Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says – DW – 07/30/2023
www.dw.com
Jim Skea, the new head of the UN's IPCC climate panel, said it was not helpful to imply that temperature increases of 1.5 degrees Celsius posed an existential threat to humanity.

In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.

He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.

  • @AA5BEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    I keep trying to remember how we won the great lightbulb war, as a possible parallel. There were so many people getting so emotional about more efficient lighting, there was culture war, there were people vowing to hoard cases of incandescent lightbulbs, there were actually people threatening to take up arms against anyone restricting their right to “traditional” lightbulbs. It really sounded about the same as those refusing to help fight climate change. Then the war was over, LEDs are expected now, but I don’t know how. It seemed to fade away.

    Maybe it was improving prices and technology, or maybe it was just familiarity once the newer technology reached some critical threshold of adoption, I don’t know. I was hoping to pull a lesson from it but I have nothing