[MCN] Nature December 19, 2019: Opportunity to avoid temperature of 1.5 [or 2 °C] above pre-industrial levels frighteningly small.

[Lance Olsen]

Nature December 19, 2019
The coming climate crunch

Environmental crises have become depressingly familiar in the past decade, and the alarming rate of global warming lies behind many of them. The latter half of the decade — 2015 to 2019 — was the warmest five years on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The pace of warming means that the window for avoiding temperature rises of 1.5 or 2 °C above pre-industrial levels is now frighteningly small. The 2020s will be make-or-break. If carbon emissions are not drastically reduced by 2030, we will be entering uncharted territory, including the possibility — albeit subject to much debate — of passing irreversible tipping points12 <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03857-x#ref-CR12>, such as the widespread loss of Antarctic ice.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03857-x <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03857-x>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A core question: What is “resilience”?

2018 — “Resilience is a popular narrative for conservation and provides an opportunity to communicate optimism that ecosystems can recover and rebound from disturbances.” (Emily S. Darling and Isabelle M. Côté, Science, March 2, 2018). 

2014 — “Emerging from a wide range of disciplines, resilience in policy-making has often been based on the ability of systems to bounce back to normality, drawing on engineering concepts. This implies the return of the functions of an individual, household, community or ecosystem to previous conditions, with as little damage and disruption as possible following shocks and stresses”  (Tanner et al, Nature Climate Change,  December 18, 2014). 

1938 — Resilience. 1- The act or power of springing back to a former position or shape. 2. The quantity of work given back by a body that is compressed to a certain limit and then allowed to recover itself, as a spring under pressure suddenly relaxed.”  (Funk & Wagnall’s New Standard Dictionary of the English Language, vol.2, M-Z 1938)




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bigskynet.org/pipermail/missoula-community-news_bigskynet.org/attachments/20191219/3436c735/attachment.html>