The Urgent Need For The World To Tackle Climate Change
The window of opportunity to turn the climate trend would close unless a coordinated global effort is made to reduce emissions and a technological breakthrough is made to draw-down atmospheric CO2.
According to Schellnhuber “We are simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.” What is required is what has never been done before in human history — a plan for the future…
An Orwellian climate: carbon price and the atmosphere, July 15, 2011 – , by Crikey, Andrew Glikson, earth and palaeoclimate scientist at the Australian National University, writes: Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate science advisor of the German government and keynote speaker at the Four Degrees or More? Australia in a hot world conference held this week in Melbourne, made a point on Lateline that even the least-informed should be able to understand: “Our body temperature is about 37 degrees. If you increase it by two degrees, 39, you have fever. If you add four degrees, it is 41 — you are dead, more or less. And you have to think about the body temperature of our planet, which has been brought about through many, many processes over many, many millions of years.”
Global emission reduction targets — ranging from Germany’s 40% aim relative to 1990 to Australia’s 5% aim relative to 2000 — would still allow mean global temperatures to rise to +3 and 4 degrees Celsius later in the century, driving a major shift in climate zones. Schellnhuber emphasizes the non-linear nature of climate change where, once critical temperature thresholds are crossed, warming is amplified by feedbacks from melting ice, opening of water surfaces, release of methane from permafrost and from polar sediments, leading to tipping points.
According to projections by NASA scientists James E. Hansen and Makiko Sato: “… goals of limiting human-made warming to 2°C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster. They continue: “Deglaciation, disintegration of ice sheets, is nonlinear, spurred by amplifying feedbacks… Gravity satellite data, although too brief to be conclusive, are consistent with a doubling time of 10 years or less, implying the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise this century.” As their abstract concludes, “Rapid reduction of fossil fuel emissions is required for humanity to succeed in preserving a planet resembling the one on which civilization developed.”……
In a world bent on extracting all available carbon resources — coal, oil, oil shale, tar sand, gas, a phony discourse has ensued between those willing to undertake only symbolic action and those who deny the science altogether. The window of opportunity to turn the climate trend would close unless a coordinated global effort is made to reduce emissions and a technological breakthrough is made to draw-down atmospheric CO2.
According to Schellnhuber “We are simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.” What is required is what has never been done before in human history — a plan for the future…
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2011/07/15/an-orwellian-climate-carbon-price-and-the-atmosphere/
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