There's no way to change the directional trend, but there are lots of things we can do to affect it's slope. Many of these things are also worth doing anyway for reasons such as energy security, resource and environmental preservation, reducing pollution, protecting biodiversity, etc. I do not believe crash course change in the global economy and our technology base is possible or desirable, were just going to have to live with and manage many of the negative consequences of climate change, but we can achieve a lot with sensible, moderate and achievable environmental policies provided they are pursued determinedly and consistently.
At a very large scale, changes like a mountain removal or temperature increase of a few degrees are fully negligible. Even humanity should be able to reverse those if it decided to actually do it.
Will we actually do so? It's not too likely.
But we need a net positive. We must stop pumping CO2 in the atmosphere, and we're merely pumping it a slightly slower rate, and the quantity still goes up.
The US has replaced lots of coal with gas, and that's most of the reduction. But we're not gonna make it this way. Remember: we're heading towards +2.5°C in 2100, but northern continents heat much faster than the average (oceans are cooler and represent 70% of Earth's surface): it could be from +4 and up to +6°C in Canada, Europe, etc. The situation is going to be absolutely catastrophic much sooner than 2100. Arguably we may have catastrophic, repeated crop failures this decade for instance.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Yes, we can slow down the rate at which the rate of growth grows. We may even feel awfully good about that. But if any meaningful projection of climate data is to be believed, we don't need slower growth, we need a total collapse in emissions: we need to get to net negative emissions. Soon.
I think going green etc. is nice, and often just common sense with a new label on it. But very often it's just distracting from realising just what kind of breakthrough that is necessary.
Agreed. We are already beyond the tipping point. Positive feedback loops already kicked in (thawing of Tundra, lower albedo due to glaciers melting, ...). We would need to go carbon negative right away and stay at those levels for years. Or go big about engineering the climate until we carbon levels return to normal levels.
How about +13 while just wearing more clothes? That would do a huge impact on ecology. Maybe even save us another hundred or so years before global warming comes
We are not going down. At least it is very unlikely (I wouldn't trust climate models enough to completely rule it out).
Once things are getting too uncomfortable in industrial countries, they will reduce temperatures using geo-engineering and possibly carbon capturing. Today that may be controversial, because people are still dreaming of being able to cut CO2 emissions enough to make a difference, but once things are getting uncomfortable, people will demand a quick relief, and it will be a no-brainer.
That can be 100% true, and humans can still be contributing to the current change? So not only would it be possible and desirable for us to stop contributing, but to try and influence the direction of change in a way that's more beneficial for more of us (which could be reforesting or olivine weathering or something crazy like solar shielding or sulfur dioxide cannons, depending on who you ask).
I feel like you’re missing the point? Once the temperature has risen it’ll already be too late, it doesn’t really matter if you then reduce carbon emissions after that point because all kinds of drastic non-reversible effects will have taken place.
Well, reduce emissions and more seriously consider geoengineering. A lot of otherwise-reasonable climate researchers seem to have an unduly negative view of potential direct interventions in the climate.
There is the interesting side effect that we'd have some measure of control over how much global warming we can handle. Instead of stopping some action X, we could instead amplify some geo-engineering Y.
It has a certain appeal. Not advocating for this, just pointing out the perspective.
I think we have to get used to the idea that we’re not going to be less than 600 ppm, even with CO2 capture. I would be surprised if we manage to scale that enough to make a larger difference. But that’s still much better than we’d get at without attempting to remove CO2, so it’s an important goal.
The one thing that might change that is very ambitious geo engineering. Which actually is the solution that makes most sense to me. But the very people who are most concerned about climate change don’t seem to support that.
Or have I misunderstood your comment?
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