(November 6, 2021 at 9:53 pm)Alan V Wrote:(June 28, 2021 at 11:07 am)Angrboda Wrote: By most models, we are or will soon pass the point at which we can't contain global warming and it will become a largely runaway process.
If that happens, it could make the majority of the earth hostile to humans in a relatively short timespan.
Do you think this will happen within 100 years? Yes or no.
No, although I can't foretell the future. The biggest variable is how humans will respond in the next several decades.
As for tipping points, different tipping points start at different temperatures and occur within a range of temperatures. So for instance, melting permafrost will release methane as a positive feedback, and that has already begun in some areas, but won't happen in other areas for decades yet. The release of methane frozen in the oceans will only happen at much higher and more delayed temperatures.
In other words, since climate change is a slowly moving process, we still have time to halt and reverse it. We can even build machines which will pull CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it again. It all depends on how we respond. However, it is likely already too late to prevent sea-level rise at least up to some disastrous point.
But I think your assumption that "the majority of the earth could be made hostile to humans" is overstated. Some areas, certainly. Other areas, like Canada and Russia, could benefit from climate change in the short run. And remember, at a point we simply run out of affordable fossil fuels to burn, likely within this century. We will be forced into renewables even if we didn't want to transition voluntarily, by economics alone.
A lot can happen in 100 years, and people will not remain idle.
The very best case scenario out of Cop26, ie if countries quickly implement the stuff they've pledged to promise to think about implementing a strategy into looking at possibly ruminating on ways to begin to start doing, we're looking at 2.4 degrees Celsius rise in temeratures globally before the end of the century. That's mass extinction level climate change right there.
By the 2100's humanity is going to be reduced to, at best, a few small bands of nomad barbarians exing a subsistance out of the very dangerous ruins of the world.
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