RUNAWAY CLIMATE CHANGE IS PROBABLE!

There is no chance that by continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere that the climate will flip into a new energy equilibrium making it impossible to sustain the existing and expected world population.

So there is nothing to worry about. If this change were to happen within the next eighty years it will occur during the lifetime of people living today.With the dramatic visual evidence of the shrinking of the Arctic icecaps, and recent spat of extreme weather associated with the increasing amplitude of the jet stream in North America, one would assume that ordinary prudence would suggest immediate action. Social policy, as other areas bear witness, does not happen in political systems that are effectively controlled by vested interests. Problems and policy cannot be aligned on a global scale because the political structures and processes do not exist, or when they do they are the artefacts of violence and structural inequality. Human beings may have the highest price for the addiction to violence.

Fiona Harvey and Damian Carrington in The Guardian report:

Governments are falling badly behind on low-carbon energy, putting carbon reduction targets out of reach and pushing the world to the brink of catastrophic climate change, the world’s leading independent energy authority will warn on Wednesday.

The stark judgment is being given at a key meeting of energy ministers from the world’s biggest economies and emitters taking place in London on Wednesday – a meeting already overshadowed by David Cameron’s last-minute withdrawal from a keynote speech planned for Thursday.

“The world’s energy system is being pushed to breaking point,” Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency, writes in today’s Guardian. “Our addiction to fossil fuels grows stronger each year. Many clean energy technologies are available but they are not being deployed quickly enough to avert potentially disastrous consequences.”

On current form, she warns, the world is on track for warming of 6C by the end of the century – a level that would create catastrophe, wiping out agriculture in many areas and rendering swathes of the globe uninhabitable, as well as raising sea levels and causing mass migration, according to scientists.

Van der Hoeven, whose deputy will present the IEA’s findings to the Third Clean Energy Ministerial, put the blame squarely on policymakers, and challenged ministers to step up.

She said: “The current state of affairs is unacceptable precisely because we have a responsibility and a golden opportunity to act. Energy-related CO2 emissions are at historic highs, and under current policies, we estimate that energy use and CO2 emissions would increase by a third by 2020, and almost double by 2050. This would be likely to send global temperatures at least 6C higher within this century.”

Some are inured to such alarm-ism, in the same way that smokers continue with their addiction while being indifferent to the welfare of others. Still the evidence for climate change and by implication runaway climate change
seems compelling and overwhelming:

But let’s feel good about ourselves and do nothing.

Related articles

• Nick Minchin, All can agree on green energy, the rest is alarmist (Sydney Morning Herald). Minchin claims that temperatures have not increased since 1998.
• Global Warming since 1995 (Skeptical Science)
• Michael Ashley, Balance in the eye of the beholder in climate change debate (SMH)
• Repentance required for climate change ‘shrug culture’ say UK church leaders (junkscience.com)
• Climate Bonds Move Forward (sustainablebusiness.com)
• April 25 News: We Must Deploy Clean Energy Quickly ‘To Avert Potentially Disastrous Consequences’ Warns IEA (thinkprogress.org)
• Governments failing to avert catastrophic climate change, IEA urges (3eintelligence.wordpress.com)
• Catastrophic Climate Change Inevitable without Drastic and Immediate Change, IEA Warns (planetsave.com)

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