Is this it?
I
Well here we are; past four hundred parts per million of Co2 in our atmosphere and rising. What are the keywords for a solution? Adapting to Climate Change and Sustainability! There is less and less political rhetoric in the ‘stop global warming and prevent climate change’ camp, but more and more on ‘adapting to climate change’ camp. COP 15 was the death knell on the former camp, so now we go down the road of naïve thinking on the subject as if it’s all too far away to worry about.
Any rational thinking person knows that the planet is out of balance – more energy is going in than going out, those ‘one in a hundred years’ weather abnormalities are becoming awfully frequent and getting more severe. The hard facts are; global carbon emissions have increased every year since the first Kyoto meeting in the 1990s. The United Nation’s ultimate climate objective to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere has come to nothing!
As these one in a hundred year events get more frequent, what of the mighty climate summits?
Kyoto, Copenhagen, Durban, Rio etc are meaningless. They are proven paper tigers, accords to 'agree to disagree' with a sprinkle of fine semantics! But on they go summit after summit; to paraphrase an eminent statesman they go on in a strange paradox, deciding only to be undecided, resolved only to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
Is Climate Change Happening? YES
Are Humans Causing It? YES.
What's going to happen?
Well, if you are easily frightened, stop reading from this point on.
Firstly, climate modelling forecasts will become irrelevant (more so than they already are)
As an upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, floods and strong tropical storms will increase in both frequency and severity and unpredictability.
The Arctic will have a completely ice-free summer in the very near future and big business will be arguing over mineral/oil rights in the region.
While they are arguing, sea level will rise will flood many coastal areas including cities causing a hundred million people to become ‘climate change refugees will start migrating.
There will be large-scale food and water shortages having catastrophic effects on wildlife as well as humans.
The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, will be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.
The average temperature of the planet (which has now climbed past 1°C in the last 150 years will reach 1.5°C within the next 5 years.
Climate change deniers and politicians will become irrelevant as society begins to fragment and fall apart.
At some point warming will become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect (rising temperatures will release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water) this in turn will hold more gasses, causing the oceans to overheat thus going acidic and losing the ability to act as a carbon sink. All this in our and your children’s lifetime!
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What can we do about it?
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What do you want everybody ELSE to do about it?
Well, that sums up the attitude of most of you!
