Clear and chilly this Friday morning here on California’s north coast — and, did I mention it’s FRIDAY!
Time does travel fairly fast it seems, feels like this time a week ago.
The World Meteorological Organization in Geneva reported this week 2013 will end up being the seventh warmest on record. WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud: “All of the warmest years have been since 1998 and this year once again continues the underlying, long-term trend. The coldest years now are warmer than the hottest years before 1998.”
And it’s only going to get worse.
(Illustration found here).
In the last decade, as the obvious signs of climate change began to make itself manifest in storms, drought and whatnot, and the environmental warnings rolled off scientific papers and into New York harbor (and many other harbors), not much has been actually done to curb the runaway fossil-fuel explosion.
Even now, with the UN hob-nobbing in Warsaw, Poland, in a show of some kind movement toward helping the planet, there’s no real physical move against climate change.
Even despite an emotional plea from Yeb Saño, the chief climate negotiator from the Philippines:
“In Doha, we asked: ‘If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
“If not here, then where?’
“But here in Warsaw, we may very well ask these same forthright questions.
“What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness.
“The climate crisis is madness.
“We can stop this madness. Right here in Warsaw.”
But no. The world was supposed to stop this madness in 2009, then again in 2011, etc. These get-togethers are just meetings on the road to shitsville: Instead, these talks have been described as sessions that will lay a foundation for a global agreement to be reached in time for 2015 talks in Paris.
Yeah, right.
The biggest fright to climate change, to me, is that no one — scientists, researchers, all of them — don’t know the future. All the claims of bad shit happening ‘way out yonder in time’ is scary. Add to the fright, just about all new research usually adds this kicker in various forms and words — shit is happening “faster than anticipated.”
Supposedly, the world has a “tipping point,” where a certain threshold is reached and there ain’t no going back — it’s all downhill from there, and pretty quick. A study in Nature last month set the date at about 2047, but who knows?
Chaos ensues: “One can think of this year as a kind of threshold into a hot new world from which one never goes back,” said Carnegie Institution climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the study. “This is really dramatic.”
Also in October, the Weather Channel started a series, “The Tipping Points: 6 Places on Earth Where Climate’s Changed,” and also picks up the 2047 date.
Series host, Bernice Notenboom, former rafting instructor, and climate journalist and lecturer (via HuffPost):
Permafrost above the Arctic Circle in Siberia, Canada and the United States is starting to thaw more rapidly.
Warm polar air and cloudy nights trap heat in the atmosphere causing the permafrost to respond.
When it thaws it can either release methane or carbon dioxide.
Methane has 23 times more greenhouse gas than CO2, so if this thaws, we are creating a huge problem for ourselves and keeping global temperatures in check of 2 degrees becomes very unlikely.
The big Southern Ocean is getting less salty and losing its capacity to absorb more CO2.
Since oceans take in as much as 42 percent of CO2, we need the oceans to be cold, dense and salty.
Oceans are also getting more acidic, which affects the health of marine wildlife and coral reefs.
Inhabitants of Tuvalu are suffering from salty groundwater and crops become difficult to grow.
Those people may be the first ones to qualify as climate refugees.
And those people, the US and the rest of the developed world don’t give a shit about — rich can’t help the poors.
From the Guardian:
US officials fear that international climate change talks will become focused on payouts for damage caused by extreme weather events exacerbated by global warming, such as the category 5 Typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines last week killing thousands of people and causing what is expected to be billions of pounds of damage.
An official US briefing document obtained by the Guardian reveals that the country is worried the UN negotiations, currently under way in Warsaw, will “focus increasingly on blame and liability” and poor nations will be “seeking redress for climate damages from sea level rise, droughts, powerful storms and other adverse impacts”.
At last year’s climate talks in Doha, the US fought off calls from African nations, the Pacific Islands and less developed nations for a “loss and damage mechanism” to channel finance to help nations cope with losses resulting from climate change, such as reduced crop production due to higher temperatures.
…
The US briefing document indicates that the Obama administration believes a focus on loss and damage will be “counterproductive from the standpoint of public support” for the UN climate talks.
Despite living together on the same ground, we ain’t the same.
In the US, we be fucked, and in turn, the Philippines, south sea islands, anywhere else.
Via Climate Progress:
61 elected representatives from the 113th Congress have taken over $54 million from the fossil fuel industry that is the driving force behind the carbon emissions that cause climate change.
They deny what over 97 percent of climate scientists say is happening — current human activity creates the greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat within the atmosphere and cause climate change.
And their constituents are paying the price, with Americans across the nation suffering 401 climate-related national disaster declarations since 2011.
…
Over 56 percent — 131 members — of the current Republican caucus in the House of Representatives deny the basic tenets of climate science.
65 percent (30 members) of the Senate Republican caucus also deny climate change.
What this means is that they have made public statements indicating that they question or reject that climate change is real, is happening, and is caused by human consumption of fossil fuels.
(h/t Firedoglake)
And as you can see, we all might already be beyond any “tipping point.” — mainly because of the madness of assholes.