We Are On The Brink Of Disaster
A new study shines a light on the reality of climate change.
by Will Lockett
We are hurtling towards a climate catastrophe. You might be thinking: surely efforts like the Paris Agreement will stop this self-made apocalypse before any irrevocable damage is done? After all, they are aiming for no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of climate warming, with a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius. This tiny increase in temperature can’t have a massive impact on the planet. Right? Well, a new study suggests that it unfortunately might.
This study looked at “climate tipping points” and under what amount of climate change they are likely to happen. These are ecological points of no return. Once these events happen, they will affect the global ecosystem and mean that our world will become unable to recover back to how it once was. These tipping points include ice sheet collapses, glacier loss, current stagnation, forest diebacks, and permafrost thawing.
Before we look at the study’s findings, we first need to understand how damaging these tipping points are.
The tipping points involving ice loss will massively increase sea levels. This will not only flood countless cities, leaving millions homeless, but it will also wreak havoc on marine ecosystems and weather patterns. For example, all coral reefs will end up being too deep, starving them of sunlight. If this happens, we could lose all the world’s coral reefs, which are a keystone ecosystem for the global marine ecosystem. Asia’s monsoons could be turbocharged too, thanks to a new abundance of warm shallow water, putting millions of lives at risk from deadly storms.
But ice melting into the sea will also affect the ocean currents. These mighty rivers in the ocean stir up the world’s seas, creating the nutrient-rich top waters that feed the base of the ocean food web. However, these currents need polar ice sheets to power them. Without these vital resources, they stagnate and starve the ocean of nutrients. This not only decimates marine ecosystems but also significantly reduces the world’s oxygen supply, given we get the vast majority of our oxygen from marine algae.
Possibly the most terrifying consequence is permafrost thawing. In the Arctic tundra, the ground never thaws and is permanently frozen solid. Millions of years ago, this vast landscape once consisted of peat bogs and wetlands, meaning this frozen Earth is incredibly carbon-rich. However, as it thaws out, this carbon will be released into the atmosphere, increasing the rate of climate change. As the tundra thaws, it creates runaway climate change by releasing more frozen carbon into the atmosphere, which increases temperatures, and so on. This will only stop when the billions upon billions of tonnes of trapped carbon are all released, and the entirety of the tundra’s permafrost is erased. Some estimates reckon that if this happens, it could cause eight degrees of climate change all by itself, which is enough to give rise to a mass extinction on a scale the Earth hasn’t seen in millions of years.
Part of the reason so many countries came together to sign the Paris Agreement was to stop events like these from happening. Doing so will save millions of lives, keep civil peace, and give the Earth a chance to recover back to its former glory.
Unfortunately, this is where our recent study comes in.
This study found that even if we manage to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we are still likely to witness five of these irreversible tipping points. Namely, the Greenland ice sheet collapse, the West Antarctic ice sheet collapse, tropical reef die-off, Labrador Sea current stagnation, and the northern permafrost thaw (with not quite the entire permafrost thawing, but it still constituting a significant accelerator for climate change). These tipping points combined are enough for whole ecosystems to crash and threaten millions of human lives.
But it gets worse. We are currently far behind this 1.5 degree goal, and it looks like we will instead butt up against the Paris Agreement’s maximum of 2 degrees Celsius. If that happens, a further seven tipping points are possible. Namely, Barents Sea ice sheet collapse, West Africa monsoon shift, East Antarctic glacier collapse, Amazon rainforest dieback, Atlantic current collapse, northern forest dieback, and northern forest north lay expansion. All of these will have far-reaching and devastating effects.
Let’s remind ourselves here that these catastrophes will happen irrespective of the fact that we will be carbon neutral by 2050. Even if we apply all of our greatest environmental technology to fixing the problem, the Earth will still be damaged beyond repair, and we will witness an apocalyptic future.
When I say apocalyptic future, I’m not exaggerating. If all of these events come to pass, then we will experience hardships like never before. Entire counties will be submerged under the waves, crops will fail year after year, the weather will become so extreme that once pleasant and arable places will become inhospitable and deadly, entire ecosystems will be wiped out, and governments will fall. This future might not quite be humanity-ending. But it will still be hell.
Sadly, this shows that even the Paris Agreement doesn’t go far enough. We need to take more drastic action, and soon. It isn’t as if we don’t have the technology to support such action either. Every week, I write at least three articles about simple technology capable of slashing our emissions, whether it is restoring wetlands, super-efficient solar panels, or how impressive nuclear power is.
We are humans. We put a man on the Moon before pocket calculators were invented, eradicated smallpox, harnessed the power of the atom, discovered the God-Particle (Higgs boson), and even created telescopes that can look back in time. We are better than this. We can stop this fate from coming true. We have the means. So, together, let’s prevent an apocalypse.