Climate scientists, in an effort to stave off despair, aren’t telling the truth about our warming planet. In reality, we're incredibly close to the point of no return: when rising seas drown island nations and almost all coral reefs die. I’m here to tell climate scientists — and my fellow climate journalists — to knock it off, writes Barbara Moran.
Close?
Bro look at the annual temperature curves. We broke it. Its done. We probably needed a global blanket ban on fossil fuels 35 years ago. The warming we’re experiencing isn’t even from this years emissions. Its a 25–30 and we’ve only continued to increase emissions over that time frame.
Its over kids.
I’m pushing 50 and I tend to think that there’s maybe one or two generations left to live before society collapses due to this shit. The copium being taken by some people on where we’re at is pretty nuts, not to mention the outlandish solutions people are proposing like putting reflective particles into the atmosphere to ‘dim the sun’, rather than just do the things scientists have been shouting for decades. I’ve done my part (which amounts to measurably nothing). But as you said, it’s over kids. We’re at the part of a roller coaster ride where the first couple cars have started down that hill and there’s no way to stop the acceleration of everything else, only unlike the roller coaster, the bottom is the end of the ride.
I’m in the 1-2 decades camp. Maybe less. I think you’ll (and myself) will be plenty young to enjoy some of the terribleness.
It took a boat going a bit sideways in a ditch to grind the global economy to a practical halt. Climate change makes something like the pandemic look like a feather duster. The whole system is ridiculously fragile.
Very true. I mean, people think rising sea levels just means losing beach front property, and they ignore the cataclysmic chain reaction of mass fish die off, acidification, and severe weather. Not to mention the increasing temperatures are allowing for pathogens - in particularly fungi to adapt to higher average temperatures, which means humans (and other mammals) won’t be able to use fevers to fight them off. We’ll continue to see more novel diseases, pandemics, etc. It’s for the best anyway. The sooner the earth can get rid of us, the sooner it can return to equilibrium.
I am with you. The collapse of atmospheric and oceanic weather systems is imminent and once food production plummets I expect things to get dark quick. It didn’t take much for the grocery store shelves to empty up in 2020.