Monday, May 13, 2019

Climate-deniers like to call people like me who agree with the global consensus of scientists "alarmists." You're fucking right I'm an alarmist. This is our planet at stake.

Climate change and the degradation of the natural world are going to be humanity's existential crisis

If we stopped all emissions today, the planet would warm for at LEAST a century, and very likely closer to scales of millenia. CO2 lasts for hundreds of years in the atmosphere, and then only goes into other forms of the carbon cycle slowly over thousands of years (or never).

http://theconversation.com/if-we-stopped-emitting-greenhouse-gases-right-now-would-we-stop-climate-change-78882

Firstly, there is a delay in air temperature increase. This means that the carbon already emitted will take 40 years to reach its full potential. This is largely due to the slow process of Earth's oceans warming. In many ways, we're feeling the emissions of the 80's right now.

https://skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html

There are feedback loops. As the planet warms, the oceans cannot absorb as much CO2. Methane, which works on scales of hundreds of years instead of thousands(but is much more effective at heating), will be released more and more on large swaths of land as time goes on.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/

Other feedback loops include deforestation and albedo effects, melting ice caps, and increasing water vapor which will only amplify the damage that has already been done.

https://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/more-resources-on-climate-change/climate-change-lines-of-evidence-booklet/evidence-impacts-and-choices-figure-gallery/figure-9/
https://phys.org/news/2014-07-vapor-global-amplifier.html

Think about that: If we did the impossible and switched entirely to 100%, zero-emission, fictional renewables today and provided zero carbon footprint... We'd still be in dire conditions for generations to come.

From a wildlife standpoint - even more grim news. Every animal on the planet is dropping. Recent studies estimate 58% of all wildlife has died since 1970. The U.N. has warned 1 million species are at risk of extinction. We are in an extinction event that is ten to one-hundred times the rate of any other extinction on Earth, save the giant impact event. It seems like hyperbole, but it isn't. We are currently undergoing (at least) the second-fastest extinction in the planet's history.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes-un-biodiversity-report-warns-one-million-species-at-risk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

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