I’m sometimes asked what would convince me that global warming was not getting worse and that we did not need to do anything. This is easy. There are straight-forward observations and trends which, if present, would indicate we are not heading for climate disaster.
Average global temperatures returning to mid 20th Century levels or below.
The increase in temperature to reverse so that most of the hottest record years were not in the last 20 or so years.
Ocean temperatures to decline, rather than apparently warm faster than predicted.
Glaciers to start re-appearing on mountains
Ice shelfs to start thickening and stay thickened.
It would also be nice if we saw:
Fish populations start rising, with tropical fish moving back to the tropics.
A decline in pollution and deforestation (because if they don’t decline then you will have other problems).
Measurements of CO2 concentration declining back to mid 20th Century levels, rather than increasing, because the theory highly suggests that too much CO2 will increase temperatures and acidify the oceans leading to massive die-off.
A solution to the loss of phosphorus problem.
The halt of increasing numbers of species going extinct – as that is not a sign of a healthy ecology. (Really climate change is just one symptom of massive ecological destruction and we need a healthy ecology to prosper.)
Some common sense from denialists, and those who wish to increase pollution.
But I’m not holding my breath for any of these events.
Tags: 'nature', Anthropocene, climate change, ethics
This entry was posted on January 13, 2019 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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