77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming—And They're Horrified

There is no ceiling. It might go up 6 or 7C. The people who have the power to change things do not give a shit if the rest of us die. They don't care, and they won't change anything. That's the world we live in.

The Global South? Those people aren't going to lay down and die. They're gonna climb North, as they should. And then we're gonna have to decide whether to shoot people approaching the borders or accept a huge population influx. Given our political reality, I think there's a good chance we try the first option at first.

"I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years," Gretta Pecl of the University of Tasmania told The Guardian. "[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future."

But, reason to keep fighting:

Others found hope in the climate activism and awareness of younger generations, and in the finding that each extra tenth of a degree of warming avoided protects 140 million people from extreme temperatures.

People will be fleeing famine, uninhabitable areas, rising sea levels and wars. The areas that can support life will grow smaller, more valuable and crowded.

I have a postmortem science degree, but hobby in studying paleontology/pre-history. It took a rise of only 10°C and excess pollution to wipe out over 83% of all life on the planet between the Permian and Triassic eras. Entire chains of life just wiped out. Carbon dating, sediment layer study, fossil records, they all show how screwed me are if we keep this up. The earth will survive, it always does, but it took 30 million years before life recovered.

Humans need to learn from the past, see the consequences of what most would think is a small change, but the ones in power don't seem to give a shit.

The used the wrong language even though they need to because they need to be accurate.

"Global South" and "by 2100"

Billionaires: oh so not in my yard and not in my lifetime? Great! Drill baby drill!

Bit of a misdirect in the headline. This was not primarily a scientific projection. This was a political reckoning by scientists who had recently suffered the bureaucratic pain of serving on the IPCC, and voluntarily responded to a survey.

As one climate scientist put it:

"As many of the scientists pointed out, the uncertainty in future temperature change is not a physical science question: It is a question of the decisions people choose to make," Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote on social media. "We are not experts in that; And we have little reason to feel positive about those, since we have been warning of the risks for decades."

Change never comes from politicians first, but these are people who are zoomed in on whether politicians are changing their minds.

They're not going to change their minds slowly over time. It's gonna be nothing at all until the electorate is too loud to ignore, and then suddenly 100% of officials will claim they've "always condemned fossil fuels", "from day one", and "in the strongest terms possible".

We've seen time and again that policy changes tend to bubble just below the surface for long time and then suddenly emerge with multiple changes happening in quick succession.

I was of voting age when just saying the word "civil union" in the context of gay rights was political suicide, and I'm not that old. Things can change quickly. Keep your hope alive and keep agitating. We can do this.

Fun fact: a lot of mining companies have been incorporating climate change projections into their closure plans for years now, using RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios. Hey, we are using a thermal cover to make sure this gargantuan pile of mine waste rock doesn't cause metal leaching/acid rock drainage issues later on: we'd better over-engineer it to take on higher-than expected warming, given that we'll be liable for it for the next 100+ years

we need some people, either hacking or inside job, setting the temperature in all conference rooms used by any politicians worldwide 2.5 degrees C higher than normal.

We're close to blowing past 1.5c

I think we'll blow past 2.5c

I think we'll be looking back, waving longingly to the incredible hulk ending song, to 5c

Because the world doesnt exist to serve the 8 billion humans. It exists to serve a few thousand rich and business owners. . which means as long as there is profit to be had, the killing of the planet and the population will continue not only at pace, but ever accelerating

Seems low.

There was a powercut this week in a large part of Mexico (I know because of family from there). They're getting rarer now as Mexico has really tried to get its grid uptogether. The downside of countries like this having more stable grids is more people and business installing aircon systems, which just means more energy used, more emissions.

The funny thing is there are ways to passively cool areas. You can literally install shading over windows and walls that face the main sun. Last year in the UK we had a few days where it was over 35C. Nobody here has aircon. So that heat is a shock to us. But I managed to cover the outside of open windows with reflective bubble wrap insulation cut into sheets.

I also installed a small solar system on our shed to run a fridge freezer out there. The funny thing is the half inch stand-offs actively created significant shading and the inside of the shed really cooled down to where we could sit in there and chill out or do tasks without melting. When I realised this I started looking online for research on solar power and shading and found agrovoltaics. Solar panels over farm crops such as fruit in hotter regions mean less watering needed... its more spread out than usual solar farms as it has to let the sun in a bit more to the food but its something that needs to be done more.

I also read of people ignoring their energy policy for their home electric and installing grid-tie solar. They use sheds, stands in their garden, conservatory roofing etc, and usually just a few hundred watts of solar. Typically homes have a fuse rating of 30-50 amps. One 300w solar panel grid tied is not going to be anywhere near that, but will mean up to 300w of clean energy. Energy companies should just allow these systems, even provide them if its a problem or worry to them. You can buy this stuff off amazon for a few hundred quid.

I'm only horrified for all the non-human life we're continuing to decimate on the way out.

Humans don't even seem to tolerate one another as we recklessly decimate this world with technologies we're just smart enough to develop and then immediately use with the same consideration for consequences as a monkey being handed a loaded shutgun, supposedly in humanity's name.

You want us to survive so we can keep a perpetual underclass subsisting in misery? So we can point fingers and call this group and that nation and this gender and that race the problem over and over and over? We are the problem, sorry. Long term, our self-destruction will be a W for the Earth. It will take millions of years, but our mother will eventually clean up our mess we left behind, and continue on like we never existed.

And from my perspective and decades of observation, that is for the best, including for our "everything will be great, once those humans I don't like are shown their place" in perpetuity species.

I've been living in coastal Southeastern Texas for 44 years. Im 46. In 2017 my county rezoned us as a flood zone because of the Havey flooding caused all the poor planning. An entire section of the state reclassified because "interstate highway" needed to be bigger.

They've been building the same 50ish miles for at least 27 years. All they've managed to do is ruin what was naturally occurring barriers and eroded our ability to maintain habitation. Or to expect a reasonable ability to protect against a disaster.

We're leaving 3.4 acres my grandfather bought in 1986, and gave my sister and I in 2007.

And that's just MY story. We had 375 neighbors in my area and at least 30% have moved on since 2017.

And that's just one coastal city, in one state, in one country, on one continent.

I don't have a lot of fantasy about humanities future.

While the developed world rests on its laurels having already developed key technologies that insulate from the worst effects of climate change, the Global South is attempting to push through rapid industrialization to achieve the same effects, bringing with it public infrastructure, electricity, robust food supply, reliable transportation, healthcare...

Meanwhile, the developed world looks at the Global South and says "ah, but why aren't you being greener about it? despicable! how dare you raise emissions?" while simultaneously restricting the free trade of essential green economy components like solar panels and batteries. The fact is, we don't actually care about climate change. Our political entities and economies are not structured to reward innovation in that space, so we simply end up pulling teeth to push through minor advances. Germany used to be a world leader in solar panels before it stagnated due to political pressure. The US used to be a world leader in developing nuclear before it stagnated due to political pressure. Japan used to be the world leader in batteries before it stagnated due to, well, Japan.

What we need is a Ministry for the Future without a killer heatwave killing millions.

Global warming is funny in that there is a threshold at which runaway reaction evaporates all water on the planet and changes it into inhabitable wasteland akin to other sad space rocks.

I don’t know what are the chances for that but I feel if it is anything above 0.1% then it is too fukin big of a chance.

I don’t want to risk that the scientists completely missed the mark in some computer simulation or missed some vital, crucial info and this is the actual scenario, those things are awfully hard to model and predict. Maybe the rate of change is so meaningful that it kicks in some bad stuff that would not happen if the rate of change was hundred thousands years. Who knows at this point. Climatologists are fumbling around in confusion

It's not like anyone's going to do anything about it.

Global South

Yeah, right. How is Europe's food security going nowadays?

There are models that predict as much as 4 C

Extreme weather will make a lot of places rethink their infrastructure and whether they should even move somewhere else.

Literally every projection made about today, 20 years ago, was false. I swear yall have zero pattern recognition.

Yes, I can finally die, hopefully the afterlife is a thing that... exists

I just hope im gonna be as excited to see this „civilization„ fall as I think I am. Humanity is just fucking disappointing.

And we'll do nothing about it because everybody is looking at corporations and their government but not at themselves to change.

I'm in no way a climate change denier and I too believe that the current path leads us there. However, isn't it normal for 80% of climate scientist actively researching this to think this way? Would they not spend their efforts somewhere else if they would think this isn't happening?

A survey among mathematicians showed that 80% consider that mathematics has the answer they're looking for.

We need to discuss hard data and proper research, not surveys.

It is.