Our Best Efforts To Reverse Climate Change Might Not Be Enough At This Point

A new scientific study published in the Nature journal offers the latest insight into the impact of global warming — and if we’re being honest, it’s a bit of a downer.

What the research shows

Although there has been quite a bit of hype surrounding the race to create new technologies and tools designed to reverse the impact of climate change. But according to the study’s lead author, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, undoing much of that damage could prove impossible.

“Every degree of warming or every point of a degree of warming … comes with irreversible consequences,” he warned.

The recently published paper outlined issues such as extreme weather and sea level increases as problems that likely cannot be solved by even the most ambitious missions to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Melting glaciers, for example, are likely to remain a constant on Earth for several centuries based on the damage already caused by climate change.

Does that mean we’re doomed?

There’s no question that this report leads to some pretty alarming conclusions, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to save our planet. But instead of trying to clean up the environment, the authors insisted that it’s far more important to significantly reduce how much pollution gets there in the first place.

The landmark Paris Climate Agreement included a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to the latest data, the current rate is 1.2 degrees.

In order to not exceed that remaining 0.3 degrees, the researchers determined that emissions on a global scale must reach net zero by the midpoint of this century.

Coauthor Gaurav Ganti concluded: “We cannot squander carbon dioxide removal on offsetting emissions we have the ability to avoid.”

Chris Agee October 24th, 2024

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