Mashable reports: On Sunday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the final installment of a massive report laying out just how feasible it is for the global community to limit manmade global warming to below dangerous levels.
Like the previous two installments, published in September of last year and March, this report contains extremely dense, technical material.
Yet its contents are hugely important for the public and policymakers. It lays out the case for why drastic emissions cuts are needed, starting within the next decade, in order to have a decent chance of limiting the amount — and the pace — of global warming.
First, here’s the good news from the report. Meeting the target of keeping global warming to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels can be done — if we take action now.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the latest report’s most important findings.
The window of opportunity to avert a “dangerous” amount of global warming is rapidly closing: We have just about a decade left to bend the upward curve of greenhouse gas emissions. Attempts to reduce emissions significantly so far have not succeeded. [Continue reading…]
I’ll try to read it. But for the moment, kindly reflect that the droughts, fires, crop failures, heat-waves, some cold waves, some excess rain (Colorado floods), some more-than-usually-horrible storms (such as Hurricane Irene which wiped out most bridges in Vermont), melting of arctic sea ice, new diseases (or old diseases in new places), insect infestations (forest-destroying pine bark beetle in Canada, Colorado, etc.) are signs that the ill-effects of global warming/climate change are ALREADY HERE.
It is already too late to avoid being severely harmed by GW/CC and green house gases (GHG) only accumulate, they do not dissipate (in short time periods under 100 years).
So things can get worse, and will get worse, adn much worse, because we keep increasing GHGs.
I imagine that what IPCC is telling us is that the VERY, VERY WORST they can imagine (end of large animal life on earth, perhaps) can still be avoided if we get busy reducing GHG to ZERO. As I believe we should do.
My opinion, like the opinion of the Koch Bros., may be wrong. But they “speak” politically with a more cogent “voice” than I do. Thanks, USA Supreme Court, for recognizing that “money is speech” and in effect, on average, “money is wisdom”.