Originally published at http://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/26/red-alert-our-planet-new-un-report-shows-radically-bolder-action-needed-hit-15degc
'A Red Alert for Our Planet': New UN Report Shows Radically Bolder Action Needed to Hit 1.5°C Target
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If it gets too hot we will build shaded walkways between buildings. If it gets way too hot we will close them in and air condition.
Outdoor workers will adapt to cool suits like NASCAR uses.
We have a ways to go before humanity goes all in on survival.
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When the polar vortex gets lost over Texas, you can count on it that things are simultaneously much warmer than usual in the Arctic. Heat and cold are physically incomparable, in actuality: cold just amounting to an absence. But when you follow these weather systems around the globe for awhile, heat and cold seem like viscous fluids, clumping together and displacing each other. Clumps of heat coincide with high pressure and clockwise anticyclones. Clumps of cold coincide with low pressure and counter-clockwise cyclones. (Reversing the clocks in the other hemisphere.)
Anyhow, in general, when there’s a cold snap (heat wave) somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, you’re bound to find a heat wave (cold snap) somewhere else.
Interested in the Arctic heat wave? Sea-ice extent is dropping like a rock. Probably it peaked (very early) in mid-February this year.
~http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
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Thanks for posting this----it is very concerning to say the least.
People need to know and understand what is happening in the arctic for as Paul Beckwith has stated for years: “what happens in the arctic doesn’t stay in the arctic”.
I was thinking today as I’m watching the streets fill with cars that hold skiers here for the Birkie (on the melted trails) ----- most of the world is filled with takers. (I’ve not read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael but I believe that is what he addresses) They just take and take from the earth----even if it’s “organic” or “free range” or electric cars or hybrids.
I would guess that even those with environmental bumper stickers on their Priuses are primarily takers.
How many people ask, “what can I do for the earth” each and every day?
How many ask: “what can I do to make sure I help leave things better instead of just extracting, using . . taking”?
People are using/trampling on the earth in what feels like the last gasp of feeding frenzy during the pandemic.
Lastly:
Does anyone really believe we will “hit a 1.5 C target”?
Isn’t that promoting false hope? And/or (word of the year) gaslighting?
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It would be interesting to know the carbon footprint of gaslighting, but you might need the square root of negative one or something to figure it out. It seems hopelessly recursive – a screen-freeze hazard.
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Lol, lol, lol!
Once again, just when I thought I could not laugh today (or ever again) . . . there you are with your marvelous wit!
I’m watching this . . this . . .(what do you call him?) Biden try to sound coherent right now. He can barely speak when he is off track of the prompter.
I voted for him thinking it was a vote against fascism. I was warned by many here (including you?).
But in keeping with “faster than expected” bad news about the environment he is making horrific moves at a very rapid pace----showing his (their) true colors faster than expected.
Perhaps that is a good thing. I don’t know anymore. It might be better just to let go . . detach and blah, blah.
this is what I thought I was voting against—it is HARD to watch:
Ted Cruz CPAC 2021 Speech MOCKS AOC and Cancun trip ; SCREAMS freedom like William Wallace
~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPNgIud18s&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis
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I expect that we will pass 1.5C very soon. Then fly by 2C. No real leaders among the heads of state today, & some really awful characters.
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And yet there are people who still defend incrementalism as a valid approach to climate action. Still.
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When Pacha Mama cooks the viability from the last dangling human testicle she will indeed have the last laugh.
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Humanity continues to sleepwalk over the proverbial cliff into the abyss. We were warned about this decades ago. Even “big oil” knew about the consequences, back in the 1950’s, of burning fossil fuels. What was and has been more important than taking action? Financial profit! We are out of time. We were out of time ten years ago (my own opinion). Many Climate Scientists have stated that we have already passed the 1.5C threshold and are actually closer to 2C compared to A.D. year 1750 baseline. I just don’t see how this will end well. We need action, but I fear it’s futile at this point.
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No action in the world is going to keep us below 1.5°C over preindustrial temperature (PIT). We’re already 1.2° over. Aerosols, tiny particles emitted by burning coal, actually exert a cooling effect, though coal’s warming overpowers them, and aerosols fall out of the atmosphere within days or weeks. Then, unless replaced by continued burning, the full power of the CO2’s warming takes over and lasts for several hundred to a thousand years. So as we decrease coal use, warming actually jumps up because of CO2 that’s already been emitted and is no longer masked by aerosols. There is absolutely no way to avoid this warming. Substituting gas for coal is even more disastrous, since there’s as much warming as coal from gas’s CO2 + methane, and fewer aerosols for cooling. Research has shown .5-1°C of warming is inevitable as aerosols decrease. That alone takes us beyond 1.5, and we can’t change it.
When CO2 is emitted it doesn’t instantly raise the Earth’s temperature to the full potential of that amount of CO2. There’s a roughly 40 year “pipeline” effect after CO2 is emitted as it reaches its full warming. Unless the CO2 is removed from the system (atmosphere and oceans)—not even remotely possible at the scale needed in the time we have—this too, will continue to increase temperature with no way to stop it.
There are a number of other factors that make warming impossible to stop on a dime.
We have to build the infrastructure of a sustainable civilization–clean safe renewable energy (RE), new agriculture infrastructure and land-use changes, renewably-powered mass transit, etc. The more we switch to RE the less will be emitted by construction, but to do that takes emissions up front, the time we can least afford them. Decades of delay caused by the fossil-fueled lunatic right wing have brought us to the edge of a cliff; only strong action by a few countries has made it even possible for us to avoid human extinction. Those countries include China, Germany, and the countries of the Nordic grid, while the US has been a drag on every aspect of the changes needed. On the edge of this cliff, without massive rationing of all non-crucial carbon-emitting activities in countries around the world, the actions we have to take will raise emissions even faster—a deal with Satan.
Tipping points have already been triggered which are now independently raising temperature.
The temperature-raising effects of emissions have been underestimated and keep having to be adjusted to reflect new knowledge.
The ecological and social-political effects of rising temperature have been underestimated. As both climate science and climate catastrophe advance, what’s discovered is virtually all bad–unknown feedbacks, fugitive emissions, more serious effects, more powerful tipping points…
Other factors are listed in this comment: ~http://disq.us/p/1yxxwnp
All these factors plus continued fanatical resistance from climate-denying delayalists, anti-renewable fanatics, and others, mean the chances of keeping temperature under 2° over PIT are virtually zip, too. The right wing’s acts amount to a SlowCoup, a decades-long plan, almost complete, for a fascist take-over the US and its empire, now crumbling because of blowback, overreach, and incompetence.
~https://grist.org/article/the-debate-is-over-the-oceans-are-in-hot-hot-water/#comment-4300972502
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That’s really bizarre. Little by little we will kill the planet.
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Sir David Attenborough will agree with you:
~https://www.climateaction.org/news/sir-david-attenborough-tells-un-it-is-too-late-to-avoid-climate-change
It’s already happening:
~https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/expert-warns-falling-sperm-count-threatens-humanitys-survival/?source=facebook
there is no longer any need to worry about survival,…no one gets out of here alive.
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Jim Morrison.
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Global warming isn’t about human comfort on a hotter planet. You might want the catch up.