Bill Gates issued a stark warning: 'As awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Bill Gates has advocated for pandemic preparedness for years, and famously gave a TED talk in 2015 that warned of the potentially staggering death toll a worldwide pandemic could create.

Now, Gates is once again urging preparedness for a potentially devastating emergency.

"As awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse," Gates said in a blog published on Tuesday. "If you want to understand the kind of damage that climate change will inflict, look at COVID-19 and spread the pain out over a much longer period of time. The loss of life and economic misery caused by this pandemic are on par with what will happen regularly if we do not eliminate the world's carbon emissions."

Gates compared the mortality rate of coronavirus — approximately 14 deaths per 100,000 — to the expected increase in mortality rate due to rising global temperatures.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-issued-stark-warning-144445344.html

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. The Gulf Stream is what worries me the most.

The new research worries scientists because of the huge impact global warming has already had on the currents and the unpredictability of a future “tipping point”.

The currents that bring warm Atlantic water northwards towards the pole, where they cool, sink and return southwards, is the most significant control on northern hemisphere climate outside the atmosphere. But the system, formally called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), has weakened by 15% since 1950, thanks to melting Greenland ice and ocean warming making sea water less dense and more buoyant.

This represents a massive slowdown – equivalent to halting all the world’s rivers three times over, or stopping the greatest river, the Amazon, 15 times. Such weakening has not been seen in at least the last 1,600 years, which is as far back as researchers have analysed so far. Furthermore, the new analyses show the weakening is accelerating.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/13/avoid-at-all-costs-gulf-streams-record-weakening-prompts-warnings-global-warming

[Boomer]

2. "Could" be worse?

Ya think?

[Miguelito Loveless]

3. Will be worse.

Much, much worse, by orders of magnitude.

[hatrack]

5. And permanent, at least by the time-frame of human civilization

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