Hexbear

14 points

4 years ago

Last I checked climate projections have actually been reasonably predictive of temperature rise over the last few years, so it depends on what 2C meant. If it meant 2C since the 80s then, well, that’s already worse than what is predicted here.

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DeathToBritain [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net

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8 points

4 years ago

I never looked much into the details, but all I heard over and over was we need to keep under 2c rise from pre industrial levels and will go over in like 50 years if we don’t start to change now

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6 points

4 years ago

I mean I’m not entirely sure why the 50 years part matters, it seems to me that 2 degrees is 2 degrees and it matters regardless of if it is 50 years or more. I’m guessing 2C is just some somewhat arbitrary threshold to have as a target.

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DeathToBritain [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net

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6 points

4 years ago

the 50 years part lets them put shit off and call for long term reforms than immediate action. the 2 degrees thing always gets brought around as this like big deal oh shit line where things get real fucked up in the ecology

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SomeLinenAndShirts [comrade/them]@hexbear.net

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4 points

4 years ago

2 C is the amount of warming that scientists and economists have somewhat agreed is the “reasonable” amount of heating that will occur if we start changing things right now. Above that and we start getting really bad climate feedback loops that could theoretically push temperatures to +5 C

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3 points

4 years ago

As far as I know there isn’t much basis to 1) managing to keep it below 2C (which is considered unlikely by now) or 2) that 2C is particularly important anyways. Bad stuff will and does happen below 2C, and there isn’t that much evidence that says “x happens at 2C” afaik. Like, I’m pretty sure they picked it because it’s a round number. The answer to the question “how much should we limit climate change” is always “more than what we are doing” and the answer to “where’s the tipping point and does it exist?” tends to be “who the fuck knows, it’s probably somewhere upwards of now”. I’m not sure I like how some people are taking the tipping point stuff and running with it to argue that it’s pointless to do anything anyways.

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SomeLinenAndShirts [comrade/them]@hexbear.net

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4 points

4 years ago

Predictive modeling is just predictive modeling, and science is just science. The expectation of people (of which I’m not going to presume where you fit on this) is that these academic pursuits are supposed to be infallible or that they are the hard authority on ANY matter is farcical. The truth is, they are working with the data as the receive it, and with knowledge that has been ascertained, and its a giant machine (academic work that is) that every now in then has some break through or idea that gets mainstream and popular amongst people and politicians.

So idk if I’m just riffing with you or not, but yeah it’s always been “who the fuck knows”, even the papers that you’ve seen cited in news articles like the one in this thread, they all work off the preconditioned assumption that they could be wrong, and everyone should know that. But 2C of warming is essentially, according to what we know right now, the point where it gets really fucked.

And yeah, I know academics are stuffy and arrogant a lot of the time, think they’re really right and are willing to fight like hell to look at data and outright lie or obfuscate the truth. But at least on this, whether they’re lying and it could be sooner, or later, it hardly fucking matters, because if we don’t do anything at all, it’s pretty much guaranteed, unless you (I’m using the general case of you) are a climate denier.

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2 points

4 years ago

But 2C of warming is essentially, according to what we know right now, the point where it gets really fucked.

Yes, what I’m saying is that given what I’ve seen this is just not the case, 2C is just a somewhat random threshold. It’s not something academics came up with as an actual threshold. I’ve been searching about where this came from and the sources I’ve found seem to say that it’s not really an important threshold, just something that’s sorta useful to think about as a milestone: https://theconversation.com/why-is-climate-changes-2-degrees-celsius-of-warming-limit-so-important-82058

The reason I’m not crazy about these sorts of thresholds people come up with is that if we pass them or if we discover we are bound to pass them, then many people will just use it as an excuse to say “welp, we did what we could, now stop bothering us and let us do whatever”. Though I will admit I don’t know as much as I would like to about the subject and I’m planning to read some books on climate to better understand what is happening.

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