Earth is rapidly being transformed into a desert planet with catastrophic consequences for most living things.
[THREAD]
4 - 5 billion people, most of them already living in poverty, will see their habitats undergo an acutely challenging transformation as we head rapidly to an extremely dangerous 2.5°C world of year long droughts and food shortages due to locked in warming and climate feedbacks.
Desertification - the greatest threat.
Land degradation of dry lands:
North and southern Africa, western North America, Australia, the Middle East & Central Asia. Drylands are home to 2.7 billion people – 90% of whom live in developing countries'carbonbrief.org/explainer-dese…
Aridification will emerge over ~25% of Earth's land surface.
Areas most affected: SE Asia, S. Europe, S. Africa, Central America and Southern Australia - home to more than 1.5 billion people. Areas would become more arid; droughts & wildfires widespread. dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar…
We're hurtling into 'climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation', a world where 'climates like those of the Pliocene will prevail as soon as 2030'.
2. 5°C by 2030: to a climate 'outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity'?
Surviving decently (or at all) in a world of rapidly escalating extreme water stress/scarcity & mega-drought food shortages is quickly going to become exceedingly difficult for billions of people.
BREAKING: scientists now fully expect global warming levels severe enough to harm all sectors of civilization including food and water within a decade or two as the world's biggest all-time emitters the US and UK refuse to stop fossil fuel expansion 🧵
1. Scientists project 1.9- 2°C by the 2030s or 2040s.
In the 2010s, scientists agreed 2°C would mean harm/dislocations for civilization. In 2022, the IPCC's AR6 report showed extreme impacts at 2°C will be even worse than previously expected.
2. 'countries including the UK, the US.. are increasingly being thought of by some experts as the “other petrostates”
'Just five global north governments – the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and Norway – are responsible for a majority of planned expansion..dumptheguardian.com/environment/ar…
BREAKING: mass media stay silent as climate scientists all agree economic growth means Earth's species face the threat of dire 1.75- 2°C of global warming by the 2030s 🧵
1. Conservative estimates imply threat of >1.7°C by the 2030s.
James Hansen warns of 2°C.
'This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of greenhouse gas emissions being close to an all-time high and a reduction in the cooling impacts of aerosols'carbonbrief.org/guest-post-tra…
2. Conservative projections show 2°C as early as 2037. Species like humans reach limits of adaptation at this point. (Tropical ecosystems wrecked at 1.5°C.)
Change this Extinction Economy now to protect species and everyone now while it's still too late. carbonbrief.org/analysis-what-…
2. 'Planetary boundaries represent thresholds in major Earth system processes that are sensitive to human activity and control global-scale habitability and stability
critical oxygen thresholds are being approached at rates comparable to other.. processes'
An amazing news story totally ignored by state-corporate media: according to even the most conservative and optimistic consensus assumptions there had to be 'immediate action' years ago at the very latest with emissions peaking and falling by now to avoid utterly catastrophic 2C.
BREAKING: scientists warn we're beginning to feel the effects of a geologically instantaneous 21st century shift into extreme and unsurvivable conditions 🧵
1. 'We are starting to feel the effects of transitioning to a hothouse climate (ΔT +4-5 °C) in a geological instant'
The global change happening now is potentially like the Permian extinction which occurred in just a few centuries.
2. "In my view it is impossible to survive that sort of change (4°C by 2100). That is beyond human physiology. But that is the trajectory we are on now.. No matter what we do with all the whiz-bang technology.. physiologically we cant survive that."