Re:Climate change and the 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals
by jfengel on Monday April 26, 2021 @04:13PM
(#26947468)
Yes, because we're talking about a time frame of 200 years. That amounts to 3.2F, and yeah, that's a lot.
It's enough to make a lot of marginally-livable places completely unlivable. It's enough to throw off growing seasons, costing a significant amount of agriculture. It will require more water, already a tough squeeze in a lot of places. It will melt a lot of ice, causing disruptions to sea level that will make expensive storms more frequent. It will throw off rain patterns, meaning that some places will become arable that weren't, but forcing some existing farms to stop. That will be hugely disruptive and expensive.
The real problem is that it likely won't just be 3.2F. That's actually pretty much what the IPCC's target is: they want it to be just 3.2F (2C). But even that much involves drastically cutting CO2 output: CO2 is very stable and will last for many centuries. We will continue to get warmer for decades even if we stopped burning fossil fuels utterly, right this instant.
Instead, the world as a whole has continued to increase its CO2. (The US has actually gone back down to 1990 levels, largely because of a shift from coal to natural gas, but partly due to renewables.) That means we're on a track for more like 6F to 8F by 2100, and that is pretty clearly a lot.
It's enough to make a lot of marginally-livable places completely unlivable. It's enough to throw off growing seasons, costing a significant amount of agriculture. It will require more water, already a tough squeeze in a lot of places. It will melt a lot of ice, causing disruptions to sea level that will make expensive storms more frequent. It will throw off rain patterns, meaning that some places will become arable that weren't, but forcing some existing farms to stop. That will be hugely disruptive and expensive.
The real problem is that it likely won't just be 3.2F. That's actually pretty much what the IPCC's target is: they want it to be just 3.2F (2C). But even that much involves drastically cutting CO2 output: CO2 is very stable and will last for many centuries. We will continue to get warmer for decades even if we stopped burning fossil fuels utterly, right this instant.
Instead, the world as a whole has continued to increase its CO2. (The US has actually gone back down to 1990 levels, largely because of a shift from coal to natural gas, but partly due to renewables.) That means we're on a track for more like 6F to 8F by 2100, and that is pretty clearly a lot.