The earth is a dynamic system, and the rate of temperature growth is as much, if not more, important than temperature average here. A car going from 100 to 0 kmph in 15 seconds is definitely not the same as a car going from 100 to 0 kmph in 0.1 seconds in terms of damage.
the temperature rises described in the article (e.g. during the eocene) are about a few degrees every few hundreds of thousands of years. Flore and fauna had time to evolve.
Today we are talking about 4 degrees in less than a hundred years. That's more than thousand times faster.
I.e. if we (or someone a million years from now) tried to estimate the 21th century's temperatures using the same techniques used to estimate temperatures a million years ago, would we be able to detect that 4 degree change?
Conversely, can scientists today detect or rule out that there was an outlier century a million years ago in which temps varied as much as today?
Future archaeologists and ice core samplers would definitely find a "wtf" layer in all their ice cores: higher radioactivity! If they attempt carbon-dating there will be a huge discontinuity in the results.
Probably also a microplastics layer.
I'm far from an expert on this. Assumedly the damage we are seeing currently and expecting in the near future due to our current warming would be detecteble over a a very large time scale. We seem to be able to detect much more subtle changes going very far back with our current techniques.
https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/8746/is-thi...
Instead, there is a need for more realistic plans to model and prepare for 3°C or 5°C increase of average temperature by 2060 (or 2100). Looking at these bigger swings in temperature, it is more likely that we're seeing temperature peaking beyond our expectations than below.
On top of that you have had climate activists pushing for very large change to happen incredibly quickly (arguably needed). But it’s an incredibly hard sell to the public who won’t except a negative impact on their quality of life.
Basically:
1. People are unwilling to make changes that they perceive as being a net negative to their quality of life.
2. Businesses are unwilling to make changes that they expect to have a net negative to their bottom line.
3. Politicians are unwilling to ask for either of the above to happen because they want to be re-elected.
The social fabric of the western societies had been severely damaged.
Trust in science is at an all time low. The absurdly rich are absurdly richer. Not few people are now flirting openly with the idea to simply abandon those bulky civil liberties of the 20th century (2nd half) in order to save the world in the long run. So, in order to satisfy 2. ("green washing") and 3. ("emergency state") 1. (civil liberties) is the obvious pawn "sacrifice".
I don't think that's the case. It's a coordination problem. People don't want to reduce their quality of life if they don't know for sure that others won't do that as well. Most things in life and in human psychology are relative, in constant comparison to our peers.
The idea that solving the climate crisis would have a negative impact on people's quality of life is one that has been successfully promoted by the fossil fuel industry. But it's not true. We could get to a net zero economy AND deliver improvements to (most) people's quality of life.
A few quick thoughts:
* I read that the richest 1% of Americans are responsible for 30% of American carbon emissions, although I'm struggling to find the source of that. It was easy, however, to find stats that indicate the richest 1% of people across the globe are responsible for 15% of global carbon emissions, which is nearly twice as much as the poorest 50%. The vast majority of us can keep on living our lives as normal. The 1% need to stop jet-setting and ripping around in lambos. That's not going to harm my quality of life. [1]
* Investments in green energy and related technologies are creating a job boom and plenty of wealth for the people participating in the green revolution. There are lots of direct economic benefits. [2]
* Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for ~1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Imagine the increase in quality of life for everyone with far cleaner air. [3]
* Millions of people, myself included, suffer from (entirely rational) feelings of anxiety, worry and depression related to climate change. The knowledge that we are destroying the planet, killing off animal and plant species by the thousands, and ruining the future of my children and grandchildren is a daily drag on my happiness and sense of well-being. I would feel so much better knowing that we were actually doing what we needed to do to solve this crisis. That would be a huge benefit to my quality of life! [4]
1: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211025-climate-how-to-m...
2: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/renewable-energy-jo...
3: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p...
4: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/health/climate-anxiety-th...
Anyway, what is still nice is that it should be easier to adapt to 3-5ºC once we're all doing something for 1.5ºC than if we were doing nothing at all, i.e. static friction is always higher than kinetic friction. I think the true covert goal at the moment is to at least get things moving and have everyone jump on it asap.
Source: I build/code software related to sustainability.
5 degrees is a nightmare scenario for the whole world. Albeit I think it’s far more likely if we have to finally admit we’re on the pathway to 3 degrees, many countries might independently deploy solar geoengineering projects to save their skin (especially island nations)
"In 1979, the Charney Report from the US National Academy of Sciences suggested that ECS was likely somewhere between 1.5C and 4.5C per doubling of CO2. Nearly 40 years later, the best estimate of sensitivity is largely the same. This has led some to question why there has been so little progress on estimating climate sensitivity."
Is this quote above now no longer true? If not, please provide a link.
More concretely, have a look at the latest IPCC report [1], page SPM-16. Three of the five scenarios include temperature rises from 3 to 5 °C. Based on the last decade, the world has not reduced total CO2 emissions at all (not even slowed), despite its knowledge about climate change. Therefore, I have reason to believe that the three bad scenarios (intermediate to high CO2 emission), are more likely to happen than scenarios covering halted or little CO2 emission.
[1]: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
If you're New Orleans, time to give up on being a city. Start preventing new construction. Incentivize people to leave.
Things like that really if we're going to get honest with ourselves about where things are headed.
"None of these techniques help with the very early Earth. During the time known as the Hadean (yes, because it was like Hades), Earth’s collisions with other large planetesimals in our young solar system—including a Mars-sized one whose impact with Earth likely created the Moon—would have melted and vaporized most rock at the surface. Because no rocks on Earth have survived from so long ago, scientists have estimated early Earth conditions based on observations of the Moon and on astronomical models. Following the collision that spawned the Moon, the planet was estimated to have been around 2,300 Kelvin (3,680°F)."
"Even after collisions stopped, and the planet had tens of millions of years to cool, surface temperatures were likely more than 400° Fahrenheit. Zircon crystals from Australia, only about 150 million years younger than the Earth itself, hint that our planet may have cooled faster than scientists previously thought. Still, in its infancy, Earth would have experienced temperatures far higher than we humans could possibly survive."
"But suppose we exclude the violent and scorching years when Earth first formed. When else has Earth’s surface sweltered?"
Earth obviously had the leg up on water accumulation during its accretation stage (Hadean period).
Perhaps we can start generating oxygen early over there on Mars using a one-step CO2->O2+C catalyst.
This comes to mind: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15606
Edit: also sorry to be a party pooper but I studied organocatalysis for a while and you must understand that these research papers about catalysts are almost always so incredibly far away from industrial viability. The ligands take long to prepare, the metals are expensive... and whilst these things might be solvable with enough money, the fact remains that they have turnover numbers that are finite.
(The TON is the amount of substrate the catalyst can transform before becoming deactivated)
Even with a TON of 1.000 (paper quotes < 10) you'd be able to produce 1.000 moles (32 kg) of O2 from one mole (has 100 g Ru, 2000 USD) of this expensive ruthenium gizmo. Oh and it's an electrocatalyst so better get some planet-scale power generation in place, first.
For photosynthesis oxygen is a waste product, it needs C02.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-did-mars-lose-its-atm...
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/how-to-give-mars-an-atmos...
Given an unlimited amount of raw materials and energy, terraforming a planet like mars would probably take decades (centuries?).
Private funded projects usually have a TTL of a couple of months to at best 4/5 years and are driven by short to medium term profits. Public funded projects are on a longer timeframe. Taking a recent example, according to Wikipedia, "serious planning" for James Webb started in early 90s. So that's ~30 years.
But do we have example, in modern times, of project lasting more than a century? I have Notre-Dame in mind, any other? The construction of Notre-Dame was driven by religious fervor. I wonder if we could muster the same amount of will based only on a profit motive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia (it is much better inside than outside)
Colonizing Mars is like the whole 'I can't bother to learn Bash, so let's rewrite our whole app to Kubernetes in next 5 years' thing. A procrastination.
