| It'll certainly get far worse. The rapidity of the increase has fundamentally destabilized the global climate The Arctic was 65 degrees above average this summer with days reaching over 100. The temperature difference between the latitudes that governed the jet streams and global sea circulation has been fundamentally disrupted That's why you're getting muggy 80 degree nights in California now. Meanwhile that cooling system has wobbled lopsided like a melting hat bringing arctic cold weather and crop failure to a bunch of northern latitudes. In the mid-latitudes, the tropical glaciers in places like the Himalayas that are the water supply for over a billion people are in an accelerating decline causing unprecedented flooding, soil erosion and soon, starvation. Meanwhile ocean acidification is making the bottom of the food chain unable to survive and thus causes a cascading effect leading to a global ocean dieoff. At the same time, the ice sheets are breaking up so rapidly that glaciologists can't even keep up with it and at least one fell to his death this year because things are happening to quickly to survey. And then there's that insect apocalypse. All the while humans are making bold proclamations and patting themselves on the back while they point fingers at the "other countries" as if it's a game. Global feedbacks due to the emissions have chains of effects that can be mapped out over decades. If we magically stopped all emission right now, there's still years of warming and disaster baked in until any kind of stability (reversal in our lifetime is frankly out of the question) We're not doing that though. Instead, pipelines slated to last 40 years are being constructed as I type this. Exploratory missions for drilling that wouldn't even start until years from now are still being done. More coal power plants were funded and greenlit just last month. They won't even start until years from now. We're still committing ourselves to an oil future despite all of this. Over half the greenhouse gases were emitted After we started the annual global climate summits. It has done effectively nothing. So yes, things will be getting worse. These are the good days. Look up "alien resurrection deleted ending"... Except for the space crafts, I don't think the depiction is inaccurate unless we take major life altering action immediately. The window to start an "ambitious" 15-year transition closed somewhere around 1990. The world will eventually recover. The carbon dioxide emitted from the car that just rolled down the street, 90% of it will finally be gone in 100,000 years. The coral reef will recover in 2,000,000 years from the ocean acidification since 1950. We'll get to a level of biodiversity equal to 1930 by about 10,000,000AD. Even the amount of fossil fuels we burned in the past 200 years will eventually come back in 400,000,000 years --- but that's only if we somehow stop today. We're not doing that. |
There is literally nothing we can do to stop what's going to happen over the next hundred years. Elimination of emissions and massive investment in CO2 capture over the next hundred years might make the next hundred less terrible?
So my philosophy is to try and enjoy what we have as much as I possibly can and vote and support what little change I can.
Sadly, as climate declines, I suspect there will be a negative feedback loop. Economies will decline and the capability & willpower to invest in the future will decline along with the funds needed to improve the world.