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Is it just my memory playing tricks, or did we not use to talk about crossing the 1C threshold? I guess now that that’s not a possibility anymore, we’re moving

Is it just my memory playing tricks, or did we not use to talk about crossing the 1C threshold? I guess now that that’s not a possibility anymore, we’re moving to the next, hoping to get some sort of action out of politicians. I strongly suspect we’re going to cross the 2C threshold in our lifetimes. The willpower to change things isn’t there, and the effects are too far removed from our decisions. Even the floods and droughts are easy to ignore, telling yourself “it’s not happening here, just some random far away place”. But I also think that we’ll slowly start reducing our emissions anyway, as electric cars and green energy keep spreading. So we will eventually reach an equilibrium. I just don’t think that that’ll be before the 2C threshold.

mistrial9 4y ago
How about the hot-fresh super charged activist group called (edit) "Climate 350" .. stop those carbon density numbers from climbing before it is TOO LATE less than two years after it was formed the PPM went past 360, then not long after went past 400 PPM iir.. how can those people feel emotionally after that?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Are you thinking of https://350.org/about/#history https://350.org/about/#history. As far as I can tell, it was already past their "safe" target when formed, they were just setting a target to aim for in the long term.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    > it was already past their "safe" target when formed no, look how bad it is .. the target was close and ahead of them when it founded. Now from media sources and casual inspection, a person cannot even tell that the atmospheric concentration was less than 350 at that time. Awful.
Symmetry 4y ago
Well, .5 C degree increments in average temperature are big enough to be qualitatively different, so that's why we use them. Hitting 1.5 C includes some things things like "All the ice in the arctic melts in the summer which really sucks for local wildlife" but nothing with huge negative effects on humans. 2.0 C includes "Sea level rise wipes some small island nations off the map", though, which made it of particular concern to said island nations during negotiations. Probably, the climate is a complex system and we've never had a ringside view of CO2 levels rising this rapidly so there's really a large degree of both upside and downside uncertainty in all of this. Probably hitting 2C just means a few refugee crises and no disasters that'll effect most of humanity but we can't be sure.

mistrial9 4y ago

How about the hot-fresh super charged activist group called (edit) "Climate 350" .. stop those carbon density numbers from climbing before it is TOO LATE less than two years after it was formed the PPM went past 360, then not long after went past 400 PPM iir.. how can those people feel emotionally after that?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Are you thinking of https://350.org/about/#history https://350.org/about/#history. As far as I can tell, it was already past their "safe" target when formed, they were just setting a target to aim for in the long term.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > it was already past their "safe" target when formed no, look how bad it is .. the target was close and ahead of them when it founded. Now from media sources and casual inspection, a person cannot even tell that the atmospheric concentration was less than 350 at that time. Awful.

Symmetry 4y ago

Well, .5 C degree increments in average temperature are big enough to be qualitatively different, so that's why we use them. Hitting 1.5 C includes some things things like "All the ice in the arctic melts in the summer which really sucks for local wildlife" but nothing with huge negative effects on humans. 2.0 C includes "Sea level rise wipes some small island nations off the map", though, which made it of particular concern to said island nations during negotiations. Probably, the climate is a complex system and we've never had a ringside view of CO2 levels rising this rapidly so there's really a large degree of both upside and downside uncertainty in all of this. Probably hitting 2C just means a few refugee crises and no disasters that'll effect most of humanity but we can't be sure.