This week in Nature, a team led by Carl-Friedrich Schleussner at Climate Analytics, a non-profit research institute in Berlin, reports that even a temporary overshoot will allow climate impacts to accumulate over the next several decades (C. F. Schleussner et al. Nature 634, 366–373; 2024).
These impacts would include more severe storms, heatwaves and the destruction of ecosystems, and it won’t be easy to extract enough CO2 from the atmosphere to reverse course. Research is showing that the space for viable alternatives is limited. As world leaders and climate diplomats meet at next month’s United Nations COP29 meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, they need to take note: the wisest solution to tackle ballooning emissions is to cut, cut, cut.
cyborgamish on
Imagine all the carbon sources over the past 150 years—factories, combustion-based transport, heating systems, and agricultural emissions. Now remove half of that, nicely compensated by natural carbon cycles. Now, imagine playing that movie in reverse, with all those exhaust pipes reabsorbing the remaining gases. That’s what we would need to do. It’s absurd. Just stop burning stuff now and hope for the best.
2 Comments
TLDR:
This week in Nature, a team led by Carl-Friedrich Schleussner at Climate Analytics, a non-profit research institute in Berlin, reports that even a temporary overshoot will allow climate impacts to accumulate over the next several decades (C. F. Schleussner et al. Nature 634, 366–373; 2024).
These impacts would include more severe storms, heatwaves and the destruction of ecosystems, and it won’t be easy to extract enough CO2 from the atmosphere to reverse course. Research is showing that the space for viable alternatives is limited. As world leaders and climate diplomats meet at next month’s United Nations COP29 meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, they need to take note: the wisest solution to tackle ballooning emissions is to cut, cut, cut.
Imagine all the carbon sources over the past 150 years—factories, combustion-based transport, heating systems, and agricultural emissions. Now remove half of that, nicely compensated by natural carbon cycles. Now, imagine playing that movie in reverse, with all those exhaust pipes reabsorbing the remaining gases. That’s what we would need to do. It’s absurd. Just stop burning stuff now and hope for the best.