this is usually an interesting discussion to have, and there are a lot of interesting questions to ask in this field–so let’s ask and talk about a few. feel free to answer as many as you want, or ask your own of people in the comments. here are two groups of three that i think are good to start:
- Do you suffer from anxiety about climate change and its effects?
- Have you ever made significant individual lifestyle choices because of climate change?
- Have you ever thought of leaving where you live because of potential future climactic effects? Have you actually moved already because of them?
- Do you think the world can limit global warming to 1.5C or 2C? Where do you think we’ll “level off” in terms of warming–especially if you don’t think we’ll meet either of those goals?
- What do you think of proposed technologies like carbon capture? Do you think they’re useful, or a technocratic waste of time? Can they be viably used at large scale on any reasonable timeframe?
- Do you support something like climate reparations either now or in the future? Do you think such a thing is even viable?
There is no single ‘extinction point’ other than becoming self-sustaining.
We will survive 3C alive and (sort of) well, just all of humanity affected, unless it triggers something like the clathrate gun - that one seems to have been mostly ruled out recently, fortunately, but there are other positive feedback loops (e.g. water vapor is a major greenhouse gas).
8C would be a major extinction event, but at that point what’s left of humanity would be fully mobilized mitigating the problem (at that point you probably couldn’t avoid geoengineering).
I don’t like the ‘temperature threshold’, ‘time limit’, etc. rhetoric - it comes mostly from politicians and it leads to ‘we can’t do anything anyway’ kind of thinking. When we’ve gone past 2C (which I’m almost certain we will), ‘we’re all going to die’ is not going to help - the problem is still there and still needs to be solved.
Note - current-ish projections aren’t that bad: but 2C is the very optimistic scenario and I’m not sure the ongoing industrial rise of India and eventually Nigeria (and other large developing countries) is well estimated there.
i’ve generally been a fan of Climate Action Tracker’s work in this regard; at least for the people in my circle, i think it very helpfully illustrates the range of most likely outcomes. right now its estimate is anywhere from 2.2C to 3.4C of warming, assuming we stick to established policies, with a best guess of 2.7C. (that sounds about right to me, tbh, absent a feedback loop) it also illustrates the impact of committing to better policies
Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that source - though this seems - incomplete (I am aware this is probably outside of their control)
EDIT: I’m being intentionally pessimistic because I assume a lot of industrial growth - still powered by coal (at least one China’s worth) and I basically expect every target to be not met (which so far has mostly been the case).