{"id":3501410,"date":"2024-05-29T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T08:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3501410"},"modified":"2024-06-19T18:59:11","modified_gmt":"2024-06-19T18:59:11","slug":"navigating-climate-catastrophe-part-2-the-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-05-29\/navigating-climate-catastrophe-part-2-the-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating Climate Catastrophe: Part 2 \u2013 The Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Part 2 of an exploration of the current state of the climate crisis. Please read Part\u00a01<\/a> first.<\/span><\/i><\/p>

What to Expect<\/b><\/p>

Because climate change is complicated and climate science is incomplete, it\u2019s hard to predict exactly what will happen this century as a result of global warming. But we have some clues.<\/span><\/p>

There\u2019s no precedent for catastrophic climate change during human history (the most impactful climate shift for which we have documentation was perhaps the <\/span>Little Ice Age<\/span><\/a> of the 14<\/span>th<\/span> to the 19<\/span>th<\/span> centuries\u2014though it was only regional, mainly affecting Europe). But, over geologic time, there is one instance that\u2019s analogous. About 56 million years ago, natural processes produced warming that was greatly worsened by climate feedbacks. The Earth\u2019s average surface temperature increased by 7 degrees Celsius. This event is known to geologists as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The PETM was a <\/span>big deal<\/span><\/a>. Triggered probably by volcanoes in the North Atlantic coinciding with a warming phase of the <\/span>Milankovitch Cycle<\/span><\/a>, the warming pulse was amplified by the release of methane from melting permafrost and methane hydrates. Surprisingly few creatures went extinct, but ones that survived were forced to migrate long distances. The oceans became acidic and were depleted of oxygen. Land vegetation shifted toward the poles. The warming and its immediate effects persisted for 180,000 years.<\/span><\/p>

For us in the 21<\/span>st<\/span> century, this may represent a worst-case scenario. Good news: feedbacks that made the PETM so catastrophic haven\u2019t kicked in yet. Bad news: the climate forcing we\u2019re doing is of nearly as great a magnitude, and at a much greater speed.<\/span><\/p>

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People have all sorts of different interpretations on what\u2019s happening with climate change. While some are practicing denial or willful ignorance, even those following the science can be confused. After all, Earth\u2019s climate system is complex. In Part 2, Richard Heinberg unpacks some recent research on the likely consequences of global warming this century and beyond and recommends practical things we can do to both mitigate and adapt to the consequences. (See part 1<\/a>, in case you missed it.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128248,"featured_media":3501407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[252007],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3501410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resilience-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3501410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3501407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3501410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3501410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3501410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}