Global Warming: The Fight's About Policy, NOT the Science

Here's why we need to start talking about policy, and pushing our elected officials to deal with this issue:

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-03-no ... ts-describ

Here’s a report from a 2009 conference at Oxford:
* A four-degree C [7.2F] overall increase means a world where temperatures will be two degrees [3.6 degrees F] warmer in some places, 12 degrees [21.6 degrees F] and more in others, making them uninhabitable.

* It is a world with a one- to two-meter [3 to 6.6 feet] sea level rise by 2100, leaving hundreds of millions homeless. This will head to 12 meters [39 feet] in the coming centuries as the Greenland and Western Antarctic ice sheets melt, according to papers presented at the conference in Oxford.

* Four degrees of warming would be hotter than any time in the last 30 million years, and it could happen as soon as 2060 to 2070.

And here’s a summary of a January 2011 special issue of super-respected science journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A:
* A 4C [7.2F] rise in the planet’s temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse.

* In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.

* Current trends plus strong natural feedbacks -- which many believe are likely -- would get us to 7.2 degrees F of warming by 2060-2070.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic ... n_50_years
World could heat up 4 degrees C in 50 years
Immediate action needed to hold warming to half that, scientists calculate
By Janet Raloff
December 18th, 2010; Vol.178 #13 (p. 9)

Such a dramatic temperature increase would be expected to trigger extensive, recurring droughts in some parts of the world, flood coastlines as sea levels rise and drastically alter the types of crops that can survive where lands remain arable, notes Mark New of the University of Oxford in England. New contributed to several of the 11 papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A . The journal issue, officially dated January 13, 2011, has been posted early online to coincide with the November 29 start in Cancun, Mexico of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Climate negotiators tend to focus on political goals, like setting timetables of 2020 or 2050 for when binding emissions limits should go into effect, notes Oxford’s Niel Bowerman. “But Mother Nature doesn’t care about what we emit in any particular year,” the atmospheric physicist says. “What matters is cumulative carbon emissions.”

His Oxford colleagues have calculated that to keep maximum global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, humanity can spew greenhouse gases equivalent to no more than 1 trillion metric tons of carbon (or 3.67 million metric tons of carbon dioxide) by 2200. Already, he adds, regarding this carbon limit: “We’re just over halfway there.”

Also important, he and his colleagues argue in their new paper, is the maximum rate at which society emits that carbon.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48791

Four degrees of warming would be hotter than any time in the last 30 million years, and it could happen as soon as 2060 to 2070.

Schellnhuber recently briefed U.S. officials from the Barack Obama administration, but he says they chided him that his findings were "not grounded in political reality" and that "the [U.S.] Senate will never agree to this". He had told them that the U.S. must reduce its emissions from its current 20 tonnes of carbon per person average to zero tonnes per person by 2020 to have an even chance of stabilising the climate around two degrees C. If climate negotiators only look at slowing rates of carbon emissions, then natural gas will be substituted for coal because it has half of the carbon - but the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere will continue to increase. "We didn't save the ozone layer by rationing deodorants," said Allen.

Few places would experience the global average temperature, Betts cautioned, noting that the computer models show the Arctic warming 15 degrees while many other regions of the world would experience 10 degrees of additional warming. These scenarios do not include potential tipping points like the release of the 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon in northern permafrost or the melting of undersea methane hydrates.

What would the world look like when it is four degrees warmer?

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-05-31-re ... ing-to-a-t

The International Energy Agency estimates that burning fossil fuels added 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2010. That makes it tough stay below a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F), which scientists say is the threshold for making everything go seriously cockeyed. It might even mean we see temperature rises of 4 degrees C by 2100...

With “bold, decisive, and urgent action” we could still turn things around, IEA economist Fatih Birol says. But that needs to be large-scale action by governments, not just switching your light bulbs to LEDs. What can the average Joe do? Put the pressure on , says John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace U.K.:

This news should shock the world. Yet even now politicians in each of the great powers are eyeing up extraordinary and risky ways to extract the world's last remaining reserves of fossil fuels – even from under the melting ice of the Arctic. You don't put out a fire with gasoline. It will now be up to us to stop them.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... #more-7768
Nobel Laureates Speak Out
— stefan @ 21 May 2011

On Wednesday, 17 Nobel laureates who gathered in Stockholm have published a remarkable memorandum, asking for “fundamental transformation and innovation in all spheres and at all scales in order to stop and reverse global environmental change”. The Stockholm Memorandum concludes that we have entered a new geological era: the Anthropocene, where humanity has become the main driver of global change. The document states:

Science makes clear that we are transgressing planetary boundaries that have kept civilization safe for the past 10,000 years. [...]
We can no longer exclude the possibility that our collective actions will trigger tipping points, risking abrupt and irreversible consequences for human communities and ecological systems.
We cannot continue on our current path. The time for procrastination is over. We cannot afford the luxury of denial.

...in climate policy, they recommend to:
Keep global warming below 2ºC, implying a peak in global CO2 emissions no later than 2015 and recognise that even a warming of 2ºC carries a very high risk of serious impacts and the need for major adaptation efforts.

While global changes are needed, it starts with communities, cities, and states as they will have to deal with the impacts in an intimate manner.
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-05-31-on ... normal-ext
Only 15 U.S. states even have a plan to deal with ‘new normal’ extreme weather
by Christopher Mims
31 May 2011

Only 15 states have completed or even started a plan to cope with climate change, which will bring profound changes over the next 20 to 30 years, including:

Washing out iconic Pacific Coast Highway 1, unless it’s rerouted (possibly through a mountain for safety)

Eating up 580 miles a year of beach in the Chesapeake Bay

Overwhelming city storm sewers with extreme flooding

Destroying some states’ cash-cow products, like citrus in California and maple syrup in Vermont

Miami and New Orleans will become islands, Manhattan's bottom tip will turn into Venice, and storms and droughts like the ones that cause record flooding of the Mississippi and drought in Texas will become the new normal. (Texas and Missisippi are not among the 15, by the way. Neither is Louisiana.)

You'd think our leaders would be planning for catastrophes that make 9/11 look like a papercut, but as usual they're beholden to the rich guys who might have to give up an ivory back-scratcher or two if the necessary changes were brought about.

So what lies behind America’s resistance to action? Economist [Jeffrey] Sachs points to the lobbying power of industries that resist acknowledgment of climate change’s impact.

It's time to take our power back.