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We've Already Built too Many Power Plants and Cars to Prevent 1.5 °C of Warming:
In a [...] paper published in Nature today[*], researchers found we're now likely to sail well past 1.5 ˚C of warming, the aspirational limit set by the Paris climate accords, even if we don't build a single additional power plant, factory, vehicle, or home appliance. Moreover, if these components of the existing energy system operate for as long as they have historically, and we build all the new power facilities already planned, they'll emit about two thirds of the carbon dioxide necessary to crank up global temperatures by 2 ˚C.
If fractions of a degree don't sound that dramatic, consider that 1.5 ˚C of warming could already be enough to expose 14% of the global population to bouts of severe heat, melt nearly 2 million square miles (5 million square kilometers) of Arctic permafrost, and destroy more than 70% of the world's coral reefs. The hop from there to 2 ˚C may subject nearly three times as many people to heat waves, thaw nearly 40% more permafrost, and all but wipe out coral reefs, among other devastating effects, research finds.
The basic conclusion here is, in some ways, striking. We've already built a system that will propel the planet into the dangerous terrain that scientists have warned for decades we must avoid. This means that building lots of renewables and adding lots of green jobs, the focus of much of the policy debate over climate, isn't going to get the job done.
We now have to ask a much harder societal question: How do we begin forcing major and expensive portions of existing energy infrastructure to shut down years, if not decades, before the end of its useful economic life?
Power plants can cost billions of dollars and operate for half a century. Yet the study notes that the average age of coal plants in China and India—two of the major drivers of the increase in "committed emissions" since the earlier paper—is about 11 and 12 years, respectively.
[*] Monday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:37PM (9 children)
Like most of them, for crying out loud. If you open up your eyes and look at the globe, you'll maybe notice the multitude of reefs right at and near the equator. And if you also engage your brain and look at the paleontology data, you'll notice that corals have been here since long before the ice ages. All through PETM, too.
http://web.archive.org/web/20190213015542/http://coral.aims.gov.au/info/evolution.jsp [archive.org]
The corals have done their "tests" themselves, the way nature intended. By propagating to new habitats on their own, that is.
Do remember that corals are a few hundred million years older than primates, and had managed their transplanting for all that time without our involvement whatsoever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:47PM (1 child)
BS, a reef can't calculate statistical significance to run the tests. Unless you are saying they are intelligent entities...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @07:00PM
The proof of corals is in the reefs. And their having been growing through much more drastic conditions than the most FUDy projections out there right now, is proof enough.
http://www.coralsoftheworld.org/page/reefs/ [coralsoftheworld.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Taibhsear on Wednesday July 03 2019, @08:08PM (6 children)
Sheathe your katana there, edgelord. I was asking so I can look up information on the species. I'm not a marine biologist. I'm a biochemist. Just because something evolved to a new climate thousands of years ago is not a guarantee it will happen again. Evolution doesn't work that way. If we want to make sure the changing environment can be restabilized with other organisms we need to test it. All those areas that are being bleached? Seed them with the other corals and see if they take hold. Science isn't based on what you believe. We need to check and prove it rather than just blindly assuming it will happen how we would like it to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @08:27PM
Don't forget the scale, human industry has really ramped up the rate of change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @06:37PM (1 child)
http://theconversation.com/heat-tolerant-corals-can-create-nurseries-that-are-resistant-to-bleaching-116675 [theconversation.com]
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/21/10586.short [pnas.org]
While I'm quite sure you could do a search for "corals resistant to bleaching" entirely on your own, maybe this post will help someone who is genuinely confused and misinformed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @06:45PM
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/21/10586 [pnas.org]
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/great-barrier-reef-surviving-corals-greater-heatwave-resistance [theguardian.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:07PM (2 children)
Evolution has worked that way for at least a billion years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday July 05 2019, @08:54AM (1 child)
We are talking about drastic, disruptive environmental changes taking place over a timeframe of decades. You are talking about evolutionary processes that take thousands, if not millions of years.
Sure, something will evolve to fill that niche eventually, but until it does we are left with a(nother) big hole in the ecosystem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 05 2019, @09:17AM
Unless, of course, it doesn't happen that way. Where's your evidence?
And over that billion plus years, there has been plenty of drastic, disruptive environmental changes over the timeframe of decades. We are still here.
Or we can allow the ecosystem from 200 km closer to the equator to move in (similarly for tidal based ecosystems allow it to shift a few meters up when that becomes relevant). Migrating ecosystems (with human assistance when necessary) is not a perfect solution, but it eliminates IMHO a huge portion of the problems with species extinction and such from climate change for the next few centuries and it's pretty cheap.