eli5 as to how changes in global temperature that are 1.5° affect it so much?

Question

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.

In: 1

Answer 1

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.