Climate science has a term – “carbon-cycle feedbacks” – that is sufficiently dry as to hide its terrible import. Let me render it into different language in a THREAD. 1/10
Feedbacks in the carbon cycle means: koalas and kangaroos roasting alive in Australia, human beings fleeing into the ocean as the land behind them burns to the water's edge, Californians running in terror ahead of fast-moving fires. 2/10
By dumping carbon pollution into the air, we are messing with the most fundamental biogeochemical cycle on the planet – the one that created us. We are sucking inactive carbon from underground and pumping it into the air, where it becomes part of the active “carbon cycle.” 3/10
Nature is frantically re-burying a lot of our carbon, in plants and soils and the ocean, but not fast enough to keep up with us. So our heedlessness is overheating the Earth. That extra CO2 in the air traps heat. Dry, fire-prone areas get drier and hotter. 4/10
The heating melts permafrost in the Arctic. It raises risk of drought in the Amazon. Bigger, more terrible fires is one consequence. It is a “positive feedback” in scientific terms, which in layman's terms is quite negative. 5/10
The fires burn vegetation and pump still more carbon into the atmosphere. Even Arctic tundra is starting to burn! So now the Earth gets hotter still. See the feedback loop? 6/10
With permafrost melting, carbon frozen for 30,000+ years is decomposing and entering air as methane or CO2: more warming. Not speculative! Age of that rotting carbon has been measured with scientific precision. I stood in Alaska watching the gases bubble out of the ground. 7/10
Scientists are uncertain exactly how much the carbon-cycle feedbacks will amplify the global overheating we are causing. They are not feeling good about the prospects, though. Stupidly, we have decided to find out the hard way. 8/10
Expect many more dead people. Expect whole regions to burn. Expect warmth-loving, disease-carrying ticks and mosquitoes to expand their range. Expect the place where you live to change, timing uncertain. 9/10
Then maybe ask yourself: What am I doing about the need for a national plan to cut emissions? Am I registered and planning to vote? Am I making this a voting issue, and urging others to do the same? 10/10
