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Climate change – now at the irreversible stage?

Is climate change out of our hands? Redding.com October 21, 2012
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
H.G. Wells “……
In March in Reuters we read,, “The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday.”

And now in the current Scientific American  we learn it may not matter anymore. It may be too late. We may have already crossed the line. The crash may be underway. Our denial protects us from knowing. But for how much longer?

“Over the past decade scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst dangers of climate change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts.

“Staying below two degrees C would require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today’s 395 ppm and the preindustrial era’s 280 ppm.
“Now it appears that the assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe show that the planet is changing faster than expected.

“More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean is disappearing than had been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are spewing out more methane, the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are breaking up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held back on adjacent land are sliding faster into the sea.

“Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave that gripped much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too.

“The conclusion? ‘As scientists, we cannot say that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine,’ says Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany.”

The saddest part is we all know we are better than this. We are better than ignorance and denial. We are better than stupid certainty. Our species evolved to control the planet because of our better qualities. We combined our intelligence with humility to create wisdom.

Our reliance on science allowed us to carefully study the evidence. Our devotion to the notion that we might be wrong led us to repeatedly question our assumptions. Why stop now? When did we decide to put stupidity in charge? What the hell are we doing? And is it now too late? http://blogs.redding.com/dcraig/archives/2012/10/is-climate-chan.html

October 23, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general