is left :(
The temperature itself is not so bad?
Just a few thousand more heat death per year, worse harvests, more damage through weather (like hurricanes).