As I understand it Venus is kinda locked in anyway at this point, halting all fossil fuel burning with nothing to mitigate the damage we’ve caused just roasts us faster because the exhaust literally blocks a bunch of sunlight
It’s not quite that bad. 2-3° is probably locked in (barring sci-fi technology like large scale carbon capture), but not the kind of runaway that would lead to Venus. You’re right about aerosol masking hiding a lot of the impact, but that damage will be very front-loaded (since the residence time of the aerosols in the atmosphere is only on the order of months), and limited to probably a few tenths of a degree. Not nothing, but not enough for us to go Venus.
Could the old climate be restored over several generations using some large scare application of some future technology? After a rapid transition away from the carbon energy economy. I guess there is a lot of speculative coping in this question.
It’s not quite that bad. 2-3° is probably locked in (barring sci-fi technology like large scale carbon capture), but not the kind of runaway that would lead to Venus. You’re right about aerosol masking hiding a lot of the impact, but that damage will be very front-loaded (since the residence time of the aerosols in the atmosphere is only on the order of months), and limited to probably a few tenths of a degree. Not nothing, but not enough for us to go Venus.
Could the old climate be restored over several generations using some large scare application of some future technology? After a rapid transition away from the carbon energy economy. I guess there is a lot of speculative coping in this question.
It’ll fix itself over the next few tens of thousands of years, but obviously that doesn’t help us at all.
From what I understand there isn’t a model that suggests the earth becoming un-inhabitable by complex life no matter how bad we fuck up right now.
The sharks will be fine. They’re older than Polaris. They got this shit.
Well, that’s at least comforting. Any Venus model would probably push a few people into an existential crisis. Thanks for your response.