tags:
#science
#climate change
#global warming
#global weirdness
#rolling stone
#bill mckibben

"Think of two degrees Celsius as the legal drinking limit – equivalent to the 0.08 blood-alcohol level below which you might get away with driving home. The 565 gigatons is how many drinks you could have and still stay below that limit – the six beers, say, you might consume in an evening. And the 2,795 gigatons? That’s the three 12-packs the fossil-fuel industry has on the table, already opened and ready to pour."

—

Bill McKibben for Rolling Stone, Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

If you only occasionally read articles on climate change, make time for this one. Two degrees is the agreed upon number that the global average temperature cannot rise above or else we will face catastrophe, and 565 gigatons is the amount of carbon dioxide we can pump into the atmosphere without going over two degrees celsius - probably. The amount of carbon located in the fossil fuel industry reserves, which they plan to burn and on which their entire fortune lies, is five times more than what we can safely release, coming in at 2,795 gigatons.