The point of no return refers to the 1.5C threshold that the Paris climate conference agreed that exceeding would have catastrophic consequences. We are now guaranteed to reach that threshold.
It’s not a stupid headline. Yes, every tenth of a degree matters, but the headline is correct, we will now have unavoidably catastrophic consequences.
I’m a climate scientist. I understand the “threshold”. It’s not a threshold in a physical sense, it’s just a policy target. All of the dangers commonly associated with 1.5°C are probabilistic. Some might be triggered before, others will come later, many will partially happen below 1.5, and partially above, as the globe is not homogenous in it’s responses…
Note also that the headline does not say “catastrophic impacts”, I would agree with it more if it did. It says “worst impacts”, and trust me, the impacts likely a 3°C are much, much worse than what will happen at 1.5°C. 1.5 is a serious risk of civilisational collapse, at 3 it’s almost certain, IMO. 1.5 we loose lots of species and see a lot more natural disasters, above 3 you start thinking about humans being wiped out (noting also that this is more of a speed-of-change problem than a temperature difference problem).
The headline is stupid because it’s defeatist. Yes, we have fucked up, and we have unavoidable problems heading our way. But we still have the ability to avoid much worse problems. A defeatist attitude won’t help that to happen.
With regards to defeatism, this is a defeat, and dressing it up otherwise serves no one but the people who failed to implement the changes needed to win. Personally, I think the populace at large needs a mindshift about climate change. Almost everyone is in denial and thinks we can solve it with technology. Maybe a defeat like this will help people to realize that we really need to revolutionize our society, because our current socioeconomic system makes any reasonable response to climate change impossible.
Fair enough. I get it, and agree with the underlying sentiment. I disagree that that language is likely to be effective in the direction we want though. I think it tends to be received as doomerist/alarmist and causes people to shut down and ignore the problem entirely. I think that sci-comms research is with me on this, but I don’t have good references for that at hand.
You could definitely be right, I’m just going off of feelings on this, and my feelings about the general public are generally anger and disappointment, so not much logic involved.
The way I see it, this is a disempowerment problem. Most people don’t feel like they don’t have agency to do anything about it. Given the power structures in our societies, I can understand that, but agency does exist, through political activism in particular (in many forms). But I think things like “past the point of no return” and “worst impacts now unavoidable” really play in to and reinforce that disempowerment. If people act as much as possible soon, then we might be able to reduce the severity of the problem. If they get more disempowered and don’t act at all, then it’ll be as bad as possible.
The point of no return refers to the 1.5C threshold that the Paris climate conference agreed that exceeding would have catastrophic consequences. We are now guaranteed to reach that threshold.
It’s not a stupid headline. Yes, every tenth of a degree matters, but the headline is correct, we will now have unavoidably catastrophic consequences.
I’m a climate scientist. I understand the “threshold”. It’s not a threshold in a physical sense, it’s just a policy target. All of the dangers commonly associated with 1.5°C are probabilistic. Some might be triggered before, others will come later, many will partially happen below 1.5, and partially above, as the globe is not homogenous in it’s responses…
Note also that the headline does not say “catastrophic impacts”, I would agree with it more if it did. It says “worst impacts”, and trust me, the impacts likely a 3°C are much, much worse than what will happen at 1.5°C. 1.5 is a serious risk of civilisational collapse, at 3 it’s almost certain, IMO. 1.5 we loose lots of species and see a lot more natural disasters, above 3 you start thinking about humans being wiped out (noting also that this is more of a speed-of-change problem than a temperature difference problem).
The headline is stupid because it’s defeatist. Yes, we have fucked up, and we have unavoidable problems heading our way. But we still have the ability to avoid much worse problems. A defeatist attitude won’t help that to happen.
That is a good point about the “worst” choice.
With regards to defeatism, this is a defeat, and dressing it up otherwise serves no one but the people who failed to implement the changes needed to win. Personally, I think the populace at large needs a mindshift about climate change. Almost everyone is in denial and thinks we can solve it with technology. Maybe a defeat like this will help people to realize that we really need to revolutionize our society, because our current socioeconomic system makes any reasonable response to climate change impossible.
Fair enough. I get it, and agree with the underlying sentiment. I disagree that that language is likely to be effective in the direction we want though. I think it tends to be received as doomerist/alarmist and causes people to shut down and ignore the problem entirely. I think that sci-comms research is with me on this, but I don’t have good references for that at hand.
You could definitely be right, I’m just going off of feelings on this, and my feelings about the general public are generally anger and disappointment, so not much logic involved.
The way I see it, this is a disempowerment problem. Most people don’t feel like they don’t have agency to do anything about it. Given the power structures in our societies, I can understand that, but agency does exist, through political activism in particular (in many forms). But I think things like “past the point of no return” and “worst impacts now unavoidable” really play in to and reinforce that disempowerment. If people act as much as possible soon, then we might be able to reduce the severity of the problem. If they get more disempowered and don’t act at all, then it’ll be as bad as possible.