I’m not denying that it’s bad, I know it’s bad and a horrible thing, but I wanna know how changes that are only 1.5° affect it so much and matter so much.
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Many plants and animals are adapted to a very narrow range, corals as an example are dying out due to bleaching as the temperature kills them off https://youtu.be/ORjBPPnrpb4 as the coral dies so do many other species that rely upon the coral and the whole ecosystem collapses.
Some large parts of the Earth’s ecosystem are not as temperature flexible as humans. Humans are pretty tough, particularly with their tools and clothes, and can live in a wide range of temperatures. This is highly unusual, most life can only operate in a more narrow range. Essentially, the single cell life which makes up most of the Earth’s biomass and makes much of the oxygen we use can only operate in a range that’s 10˚C wide. A 1.5˚C change is 15%, and that’s a lot to them.
In addition to what others are saying, 1.5 degrees is an average. Certain areas at certain times of year will experience much greater increases in temperature.
1.5 is the average. In some areas it will get hotter, in other colder.
One of the big problems is that one of the areas it’s going to get hotter is the tundra. Tundra stores a lot of methane. When it melts the methane will be released. Methane is also a greenhouse gas and so this will increase warming even more.
Some places that will get colder will be food producing areas that won’t be able to produce as much food anymore.
The other is that warming increases evaporation of water. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas.
So the more warming there is the more greenhouses gases are released into the atmosphere and the more warming that takes place. At some point it will run away and continue no matter what we do.
This change can be absolute critical in some cases. -.5C and water is ice, heat that by 1.5° and it’ll become water. That can mean that polar bear has to wake up earlier by a week or two but the other nature is not awake, so he has to starve longer, burn energy and won’t be able to preserve as much as needed for the next winter.
Also, if it’s 1° every year it means in 10 years it’ll be 10° hotter!
If you think of it as “oh, it’s only 1.5° warmer than before”, it doesn’t seem significant.
But the amount of additional energy being trapped is between 0.7 and 2.0 watts per square meter, depending on the research. Let’s round that to 1.0 watt/m² for this explanation.
The surface of the Earth is ~5 x 10¹⁴ m², so that’s an additional 5 x 10¹⁴ watts *per year* of warming. That’s 278 *billion* hair dryers running continuously.
One aspect, very much simplified:
Some places are cold and are always covered with snow. (mountains, glaciers, …)Other places are warm and never have snow. (deserts, normal land, …)Increasing global temperatures will decrease the snow covered area by a certain amount, while simultaneously increasing the non-snow covered area. (Think with averages.)
The non-snow covered areas absorb light from the sun, turning it into heat.
The snow covered areas reflect light back into outerspace before it turns into heat.
There is a balance to maintain.
It is calculated that after an increase of around 1.5°C it will cause a runaway effect: the additional heat from absorbed sunlight in non-snow covered areas is enough to further increase temperatures, which will further decreasing the snow-covered areas, which will futher increase temperatures, etc…
Essentially, a lot of the systems that we as humans rely on are pretty delicate. The extra warming is concentrated at the poles, leading to the ice caps melting, raising sea level, inundating coastlines. The extra energy also gives storms more energy, making them stronger and more frequent. The melting ice caps dump fresh water into the ocean, disrupting ocean currents, and changing the temperature in some places by 10 degrees or more.
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