Richard Seymour on how f**ked we now areArchived Message
Posted by johnhol on March 14, 2019, 8:34 pm
Begins:
Consider the end of the world.
The UN has just announced its findings that, even if the Paris Agreement were met, it would see global temperatures raised by 3-5 degrees on pre-industrial levels. Far worse, and this is buried in the story, it has declared that even if all carbon emissions stopped right now, the Arctic would still be an average of 5 degrees warmer by the century's end, after eighty years of relief, than it was in the period 1986-2005.
All carbon emissions will not stop right now. Short of a colossal, chiliastic political rupture, carbon emissions will continue to massively expand for the foreseeable future. Paris, even if it was universally implemented, locks that in. As to the effects, up to this point official estimates from the IPCC have tended to significantly underestimate the rate of Arctic warming and melt. Last year's Arctic winter was much warmer than average.