How do journalists feel about the fact that 99% of their readers and viewers don't realise we can no longer avoid calamitous levels of global warming by 2025 - 2034 which will combine with habitat destruction and pollution to begin to seriously threaten organised human society?
Chemical, light & noise pollution threaten life on Earth. And..
'Global plastic production is increasing exponentially, with a current doubling time of 11 y; thus, between 2015 and 2026, we will make as much plastic as has been made since production began'ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
However, the Hothouse Earth theory is not dismissed by Betts, but he sees it as speculation:
'even if the self-perpetuating changes do begin within a few decades, the process would take a long time to fully kick in – centuries or millennia.' theconversation.com/hothouse-earth…
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Is it fair to say 2C, likely by between the late 2030s and mid-century, will lead to the release of vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere from tropical, temperate & Arctic soils, and Earth's oceans & forests, and thus to further warming?
We can expect +2C of global warming just from emissions that have already occurred.
Some of this committed warming will happen within decades, and though much of it will take centuries, without emergency system change now, we face the hell of a rapid shift to +2C by the 2030s.
'committed warming has a most-likely value of around 2.5C.. just from emissions that have already occurred
if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the rate we currently are, we will blow through the 1.5 and 2C limits possibly within a few decades.' independent.co.uk/environment/gr…
I'm more than happy to answer when someone asks how I cope with the grim information on here because of course it needs to be talked about, and lots of people struggle with the feelings that inevitably arise from confronting what is happening. The fact is
whatever I feel (and I'm only talking about my feelings here) is nothing compared to people who are really suffering - those billions dealing with the famine, hunger, poverty and/or war which are overlapping with ecological and climate breakdown. It's much easier to 'cope'
when you're privileged (see my photo, job, location. For years reminding myself of my privilege when I was low made me feel worse, but that's in the past). I've talked through feeling low a good deal over the decades, so now I'm well set up to handle the grim science.
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.”