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"Preparing for this talk I experienced something gut-wrenching. It was the realisation that there is now nowhere to hide from the terrible truth." The great @joellegergis on the terror climate scientists feel facing the terrifying news from science. (1/x) themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/aug…
@joellegergis "The results coming out of the climate science community at the moment are, even for experts, similarly alarming," she writes.
@joellegergis "We know that CO2 concentrations have risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to approximately 410 ppm today, the highest recorded in at least three million years. Without major mitigation efforts, we are likely to reach 560 ppm by around 2060..."
@joellegergis "In the IPCC’s 2013 report was published , it estimated that such a doubling of CO2 was likely to produce warming within the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C. However, preliminary estimates calculated from the latest global climate models are far higher: between 2.8 and 5.8°C of warming."
@joellegergis "Even achieving the most ambitious goal of 1.5°C will see the destruction of between 70% and 90% of reef-building corals. With 2°C of warming, a staggering 99% of tropical coral reefs disappear. An entire component of the Earth’s life support system would be eliminated."
@joellegergis "To restrict warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to triple its current emission reduction pledges. If that’s not bad enough, to restrict global warming to 1.5°C, global ambition needs to increase fivefold."
@joellegergis "Even with the 1°C of warming we’ve already experienced, 50 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef is dead. We are witnessing catastrophic ecosystem collapse of the largest living organism on the planet."
@joellegergis "Examining the Earth’s climatic past tells us that even between 1.5 and 2°C of warming sees the world reconfigure in ways that people don’t yet appreciate. All bets are off between 3 and 4°C, where we are currently headed." (x/x)
