Do you remember when this happened:
Experts say that we have until 2030 to avoid catastrophe.
And then this:
Climate change is exploiting the world's land at an unprecedented rate.
Can you sip a steak?
Well prepare for something like this: Taylor: The coral reefs are totally f**cked
I’m not IRL-old, I’m getting kind-of internet old, but I don’t remember a time when a
massive hundreds-of-pages-long climate report made headlines - or memes - or started movements
- until the last year.
Since 2018 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has now released, three big
reports about humanity’s, but let’s be real mostly industrialized, rich, countries’
impacts on the planets climate.
The first one - a report on the impacts of reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrialized
temps showed us the very possible terrifying future with increases in extreme heat events,
species loss, and sea level rise with the most vulnerable and poorest hit the hardest.
It also emphasized just how hard it’ll be to keep temperatures down.
In the IPCC’s land report, from just a few months ago, scientists said globally, we really
need to think about what we’re eating, and how that food is made.
And now.
We’ve got the Ocean And Cryosphere Report.
Cryosphere, just means, ice, basically any frozen water on earth.
I recommend asking for some cryosphere in your drink next time you order at a bar.
Let me know how that goes.
Anyway this report or S-ROCK (SROCC) if you wanna, is many, many, many, many, many, pages
long.
But here are the big take-aways.
The ocean has been changed - a lot.
Its warmer, its more acidic, and it holds less oxygen.
Since we started pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the ocean has been absorbing
90 percent of the extra heat energy.
And that’s having serious effects.
LIke - warm water coral reefs are going to keep dying off and aren’t likely to recover.
Which is obviously bad in its own right - but reefs are also important for supporting fisheries,
giving nemo a home, and protecting coastlines from ocean waves - they’ve also got an economic
value of like 30 billion dollars.
Sea Levels are rising.
We’re already locked into at least .4 meters by 2100.
For scale.
That is approximately how long my dog, darcy, is.
And that’s if we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
If we don’t, get ready for 2 darcy’s worth of sea level rise or even more.
hello it is me, here to explain to you why this joke is funny, the hallmark of a funny
joke.
Darcys are also an actual unit of permeability often used in petroleum engineering - but
here I’m using them to refer to sea level rise - a phenomenon that is happening because
of petroleum use - also my dog is cute - so that is also funny.
Because of higher sea levels and a warmer ocean - storms are getting worse.
We’ve already been seeing this.
Slow-moving storms that dump tons of water like hurricanes Harvey and Maria and recently
Dorian caused massive amounts of devastation and Houston, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas
will be in a state of recovery for years and years to come.
Everything getting warmer also means the ice is melting.
That’s ice in glaciers, sea ice, and permafrost.
Glaciers melting means more than just adding a bunch of extra water into the oceans - it
can also lead to rapid, unexpected, flash flooding - which can cause tons of damage.
And glaciers that used to melt seasonally, and feed streams and rivers- well they’re
disappearing and those streams and rivers that communities rely on are drying up, resulting
in water shortages.
Permafrost melting is already causing land to collapse - towns like Newtok in Alaska
have seen their coastline literally falling into the ocean - and as more of the permafrost
goes - this is going to keep happening all over the arctic, and in high-mountain regions.
With sea level rise, permafrost melt, and extreme storms - coastlines and islands are
in serious trouble.
People are going to have to move.
Even if we can hold off warming to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, by
2100 the places where 280 million live could be underwater.
All of these impacts are really freaking hard to deal with.
The impacts of climate change will be felt both physically and mentally.
Dealing with water shortage, food insecurity, and economic instability caused by flooded
infrastructure, reduced fishery catches and changes in shipping routes is going to require
a massive restructuring of how people live their lives.
While we, hopefully, work radically and quickly to mitigate as many of the impacts of climate
change as we can - we’ll need to - at the same time - figure out how to adapt to the
changes that are here and will continue to arrive.
Coastal cities will need to invest in expensive barriers to hold back the ocean - which really
only works for low levels of sea level rise, and is only attainable to those with the cash.
Buildings must be secured against flood and storm-surge.
We’ve gotta figure out the best early warning systems so that people who are in harm's way
of flooding and super storms have time to respond.
Governments and people are going to need to work together to make sure that as the thermometer
goes up we’re not doing other things to screw with fragile ecosystems - like overfishing,
or dumping waste and toxins into waterways.
This IPCC report also acknowledges that a lot of the folks impacted directly by things
like permafrost melt in the Arctic and sea level rise are indigenous.
Our collective response to these climatic changes needs to recognize that indigenous
folks are often on the front lines of climate change, have been dealing with these issues
for decades already, and likely have good plans we all could learn from.
There’s a lot of stuff in the IPCC reports - and a lot of it is scary.
This report on Oceans and the Cryosphere is no different.
We’re facing futures that are already looking pretty dire, we cannot let the even worse
projections come true.
Links and resources for ways to learn more and get involved in dealing with the climate
crisis will be down below.