Why does just 1.5C° of heating make such a significant difference on Earth’s climate and environment?
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Warning, personification is used repeatedly for ease of discussion. I am NOT suggesting that the world has thoughts and feelings.
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Temperature and heat are two different things.
If you were to increase the temperature of a small mug of water by 1.5°C you would need a certain amount of heat.
If you wanted to increase the temperature of TWO mugs, then you’d need TWICE as much heat. Likewise, a full bath would need much much more heat. I think most people have an intuitive sense of this (even if they don’t know the distinction in terminology).
Now, heat is a form of energy. In simple terms, energy is a measure of an object’s capacity to “do stuff”. You use energy to walk. Tornadoes use energy to destroy buildings. The sun uses energy to melt your ice-cream.
Now, suppose you wanted to heat THE WORLD, all of it, by 1.5°C. Such a temperature increase would require A LOT of energy. A temperature change of 1.5°C is not a big temperature change, but a small change across the entire planet is indicative of an unthinkable amount of new energy that we’ve added to the atmosphere. No telling what the atmosphere will do with that energy and it’s not forced to spread it’s usage evenly.
Nature (for all her virtues) enjoys the sport of killing us. Giving her more energy with which to buy our destruction is not going to help us in the long run. Floods, heat waves, storms, droughts, you name it. Anything that nature has done to us in the past, she will gladly do more often as we feed her the necessary funds (energy) to pay for it.
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As it happens, 1.5°C is not as concerning as people make out. It’s simply the lowest round number that we realistically might stay below. We are already at 1.2°C and (while we have our problems) the environment isn’t too harsh yet. 1.5°C would be worse but not too much worse.
The original concern was 4°C, which very few people believe we will hit (not within the next 100 years at least). 3°C is still a real possibility in 2100, but there is reason to be optimistic about getting that number lower.
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