this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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The paper is here.

It's worth reading Stefan Rahmstorf's perspective on this for context

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What effects would the collapse of this current have on regional and global climate? I assume the effects for Europe would be substantial but what about the rest of the world?

[–] teft@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Basically it would make for a colder Europe and warmer tropics. Harsher storms in north america likely because of the change in warmth at the tropics.

[–] pgetsos@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is obviously bad for the environment in Europe etc but as a joke: After spending 10+ days in 38-45 degrees weather with a cold night of 33, I'm all for colder Europe!

[–] RealAccountNameHere@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is from a paper another user submitted in the lemmy.ml collapse community:

An abrupt AMOC collapse would cause profound and abrupt shifts in regional weather patterns and water cycles.

An AMOC collapse under warming reduces the growth suitability of three major staple crops – wheat, maize and rice, which provide over 50% of global calories.

It's worth reading through that whole section. TL; DR: Nothing good.

Edited to add this horrifying graph from the paper.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] RealAccountNameHere@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I'm not sure why, but the link I posted keeps breaking. Try this:

https://read.oecd.org/10.1787/abc5a69e-en

If that doesn't work, you can do a search on www.oecd-ilibrary.org for "climate tipping points."

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you. This looks pretty dire. Widespread cooling of the northern hemisphere is not altogether bad, but key regions including Europe, West Africa, and India may receive substantially less rain. This would be catastrophic for global food production, as your graph indicates.

[–] spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago

Some of the biggest unknown impacts are ecological. This is such a large area of the ocean effects could be absolutely disastrous.