The climate change time bomb will explode in less than a decade.
While Americans have spent this decade worrying about people who live in caves, glaciers deep within the Earth reveal a more ominous truth.
Today’s carbon dioxide level is 380 ppm. That is up 30 ppm since 1989. It is a record high.
We know it’s a record high because, thanks to the remaining Antarctic ice cap, we can analyze the composition of air going back 800,000 years. In that time the range has gone from 300-330.
Now for the big news:
Many experts recognise a "tipping point" of 440 ppm of carbon
dioxide, after which climate change starts to run out of
control.Although opinions differ, it was generally accepted that at some
stage a "step change" is reached after which global warming
accelerates exponentially, Dr Wolff said. According to the new
evidence, the threshold may now be only a decade away.
Have I got your attention yet, or do you still want to look at George W. Bush and take him seriously?
Fucking Scalia and Thomas may have killed the whole damned planet.
But isn’t the real issue China and India and then the whole rest of the developing world. Eventually these countries will overtake us as the world’s top CO2 producer and what can we really do to persuade them not to? Is the average American going to support a program that invests in modernizing the energy infrastructures of other countries while domestic energy costs keep going up and jobs are going to those other countries? In comparison to this problem, fixing Iraq looks pretty easy.
But isn’t the real issue China and India and then the whole rest of the developing world. Eventually these countries will overtake us as the world’s top CO2 producer and what can we really do to persuade them not to? Is the average American going to support a program that invests in modernizing the energy infrastructures of other countries while domestic energy costs keep going up and jobs are going to those other countries? In comparison to this problem, fixing Iraq looks pretty easy.