Readers be advised, this post is a collection of the latest climate change news I have collected the past week. And to tell the truth, the more science on global warming is published, the more alarming it is.
First thing first, concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased in 2012 by no less than 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million (ppm). While this doesn’t look much, it is still the second-greatest annual rise in CO2.
This huge increase questions our willingness to prevent the worse from taking place. Even if we are acting on climate change, we aren’t doing enough.
Second worrying news, according to a new study revealed by Climate Progress, developed nations should halve their greenhouse gases emissions by as early as 2020.
Given how the European Union is stuck with its 20-20-20 by 20 targets instead of going for 30 percent cuts, how the United States are still refusing to acknowledge the gravity of the situation – and this despite the speeches given by President Obama – and so on and so forth, one can be pessimistic…
But wait, there is more : To CNN, the Atlantic and Climate Progress (once again) we are downright ” screwed “. As The Atlantic reports :
A study published in Science reconstructs global temperatures further back than ever before — a full 11,300 years. The new analysis finds that the only problem with Mann’s hockey stick was that its handle was about 9,000 years too short.
To be clear, the study finds that temperatures in about a fifth of this historical period were higher than they are today. But the key, said lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University, is that temperatures are shooting through the roof faster than we’ve ever seen.
“What we found is that temperatures increased in the last hundred years as much as they had cooled in the last six or seven thousand,” he said. “In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we’ve seen in the whole Holocene,” referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago.
Here is the graph accompanying this :
Meanwhile, one of the most prominent military officer in the United States of America is citing climate change as the top threat his country is facing. (no wonder why…)
Tom Friedman, the famous New York Times editorialist has urged President Obama to say no to the Keystone XL pipeline and told local Greens to step up. cf his excellent article : “No to Keystone. Yes to Crazy,”
USA Today had an interesting article on how climate change is already costing huge amounts of money to the United States. As I noted previously, climate change cost $188 billion to the United States of America in only two years : 2011 and 2012.
Are we going to finally, at long last, tackle the climate crisis as much as we should ? If yes, will it be enough to prevent the collapse of civilization as we know it ?
I guess we will find out as we go.
Meanwhile, start your journey towards sustainability, urge your representatives to act on the issue and stay safe. Be sure I’ll keep posting on the issues as time goes..