But nothing less than the future of the Earth is at stake. The COVID emergency has shattered our sense of normalcy and forced us to grapple with the kind of world we want — and need — when this crisis is over.
Will you join us for an upcoming Climate Reality Leadership Corps training? Because even with the threat of coronavirus outside our doors, we are still working to give our children a better world to live in.
At Climate Reality, we work hard to create high-quality educational content like blogs, e-books, videos, and more to empower people all over the world to fight for climate solutions and stand together to drive the change we need. We are a nonprofit organization that believes there is hope in unity, and that together, we can build a safe, sustainable future.
To put it another way, we want to do everything we can to keep warming below 1. To understand why, read on. Temperatures Will Get Much Hotter than 1. So where does the 1. The IPCC projects that going from 1. Seas rise — on average — another 10 centimeters almost 4 inches ,. Up to several hundred million more people become exposed to climate-related risks and poverty.
The coral reefs that support marine environments around the world could decline as much as 99 percent. Global fishery catches could decline by another 1.
There is such a thing as moving too slowly. Ready to Take the Next Step? Before You Go At Climate Reality, we work hard to create high-quality educational content like blogs, e-books, videos, and more to empower people all over the world to fight for climate solutions and stand together to drive the change we need. Practically speaking, we are heading past 1. What bothers me about the forced optimism that has become de rigueur in climate circles is that it excludes the tragic dimension of climate change and thus robs it of some of the gravity it deserves.
Really sad. We are in the midst of making the earth a simpler, cruder, less hospitable place, not only for ourselves but for all the kaleidoscopic varieties of life that evolved here in a relatively stable climate.
The most complex and most idiosyncratic forms of life are most at risk ; the mosquitoes and jellyfish will prosper. That is simply the background condition of our existence as a species now, even if we rally to avoid the worst outcomes. But it would be shallow, and less than fully human, to deny the unfolding tragedy that provides the context for all our decisions now.
I know from conversations over the years that many people see that tragedy, and feel it, but given the perpetually heightened partisan tensions around climate change, they are leery to give it voice. They worry that it will lend fuel to the forces of denial and delay, that they are morally obliged to provide cheer.
To really grapple with climate change, we have to understand it, and more than that, take it on board emotionally. That can be an uncomfortable, even brutal process , because the truth is that we have screwed around, and are screwing around, and with each passing day we lock in more irreversible changes and more suffering. Saying that we are likely to miss the 1.
Such accusations are premised on the notion that a cold assessment of our chances will destroy motivation, that it will leave audiences overwhelmed, hopeless, and disengaged. But the idea that hope lives or dies on the chances of hitting 1.
We can always hope to arrest our slide. Exceeding 1. What sense would that make? These are all, in the end, arbitrary thresholds. Exceeding one does not in any way reduce the moral and political imperative to stay beneath the next. If anything, the need to mobilize against climate change only becomes greater with every new increment of heat, because the potential stakes grow larger.
Given the scale of the challenge and the compressed time to act, there is effectively no practical danger of anyone, at any level, doing too much or acting too quickly. The moral imperative for the remainder of the lives of everyone now living is to decarbonize as fast as possible; that is true no matter the temperature.
No one ever gets to stop or give up, no matter how bad it gets. If you need a kick in the pants on this subject, read this essay by Mary Heglar. This can no longer be news among other news, an "important topic" among other topics, a "political issue" among other political issues or a crisis among other crises.
This is not party politics or opinions. This is an existential emergency. And we must start treating it as such. As a final, practical point, speaking frankly about the extreme unlikelihood of stopping at 1. But it should mean getting serious about adaptation, i.
Here in the US, we need to think about how to help Californians dealing with wildfires , Midwestern farmers dealing with floods , and coastal homeowners dealing with a looming insurance crisis. All those problems are going to get worse.
We need to grapple with that squarely, because the real threat is that these escalating impacts overwhelm our ability, not just to mitigate GHGs, but to even care or react to disasters when they happen elsewhere.
Right now, much of Australia is on fire — half a billion animals have likely died since September — and it is barely breaking the news cycle in the US.
That shrinking of empathy is arguably the greatest danger facing the human species, the biggest barrier to the collective action necessary to save ourselves. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all.
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all. Small Islands and Coastal and Low-lying Areas — The report says these areas will see multiple climate-related risks at 1. These risks include sea level rise, leading to coastal flooding and erosion; changes to the salinity of coastal groundwater supplies, resulting in freshwater stress; risks to marine ecosystems, such as mass coral bleaching and die-offs; and more intense tropical cyclones.
Part 1 of this two-part series includes an interactive presentation of highlights from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report showing how higher temperature thresholds will adversely impact increasingly larger percentages of life on Earth, with significant variations by region, ecosystem and species. Figure 3. Temperature of annual hottest day maximum temperature , TXx top , and temperature of annual coldest night minimum temperature , TNn middle , and annual maximum 5-day precipitation, Rx5day bottom.
Credit: Figure 3. Freshwater increases above average are shown in blue, while decreases below average are in red. Flooding in Marblehead, Massachusetts, caused by Hurricane Sandy. The IPCC special report says heavy rainfall from tropical cyclones is projected to be higher as Earth continues to warm. Threshold level of global temperature anomaly above pre-industrial levels that leads to significant local changes in terrestrial ecosystems.
Regions with severe colored or moderate greyish ecosystem transformation; delineation refers to the 90 biogeographic regions.
All values denote changes found in greater than 50 percent of the simulations. Source: Gerten et al. Regions colored in dark red are projected to undergo severe transformation under a global warming of 1. Sea level rise fingerprints calculated from observations of mass changes in Greenland, Antarctica, continental glaciers and ice caps, and land water storage made by the U. Sea level fingerprints are detectable patterns of sea level variability around the world resulting from changes in water storage on Earth's continents and in the mass of ice sheets.
Sea level rise will significantly impact areas all around the world to varying degrees. The texture on the surface of flowing ice, such as Heimdal Glacier in southern Greenland, allows Landsat 8 to map nearly all the flowing ice in the world.
The IPCC special report states, with medium confidence, that at an increased level of warming between 1. Black dots show where dead zones have been observed, but their size is unknown. Fish in Moofushiu Kandu, Maldives. According to the IPCC special report, at 1. Bleached branching coral foreground and normal branching coral background in the Keppel Islands, Great Barrier Reef.
The IPCC special report says that ocean warming, acidification and more intense storms will cause coral reefs to decline by 70 to 90 percent at 1. Credit: Creative Commons Attribution 3.
Mangroves in Cambodia. The IPCC special report says that many marine and coastal ecosystems will see increased risks of irreversible loss at 2 degrees Celsius warming. Loss of mangrove trees increases at both the 1. Maps of land surface type and temperature for Baltimore, Maryland, reveal the tight relationship between development and the urban heat island effect. Land temperatures in the densely developed city center are as much as 10 degrees Celsius higher than the surrounding forested landscape.
The IPCC special report says cities will experience the worst impacts of heatwaves due to the urban heat island effect. The IPCC special report projects seven to 10 percent of rangeland livestock will be lost at about 2 degrees Celsius warming. Credit: USDA. Tavarua Island, Fiji. The IPCC special report says small islands and coastal and low-lying areas around the world will see multiple climate-related risks at 1.
Called INCUS, it aims to directly address why convective storms, heavy precipitation, and clouds occur exactly when and where they form.
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