The temperature changes are projected to reduce increases in ocean temperature, there will be worsening of food shortages and wildfires as soon as 2040 (Davenport, paragraph 2). To prevent 1.5 degrees C of warming the report from the IPCC makes it clear that the world would have to get rid of coal use. From reading the interesting article about Tyndall and the articles from IPCC there are ways that technological fixes can address rising temperatures. Tyndall found out that carbon dioxide and water vapor are quite powerful absorbers of heat (Reidy, page 12), and this has helped people today to figure out ways to avoid dumping all this carbon dioxide into the air. The IPCC has developed some carbon dioxide removals called CDR’s. A CDR example is bioenergy with CO2 capture and storage, which they have named BECCS for short. These facilities would limit CDR deployment to a few hundred. To significantly slow down climate change, it is a good question if there could be an effective socio-technological fix that could be employed in the timeframe from now to 2040. With all the coal-fired power plants around the globe, it could only be achieved if every country engaged in climate change agreements, and as an example, the US currently does not even do that. (Davenport, paragraph 7).
I wouldn’t say that climate science is too young to be reliable. With Tyndall’s experimental confirmations from the 1860s, it shows that climate science has been a topic for a while. The technological fixes and the catastrophic environmental changes in our world today have certainly not been a topic for a long period of time, but in some way climate science has. People have known about climate science, but the actions of limiting climate change with climate science can be explained as being in its infancy.
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Linnea, I thought you did a great job of answering the questions that were brought up for this week’s blog. I agree with you that countries engaging climate change agreements have a huge impact on whether an effective socio-technological fix could be employed in the timeframe between now and 2040. This could be difficult because, as you pointed out, the United States isn’t even currently doing that. I also agree with you that climate science isn’t too young to be reliable. It may be young in comparing to the universe, but it certainly has been around long enough to be explained and be reliable.