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[–] 191 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

'Sharp acceleration' meaning 75% faster warming in the last decade compared to the 40 years previous, and blowing past the 1.5° target in 3-4 years. No speculation was given, but I think it's likely we're seeing the limits of oceanic absorption of co2 and heat. The ocean's latent heat capacity has flattened the curve for more than a century, and it's very hard to predict when that will run out, but sea surface temperatures spiking all over have been good evidence that we have passed a major tipping point in the last few years.

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  • [–] 66 points 4 weeks ago* (2 children)

    They also banned sulphur oxide in ship fuel which would have had a cooling effect, that was hiding the full extent of the damage and is slowly dissipating

    Won’t be long until we start doing that again on purpose

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  • [–] 19 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    How great fixing pollution with more pollution.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Actually it's kinda good news as it shows we can make direct impact to the climate. Just with a substance actually made for it.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Don't take it too seriously, there is an effect but it's not that large. And anyways, the change in maritime fuel standards happened in 2020, while this trend goes back to 2015. A geoengineering project is just going to cause more problems, we don't know nearly enough about how the world works, truly.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Geoengineering is the only thing that can really blunt this at this point...

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  • Delaying the collapse of civilization by changing the chemistry of the atmosphere further will only serve to hurt the entire ecosystem to allow a few more years of our planet-wide rape. Decarbonizing was the only hope for both human civilization and Earth to survive together. Our choice now is to accept that or possibly kill everything in desperation.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    I’ve read that the models used to predict the rate of change were too optimistic or an assumption about them was too conservative and thus not very realistic. Now we have data showing the models under-predicted the rate of change, so one argument is that we were already on this path since decades ago, we just didn’t model it right.

    In any case, we’re all fucked so who gives a shit anyway no?

    Is there a name for when we know what the right thing to do is but we keep not doing it?

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  • [–] 16 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    No way in hell we're facing an extinction event. Unimaginable human suffering, probably, but humanity will persist.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Isolated pockets in relatively protected areas. Global society won't survive it. Most of the places we grow food won't be able to grow food, that's already accelerating. Ocean acidification kills that food source. Blue ocean event accelerates runaway heating leading to massive hurricane force continental storms. Amoc shuts down and Europe ices over. Humanity may persist but civilization won't.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Vast current areas become arid but vast areas in Siberia and Canada become arable. Very bad but not extinction for humans. Likely extinction for many species though.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    We are driving 200 species extinct a day and that figure is increasing every year. Eventually we run out of nature and we go with it.

    The temperature on the planet has never in its history changed so abruptly, which means plants and animals don't have enough time to adapt.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Most of the places we grow food won’t be able to grow food

    that's just not true! higher temperature makes food grow better, not worse.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Not if it includes lots and lots of drought. Besides of course that lots of the now commonly used crops definitely have an upper limit where heat is beneficial.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago*

    Not if it includes lots and lots of drought

    yeah but typically, the hottest regions on earth (tropical rain forest, directly on the equator) are also the wettest regions on earth at the same time.

    that the sahara and arizona are dry, has nothing to do with the solar irradiation itself, but instead with the wind patterns.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    We are adaptable creatures with command of technology. So we've got that going for us. We also have temperature limitations in which we can live, and so do our food sources. Then there's the issue of potable water.

    It really depends on how far we're pushed the planet's ecosphere. It could do like before (most recent is the PETM) and hover high, then eventually equalize back into something not the same as we had, but similar. It's done this before, albeit after millions of years. Or it could find a new equilibrium in another state, aka hothouse. Not Venus-like, as some media has spun it, but its own version of feedback to retain a lot more heat than now. Not great for anything that evolved in this climate.

    Fun fact: the PETM was the most recent heating event, 56 million years ago. Some species went extinct, others were able to adapt and survive as they evolved into smaller forms. The fun fact is that they adapted because the rate of heating change was over a large amount of time, many hundreds of thousands of years. Now look at us, a spike on the geological temperature graph in (looks at data) less than a 100 years (a few decades, really). So what kind of inertia does a more rapid acceleration usually give compared to a slower one? But hothouse Earth is just a speculation, just a guess. We don't know how far this will go.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago*

    Really depends on what happens with phytoplankton; if they can adapt well enough to survive the excessive heat. Some of them can but others are dying out. If we lose all of them, then everything that breaths oxygen is extremely fucked since they make ~70-80% of that oxygen. Then we only have plants and forests like the amazon to make O^2^ (and we all know how that ones going), and then we would also have to deal with the gasses produced by all the oceans on the face of the earth dying and everything in them rotting... if they're not par-boiled.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    All of the climate models have adjustable parameters. We are still within the bounds of the worst case scenarios but scientists are always afraid to claim too much. An academic's reputation is a lot less recoverable than a pop star or politician in the sense that they, and their colleagues, actually take their words and predictions seriously. I don't want to completely dismiss the effect of lobbying and corruption toward the downplaying of global warming, but making smaller-than-necessary claims is a common sight in most academic fields.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    I think it's mostly in fields with exponential outcomes, which experiences the too conservative estimates.

    We as a species has a really hard time understanding exponential/accelerant movement, we expect the next decade to change as much as the previous one. Despite every decade has been changing more than the previous one did

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