No one knows for sure, because nothing like this has ever happened before.
There is no true analog for what humans are doing today and have been doing for the past 150 years — pumping hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air, radically altering atmospheric chemistry in the geological blink of an eye — and so it’s impossible for anyone to say with any certainty what will happen.
Let's take a look at some of the perilous dangers we face...
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Climate change effects usually become clear over decades and centuries, but they seem to be everywhere this summer: temperature records broken constantly, ocean waters as warm as hot tubs and world leaders so alarmed they've called this the "the era of global boiling."
And as concerning as these developments are, scientists have long worried about even more dramatic, looming and irreversible changes to the planet that could happen quickly. Even in the past year, there's evidence some of these scenarios are becoming more likely.
A paper in the journal Science in 2022 looked at several climate "tipping points" – conditions beyond which changes become self-perpetuating and difficult or impossible to undo. While the concept raised the hackles of some scientists, who suggested it was overly simplistic, the paper suggested even the possibility of such no-going-back points provided compelling reasons to limit warming as much as possible.
About a year later, several global systems that scientists have been concerned about are showing signs of becoming increasingly fragile.
Antarctic sea ice is at a record low, fires in Canada are reshaping terrain and polluting the air and record ocean temperatures are threatening coral. There's even new research published in July that suggests critical Atlantic Ocean currents could collapse sooner than expected, which could trigger rapid weather and climate changes.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fnation%2F2023%2F08%2F05%2Fclimate-changes-irreversible-impact-earth-ecosystems%2F70492307007%2F
Very scary stuff. But as I've said before, numerous times, my intent is not to frighten anyone into paralysis or despair. We need *action* on an individual level and on a global level.
Demand system change now!
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
