Figures and previews from the forthcoming IPCC AR6 (due out in July) are starting to come out. They're not looking great. Limiting warming to 2 degrees C or less is now virtually impossible, as even the most optimistic net carbon zero projections put us at 2.1 degrees of warming by 2100. More realistic target is now in the 2.5-3.5 degrees of warming range, which is likely to be extremely bad for a lot of people.

The authors of the IPCC report suggest that only an "immediate and radical transformation" of the global economy and governance would allow us to avoid the worst of the oncoming climate catastrophe. This kind of language is a marked difference from earlier IPCC reports, and reflects a growing sense of urgency and impending doom within the climatology community broadly.

  • zukai12_ [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I did a degree in Climate Science and as soon as i was done I had to stop looking at shit like this

    It was putting me in such a bad state

    Climate anxiety and depression is pretty major

    • Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I totally empathize. My PhD is in philosophy of science, but I ended up specializing in the foundations of complex systems theory, and wrote my dissertation on climate model building. After I graduated, I got a job in a climatology department doing that research full time; I lasted two years before I had to step away from that. It is incredibly depressing and mentally unhealthy in a lot of ways (on top of how academia generally is also both those things).

      I still think it's super important to talk about and advocate for, and I'll teach undergrad classes in it, but I just can't spend all my time and energy researching it and participating in professional conferences about it. Doing that made me absolutely miserable. Basically everyone I know who works in the field is totally blackpilled about our prospects for solving this, and it's just generally really not a great environment to be in (no pun intended).

    • vccx [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I got 2 semesters into it and I could already tell we were fucked and how wholly impossible it would be for liberalism to come anywhere close to solving it.