The IPCC has said that the planning to limit global temperatures rises to below 2C by 2100 is not now a goal that will be achieved, instead advising we must stop warming before it exceeds 1.5C by 2030.
That is twelve years of accelerating and increasing decline in stability before we are well and truly cooked.
Blame this directly on Donald Trump and his apocalyptic economics. This time he can not just bankrupt the enterprise as the economy adjusts to unsustainable tax cuts with an infrastructure that no longer looks after its people. Category: Global Warming
The Greenhouse Treaty
China and America have agreed to targets for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 for America, and 2030 for China. On the scale of problems, China is a significant player, with a much larger population competing for resources as economic growth strides into the greener parts, its lungs, pollution is rife, significant and horrendous to the increasingly aware population. It is they who are served by a mutual accord of the current world leaders. Both have already made history.
China’s pollution is evidence of a population growing too fast. Economic growth is reflective of a certain attitude to risk. Countries are examples to each other of how to do it or how to do it all wrong. Overheated economies destroy our habitats. The solution is not war, economic war or invasion. It is much easier than that.
According to World Bank figures for 2010 – 2011, developed nations afford to include the exponential cost of environmental damage, on the index the UK is about 20. China is 60. But compare that to Botswana, at 199. The problem is not China. It is the misuse of resources and the rape of land by too many competitive hungry humans. We have to evolve to stop killing our future.
We can do this by simply changing our thinking. Our economic system needs to evolve into one that is geared to reward economic contraction. Our religious beliefs need to encompass a new spiritual path that includes a respect for all life and ones descendants who are as much us as we are our ancestors.
Bay of Bengal Delta
Living on a river delta is indeed precarious and the probable results of climate change would progressively add to the effect of wind and current as the sea level start to flood the delta, presently home to 100 million people, a mass migration into central Asia could trigger all sorts of events.
How long until this occurs?
According to ClimateHotMap.org it is only about 3mm per annum.
It depends on what melts. Sea ice does not matter so much but if Greenland were to lose its 2km icesheet, sea levels could cover much of this map.
Catastrophic Melt
A world leading ice expert Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for “urgent” consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures. Appaently we have about for or five years before the collapse of the ice shelf releasing much methane into our already over heating atmosphere.
Methane Fountains
Methane Fountains are pouring out of melting permfrost forming seas of methane. The effect of this gas in the atmosphere are unfortunately going to increase the action of instability in the atmosphere.
See also
The future of solar power
The future of solar power is linked to the cost of the medium for generating it. If it is too expensive, then the cost savings do not come into play fast enough to make it attractive to the greed instinct. A possible future breakthrough lies in a thin film that absorbs sunlight and generates electricity. It takes far less material to build photovoltaic cells from high grade silicon that is over US$500 per pound. Solar power is therefore a whole lot cheaper to generate and once you have established a solar farm it works without moving parts for 30 years. Instead of adding to global warming, nuclear waste dumps or using a finite resource, maintaining large scape solar power batteries becomes more possible when it is seen in a social context. Every roof in a city for example. It is time to evolve away from dependence upon a resource that is always going to be available for free. Unless we pollute the atmosphere with too much soot from burning coal, or worse a 500 year nuclear winter.
Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming
“Global Warming” (and cooling) has always been a natural process! So are the natural processes that excessive pollution threaten to upset. What about the scale of extinctions since the industrial age started to poison rivers and air? These scientists correctly say an ice age would be worse that “global warming”. Tell that to land owners who are affected by a sea level rise. If we abate pollution, it will not stop “global warming”, but it may allow the trend to, one day, revert. If its a cycle, then its either naturally getting warmer or colder.
It seems a little irrelevant to worry about if its going to become warmer or colder if our risky activity could be projected into an outcome of life extinction. Sure the Earth may recover, but the dinosaurs did not.
Climate change is the present and real danger that we are causing. And poisoning our environment is just a crime against nature. It will pay us back. But we have already buried the worst culprits, the giants of pollution, until GW Bush came along and tried to keep America on top of the tables, but Asia will out-pollute them as they compete to try to catch up.
The world does not need another billion SUVs badly maintained in a Chinese economy that is collapsing in 2060 as their economic sunshine fades. One possible future.
“Global Warming” is the wrong target. The melting ice will not stop to examine tree rings. Change will occur with or without us, but we are contributing more than dinosaur flatulence and we should spend more on research into reducing our energy footprint. It is just responsible!
Harnessing free energy supports moderate growth. Burning all the oil competitively does not. It is time for the great nations of the world to stop competing for control of the Earth’s resources and paid the true cost to this and future humanity, (as well as repair nature).
War is redundant if you can not support a decent quality of life for all citizens.
The 11th Hour
The most severe criminal act is destroying the world, the current leadership seem to think its the end of the world so why not burn everything up…
Real faith is shown by those who take the long term view. The one where their grandchildren have some air to breath, clean rivers and streams, abundant fish in the sea.
The film The 11th Hour by Leonardo Dicaprio addresses these issues. It looks inspiring and full of the kind of hope that drives people to do something positive.
I have been raving on about climate change for years here on disturbingtrends.org and agree – it is late in the game to be making a change to the way we behave – but act we must – and the sooner the easier – we must act politically and change the underlying philosophy. The philosophy must be revised because it is exactly our need to compete to survive that is the fire underlying our outstanding success in dominating all life on Earth.
Humans have quickly evolved intellect in order to see how we can reduce our impact. It requires less greedy and criminal motives. It requires a different motive for competitive behavior. We should moderate our population growth.
If we could reduce our footprint with technology it also requires us to retreat somewhat and let nature recover. Or we will bring another Great Flood upon ourselves, this time it will be for very clear scientific reasons.
From an article about Mikhail Gorbachev
GORBACHEV | All of us, but particularly in America, consume too much for the planet’s well being. Americans are less than 5 percent of the world population, but use 30 percent of all the energy. Gradually, we need to abandon the model of consumer society. If we continue with this model, we will surely undermine nature. And that, in turn, will undermine the stability of our societies.
The Energy of Progress
Al Gore may be right that ultimately it is up to every individual to believe that change is possible, in order that politically we choose leaders who advance progress in priority to growth. On the 07/07/2007 we all swung away from unrestrained capitalism as the only panacea necessary to allow us to thrive in harmony most successfully.
It is really only the political consideration that matters, for, ultimately we may care how many plastic bags make poisonous pits out of landfills but that does not stop the factory down the road from making the local river murky and lifeless.
It has only been political change that has allowed us to control our impact upon the environment. And for America this provides an alternative impetus for progress. What is progress? It is invention, finding a better way to do it. And these days cleaner and environmentally friendly is going to become something as important and enforceable as any other law.
US Industry is growing at 1% per annum. It is already a substantial contributor to global warming because it requires so much energy. If we draw the energy from burning coal, as seems “politically realistic” it will be with advantages in air filtration and clean burning technologies that do not emit excessive CO2 or other gases that poison the environment.
Understanding the problem is hard enough for the scientific community so one can not expect political change unless the addiction to growth is not curbed. Political change needs to encompass stronger motivations for choosing to advance the case for free power generation using large batteries of wind farms.
Taking the energy from the air seems logical as a counter measure to climate change. Scientific analysis of this effect may well prove important if the religion of growth is continued. Our climate is like the Earth’s circulatory system. We got to learn to stop screwing with it to get our energy.
Free passive energy can obtained with solar cells. If every rooftop in America was covered with power generating solar cells, power would be free.
If the environmental cost was assessed and taxed to every business in the world, we could make progress to ensure our safety.
It is political for the same reason that it would be very hard to stop someone competing in a race, for example, after they had prepared for it. You would have to have a very good reason.
The most convincing commercial argument to prevent climate change is that there is rather a lot of money to be made.
