this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
206 points (96.4% liked)
The memes of the climate
1662 readers
3 users here now
The climate of the memes of the climate!
Planet is on fire!
mod notice: do not hesitate to report abusive comments, I am not always here.
rules:
-
no slurs, be polite
-
don't give an excuse to pollute
-
no climate denial
-
and of course: no racism, no homophobia, no antisemitism, no islamophobia, no transphobia
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't have sources at hand so this is off the top of my head, but IIRC stabilising carbon levels in the atmosphere would leave us with as an additional increase of 0.5-1°C over the next hundred years. Current anthropogenic emissions are roughly 10 Gigatons of carbon per year (GtC/a), while natural carbon sinks take up roughly 5 GtC/a. This means we would have to cut emissions in half to reach that point. Even if we were to magically get to a rather unlikely zero emissions, so 0 GtC/a, the carbon that is already in the atmosphere only gets sequestered at a rate of 5 GtC/a still, so it would take some time to return to pre-industrial concentration levels. Further warming would stop relatively fast, but it wouldn't reverse the damage that has already occurred due to the warming so far. Many ecosystems would still fail because their equilibrium has already been irrecoverably disrupted and they are just limping along in a proverbial death spiral. Which is the problem with reducing the question to climate effects. So even if we had this magical carbon switch, which we sadly don't, things are all but guaranteed to get worse for a good while there.