claim: We note that the Earth has never in its history had a quasi-stable state that is around 2C warmer than the preindustrial and suggest that there is substantial risk that the system, itself, will ‘want’ to continue warming because of all of these other processes – even if we stop emissions,” she said.
evidence: A 2018 study tried to identify such a planetary threshold for self-reinforcing feedbacks and found that even a 2 °C (3.6 °F) increase in temperature over pre-industrial levels may be enough to trigger such a hothouse Earth scenario.
category: Global warming