AvogadroJones

It is clear that Republicans and Democrats alike will never do enough to solve climate catastrophe. Can America's ambivalence be reversed through the legal system?

It's all fine and good for John Kerry to utter a fundamental truth about a major driver of climate catastrophe, but it is a useless proclamation without offering a solution.

Have enough tipping points been breached that there are no prescriptions to offer?

(Washington Post articles are pay-walled)

The Montreal Protocol, with a mere 46 signatories in 1987, has reduced chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) use to 10% of peak 1974 levels. CFCs, typically used as refrigerant, are powerful greenhouse gases that degrade the Earth's ozone layer as they break down, allowing harmful UV radiation to reach the surface. A United Nations study estimates that the ozone layer will be restored to pre-industrial levels over most populated areas by 2040, with polar regions to follow in the coming decades.

It is also estimated that had CFC use continued, global temperatures would now be an additional 1 degree Celsius warmer.

A mass extinction of life on Earth as a result of willfully generated climate change is certainly one of the most daunting outcomes that civilization currently faces. But it is certainly not the only danger.

Nuclear war, killer asteroids, coronal mass ejections, artificial intelligence, pandemic, super-volcanoes, and many other events of lessening probability have the potential to end civilization as we know it before all of the honeybees die.

Leaving aside the certainty of climate catastrophe, what other events could occur that have the potential to destroy our civilization?

By any stretch of the imagination, this is not fresh news. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has been observed to be slowing for several years now, and the consequences of losing the cooling properties of the oceans have been long established.

Is it too late to do anything to prevent mass extinction? Have enough tipping points been breached that render a reversal impossible?

I think it will happen far sooner than we're being told.

I am increasingly convinced that climate scientists withhold information vital to understanding how dire Earth's climate situation really is.

I think it's just too late for humanity to turn this around.