Are we heading for a 50 degree summer?

In Paris in 2016, world leaders agreed to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, but recently research It shows that this limit may already have been exceeded. We could reach 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2030.

Despite all the words and promises, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to increase and thus the Earth’s temperature rises. The fact that scientists repeatedly conclude that this is happening faster than expected is alarming.

Under current climate policy, we are on track for a temperature rise of 3 to 4 degrees by 2050. That may not sound like much, but it is. A body that gets 1 degree warmer gets a fever. A body that gets 4 degrees warmer structurally dies. The same is true for Earth. With this slight difference: Earth will survive this kind of warming, but it will be much harder for human civilization.

Fifteen years minus one day between these photos. Taken today at the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland.

I won’t lie, it made me cry. pic.twitter.com/Inz6uO1kum

– Duncan Porter (@misterduncan) August 4, 2024

The oceans are warming more slowly, which means the rest of the Earth is warming faster. Plus, dry soils provide a self-reinforcing effect. All of this means we could see peaks of up to 50 degrees Celsius by 2050, climate scientists estimate. Francois Massonette From the University of California, Louvain.

These temperatures are deadly, explains his colleague Wim Thierry from VUB. During the 2020 heatwave, 1,400 more people died than usual for that period. “In France, the peak of excess heat-related deaths was higher than the peaks of the Covid waves,” Thierry says.

End of the game

In the book six degrees Mark Lynas describes the consequences of global warming from one to six degrees. In the chapter “Four Degrees,” he talks about heat-related deaths, large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable, hurricanes, floods, dust storms, wildfires, crop failures, and mass extinctions.

A body that becomes structurally 4 degrees warmer dies.

“The Earth has now entered the 4°C endgame, and that may not even be our final destination,” Lynas continues. “At this point, a large-scale feedback loop has begun, threatening to send the warming process into an unstoppable upward spiral.”

Global warming is not a uniform process, with every ton of carbon dioxide resulting in the same increase in temperature. It is a self-reinforcing process with many tipping points. For example, as the Earth warms and the polar ice caps melt, the white surface of Arctic ice is increasingly turning into dark water, reflecting less sunlight and converting more into heat. Just as a black shirt is warmer in the sun than a white shirt.

At four degrees, permafrost, the permanently frozen ice in the tundra around the North Pole, is also at risk of melting completely. Methane is stored there, along with organic matter that bacteria convert to carbon dioxide when the ice melts. Fortunately, current emissions there are partly offset by new plants that can grow where the ice disappears. But there is a tipping point, beyond which more greenhouse gases are released into the air from the melting permafrost than the plants can absorb.

Once that happens, we’ll be moving rapidly toward 5 degrees and then 6 degrees. “A warming of this magnitude threatens the survival of humans as a species,” says Lynas. “As most remaining life disappears, plant remains and rotting corpses form floating mats that wash up along the dead shores of oxygen-deprived oceans. Eventually, such extreme warming raises the prospect of a runaway greenhouse effect that evaporates the oceans, sterilizes the biosphere, and turns Earth into Venus, a billion years too early.”

Postpone a visit to the doctor

These are not the wild predictions of pessimists. This is an accurate description of the consequences of global warming we are currently heading towards, based on the best available science.

Our house is on fire

Our house is on fire. I thought We are doing everything we can to put out the fire, but the reality is that climate policies are being watered down in many European countries, and the United States will likely soon have a president who does not believe in climate change.

The climate crisis was not a topic in the election debates. Green parties are in decline across Europe. People seem to think that the environmental crisis will go away if people stop talking about it, but of course it doesn’t. We seem to be collectively behaving like a patient who doesn’t want to go to the doctor for fear of the diagnosis he somehow knows he will receive.

One of the main reasons Abandoning ambitious climate policy means it will cost a lot. This is not incomprehensible. The financial cost of going to the doctor is often a major barrier, but everyone knows that if you put it off until it is necessary, the bill will double.

Sometimes you have to finish something before it finishes you.

This is no different with climate change. Anyone who says it would be fun or easy to reduce our emissions is lying, but sometimes you have to end something before it ends you. We face a choice between what is right and what is easy. And the longer we postpone that choice, the greater the consequences we will face.