We are in uncharted territory. There has never in planetary history been a rapid warming as quickly as it is happening today. Two years ago, atmospheric carbon reached a level unprecedented in human history. Because we’ve done this so quickly, we can’t know how fast atmospheric carbon will heat up our world and how fast the glaciers will melt and flood our coastal cities. We don’t know whether we will be able to water our crops or keep them alive through unprecedented freezes, floods, and droughts.
Legions of scientists have been piecing together the unfathomably complex system that is our natural world. But they don’t know enough to predict when (and it is when, not if) coastal cities will be gone. Nor do they know how quickly the seas will rise once glaciers begin to collapse in earnest. Then there are the storms, the droughts, and the pestilence to understand, and microorganisms, and the extinction of species upon whom our survival depends.
Some scientists believe, and I agree with them, that climate conditions are in a surge state and that the natural world upon which our survival depends is dying. Unless we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade or so, we will move into a state where the climate will be heating up faster than we will be able to adapt.
Our leaders are doing nothing about this emergency. Our scientists can only give conservative projections of sea level rise and surface temperature rise.
We are going to be relying upon our intuition.
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