Researchers from institutions including the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a new method for statistically analyzing climate models that projects future conditions with more fidelity.
Remember: all published scientific reports are exceptionally conservative by design.
As we have seen time and time again, what is projected to happen invariably impacts much worse than predicted, or occurs much sooner than predicted. And frequently both at the same time.
Every few years, the prior “worst case scenarios” get re-applied as our “best-case scenarios” moving forward. As in, the evidence that rolls in keeps exceeding our most pessimistic prior predictions for that evidence.
We are accelerating past +1.5℃ of warming, which is generated from 1990s CO2 levels (warming trails CO2 by about two decades). This means that +2℃ is pretty much baked into the pie, even if all Petro sources planet-wide get shut down tomorrow and we go total cold turkey.
Under “business as usual” projections - which we have not deviated from one single iota - we are looking at +5℃ warming at absolute minimum.
What does a +5℃ world look like? It’s one where the agriculture to feed more than 1-2 billion on a totally vegan diet is impossible due to chaotic weather, and persistently lethal wet bulb temperatures make almost a third of the planet - where 4.2 billion people currently live - impossible for permanent habitation even with modern first-world consumer and commercial AC.
And guess what? Just like a hurled cinder block, climate change has inertia. prior warming events have always corrected themselves because they took hundreds of centuries to play out, allowing entire ecosystems to quite literally migrate and adapt. But we are seeing 100,000 years of climate change within a single century. This can impart an inertial vector that could easily bring temperatures into a Venus Scenario range with or even without our continued presence. At that point, it’s bye-bye all life, and not just us.
Those climate scientists that work with population demographers and climate-aware economists are already making some very conservative predictions of a 40% collapse of the human race by 2050 due to worldwide famines and cascading infrastructure collapses, and an 80-95% collapse of the population by 2070. Their middle of the road projections are much, much worse.
Suffice it to say, we have a non-trivial probability of going extinct this century. My apologies to anyone younger than 40. The latter half of your life is gonna suck donkey’s balls something bad.
Remember: all published scientific reports are exceptionally conservative by design.
As we have seen time and time again, what is projected to happen invariably impacts much worse than predicted, or occurs much sooner than predicted. And frequently both at the same time.
Every few years, the prior “worst case scenarios” get re-applied as our “best-case scenarios” moving forward. As in, the evidence that rolls in keeps exceeding our most pessimistic prior predictions for that evidence.
We are accelerating past +1.5℃ of warming, which is generated from 1990s CO2 levels (warming trails CO2 by about two decades). This means that +2℃ is pretty much baked into the pie, even if all Petro sources planet-wide get shut down tomorrow and we go total cold turkey.
Under “business as usual” projections - which we have not deviated from one single iota - we are looking at +5℃ warming at absolute minimum.
What does a +5℃ world look like? It’s one where the agriculture to feed more than 1-2 billion on a totally vegan diet is impossible due to chaotic weather, and persistently lethal wet bulb temperatures make almost a third of the planet - where 4.2 billion people currently live - impossible for permanent habitation even with modern first-world consumer and commercial AC.
And guess what? Just like a hurled cinder block, climate change has inertia. prior warming events have always corrected themselves because they took hundreds of centuries to play out, allowing entire ecosystems to quite literally migrate and adapt. But we are seeing 100,000 years of climate change within a single century. This can impart an inertial vector that could easily bring temperatures into a Venus Scenario range with or even without our continued presence. At that point, it’s bye-bye all life, and not just us.
Those climate scientists that work with population demographers and climate-aware economists are already making some very conservative predictions of a 40% collapse of the human race by 2050 due to worldwide famines and cascading infrastructure collapses, and an 80-95% collapse of the population by 2070. Their middle of the road projections are much, much worse.
Suffice it to say, we have a non-trivial probability of going extinct this century. My apologies to anyone younger than 40. The latter half of your life is gonna suck donkey’s balls something bad.