The climate is sometimes compared to a huge ship, in that it takes some time to turn it in a new direction, meaning that actions to limit global warming produce very gradual results. While the lack of instant gratification is certainly frustrating, having some indications of progress could at least sustain patience with the energy transformation needed. The problem is that Earth’s climate system differs from that metaphorical huge ship in a key way—there is a significant amount of natural variability that can also mask a change in trend.
So before we see any change in climate trends from our present actions, we have to both wait for them to start and wait for them to become large enough to be detectable against a background of natural variability.
A new study led by Bjørn Hallvard Samset takes on the question of how long it will take to clearly see the effects of reducing emissions. “This paper is about managing our expectations,” the authors say in their new work. Failure of that management could mean that undertaking the work of climate mitigation would lose support if people are expecting instantaneous progress that doesn’t materialize.
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Source: Ars Technica – Manage your expectations about the benefits of emissions cuts, study says