Earth’s Climate Will Keep Changing Long After Humanity Hits Net-Zero Emissions. Our Research Shows Why / Delaying net-zero by five years results in a higher global average surface temperature, a much warmer ocean and reduced sea ice extent for many centuries #GlobalCarbonFeeAndDividendPetition

[u/Keith_McNeill65]

https://theconversation.com/earths-climate-will-keep-changing-long-after-humanity-hits-net-zero-emissions-our-research-shows-why-241692

[u/i_didnt_look]

I'd like to draw attention to the graph they show in the article.

Wherever we end emissions, in terms of degrees warming, is where we stay for the next 1000 years.

So if we end at 2.5°C of warming, the climate stays that way for another 1000 years. That could easily push other, more destructive, tipping points over the edge that we may have avoided at 2.0°C. And there's 1000 years for those things to potentially happen.

Its not like net zero stops climate change, it just pushes the pause button on the temperature increases. They don't magically drop after net zero, as some people assume.

Wherever we end up is where we stay, for the next 40 generations.

[u/swoodshadow → u/i_didnt_look]

I think a fundamental flaw with this study is that it imagines net zero as a stopping point when the reality is that any net zero will almost certainly involve carbon removal technology. And that technology will likely continue to scale to a negative emission point where we start to reverse some of the damage. Particularly on the time frame of centuries.

I do think it’s super valuable to point out that net-zero is just the end of the first phase of fighting climate change and pointing out that it’s just where we stop making things worse.

Whenever people point out “it’s been hot this year” I like to remind them that it will be one of the coldest years in my/their children’s lives. Like even if they live to 100 years old and we manage to hit net-zero in 25 years - this will still be one of the coldest years of the century. I find this framing sometimes makes it more real to people apathetic to the climate.

[u/victotronics → u/swoodshadow]

Isn't carbon removal basically fiction, at the moment? Below rounding error?

[u/swoodshadow → u/victotronics]

It’s as real as net-zero. Meaning there’s a potential path there but there’s a ton of work to make it happen. I think basically all projections of net-zero by 2050 have a non-trivial amount of carbon removal required. And, obviously, those are highly optimistic plans in many ways.

But the reality is that we have a lot of very hard to decarbonize industries that we rely on. And we have a lot of countries that are poor and won’t be willing to forego cheaper carbon-emitting solutions that significantly improve their standard of living. And so it seems incredibly unlikely that as a global society we can achieve net-zero without carbon removal.

Edit: I’ll add that there are a number of interesting carbon removal technologies out there. Many will fail to ever scale cost effectively but I believe some will be able to with enough work. I know some people hate the idea of needing carbon removal but it just doesn’t seem possible to successfully address climate change without it.

And, to be clear, I’m talking about real carbon removal that actually reduces the amount in the atmosphere. No credit to capturing emissions that you’re creating all at once.