5 ms·
As far as I understand, there is not any boundary about climate change. +1.9 will be worse than +1.8 but better than 2.0 The more we wait, the harder the conse
by pjerem 3y ago
As far as I understand, there is not any boundary about climate change. +1.9 will be worse than +1.8 but better than 2.0
The more we wait, the harder the consequences but, for better or worse, there will never be a threshold where we will be in position to abandon the fight.
Also the good news seems to be that there is in fact very few inertia in the climate system : every increase in temperature is forever but we will always have the choice between keeping the current situation (by acting drastically) or getting an even worse outcome (by doing nothing).
- nostrademons 3y agoMy understanding is that that's technically true, but not what they mean here. The idea behind 1.5C is that that's (supposedly, and probably given what we've observed in 2022-2023) the point at which natural feedback loops kick in and climate change becomes non-linear. So for example, 1.3C is better than 1.4C is better than 1.5C. But if you cross 1.5C, you might get decreased albedo from glaciers melting, or increased methane emissions for permafrost. The result might be that you can't actually have a state with 1.8C in warming, because once you cross 1.5 you trigger natural feedback loops which bake in an extra 1C of warming. Total climate change jumps straight from 1.5C to 2.5C, because once you cross 1.5C it's not just us warming the planet anymore. It's still better to have 1.8C of emissions than 1.9C than 2.0, but the difference in actual temperatures might be 4.8C vs 4.9C vs 5.0, while if we could've just stayed under 1.5C we could've stayed under 1.5.