You know, one of the problems with the quotes you're throwing around is that they're about different subjects, but you're not reading them carefully enough to realize this. Contrast this, which you base on the UN document you quoted earlier:
With this:
The UN report was all about whether we can keep temperatures below 2C and possibly 1.5C. And it is appropriately pessimistic. We almost certainly won't. But the second quote is about doing anything to alter the trajectory of climate change, by slowing the rate of change and the final magnitude. And it's optimistic about that.
Climate change is not some yes-or-no, binary thing. If we lower the increase of carbon emissions, we slow down the rate of change. If we stabilize them, then we limit both the rate of change and how much change we'll ultimately see. If we actually cause emissions to drop, we'll be able to make those limits more dramatic. All of those remain true whether or now we overshoot a 2C target.
Perhaps more importantly, they buy us more time before we see the same amount of change. And that time allows positive trends - the death of coal power, the increasing economic power of renewables, research in carbon capture tech - to advance us further, creating a virtuous cycle.
But you would seemingly prefer to ignore all that, and just say "we're not going to hit the 2C target, so why bother?"
And that's of course ignoring the fact that you apparently can't support your accusation that Cow Poke disagrees that humans are causing climate change. Or that you haven't acknowledged that you claimed your own opinion had the weight of a scientific consensus. It seems like Teal is doing a find job holding your feet to the fire on those counts.
Originally posted by shunyadragon
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Originally posted by shunyadragon
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Climate change is not some yes-or-no, binary thing. If we lower the increase of carbon emissions, we slow down the rate of change. If we stabilize them, then we limit both the rate of change and how much change we'll ultimately see. If we actually cause emissions to drop, we'll be able to make those limits more dramatic. All of those remain true whether or now we overshoot a 2C target.
Perhaps more importantly, they buy us more time before we see the same amount of change. And that time allows positive trends - the death of coal power, the increasing economic power of renewables, research in carbon capture tech - to advance us further, creating a virtuous cycle.
But you would seemingly prefer to ignore all that, and just say "we're not going to hit the 2C target, so why bother?"
And that's of course ignoring the fact that you apparently can't support your accusation that Cow Poke disagrees that humans are causing climate change. Or that you haven't acknowledged that you claimed your own opinion had the weight of a scientific consensus. It seems like Teal is doing a find job holding your feet to the fire on those counts.
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