The Terrifying
Truth about Climate Change
An apocalyptic future is materializing
that threatens human civilization and all life on the planet. The truth about climate change is more terrifying than our worst nightmares.
We are teetering on the brink of a world that is the stuff of nightmares. This includes starvation, riots, disease, violence, and war.
These impacts range from the seemingly innocuous, like more
potent poisonous plants, to cataclysmic extreme weather events, like
continent-sized superstorms. Other serious threats include widespread coastal
flooding, storm-surges, heatwaves, drought, wildfires, mass migration, famine, disease, conflict, anoxia, species extinction and ultimately human extinction.
Scientists tell us to avert the worst
impacts of climate change, we must keep temperatures from rising no more than
1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial norms.
Given our current
trajectory, we are looking at temperature increases that could be as much as
four times the upper threshold limit.
A temperature increase of 4 degrees would wreak bloody havoc on an unprecedented scale, seven degrees would cause hell on earth. The situation is dire as we are already more than 1 °C above preindustrial norms.
As stated in Seeker:
“More heat is sending the planet spiraling closer to the point where warming’s catastrophic consequences may be all but assured.”
We are on the cusp of a number of tipping points that will irreversibly devastate
life on the planet, the same planet we depend on for our survival. This has
prompted some scientists to suggest we have entered a new epoch.
The Age of the Anthropocene
Scientists are suggesting that human
impacts on the Earth warrant a new geological epoch. This new epoch is being
called the age of the Anthropocene. Study after study tells us that human
activities are putting life on Earth in jeopardy.
As referenced in the Guardian, there are two recent independent
studies that have added to the vast amount of data corroborating the conclusion
that we are in the age of the Anthropocene.
Last August, Eric Holthaus wrote a piece
published in Rolling Stone in which he
cited a number of reasons why we should be nervous. This includes everything
from bee mortality to the collapse of the ocean food chain.
Timelines
It is important to understand that
climate change is not some distant event, these catastrophic events are already
beginning to unfold. Some of the most cataclysmic impacts of climate change are
taking shape far faster than scientists had anticipated. Many are concerned
that climate change could explode exponentially.
Holthaus explained:
“The worst predicted impacts of climate change are starting to happen and much faster than climate scientists expected.”
New research suggests the climate situation is
far worse than initially thought. According to this and other studies, we can
expect short-term temperature increases of between 1.6 °C and 2.1 °C above
pre-industrial norms.
Impacts will be far worse than predicted in most research
as these studies commonly focus only on CO2, however, carbon is but one of
several greenhouse gasses (methane, nitrous oxide, and others).
A paper from the National Academy of Sciences states that climatic changes could
occur within decades or even sooner. The most challenging changes are the abrupt
ones, said James White, a professor of geological sciences at the University of
Colorado at Boulder and chair of the report committee.
While exact timelines are impossible to
know for sure, a paper co-authored by a team of 14
climate-scientists integrated all previous research and came to the conclusion
that the truly catastrophic impacts of climate change will hit the tropics in
2020 and the rest of the earth in 2047.
According to an analysis by Carbon Brief, we have only five years (2021) until
we exceed our carbon budget, which the IPCCC defines as the amount of carbon
that can be released into the atmosphere while staying within the prescribed
1.5 C upper threshold limit.
Others have suggested that we could see
a very rapid onset well before the dates referenced above. Jacquelyn Gill is a paleoecologist at the
University of Maine who studies extinction. Her research reveals,
“…really compelling evidence that there can be events of abrupt climate change that can happen well within human life spans. We’re talking less than a decade.”
Coastal flooding
New research suggests that climate
change is expected to cause coastal flooding of some of the world’s biggest and
most populous cities far sooner than many had envisioned.
In July 2015, James
Hansen, the former NASA climatologist, published research which suggested that
mean sea levels could rise 10 times faster than previously predicted.
“We conclude that multi-meter sea level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization.”
Famine
As reviewed in a Robert Scribbler post, half a billion people
already suffer from famine and droughts and the situation will only intensify
as the planet continues to warm.
A study released in April from the European
Commission has found that 240 million people across the world are now suffering
from food stress.
Greenpeace said that 330 million people in India alone are
faced with water shortages and the threat of famine. Millions more are under
both food and water stress in Vietnam as a record Southeast Asian heatwave
ramps up to never-before-seen extreme temperatures.
The death of our children
Children bear the brunt of climate
change. As reported by the NRDC, WHO statistics say that children under
the age of five suffer more than 80 percent of the illness and mortality
attributable to climate change. Further, weather-related disasters will affect
as many as 175 million children globally over the next decade.
The death of our oceans
Ocean acidification is a disaster on a
planetary scale. It is already too late for vast swaths of the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs around the
world.
Plankton is the basis of the ocean’s food chain. A July 2015 study that
shows acidifying oceans are likely to have a “quite traumatic” impact on
plankton diversity.
Areas with extremely low oxygen keep increasing, causing
ever larger ocean dead zones where nothing can survive.
The mass die-off of
plankton also has implications for terrestrial creatures. Research published in
the journal Bulletin of Mathematical Biology from the University of Leicester
in the UK, suggests that rising ocean temperatures will lead to declining
plankton populations.
Since plankton is responsible for two-thirds of
atmospheric oxygen, this could cause the Earth’s oxygen levels to fall
dramatically, killing massive numbers of people and animals.
Mass extinction
Research suggests that global warming
played a role in the world’s largest extinction event known as the Great Dying,
250 million years ago at the end of the Permian Era. This event wiped out more
than 90 percent of all species of plants and animals.
As reviewed in the Atlantic, a person alive today is more than five
times as likely to die in an extinction event like runaway climate change than
in a car crash. This is the conclusion of a new report on the economics of
climate change from the U.K. based Global Challenges Foundation.
According to
the Stern Review, over the course of a century, the average person runs an
almost ten percent chance of being annihilated by an extinction event. The
report states that the most likely such event is catastrophic climate change.
A
2008 Oxford study says that number is even higher.
Biologists have shown that humans are
behind the fastest rate of species extinction since the end of the reign of the
dinosaurs 250 million years ago. This research also concludes that humanity is
also at risk of extinction.
Paul Ehrlich, one of the researchers who
contributed to the study said that there is very little doubt that “we are now
entering the sixth great mass extinction event. Even worse, the research shows
that we triggered the event ourselves.”
He added, “We are sawing off the limb
that we are sitting on.”
Professor Phil
Gibbard, a geologist
at the University of Cambridge said:
“The Earth is now on course for a sixth mass extinction which would see 75 percent of species extinct in the next few centuries if current trends continue.”
The current climate trajectory is
rushing headlong towards catastrophe, moving
us ever closer to doomsday. Ours would not be the first civilization to succumb to climate change,
as evidenced by the demise of cultures in South America and the Indus valley.
Urgent action
Climate change is one of the most
studied phenomena in human history. Thousands of research papers tell us how
dire the situation is and how urgently we must act.
The fact is that climate
action is incredibly urgent, we must acknowledge that even with a consorted
global effort it will be difficult to solve. A New York Times headline read “New
Dark Age Looms“.
However all is not hopeless, there may
be time if we act now. This is the view contained in UNEP’s Global
Environmental Outlook (GEO-6),
their most comprehensive report to date. The title says it all: “Rate of
Environmental Damage Increasing Across the Planet but There Is Still Time to
Reverse Worst Impacts if Governments Act Now.”
“The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit,” David Roberts said. He also said: “Climate change is simple: We do something or we’re screwed…”
We cannot be sure that our efforts will
succeed. Some believe that we will exceed the upper temperature threshold
limits even if we stopped spewing GHGs into the atmosphere today.
Perhaps the
most incisive remark on climate change comes from EPA chief Gina
McCarthy who
said, “the scary thing is doing nothing.”
Richard Matthews is a consultant, eco-entrepreneur, green investor
and author of numerous articles on sustainable positioning, eco-economics and
enviro-politics. He is the owner of The Green Market Oracle, a leading sustainable business site and one of the Web’s most
comprehensive resources on the business of the environment. Find The Green
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