Time to Take Up Drinking At Breakfast….

Sharon October 5th, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092402602.html

“Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world’s leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.

The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshaling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

Robert Corell, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative and reviewed the UNEP report’s scientific findings, said the significant global temperature rise is likely to occur even if industrialized and developed countries enact every climate policy they have proposed at this point. The increase is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change.”

I’ve been saying this for years, but I don’t enjoy seeing it in print any more than anyone else.   Especially not before my first cup of tea.  Maybe I should switch to gin ;-) .

Sharon

6 Responses to “Time to Take Up Drinking At Breakfast….”

  1. # Julieon 05 Oct 2023 at 9:57 am

    Good thing you aren’t the type to paralyzed by bad news….maybe, you would like my method of making a stove top still?

  2. # MEAon 05 Oct 2023 at 10:11 am

    But you know, it was cold here last night, so all that global warning stuff is crap.

    To me, it’s just another call to keep on keeping on, beucase, like you, I feel if we let it stop us, nothing good will come of it.

  3. # Laurie in Mpls.on 05 Oct 2023 at 1:29 pm

    What torques me off about this kind of article is that so many people react to it by saying/thinking “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it, so we might as well do nothing!” And they keep on with whatever they’ve been doing for the last 20 years, right, wrong, or ineffective. Instead of seeing it as a reason to buckle down and give stuff up, make some lifestyle changes that in the long run will be Very Good For Them, they use it as an excuse to be inert.

    It makes me sad and angry, and sadly, I’m not nearly as articulate as Sharon is in explaining that changes may not stop the process, but they will allow us to live less uncomfortably in the long run. I had that conversation with a student this past Saturday, and all she could come up with was “But don’t you hate being cold?” Yes, I do. A lot. And I voluntarily lived chilly last winter in an effort to adapt. At least she is aware that people used to live here in far less secure housing than we have now, and managed to survive.

    Bleah! I’m a little impatient with humans right now, so I’ll stop here.

  4. # Texas_Engineeron 05 Oct 2023 at 9:35 pm

    Hi Sharon

    Love reading your site. But keep drinking tea. At the risk of your thinking I am a denier of global warming - I am not. Increasing levels of CO2 will warm the earth.

    But it is important in this crazy information age to sort out the useful and non-useful data. With respect to global warming I just decided to study the largest compilation of data available - the IPCC report written by 2500 scientists to summarize their conclusions. Yes - I actually read the real report - not the announcements of the political side of the UN. Any reasonably competent technical person that actually reads the IPPC report can only conclude that the paragraph you quoted - that we will increase temperatures by 6.3 degrees even if we “fulfill all our pledges” is utter nonsense. The reported models in the IPPC report, even including the business as usual model do not come close to that. But more importantly all of the scenarios in the IPPC assume non-stop continued economic growth of the world economy coupled with increases of industrialization in the less developed world - therefore big increases in CO2.

    None of these scenarios will happen - we are truly running out of cheap energy and the result will be that economic growth will stop. If the IPPC models are right there will not be any significant increase of temperatures past 2030.

    The real issue is - can we deal with negative economic growth? I’m not sure we can. Now that might cause me to switch to gin.

  5. # Sharonon 06 Oct 2023 at 6:40 am

    Texas Engineer, I agree with you that the IPCC reports don’t adequately take into account economic and energy crises - but I also am familiar enough with the raw reports to know taht they don’t fully take into account other factors - global dimming, methane release taht is already occurring, and the potential impact of our coal extraction. The reality is that we aren’t short enough of coal to manage things - I wish we were in many ways.

    Sharon

  6. # NMon 07 Oct 2023 at 4:58 pm

    Gah.
    Me, I’d prefer amaretto coffee, or some homemade quince liqueur to gin first thing in the morning.
    And a bucket of sand in which to bury my head …
    No, scratch the coffee, it jangles my nerves. Now I have to add to my to-do list, finding a recipe for a liqueur with which I can spike my morning chai. ;p
    At least that should keep me distracted from thinking about this depressing report.

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