BREAKING: catastrophically rapid global warming via an 'aerosol termination shock' in the 2020s and 2030s cannot be ruled out say scientists as they urge immediate media coverage 🧵
1. A recent albedo decrease and increase in planetary heat uptake coincided with a decrease in anthropogenic sulfur emissions.
This trend could accelerate further with more sulfur emission reductions.
3. There’s a fix for at least some of this short-term increase in the rate of warming:
"The only measures that can counteract this increased rate of warming over the next decades are methane reductions"insideclimatenews.org/news/15092021/…
4. Methane is rising sharply
5. The thread is being updated with further details:
6. global warming acceleration is due to the one huge climate forcing that we have chosen not to measure: forcing caused by imposed changes of atmospheric aerosols
expect warming rate for 2015-2040 to double 'unless appropriate countermeasures are taken' mailchi.mp/caa/july-tempe…
7. Scroll up to read this helpful conversation.
Dire 1.5°C can be expected by the 2020s, or if not, by the 2030s.
2°C hell looks hard/impossible to avoid by the 2030s-2060s to my mind, though theoretically it could be delayed for many decades/centuries.
Destruction of habitats and wildlife has intensified and accelerated to an almost unimaginable degree during the capitalist era. Scientists say the 40-50% of plant species now facing extinction will be obliterated in a handful of decades. It didn't have to be like this. Rethink.
'previous mass extinctions.. took 10,000s, 100,000s, even millions of years to happen. this is happening so fast, now in just two, three decades..' google.com/amp/s/www.cbsn…
2. Current estimates of plant extinctions are, without a doubt, gross underestimates. Extinctions will surpass background rates by 1000s of times over the next 80 years. universityofcalifornia.edu/news/plants-ar…
BREAKING: as tropical forests show increasingly clear signs they are entering a collapse phase scientists warn irreversible mass extinction conditions are on the horizon 🧵
1. rapid warming & collapse
".. warming could continue to accelerate.. even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth’s past.”scitechdaily.com/mass-extinctio…
2. “There will be a point in the not too distant future when we suddenly see and feel this mass extinction all around us very clearly”
“A key point of extinction crises is that life has always recovered.. However..we most likely won’t be there to see it."
The Greenland ice sheet is now losing around 9 billion litres of ice an hour [Geological Survey of Denmark &Greenland]
With the ice sheet at “a tipping point of irreversible melting”, scientists currently expect an unavoidable sea level rise of 1-2 metres.weforum.org/stories/2025/0…
4 to 10 m sea level rise committed in the coming 2000 years, with the majoroty of that in the coming decades/centuries it would appear. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
BREAKING: horrific worst-case scenarios firmly back on the table as scientists confirm large-scale Earth systems such as forests, ice sheets, and ocean currents may already be collapsing 🧵
'large-scale Earth systems may be experiencing gradual collapses that are easy to miss, with profound implications
"we may already be crossing tipping points without realizing"
BREAKING: as global warming accelerates wildly normally reticent Establishment scientists begin to discuss plausibility of near-term human extinction 🧵
1/'It seems very unlikely that extinction is on the table for any but the most severe scenarios of climate negligence. However, it is easy to envision a collapse of human civilization.'
2/We know relatively low levels of warming like 2 or 2.5°C (which are in fact absolutely extreme given the rapid rate of change) could mean human extinction. Dr Mann would agree 2.25-3.25°C is likely/very likely to hit in a few/handful of decades.
BREAKING: climate scientists say it's now easy to envision a collapse of human civilization 🧵
1. it is easy to envision a collapse of human civilization:
'Without even appealing to the uncertain science of climate tipping points, the known impacts of climate change.. would be more than adequate to destabilize our societal infrastructure.' gizmodo.com/is-climate-cha…
2. Climate scientists project 2°C and rising by the 2030s/40s, with 2.5°C or more by the 2040s/50s or soon after. There is no evidence whatsoever humans can survive that rate of change and the abrupt shift to extreme new conditions.