Ive read that our carbon emissions have basically started a cascade effect that we can’t limit now. IS this right or wrong?
In: 840
Part of the “cascade” effect you’ve read about is trapped CO2 in ice. As CO2 warms the atmosphere, more ice melts, releasing more CO2, and therefore melting ice faster. There’s also rising sea levels, again due to ice melting, which increases the surface area of the oceans and therefore the heat they absorb, leading to faster ice melting.
Neither of those are irreversible, but it’s possible even if we stopped emitting more CO2 (i.e. reached the “net zero” that many are aiming for) those effects would continue to heat the earth. So instead we need to reach a net negative, a reduction in CO2. There are ways we could do that, although it would require pretty significant political and economic policies, and a noticeable change to our daily lives (less meat, travel, shopping etc.).
If we do start removing CO2 we’d need to do so carefully. A hot earth isn’t *necessarily* as bad as a rapidly changing one. It’s the *rise* in temperature that’s disrupting weather patterns and ecosystems as much as the temperature itself. So we’d probably want to spend the next few centuries cooling it down to pre-industrial levels.
Latest Answers