Comment by cogman10
1 day ago
> Remember that 1.5 degrees Celsius is a nearly end-of-the-world scenario
No, it's not end of the world. 3C is where things start getting bad. 1.5C is the target for the 2015 Paris climate agreement to try and avoid hitting 2C.
We are looking at more severe droughts, flash floods, and rising oceans where we are at, but not the worst of it like mass 40C wet bulb heat domes which wipe out all life underneath them.
This is an incorrect way to frame the impacts of temperature increases. 1.5, 2, 3C makes extreme events like the one you stated significantly more likely in a probabilistic sense. The ability of adapt is in part driven by frequency of extreme events as much as it is adaptability to specific thresholds. We are already experiencing deadly heat bulb events at current warming levels, the impacted areas and frequency of these events will strictly increase.
I agree, but what we aren't currently really seeing (at least I've not seen it) is a heat dome killing off a herd of cattle or a crop.
That's the sort of event that becomes much more likely if not inevitable as the temperatures increase.
Heat domes are already killing off cattle and reducing crop yields, even in western countries? There was significant cattle die off in the US during 2022/2023. Europe just experienced 10,000 excess deaths due to heat impacts and a reduced grain yield by almost 8-10%. There have not been correlated heat dome events over multiple regional bread baskets (yet) but those are going to get increasingly more probable. We have a lot of adaptability on the food side though as reducing meat consumption is an easy behavioral change. Climate change impacts is one reason why beef is currently so expensive in the US.
Weren't there widespread crop failures in 2026 already?
Bad? Things are already fucking bad.
[flagged]
Well that's a relief, glad I am a turtle then and so are most of my friends, and that our whole world economy and food system runs on turtles. So we should be fine.
You are right, it is an exaggeration.
I should have said "land life" as the ocean temperature doesn't shift that much with the above ocean temps.
And I'm sure there's some random bacteria and fungus that can survive and thrive at 40C web bulb.
What doesn't tend to do so well is the likes of humans, birds, cattle, horses, mice, rats, insects, many crops, native animal life that didn't evolve to handle high heat temperatures.
The last time earth will have been as hot as the 3C temperature was prehistorically.
I wonder if "but the turtles survived and I was right!" is the best way to look at it if humanity is close to extinction in the next century or so.
…and from here, it’s turtles all the way down.
Yes for temperature but what about CO2 ppm?
Temperature will kill most things before CO2 does. Current CO2 levels are making humans slightly stupider, but politics is doing that a lot more.
So ... It's turtles all the way down?
always has been