Will we ever get a strong, lasting impression from ad-dependent, billionaire-funded, corporate media that many forest ecosystems are at risk of ecological collapse; that insect pollinators of crops & wild plants are under threat; and that severe global warming is now unavoidable?
1. “the land system will act to accelerate climate change rather than slow it down" (by 2040)
🔺findings challenge the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5-2°C
Every US president since Lyndon Johnson has known about the catastrophic effects of greenhouse gases and done nothing but make things worse.
Now for a reasonable chance of decent survival there are only 9 years left to stop all emissions from the whole global industrial economy.
1. For a 67 per cent chance of not exceeding catastrophic 1.5C of global warming, 'total CO2 emissions must not exceed 230 billion tonnes. This is about five years of current emissions, or reaching net-zero emissions by 2030.'
The prospect of the near total obliteration of summer Arctic sea-ice before 2035 should really be focussing all our minds on achieving zero carbon emissions in the 2020s.
"The prospect of loss of sea-ice by 2035 should really be focussing all our minds on achieving a low-carbon world as soon as humanly feasible."phys.org/news/2020-08-e…
“We’re never going to return to conditions like there were in the 1980s and 90s,” she says. “It’s not recovering. There are going to be ups and downs, but it’s never going to go back to what it was, given our current climate state today.”
1. We have no crystal balls so 2021 could be a turning point, of course. But it would take something absolutely extraordinary to suddenly stop the destruction that's happening in this particularly awful stage of industrial capitalism.
2. Using a 1750 baseline, 1.5C probably isn't possible anymore. Using a 19th/20th century baseline still only gives us until 2030 to slash emissions to zero for a '67 percent' chance of not exceeding 1.5C. theconversation.com/new-research-s…
'For a 67 per cent chance, total CO2 emissions must not exceed 230 billion tonnes. This is about five years of current emissions, or reaching net-zero emissions by 2030'
The temperature tipping point of the terrestrial biosphere lies not at the end of the century or beyond, but within the next 20 to 30 years
[THREAD]
Given the temperature limits of land carbon uptake presented here, without mitigating warming, we will cross the temperature threshold of the most productive biomes by midcentury, after which the land sink will degrade to only ~50% of current capacity if adaptation does not occur
While biomes will eventually shift spatially in response to warming, this process is unlikely to be a smooth migration, but rather a rapid disturbance-driven loss of present biomes (with additional emissions of carbon to the atmosphere),
Now would be a very good time for newspapers to investigate whether massive agricultural failures look likely by 2027 - 2041 due to a combination of profoundly dangerous climate change including global warming of 1.5-2°C, soil destruction, water crises, and pollinator declines.