#EightYears came early

Posted on December 26, 2019 by John Klein

A couple years ago when the IPCC gave us approximately 12 years to get emissions way down, I started using the hashtag #TwelveYears on stories related to how far we have to go yet now I’ve been using #TenYears, but I’m being too conservative. #EightYears is our presently calculated deadline to have a 50% chance of protecting a survivable planet.

Our odds of limiting warming to 1.5C are vanishingly small barring global-scale negative emissions tech that barely exist today. There are real climate impacts at 1.5C, and even larger impacts at 2 and 2.5C; in fact, the longer we delay the more important rapid mitigation becomes pic.twitter.com/YHSRIYYKLh

— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) December 26, 2019

And make sure they understand that this is for a 50% chance of staying below 1,5°C of average temp rise, and that 50% do not including global aspect of equity, most feedback loops, non-linear tipping points nor additional warming hidden by air pollution. 2/3

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 26, 2019

2 responses to “#EightYears came early”

greenjeff says:

December 26, 2019 at 7:29 pm

It’s a waste of political capital to try to hit 1.5C. We’ll be lucky if we get under 8C. The fight should be at 4C or 5C instead

Reply
- MoS says:
  
  December 27, 2019 at 11:36 am
  
  Few of us can grasp what a world 4C or 5C hotter would be like. I was lucky enough to get in on an online course a few years ago put on by the Potsdam Institute – Schellnhuber et al – sponsored by the World Bank. A couple of the lectures dealt with this range of heating and the knock-on effects that would trigger. Put bluntly it would not be survivable – not for very long.
  
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