Climate Change
Feb. 24th, 2025 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithArctic study urges stronger climate action to prevent catastrophic warming
Remember when 2 degrees Celsius of global warming was the doomsday scenario? Well, we're now staring down the barrel of something much worse. From the fish on your plate to the weather outside your window, everything's about to change. A new study underscores the grave risks posed by insufficient national commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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The research underscores that current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) -- the promises made by nations under the Paris Agreement -- will not suffice to achieve the 2°C target, which is the threshold marking a known tipping point beyond which widespread and severe global impacts are expected. Without substantial increases in these commitments, a future characterized by extreme temperatures and profound ecological disruptions appears unavoidable. This also suggests that scientific and policy efforts to understand the future risks of climate change need to now consider what a +3 or +4 degree world means.
People aren't really trying to meet the Paris agreement. So now things are rapidly getting worse. >_<
Remember when 2 degrees Celsius of global warming was the doomsday scenario? Well, we're now staring down the barrel of something much worse. From the fish on your plate to the weather outside your window, everything's about to change. A new study underscores the grave risks posed by insufficient national commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
[---8<---]
The research underscores that current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) -- the promises made by nations under the Paris Agreement -- will not suffice to achieve the 2°C target, which is the threshold marking a known tipping point beyond which widespread and severe global impacts are expected. Without substantial increases in these commitments, a future characterized by extreme temperatures and profound ecological disruptions appears unavoidable. This also suggests that scientific and policy efforts to understand the future risks of climate change need to now consider what a +3 or +4 degree world means.
People aren't really trying to meet the Paris agreement. So now things are rapidly getting worse. >_<
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-25 05:33 am (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2025-02-25 06:29 am (UTC)Ah, sounds like more of the permafrost is melting than has been reported. :/
>>After 27 years in newsrooms, I thought I was hardened to ugly news, I worked in Hobart when the Port Arthur Massacre happened. The arctic flip story cost me some serious sleep last night.<<
I do worry about the Arctic, not just its carbon dynamics, but the sea ice. The more navigable the Northwest Passage gets, the worse the political risk gets because people will fight over it. Again.
My main worry is the thermohaline cycle though. It's already wobbling, so I don't think it's going to last a great deal longer, which is a real disaster. Also, the worse the Arctic situation gets, the more it feeds into that, because melting ice is what's most likely to break it.
Ironically, the March 1 Poetry Fishbowl will be on "Yes Actually It IS That Bad" so feel free to prompt for the Arctic or other climate change issues then.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-25 11:47 pm (UTC):-/
Well ...
Date: 2025-02-26 01:28 am (UTC)The current selection of megafauna, if you can even call it that, is mostly or entirely fucked, depending how bad things get. That we are losing some of the small generalists is a very bad sign of the current mass extinction. But some creatures will survive. A few, like coyotes and jellyfish, are even thriving under current circumstances.
Modern civilization is likely fucked as it is fragile. Humans may well be fucked due to pushing the climate outside the envelope they are adapted for. As an invasive species, they are tough and clever, but they breed very slowly and they are over the 50-pound threshold for warm-blooded land animals that tends to cap survival in mass extinctions. They can eat a huge range of foods, but they just take too much food to keep going in severe scarcity.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-02-27 06:03 pm (UTC):-/
Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-02-27 07:46 pm (UTC)It is a sad time. People are choosing to destroy a lot.
We have about a 75% drop in insects, a third less birds, and plummeting populations of amphibians. The web of life is unraveling.
>> I feel like we could be making more of a difference <<
As a species, this is true; people just don't want to do it. As individuals, however, we are free to make many of our own choices. Most are free to reduce or eliminate eating meat, to grow and/or eat climate-resilient or Earth-friendly foods, plant native instead of exotic landscaping, move a bug outside instead of squashing it in the house, donate to nature charities instead of human ones, etc. And if ore individuals made more Earth-friendly choices, that would add up quickly.
Case in point: we joined Grand Prairie Friends, hmm, between 20-30 years ago, when it had just a few small reserves. Now our biggest is over 1000 acres of upland forest, riverbottom, and adjacent grasslands. And there are bald eagles in central Illinois again; I suspect the refuge contributes to that. I've personally seen bobcat tracks there. Decades of nature nerds sticking together has made a difference.
>> but at the same time I'm almost worried it won't make much of a difference because this has been going on too long now :-/
It helps if you understand how an ecosystem works, what some of the important parts are. Take ants. Most people ignore them, but they are enormously important. If you have so much as a patio, you can help ants survive. It also helps if you know how a mass extinction tends to work, killing off species that are large, specialized, and/or hyperlocal. Flip that around and what tends to survive are small, widespread generalists. So you can focus on helping them. Another excellent approach is to support keystone species who have a huge impact on the ecosystem -- wolves, beavers, oak trees, goldenrod, etc.
When it comes to saving the world, most of the time you won't know that you've done it. But you can know the kinds of things that do it, and do those things. Every mass extinction is a hurricane of butterflies flapping their wings: the tiniest change can make the difference between a species surviving or not surviving. If you need more concrete evidence of making a difference, however, look for starfish opportunities where you can say, "I made a difference for THAT one."
Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-03-01 11:44 pm (UTC)Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-03-02 10:52 am (UTC)Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-03-03 12:53 pm (UTC)