Overshooting 1.5C Risks 'Irreversible' Climate Impact: Study
- Reference: 0175228649
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/10/1814246/overshooting-15c-risks-irreversible-climate-impact-study
- Source link:
> Even temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius before bringing temperatures back down -- a scenario known as an "overshoot" -- could cause sea level rises and other disastrous repercussions that might last millenia. This "does away with the notion that overshoot delivers a similar climate outcome" to a future where more was done earlier to curb global warming, said Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, who led the study co-authored by 30 scientists.
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> The findings, three years in the making, are urgent, as the goal of capping global temperature rises at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is slipping out of reach. Emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases must nearly halve by 2030 if the world is to reach 1.5C -- the more ambitious target enshrined in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
[1] https://www.dawn.com/news/1864247
Already Bad (Score:1)
My fear is that the impact to the climate of CO2 is delayed, as it may take decades for the climate to stabilize. I don't think we have enough data to know. But what's clear is that the more we mess with the atmosphere, the worse it will get.
We know (Score:3)
But won't act.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> But won't act.
Actually it's a combination of won't and can't.
We won't do anything because we have allowed too many stupid people to be elected to positions of power. Also, the oil/coal/gas companies are not going to just shut down and go out of business. They are going to do everything they possibly can to keep producing MORE. As long as the CEOs die rich, that's all they care about.
But even if we could get the stupid people out of the way, there's a bigger problem. I don't believe we can do anything meaningfu
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> We won't do anything because we have allowed too many stupid people to be elected to positions of power. Also, the oil/coal/gas companies are not going to just shut down and go out of business. They are going to do everything they possibly can to keep producing MORE. As long as the CEOs die rich, that's all they care about.
You left out...that most people are NOT willing to change their lives or lifestyles drastically like would be required to reverse anything globally...
Re: (Score:2)
> More solar panels, more batteries! Duh!
YES!
More enslavement of poor people to make rich people climatically comfortable while helping the rich symbolically atone for their climate sins
More harsh chemicals introduced to our environment and water supply through the mining, refinement, and manufacturing processes of the products you espouse
More destroying of the Earth (by strip mining and other means) and it's atmosphere (by the ore refinement process) ...
... as if we have another planet to go to and the means to get there FAST
I'm pretty certain t
Re: (Score:2)
Except none of these are true. These are talking points being promulgated by the right-wing "think tanks" funded by oil companies.
If you were seriously worried about strip mining, point me to all your previous posts where you propose coal mining should be made illegal. Coal mining strips away more surface area of the Earth than all other mining combined .
But, no. And you were silent about 20 million tons of copper being mined per year, back when it supported our entire electrical infrastructure. But let a
Irreversible? I doubt it ... (Score:2)
It may have catastrophic results for us, but irreversible? What if it is so catastrophic that it kills all humans and the CO2 levels go back down. It doesn't even need to kill all humans. It just needs to wipe 90% of us. Won't things change climate wise for the better over the next 10000 years?
Long term, not "Irreversible" (Score:5, Informative)
Well, "irreversable" is in the title here, but in the text the consequences are that an overshoot could "cause sea level rises and other disastrous repercussions that might last millennia." The [1]actual article [nature.com] doesn't use the word "irreversable".
So, effects are not forever, just thousands of years.
(A possible better news story is this one: [2]https://www.imperial.ac.uk/new... [imperial.ac.uk] . Here the phrasing is "Temporarily exceeding global temperature rise of 1.5C likely to come with long-term consequences."
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08020-9
[2] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/256978/reversing-global-warming-part-climate-overshoot/
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> So, effects are not forever, just thousands of years.
Given the sun won't last forever, most of us are smart enough to know what irreversible doesn't mean infinite.
Re: Long term, not "Irreversible" (Score:2)
In reality it is millions of years. Google average temps during the Triassic. Earth had all these periods that span huge periods of time with unsurvivable temps for humans. All the oil and coal was formed by removing carbon from the air by algae and trees respectively, but in those high temps fungus to break down trees did not exist. All this took hundreds of millions of years, in periods like the Carboniferous. Our low CO2 atmosphere with huge amounts of bio carbon underground is the exception not the rule
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> but in the text the consequences are that an overshoot could "cause sea level rises and other disastrous repercussions that might last millennia."
Well, the good news is...I won't be around in a millennia to see how bad/good it turns out.
I'll be long into my dirt nap...and likely not caring WTF is going on....
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> It may have catastrophic results for us, but irreversible? What if it is so catastrophic that it kills all humans and the CO2 levels go back down. It doesn't even need to kill all humans. It just needs to wipe 90% of us. Won't things change climate wise for the better over the next 10000 years?
Even that's a huge stretch. Every time I read another story like this, I roll my eyes. IMO, a global mass extinction event is just not realistic except at the individual species level (and humans are not likely candidates). There are entirely too many species that are able to adapt to changing environments that will thrive even if weather patterns change a bit and they end up migrating north or south or whatever. Sure, you'll have extinction of species that are particularly unable to adapt, like butterf
Don't know about climate change but... (Score:3)
I suspect the increases in insurance for folks in the US subject to problems caused by more extreme weather are irreversible. But, don't worry, Florida already has a plan to fix that by making the Federal Government underwriters for properties no one else will insure because they're likely to be destroyed as the climate becomes more extreme and sea levels rise. (You may be a climate change denier, but the insurance companies sure as heck are not...)
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The feds are already underwriters for a lot of the problems caused by extreme weather. It is called the National Flood Insurance Program. It is neigh impossible to get residential flood coverage from any other source in the USA.
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hehe, it's worse. Insurnace companies - worldwide - all get their insurance from re-insurance - which goes up a few levels. Basically EVERYONES insurance is insured by a bigger company and another bigger company - for worst case senerios. So all insurance is shared when it hits the fan - so we all pay for WORLDWIDE issues that are big enough to need it. What is going to happen, and is happening is - no insurance for weather events in many areas. And higher rates - for everything, for everyone, everywhere.
If Earth was a Stanley Cup tumbler (Score:2)
If you can imagine the Earth as a Stanley Cup tumbler and that the heated liquid that you pour into it eventually will cool off, the same thing will happen. The difference being, the Earth is a big ass tumbler and it has a crap ton of water. Even when you remove it from the heating element, it still has all that thermal ass that has to slowly dissipate.
It's going to be a long hot minute for that to happen.
Ok, so let's do it (Score:2)
If this is really true, and it looks like we're not going to get most countries on board with cutting greenhouse gas emissions in time, then logically we need to use the tools at our disposal to prevent going over this 1.5C limit, and we need to do it now, right? Ok, so go ask a climate scientist if it's time to kickoff one of the plans to dump silicon dioxide into the stratosphere as a stop-gap measure... these are do-able with current technology, will cost in the 10's of billions of dollars, so it's actu
Failures of past generations (Score:2)
Failures of the past:
1) Never address emissions as a serious problem (for reasons geopolitical and military).
2) Never address geopolitical and military problems that are stated to supersede 1).
3) Consolidate wealth.
Millennials might soon get an earnest crack at solving the failures of their elders that threaten the futures of their children. Unfortunately, it might already be too late.
Passed again (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure we passed 'the point of no return' like 11 times in the last 30 years. It always happens to be 5 years away from whatever the current date is. Strange how that works out.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
> There are three thing's that will get you modded down on Slashdot faster than you can say "Communist". If you are skeptical about climate change stories in the media, anything whatsoever "medical", or saying the US shouldn't fight proxy wars.
Looks like someone's been doing their homework!
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
It was more of a practicum but yeah, color me experienced.
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Looks like someone's had a stick shoved up their ass.
Re:How dare you doubt the Church of Climatology (Score:4, Insightful)
You're just asking questions. "Do we really have to make all these expensive and uncomfortable changes? Can't we just continue to do as we've always done? Where's your evidence?"
Fine. Those are valid questions. Well, they were, thirty years ago. But you're never going to be done asking those same questions, because you don't really want answers. No evidence will ever be enough to satisfy you. You already decided what the answers were, in early adulthood or even before. There isn't even a hypothetical situation under which you would change your mind. Now you're just asking the questions to Challenge Orthodox and justify your intransigence--sorry, your Brave and Principled Stand against the Fickle Horde.
Sure, all of this is theoretically reversible. We could theoretically terraform Mars, for God's sake. But all that's going to be expensive. More expensive than we're going to want to pay for. Ten times more expensive than if we made the uncomfortable changes now. Fifty times more expensive than it would be if we'd just made the uncomfortable changes a couple decades ago. And nobody's ever gonna be able to bring back all those marmots that drowned in the flood, or the grassland that dried up and blew away.
So the consensus of people object to your skepticism because it's an obstruction to actions that they feel need to be taken. It threatens to seduce people who might otherwise help to wallow in their own inertia. Because inertia feels fucking great, in a way that having to do responsibility does not.
Re: (Score:2)
Some people are just wired differently. They refuse to evacuate when the hurricane is coming. They look for alternative treatments so that they can avoid chemo. They keep up their spending habits hoping that they'll find the extra cash when the bills are due.
I'd call this a case of inertia, but some people seem to expend a lot of energy avoiding the spending of a little bit.
In the modern age you have to remember the new rule. Any fact will have an equal and opposite alternative fact.
Re: How dare you doubt the Church of Climatology (Score:2)
I would be absolutely fine with the measures if i felt the wealthy were also making the same sacrifices relative to the size of their wealth. As usual, there seems to be a drum beating for the middle class and the poor to make large sacrifices that become very small for the wealthy.
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> I would be absolutely fine with the measures if i felt the wealthy were also making the same sacrifices relative to the size of their wealth. As usual, there seems to be a drum beating for the middle class and the poor to make large sacrifices that become very small for the wealthy.
What "large sacrifices" have the middle class or the poor been "drum beaten" into making?
Mostly what I see here is slashdotters saying "we need to implement better technologies for energy" and others saying "anything we do will be too expensive," and others saying "we don't need to do anything because China / we don't need to do anything because rich people". Plus the handful who change the subject to "this shows we need nuclear power."
Can't recall anybody saying "the middle class and the poor need to ma
Re: (Score:2)
Great, this is what the vast majority of people who want climate change addressed would like to see as well. Only some of the super-rich and a small cadre of their fawning fanboys would like to see climate change addressed with minimal contribution from the rich. But if you oppose addressing the problem until after the unfair funding situation is solved, you've made yourself a roadblock to addressing the problem as quickly as possible, and that's going to hurt the poor and middle classes approximately infin
Re: (Score:1)
> So the consensus of people object to your skepticism because it's an obstruction to actions that they feel need to be taken.
Ahh, they feel they need to be taken? Oh well, then let's smash these doubters, eh? They are in the way of progress! I mean... these people are like the fucking natives when white folks got to the Americas. Right? "Goddamn, would you us skeptics just die so climate angels can have their utopia already?" Out of the way, troglodytes! The climate saviors are here on a white horse to trample you underfoot and save the deserving elites who bought a Prius and use climate credits.
> No evidence will ever be enough to satisfy you.
Me? Personally? Haha, SURPRISE. I
Re: (Score:2)
I AM surprised. I don't recall any of the previous times I've tried to change people's minds, on the internet at least, being met with failure and detailed mockery. Let me verify by checking the logs real quick...
...hmm...
...oh. All of them, you say? Oh, dear.
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Don't forget putting any non-secular religious belief, especially Christianity, in a positive light.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not Christian and not a fan of the dogma, but I definitely agree with you. It's weak.
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lol, living large with a -1 and a +1 at the moment then.
Re:How dare you doubt the Church of Climatology (Score:4, Insightful)
> There are three thing's that will get you modded down on Slashdot faster than you can say "Communist". If you are skeptical about climate change stories in the media...
It's worthwhile to be skeptical about climate change stories in the media, but true skepticism would be when a person tracks down and reads the actual scientific sources. I've seen little evidence that most of the self-declared skeptics have any familiarity with the scientific literature on climate change.
What I see more of is one-sided skepticism, where any information saying "climate change is real and caused by humans" is treated with extreme distrust, while anything saying "don't believe in climate change, and it's not caused by humans" is accepted uncritically.
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> What I see more of is one-sided skepticism
Climate stories create a lively debate. I'm pretty convinced there are folks at all points along the continuum. It's just the far-left ones seem to have all the mod points. Almost as if the editors of the site are all far left and giving mod points as they see fit to their allies to shape the site's discussion forum.
The sad personal fact is that I come to Slashdot out of habit, but I'm slowly migrating to other sites like LXer, Lobsters, LWN.net, SGUG, Hacker News / Y-combinator, The Register, and other
Re: (Score:2)
>> What I see more of is one-sided skepticism
> Climate stories create a lively debate. I'm pretty convinced there are folks at all points along the continuum. It's just the far-left ones seem to have all the mod points.
I haven't seen that. What I have seen is down-moderation of the same people with the same talking points showing the same ignorance of any actual climate science. When they get confronted with citations and links, they shut up for a moment, then post exactly the same talking points on the next story mentioning climate. As I said:
>> I've seen little evidence that most of the self-declared skeptics have any familiarity with the scientific literature on climate change.
Can you show which "far-left" posts about climate have been moderated +5? Or which far-right posts that have been moderated -1 actually show knowledge and insight?
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> Can you show which "far-left" posts about climate have been moderated +5? Or which far-right posts that have been moderated -1 actually show knowledge and insight?
Only if you do the opposite first, baby. That'd be time consuming, but somewhat interesting.
> When they get confronted with citations and links, they shut up for a moment, then post exactly the same talking points on the next story mentioning climate.
That's not how I remember it. They usually post cogent points back, or their own papers, and both get summarily ignored as both partisan groups talk past each other. You can find a "paper" saying anything you want these days. It's a big Internet. Sure quality is different between sources, but that qualitative difference is pretty much lost in a forum debate. It's just "I gave you evidence so you need to shut up" foll
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Genuine philosophical skepticism is actually kind of exhausting.
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Bonus points if instead of merely being skeptical about climate change, one actively lies about it claiming this had been said 11 times in the past. Maybe back up the skepticism with actual facts?
Re:Passed again (Score:5, Insightful)
> I'm pretty sure we passed 'the point of no return' like 11 times in the last 30 years. It always happens to be 5 years away from whatever the current date is. Strange how that works out.
Nope. Just you twisting your own memory to help you feed your own narrative that everyone is being alarmist. The number being quoted here as the point of no return is the same number quoted from the original IPCC report. It's been the same target for 30 years now, and has yet to be breached according to its definition.
But keep pretending that everyone is just trying to scare you just because you can't follow what is being said.
Re:Passed again (Score:4, Informative)
> Nope. Just you twisting your own memory to help you feed your own narrative that everyone is being alarmist. The number being quoted here as the point of no return is the same number quoted from the original IPCC report. It's been the same target for 30 years now, and has yet to be breached according to its definition.
> But keep pretending that everyone is just trying to scare you just because you can't follow what is being said.
Regardless of what you think about it all...
Time to face facts, it ain't gonna happen ....the steps we'd have to take to stop global warming that they describe just isn't going to happen, shy of halting the world on a global scale that would make the covid lockdowns that happened in some areas pale in comparison....it just ain't gonna happen.
Maybe these scientists need to start working now on a "Plan B" on what to do once world temps do manage to exceed the 1.5C.
The world doesn't stop or turn on a dime....too much inertia, so, the better plan would be what to do when this happens.
Re: (Score:2)
Well then, since humans can't do anything to affect the climate, they can't do anything [1]to create hurricanes [wired.com].
You can't have it both ways.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/hurricane-milton-geoengineer-lasers-fema-conspiracy-theories-debunk/