[jellicle]

If they did exist, we would take their effects as baseline assumptions and just ratchet down our opinion about the crisis, if that makes sense. To the extent there are buffers, we just assume their effects, and we'll be unpleasantly surprised when the buffers run out.

Examples: in the 70s we had a great deal of particulate smog, which effectively reduced some of the radiation hitting the Earth and camouflaged the effects of global warming. But instead of saying "hey, global warming must be a big problem since we're noticing X amount of warming EVEN WITH PARTICULATE SMOG", it just let us ignore global warming for longer.

Example: the deep oceans have been an effective heat sink and some amount of the global heat has gone into them. Again, instead of saying "global warming must be a big problem since we're noticing X amount of land warming EVEN THOUGH THERE'S A GIANT HEAT SINK", it just let us ignore global warming for longer.

So, to the extent that there are any buffers, we'll just build them into our baseline of "how bad the problem is", and therefore ALL of our surprises and feedback effects will be seen to be negative.