Calling Al Gore: Catastrophic Warming Now Unavoidable

[JMDEM]

Calling Al Gore: Catastrophic warming now unavoidable.
by Barcelona (From DailyKos)
Sun Sep 23, 2007 at 07:48:32 AM PDT

Some mornings I wake up wanting to scream. Everything seems so... normal. Birds twittering in the trees outside. An early flock of Canada geese honking overhead. A paler shade of sun streaming in through the trees outside my wide bedroom window. A beautifully cool autumn day in the offing, but I still can't shake the feeling. I rise from my bed, splash water on my face, head for the kitchen for my morning coffee, stopping to pick up my morning paper at the front door on the way. I scan the front page, leaf through to the editorial pages, just for a sign that someone, ANYONE in those crowded rooms where headlines are made and people decide what gets on Page One GETS IT. The feeling changes to a slow burn. I turn on the radio, to my favourite morning show on Radio-Canada. Most mornings it's just chatter about politics, sports, the arts, interviews with famous peope, laughter, jokes. And then sometimes, like this morning, I get lucky. I catch a conversation in progress. How come this isn't front page news? the host is asking. I like the host. He gets it. Yeah it's strange, the person he's talking to is saying. I recognize him. It's the environment correspondent. And then he continues and that sense of dread I woke up with explodes into full-blown, impotent rage.

Barcelona's diary :: ::
His report lasts barely a minute. To be fair, maybe two. I rush to the computer to look up the article in The Independent (UK) he was quoting from. It's dated september 19th. Four days ago! First I've heard of any of this. My outrage grows. Yes, I feel like screaming. Don't you? WHY IS THISNOT FRONT PAGE NEWS?

The latest study from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put the inevitability of drastic global warming in the starkest terms yet, stating that major impacts on parts of the world – in particular Africa, Asian river deltas, low-lying islands and the Arctic – are unavoidable and the focus must be on adapting life to survive the most devastating changes.
A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures – the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change which will expose millions to drought, hunger and flooding – is now "very unlikely" to be avoided, the world's leading climate scientists said yesterday.

(...)

For more than a decade, EU countries led by Britain have set a rise of two degrees centigrade or less in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels as the benchmark after which the effects of climate become devastating, with crop failures, water shortages, sea-level rises, species extinctions and increased disease.

Two years ago, an authoritative study predicted there could be as little as 10 years before this "tipping point" for global warming was reached

The IPCC said yesterday that the effects of this rise are being felt sooner than anticipated with the poorest countries and the poorest people set to suffer the worst of shifts in rainfall patterns, temperature rises and the viability of agriculture across much of the developing world.

(...)

"Even if we achieve a cap at two degrees, there is a stock of major impacts out there already and that means adaptation. You cannot mitigate your way out of this problem... The choice (now)is between a damaged world or a future with a severely damaged world."

The IPCC assessment states that up to two billion people worldwide will face water shortages and up to 30 per cent of plant and animal species would be put at risk of extinction if the average rise in temperature stabilises at 1.5C to 2.5C.

More at link:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/23/10659/9322

[Teaser]

1. unfortunately

we're probably going to have to live with a really sucky, post global warming world. Just so long as its survivable, I consider that a victory, and an achievable one. A runaway scenario is highly unlikely, so I let that comfort me as I think about my child's future.

[pansypoo53219]

2. think dark ages

what happened after that massive volcano brought out the deep chill, in reverse. and nothing a greenspan can alter. whoo hoo! TAX CUTS!!!

maroons/lemmings

[aquart]

5. Your child's future?

I suggest an arranged marriage with someone who own farmland in central Canada. You'll be glad you did.

[Teaser]

10. You think my current wife would mind?

?

[JMDEM]

3. We hated our parents' generation because...

They wanted to throw us into the meatgrinder called Vietnam.

Our children and grandchildren will have plenty of reasons to hate us, for piddling around and wasting $1 trillion on a useless war to get more oil, while the world started roasting from too much oil.

It's the social upheaval that scares me more than anything. The chances of massive depressions, wars and famines are... well... almost unavoidable too.

[Lorien]

4. We'll have reason enough to hate ourselves

Most of us will get a good taste of the horrors climate change will bring. Hell, it may even wipe many of us out in our lifetime. The predictions thus far have proven to be downright optimistic in comparison to reality.

[Apollo11]

6. How about: Calling all humans!

Especially people in North America and Europe, where we have the highest CO2 emissions per head of population.

The USA and other heavily industrialized countries, who for the past 200 years have been at the front of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, have a moral responsibility to lead the shift to a more sustainable, renewable and energy-efficient future.

The idea that we should all sit around waiting for Al Gore to come and save us is simply TRAGIC.

Al Gore is doing everything he can to raise the alarm and convincing people to take this issue seriously.

The question all of us have to face is - are we doing everything we can???

However - I also think we also have to look at the big picture and be realistic.

Between 1960 and 2000, the human population of the planet doubled from less than 3 billion to more than 6 billion.

At the same time we have seen wide-scale industrialization and increases in the rate of energy consumption.

The number of cars and other motor vehicles continues to increase by millions each year.

Meanwhile, there is a finite amount of oil and coal in the ground (worldwide).

In a market economy, we can assume that all of the available oil and coal will be burned sooner or later.

All that governments can do is try to slow down the rate at which we burn all of the remaining oil and coal.

They can also help to lead the way in preparing for a future in which all of the oil will have run out.

But despite all the good reasons to be pessimistic - doing something is always better than doing nothing.

So we should all get behind Al Gore's efforts and make the climate crisis a priority issue in the 2008 elections.


Let's all find ways to show our support for Al Gore! :patriot:

Sign the Live Earth Pledge: www.liveearthpledge.org

Visit Al's site www.algore.com and read his blog http://blog.algore.com

Sign the petitions at www.algore.org and www.draftgore.com

Visit www.americaforgore.org and send your two cents to Al!

:kick:

[Locrian]

7. I want to run screaming into the street

It's just unreal. And what makes it even harder to take, is that WHEN it really starts falling apart the disaster capitalists will have a field day making $$ off of the chaos. Like 911, any possibility of realizing we are in this together, and actually need to develop sustaining behavior, will go right out the window.

I shudder at the "solutions" that will be proposed by Haliburton, Blackwater, GE, etc

[Duppers]

8. "WHY IS THIS NOT FRONT PAGE NEWS?" indeed!

Those are my words in every email I send out on Global Warming.

K & R.

[road2000]

9. Dare I say this without sounding crazy?

Kentucky and southern Ohio farmland are disaster areas. Cincinnati is becoming the Dust Bowl. There has been no rain since at least June (not counting one or two showers that hardly wet the sidewalks). This city, which boasted only five days per year over 90 degrees when I moved here 10 years ago, is now a broiling oven -- week upon week of mid- and upper-90s and high humidity. The annuals are dead. Some of the perennials are dead. The grass is dead. The trees are dying.

And I don't see anything on the local MSM. Local weather always seems to be forecast a few degrees cooler than it is. The local NPR news outlet consistently says it's 89, but as I pass a shopping center thermometer daily at about 7 p.m., I check that and my car's thermometer against the radio. It's always five or six degrees hotter than announced.

I realize that part sounds CT, but they're so... effing jolly. No clouds. Nice day for the Reds game. Pleasant tonight: down to 75.

I wake up wanting to scream, "Doesn't anybody see what's happening?" Today's high is 95. It's September 24. This is not a dry spell; it is disaster.

But hey, guys, it's going to be a nice weekend, so let's have a cornhole tournament.

[katty]

11. Gore can't save the earthlings from their ceaseless folly

there is no one coming to save us.