Climate Change Too Slow to Get Under Control

[Otto_Harper]

This is a long, but very important read.
Excerpt:

The melting ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are climate change’s most dangerous Big Bad, capable of altering the very face of the planet. All the adaptation we could muster can’t hold back the 25 feet or so of sea level rise that Greenland alone could unleash, not to mention the couple hundred more locked up at the planet’s southern extreme. And increasingly, scientists have found that these ice behemoths are teetering on the edge, approaching tipping points that will more or less lock in all or significant parts of their melt within only fractions of a degree from where things stand today.



One would think, then, that the world might show some increased urgency in the face of such imminent calamity. Miami, Shanghai, much of Bangladesh and the Netherlands, and many other places—gone. Trillions of dollars in real estate submerged, not to mention the sheer calamity of many millions of people seeing their homes lapped up by the waves and the geopolitical chaos such an event would undoubtedly spawn.



And yet. And yet emissions rose again in 2023. And yet demand for oil and gas will rise in 2024. And yet the supposedly landmark result of COP28, the United Nations climate talks held in December in Dubai, included in its agreement to transition away from fossil fuels massive loopholes and the traditional lack of teeth that plagues global agreements. The collective shrug at this Ice Sheet of Damocles can be chalked up to a strange quirk of this particular brand of apocalypse:



The ice sheets are melting too slowly for us to stop them.

https://atmos.earth/the-time-paradox-of-climate-change/