Does this mean we’re all going to die? Like humanity will be gone without a trace? If so, how soon?
No; at least, that’s unlikely. But parts of the world that are currently habitable will be made inhabitable, and biodiversity will continue to fall. We’ll likely see more extreme weather events, increased migration from areas that are too hot or underwater, and issues with global food supply. Coral reefs may completely disappear.
However, progress is being made, and while it’s not as quick as we’d like, carbon emissions for modern economies like the US and EU are on a downward curve. In 2021 EU’s carbon emissions were back to pre-1967 levels, while the US’s carbon emissions were back to pre-1979 levels (Source). So there’s cause for hope; the worst thing we can do is give up. Everything we do now lessens the scale of the problem in future.
Does this mean we’re all going to die?
No; at least, that’s unlikely.
Well that “unlikely” there merits some debate I would say. Yes there is reason for cautious optimism, but there is also the very real possibility of climate change becoming an extinction level event for humanity, specifically by a cascade of tipping points through several globally relevant climate systems being triggered. The damages that will be caused just by optimistic projections of warming are not well understood either:
Even without considering worst-case climate responses, the current trajectory puts the world on track for a temperature rise between 2.1 °C and 3.9 °C by 2100 (11). If all 2030 nationally determined contributions are fully implemented, warming of 2.4 °C (1.9 °C to 3.0 °C) is expected by 2100. Meeting all long-term pledges and targets could reduce this to 2.1 °C (1.7 °C to 2.6 °C) (12). Even these optimistic assumptions lead to dangerous Earth system trajectories. Temperatures of more than 2 °C above preindustrial values have not been sustained on Earth’s surface since before the Pleistocene Epoch (or more than 2.6 million years ago) (13).
Even if anthropogenic GHG emissions start to decline soon, this does not rule out high future GHG concentrations or extreme climate change, particularly beyond 2100. There are feedbacks in the carbon cycle and potential tipping points that could generate high GHG concentrations (14) that are often missing from models. […]
There are even more uncertain feedbacks, which, in a very worst case, might amplify to an irreversible transition into a “Hothouse Earth” state (21) (although there may be negative feedbacks that help buffer the Earth system). In particular, poorly understood cloud feedbacks might trigger sudden and irreversible global warming (22). Such effects remain underexplored and largely speculative “unknown unknowns” that are still being discovered.
So is the extinction of humanity through climate change certain? No. But is it possible? Yes, and the likelihood is very poorly understood.
Another aspect that is often overlooked in this debate is that the beginning of the holocene mass extinction is very much pre-historic, insofar as the spread of homo sapiens over the globe closely matches to the extinction of mega-fauna wherever we appeared, unsettling ecosystems millions of years old, and reducing biodiversity further and further. Other ecosystems will only be able to compensate for so long before they go extinct, and so on, and the explosion of complexity that usually follows after a mass extinction happens on timescales longer than humanities existence. If or when this cascades to the top of the food chain is anybodies guess.
If a system is poorly understood, then by definition it cannot be factored into predictions. When we say something is “unlikely” we mean “it is unlikely based on what we understand”. I don’t think it’s very useful to ask, “Well, is it unlikely based on what we don’t understand?”, because that’s not a question that can be answered.
The possibility of a tipping point cascade is generally without dispute as far as I know. It is likely based on what we do understand, however predicting how likely exactly, the severity of consequences, and the interaction with positive and negative feedback loops from other climate systems is not well understood.
The consensus seems to be that it’s virtually certain with a warming of 4-5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels.
Ignoring an existential risk like that because one lacks understanding doesn’t seem wise.
Is a catastrophic, world-ending feedback loop likely based on what we understand? The IPCC reports paint a grim future, but I don’t believe any has suggested that it’s likely the entire Earth will be rendered completely uninhabitable to human life.
There’s no way the climate crisis entirely wipes out humanity. However, we could be looking at a Mad Max style future.
What do you mean by no way? People cant live underground forever, and itll get worse for more generations than is sustainable.
Civilization couldn’t exist as it does today, but humans are a resilient species. We will find a way to continue living, pretty much as long as life remains on this planet. Be that underground, at the poles, in bunkers, in a dystopian desert wasteland, humanity will persist.
The 1% truly think they are going to sit it out underground in their billion dollar bolt-holes/bunkers. It’s like thinking you’ll survive the tsunami by standing on a chair.
They will probably mostly survive. But then they’ll realise that all productive and smart people are dead and their money is worthless in the new world.
all their wealth is basically dependent and built on the labour of all society, they’re not escaping this. They’ll have more privilege to suffer less relatively to the majority of the people on this planet, but they’re not escaping this
Meanwhile, in southern Poland, I think we had one of the coldest springs lately, and only several really hot days of summer so far.
Right now we have barely 22 - 23C here. I’m not complaining in general, but I wouldn’t mind temperatures ~5 degrees higher and more sun.
There are ways to experience 5 degrees hotter without destroying the planet
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17c/62f is on the low side of comfortable though
Remember that since this is a planet-wide average, it includes places like the North Pole and Antarctica. Or just look at the graphs — it’s a pretty visual demonstration of how extremely abnormal recent temperature changes are.
yes the graphics are very shocking, to be sure - why is it only limited to 44 years though? do records not extend back further than that? I seem to remember reading somewhere that there’s climate records from as early as the 1880s but maybe that was in England only.
though, even 44 years, while easily half of a human’s lifetime, it’s just a tiny blip on a geologic time scale.
Air temperature graph starts from 1940, that’s 83 years. Enough to gauge trends, since industrialization and copious CO2 emissions in particular are a pretty new thing.
But here’s some data starting from the year 0, in case you’re interested.
ah, some actual data, thanks! still, it looks like an average variance of 1 degree celsius over 2000+ years.
let’s be honest though - nothing is going to change in the next ~50 years or so, not enough to stop the slight raise in temperature. no one is willing to go back to living like medieval peasants prior to the industrial revolution. no one politician is going to enact any laws that will return society to that state. no coalition or governmental body is going to do it either. not in America, not in China, not in India, not in Europe.
we would need most of northern africa and all of central australia covered by solar panels, wind turbines everywhere, and probably actual fusion reactors generating power in order to markably decrease global temperatures.
Let’s be honest though, actually solving this problem is pretty much unachievable given the lack of motivation and interest on the part of the populace, so why bother taking any action to mitigate the problem at all?
I’m really only interested in punchy 3 word concepts like “stop abortion now” or “fix gay people”.
The whole idea of investing some effort now so that the world is better off to some unknown extent later is pretty much Socialism. We won the cold war.
The populace isn’t who creates most of the greenhouse gasses. Try again.
It’s the average for the entire earth, not the temperature in any one area.
ok, but only a very small percentage of the global population gets to visit the entire earth on a yearly basis - I mostly only care about where I live.
Takes like this are why we don’t deserve to survive as a species
lol there’s far too many people alive now for any type of cataclysm to kill everyone
It’s acutely disappointing to see people care so little about others & the world in general.
But I don’t want to waste energy being mean to people on the internet. I hope you have a change of heart.
Obvious troll is obvious.
A global average of 17c doesn’t even mean it’s necessarily 17c anywhere in the world. That’s not how averages work. It could be 0c in half the world, and 34c in half the world, and the global average would be 17c (and yet it would be 17c nowhere).
The point of global averages is to identify trends, which are not isolated to a particular region.
This is the second time in a week someone has used “tumble” to mean “occur rapidly” instead of “fall”. Is this a new colloquialism or had"tumble" always had a second definition as “occur rapidly”?
If a condition is worsening (a “fall”) “tumble” applies just fine. Indeed, “tumble” is just a way to say “falling rapidly” in this context.
The reason “tumble” (and its notion of “fall”) is applicable is because the situation is worsening. If it was rapidly improving, nobody would say “tumble”; it’s not simply that it is occurring rapidly.
In this case, one could assume tumbling is related to the temperature and not the situation, leading to an observation that the situation is improving. It is a poor choice of words for this headline.
No, as I realized and clarified in a comment of mine down this thread a bit,
Climate records tumble,
Here, “climate records” is the object of the verb “tumble”. That is, the thing that is “tumbling” are “climate records”.
I agree it’s a poor choice of wording for a headline but it is clear what is doing the tumbling on subsequent reads.
Taking a tumble referring to something that is worsening is another common definition that I’ve read countless times in reference to something problematically decreasing, I’ve never heard or read “tumble” used until very recently to describe a situation in which something is rising. Have you?
“falling rapidly” would make perfect sense in many other situations. “Food storage tumbles, democracy tumbles, winter temperatures tumble”, etc. But nothing is falling, all of the temperature records are rising.
Summer temperatures are so high they tumble?
This is a genuine grammatical question. I’m not trying to detract from your answer or the article itself.
I’m just very confused by this usage of the word “tumble” that I’ve seen at least twice now to refer to rising temperatures.
But nothing is falling, all of the temperature records are rising.
I see what you’re saying. I had taken the use to mean the situation is tumbling, not the temperatures. But upon a closer reading (of the title specifically) it seems a more reasonable interpretation of the word tumble is:
Climate records tumble,
The object of the verb ‘tumble’ is “climate records”. That is, the climate records are tumbling. A tumbling record is one which has fallen over and been surpassed. So what they’re saying by using the word “tumble” is: previous climate records have fallen over and been surpassed.
I do agree it’s a weird word choice, but I don’t think it’s wrong or even playing on a potential uncommon secondary definition. It’s not saying temperatures have tumbled, but rather records have tumbled.
