• Vampire [any]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Unscientific take on climate change, IMO

    What I’ve read from scientists/experts doesn’t paint that picture at all.

    Catastrophic weather events will kill millions, but not a billion.

    • Then you need to do more reading because I did work in this field and have read the science on it as well. First all, you have to take into account what time scales are being discussed. What you’re reading is, I’m all but certain, just talking about the coming few decades, in which yes, millions at least will likely die. And even then the science that tends to reach the public is toned down, pacified, and doesn’t represent the whole truth. You should be familiar with this as a communist trying to get an understanding of what’s really going on with the world via popular journalism. Is what you’re reading about “catastrophic weather events” also discussing what will be happening 1000 years from now? 10,000? Despite the longer scale, what we are doing right now and in the coming decades will have an effect on those longer scales. Climate change is so much more than simply an intensification of weather events. It is literally a rapid change to the composition of our atmosphere. An atmosphere which has, by the way, been completely altered by life in one of the most chemically fundamental ways possible, from a reducing atmosphere to an oxidizing one. This is what I mean when I say even many leftists just do not understand how extreme the risks are here. A runaway greenhouse wouldn’t just kill a billion, it could well end our species and most other species of “higher lifeforms.”

    • ElHexo [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      I don’t agree with the risk that Earth will become Venus, but it is very possible we could hit the hottest temperatures since ~50 million years ago, which were too hot and humid for humans to live in.

      Projecting current emissions into the future, Gingerich found that if emissions continue to rise, we could be facing another PETM-like event in fewer than five generations. The total carbon accumulated in the atmosphere could hit the lowest estimate of carbon accumulated during the PETM – 3,000 gigatons – in the year 2159. It would hit the maximum estimated emissions – 7,126 gigatons – in 2278, based on Gingerich’s calculations. Humans have emitted roughly 1,500 gigatons of carbon as of 2016.