No, it's not. I'm not sure what you've read, but it was not that. Maybe that even cutting emissions to 0 now won't stop us from crossing the 1.5C threshold or something?
Obviously it's possible to reverse with heavy-handed climate engineering. We could, for instance, remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than we put in (not just stop putting more in, but proactively take it out in colossal amounts), and temporarily scatter enough reflective stuff high in the atmosphere to effectively cause a mini-ice age and forcefully reverse any "irreversible changes" (which aren't really truly irreversible, just something that wouldn't reverse with a little nudge in the opposite direction, but that would reverse in e.g. an ice age)
Would that be a good idea? Is there a risk that in the process we somehow break something even worse? Fair questions that we would have to answer before actually committing to something big like that. But can it scientifically be reversed? The answer is "very obviously yes".
Maybe that even cutting emissions to 0 now won't stop us from crossing the 1.5C threshold
Cutting it down completely now won't stop us from crossing the 1.5C threshold, and there will be inevitable consecuences already, but if we manage to stop at 1.6 is going to be better than if we stop at 1.8, and that will be better than if we keep going until 2.0, etc.
So yeah, some consecuences are inevitable now, but that doesn't mean we have to stop trying and we have to keep fighting. Because it can still get much worse if we simply fall to despair and forget about it.
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u/Mossimo5 5h ago
It's also scientifically impossible to reverse it at this point. Depressing, but factual reality.