We’re used to climate-change advocates telling us we have to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere NOW before it’s too late. When will it be too late? When the climate warms more than 2.7 degrees above “pre-industrial levels” (about 1850). We’re currently at about 1.7 degrees.
All current climate models operate under the assumption that even if we blow by the 2.7-degree increase, we’re not really doomed because we can always slide back below that 2.7-degree end-of-the-world threshold. All we have to do is cut the amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere.
It turns out that the climate doesn’t listen very closely to climate models. In fact, the climate laughs in the modelers’ faces.
Pathetic earthlings, meddling with powers we can’t possibly understand, have been wrong all along. It doesn’t matter if we cut CO2 emissions because even if the temperature goes down, the predicted effects of climate change won’t end for centuries.
This phenomenon, known as a temperature “overshoot,” has been baked into most climate models and plans for the future. In theory, even if global warming reaches the dreaded 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures, it could be brought back down by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
But a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that blowing past climate goals is more dangerous than it originally seemed. Even if temperatures come back down to 1.5 degrees C, the authors found, many climate impacts — like rising sea levels and thawing permafrost — will persist for centuries to millennia. […]
— Read More: pjmedia.com
