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Are we condemned?
If you are an expert in climatology, you will probably often have this question.
"Yes," said Kate Marvel, associate researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "And I heard it more recently."
It's not a mystery why. Threat reports from a warming planet have arrived quickly and furiously. The latest: a surprising analysis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that predicts terrible food shortages, forest fires and the massive disappearance of coral reefs by 2040, unless governments take action energetic.
The Paris climate agreement is set to aim to prevent rising global temperatures more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels. The situation is already pretty bad at 2 degrees: Arctic sea ice is 10 times more likely to disappear during the summer, as are most of the world's coral reefs. Nearly 37% of the world's population is exposed to extreme heat waves, with about 411 million people subjected to severe urban drought and 80 million people to floods due to sea level rise.
But if we can maintain the global temperature increase at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Arctic sea ice will have far more chances to survive during the summers. Coral reefs will continue to be damaged but will not be cleared. The percentage of people exposed to high heat waves would fall to about 14%. The number of people exposed to urban drought would decrease by more than 60 million people.
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Yet no major industrialized country is on track to reach the 2-degree target, let alone the 1.5-degree mark. And the Earth has already warmed by 1 degree. Even if, thanks to tremendous efforts and willingness, we significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of today's carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be felt for centuries.
Although it is undoubtedly sinister, it is not as bad as it could be. Reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could eventually reverse some of the more troublesome effects of warming.
The worst scenarios are so terrible that a type of climatic cover tending towards the apocalyptic has appeared. This yearWilliam T. Vollmann published a two-volume book entitled "Carbon Ideologies", which he claimed to write for the inhabitants of a catastrophic and disastrous future.
After describing the amount of energy needed to make the glass, he added, "I hope you have at least inherited some of our windows. Perhaps you have eradicated them from the drowned properties and installed them in your caves. "
For James Hansen, the scientist who warned of climate change in the historic testimony of Congress 30 years ago, the apocalyptic discourse is getting old.
"I find people who think we are doomed to be very tiring and useless," he said. The most catastrophic results can be avoided "if we are smart and think that we are capable of being intelligent".
Dr. Marvel agreed. "It is worth pointing out that there is no scientific support for the inevitable misfortune," she said.
"Climate change is not a failure," she added. "There is a true continuum of the future, a continuum of possibilities."
So yes, things will be bad. And yes, we must do more, much more, to avoid what could happen. But how things get terrible and for how many people depend on what we do.
And while humans avoid notoriously acting on long-term problems, the species has an ability to look into the future.
"We think about the future," said Dr. Marvel. "We plant trees" and "we have children".
Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist at Texas Tech University, noted that her colleagues tended to be cautious about their findings: "If they say something wrong, you know it's probably way worse than what 'they said.
Yet, "I find hope". Young people are becoming climate leaders, she noted, and developing technologies can already extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
"It's expensive, but the fact that we can do so gives hope," she said.
In order to achieve a better future, the problems of the present must be more effectively explained, said Dr. Hayhoe. A message of unavoidable inevitability creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. She said, "The worst will to arrive, because we give up. "
One might think that tackling climate change amounts to moving a huge rock "with only a few hands to push it"he added. Drankt "there are already millions of hands on the rock", thanks in particular to the economic trend in favor of renewable energies.
"The world is changing," said Dr. Hayhoe. "It's not fast enough."
There is not only one way to talk about climate change, though. As Dr. Marvel said, "There is nothing that works for everyone and there is no definition of the term" work "that everyone agrees with."
One message can motivate people to act, another can trigger an emotional response, and another can teach something concrete. "All these goals are commendable. It's not the same thing, "she said.
Dr. Marvel is not a fan of the message some people have guessed from a recent climate report – which he is "A little over a decade" to correct the problem.
"I am willing to bet a lot of money, a million dollars, that in 12 years, there will always be human beings on the planet," she said.
This is certainly not a reason for complacency, however. "There is no cliff," she said, "but there is no doubt that there is a slope," and the world can continue to sink into trouble over time.
In the end, she said, "we really need to have as many voices as possible from as many people as possible to do it."
After all, she said, "There is no one who will not be affected by climate change in one way or another."
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