<
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-climate-change-weve-already-created-will-last-50000-years-scientists-warn>
"In February 2000, Paul Crutzen rose to speak at the International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Mexico. And when he spoke, people took notice.
He was then one of the world's most cited scientists, a Nobel laureate working
on huge-scale problems – the ozone hole, the effects of a nuclear winter.
So little wonder that a word he improvised took hold and spread widely: this
was the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch, representing an Earth
transformed by the effects of industrialised humanity.
The idea of an entirely new and human-created geological epoch is a sobering
scenario as context for the current UN climate summit, COP28. The impact of
decisions made at these and other similar conferences will be felt not just
beyond our own lives and those of our children, but perhaps beyond the life of
human society as we know it.
The Anthropocene is now in wide currency, but when Crutzen first spoke this was
still a novel suggestion. In support of his new brain-child, Crutzen cited many
planetary symptoms: enormous deforestation, the mushrooming of dams across the
world's large rivers, overfishing, a planet's nitrogen cycle overwhelmed by
fertiliser use, the rapid rise in greenhouse gases.
As for climate change itself, well, the warning bells were ringing, certainly.
Global mean surface temperatures had risen by about half a degree since the
mid-20th century. But, they were still within the norm for an interglacial
phase of the ice ages. Among many emerging problems, climate seemed one for the
future.
A little more than two decades on, the future has arrived. By 2022, global
temperature had climbed another half a degree, the past nine years being the
hottest since records began. And 2023 has seen climate records being not just
broken, but smashed.
By September there had already been 38 days when global average temperatures
exceeded pre-industrial ones by 1.5°C, the safe limit of warming set by the UN
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the Paris agreement. In previous years
that was rare, and before 2000 this milestone had never been recorded.
With this leap in temperatures came record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires and
floods, exacerbated by other local human actions. Climate has moved centre
stage on an Anthropocene Earth."
Via Rixty Dixet.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
