Wednesday, May 31, 2017

A Brief Overview - Nature Bats Last

guymcpherson.com: "According to James Hansen, the godfather of climate science, we’ve had humans on the planet up to about 2 degrees Celsius above the 1750 baseline, when the planetary temperature was about 13.5 C. Hansen reported this conclusion in a legal brief filed on August 12, 2015. I suspect 2 C above the 1750 baseline is the maximum temperature at which we will have habitat for humans on Earth. We’re currently at least 1.6 degrees above the 1750 baseline. No species persists long without habitat, not even the clever ones.
A synthetic paper written by Oliver Tickell and published in the Guardian on August 11, 2008 concluded via headline, “On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction.” That 4 C number seems a tad high to me. The paper goes on to explain that humans will persist up to 6 C above the 1750 baseline, thus about 19.5 C. I doubt there will be a tree on the planet, or much other complex life, with a rapid rise to 17.5 C. But we don’t know, because we’ve never experienced Earth with humans at anywhere close to 4 C above baseline, much less at 6 C above baseline, about 19.5 C."