Why One Degree Matters!
Why one degree matters! Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you need to wake up!
When I hear people make snide remarks like “it’ll be nice for our winters to be a few degrees warmer!” while referencing CLIMATE CHANGE or GLOBAL WARMING, I lose my s**t. Even with the Paris Climate Change talks last year, some world leaders are either in denial or they’re controlled by Big Oil.
A shift of one degree is barely noticeable to human skin; but we’re not talking about human skin, we’re talking about the planet. One degree warmer for the planet is and will continue to cause devastation that we are all beginning to see now. One of my students forwarded me an excellent article that describes what will happen to the planet, and subsequently, human civilization, for every single degree that the planet warms. READ THIS:
0.5-1.0 Degree Warmer: (No chance of stopping this; we are already here)
Droughts = Deserts = Forest Fires
Melting ice caps – feedback loop – won’t be able to save the ice caps and glaciers
1.0-2.0 Degrees Warmer: (93% chance of stopping this IF we reduce greenhouse gases by 60% by 2026)
Saharan-type heat waves = kills hundreds of thousands
Mass migration away from equator
Fresh water supplies gone
Ecosystem collapse — 1/3 or species will face extinction
2.0-3.0 Degrees Warmer: (Little chance of stopping this once we reach 2 degrees because of carbon-cycle feedbacks)
Mass starvation (as soon as 2050)
Even more mass migration with starving people causing political and social upheaval
3.0-4.0 Degrees Warmer: (Little chance of stopping this once we reach 3 degrees because of runaway thaw of permafrost)
Millions of refugees flee to the coasts
Sea levels rise so coastlines and islands will be submerged
Permafrost thaw causes billions of tons of carbon to release into the atmosphere
Fires = dustbowls
World economy bust
4.0-5.0 Degrees Warmer: (Little chance of stopping this once we reach 4 degrees because of the release of trapped methane from the sea bed)
Ice sheets from both poles have vanished
No international aid; fight for survival
There’s more bad news but I don’t want to write it (read the article)
I blogged about this because we need to make substantial changes to stop CO2 from entering the atmosphere NOW.
To avoid our planet from getting 2 degrees warmer, we have 10 years to reduce our output by 60%. That means that we need to embrace an energy source that is 100% clean and we need to convert our internal combustion cars to use hydrogen NOW. My students are working on solutions that can divert our current collision course and I’ll be blogging about it in the next few months.
Get your head out of the sand and start reducing your carbon footprint today!