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Waveney · M
@whowasthatmaskedman And it's hard to argue with someone who puts words in my mouth. I didn’t misrepresent you. You said plankton would start dying, and I replied to the conclusion you were drawing from it, that oxygen levels in the air would drop enough to cause hospitals to fill up fast and make covid look like a picnic. That is NOT true.
And I never said oxygen reserves would last “forever”. I said the atmosphere already contains an enormous amount of oxygen, so even a serious decline in phytoplankton would not suddenly make the air unbreathable. It would take an extremely long time for atmospheric oxygen levels to change in any meaningful way.
At 3.5°C warming we’d have plenty of very real disasters to deal with. We'd have deadly wet-bulb heatwaves, crop failures, water shortages, fires, flooding, pollution and ecosystem collapse. These will indeed cause hospitals to fill up fast and make covid look like a picnic. But not because of a lack of breathable air.
But as I've said yet again, I'm hopeful. WORST CASE scenario is a catastrophic 3.5, but at the moment we are on target for about 2.6C warming by 2100, still too much but FAR better than 3.5. Plus, if countries stick to their pledges warming could get down to under 2C by 2100.
No plankton need to die. We'll still have many many problems, but it could be SO much worse.
And I never said oxygen reserves would last “forever”. I said the atmosphere already contains an enormous amount of oxygen, so even a serious decline in phytoplankton would not suddenly make the air unbreathable. It would take an extremely long time for atmospheric oxygen levels to change in any meaningful way.
At 3.5°C warming we’d have plenty of very real disasters to deal with. We'd have deadly wet-bulb heatwaves, crop failures, water shortages, fires, flooding, pollution and ecosystem collapse. These will indeed cause hospitals to fill up fast and make covid look like a picnic. But not because of a lack of breathable air.
But as I've said yet again, I'm hopeful. WORST CASE scenario is a catastrophic 3.5, but at the moment we are on target for about 2.6C warming by 2100, still too much but FAR better than 3.5. Plus, if countries stick to their pledges warming could get down to under 2C by 2100.
No plankton need to die. We'll still have many many problems, but it could be SO much worse.
Waveney · M
@whowasthatmaskedman But things could be even worse. I'm hopeful, but we're still in for a rough ride.