Global warming target unlikely to be reached, UN says
Global warming target unlikely to be reached, UN says
www.dw.com
Global warming target unlikely to be reached, UN says – DW – 05/28/2025
The chance of exceeding the 1.5 degree benchmark of limiting global warming stands at 70%, the UN's weather agency says.
The chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 is to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) benchmark stands at 70%, the United Nations (UN) said.
As a result, the Earth is expected to remain at historic levels of warming.
This comes after the planet experienced the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to a report published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN's climate agency.
Obviously humane are not as self determined as we like to think. Maybe our paths are predetermined through our evolutionary development.
Decision making motivated by emotions. Quick success, own advantage or the closest pressing issue is always more important than sustainability and the common good. Bad emotions are suppressed and messengers of bad news are chased out of the village.
And then there are the ones who believe that all is lost and nothing can save us. Like me. Not helpful, I know.
I believe we're seeing a universal law in action: any technologically advanced civilization will end up destroying itself. Whether it's the warming due to extracted fossil fuels, or a nuclear war, or AI, ..., there is, and must be, a seed of destruction in every advanced civilization. I purposefully say 'must be' because of the Fermi paradox, which should indicate to us all how any sci-fi future is forever beyond our grasp.
In our case at least, climate change is the answer to the Fermi paradox. Human civilization will collapse in the near future and billions are going to die. Don't have kids.
I disagree that the lack of a hard answer to the Fermi Paradox necessarily indicates that any technologically advanced civilization must invariably end up destroying itself. There are a variety of potential explanations that could explain our apparent solitude, of which a technological great filter is but one. For example, our universe is quite young, both in terms of how long a universe lives before its heat death and in terms of how long a universe continues producing stars capable of sustaining life. With this in mind, it’s entirely possible that we are simply the first to achieve sentience in our galaxy (as intergalactic travel is an unlikely prospect), especially if there is some particularly difficult evolutionary hurdle that we have already passed. Alternatively, it may be that communication methods detectable by us (such as radio emissions) are methods used only by technologically primitive spacefaring species, and so it could be that there is only a short window of time during which a species is visible to observers outside the system. And those are just two of a myriad of potential solutions to the paradox.
Space is vast, and the fact that we haven’t found anyone else yet should not be taken as proof nobody is out there. That’s like scooping a cup of water out of the ocean and declaring there are no fish in the ocean on the basis of that cupful of water alone. Looking more toward earth, I also want to note that humanity is a tenacious bunch. We have survived ice ages and super volcano eruptions in our past, climate extremes that mimic what could be produced by nuclear war. Undoubtedly, many of the outlined scenarios would be unpleasant and lead to an unacceptable loss of both human and non human life, but I find it unlikely that humanity wouldn’t cling on. Even if 99.99% of humanity died, that still leaves 800,000 people alive, and I doubt it would take more than 1000 years before we were back on our feet.
It's a bit sad. It feels like fighting windmills, too big of a task, general mistrust that my fellow humans would work towards the same future. And maybe I mentioned it, there are always more pressing tasks and a limited personal energy budget.