Alright, so we pump energy into a chaotic system and obviously the extremes will get more exteme. Stronger hurricanse, colder hurricanse and snap freezes, deeper floods, wet bulb events further north than you think possible, whatever. This is the known unknown.
I am existentially afraid of the unknown unknowns. At what point do the phytoplankton I’m currently breathing the poop of have a mass extinction event? All of human civilization is about to drown on dry land and I spend 5 days a week maintaining software that charges people for turning on their lights.
I crave death I crave oblivion death to america death to capitalism death to me.
I’m not convinced we will leave any fossil fuels unburnt without abolishing capitalism. Renewables will displace fossil fuel consumption more and more as prices drop and as compatible infrastructure is built, but as demand goes down the price of carbon fuels will also drop, when it gets low enough we’ll of course start burning again. The industry has and will continue to plunge money into making extraction cheaper and demand for energy will likely continue to increase. It’s hard to imagine energy ever being so cheap that it doesn’t make sense, as in short term profit sense, to burn at least some fossil fuels. It’s possible that we get close enough to net 0 that it’s a rounding error but it seems at least equally plausible we end up at 30+ % of where we are now, if so all that carbon still ends up in the atmosphere within a century or two.
Even if we stopped burning everything right now, the feedback loops will continue, they are self sustaining at this point.
Look worst case scenario we simply direct a massive asteroid into a collision course with mercury creating a ring of dust between the earth and the sun, I’m sure there are some minor details to be worked out but the theory is sound
Or, maybe stop Venusforming Earth before we try Terraforming Mars.