A super-inconvenient truth: CO2 has hit an all-time high.
The week leading up to Memorial Day was filled with weird, terrifying weather news: There was the appalling destruction of the tornado in Joplin, Missouri; storms and floods mangled streets in Vermont and Louisiana; there’s so much moisture in Colorado that mountains have announced they’re extending ski season through the July 4th weekend. And further from home there’s this—which Australians don’t even seem to have a name for other than “waterspouts.”
And then just yesterday came the news that the International Energy Agency had announced C02 emissions have officially hit an all-time high. C02 slumped slightly in 2009 after the economic collapse, but it stormed right back in 2010, seemingly faster than the economic recovery to hit a 5% growth over the previous year, and a new record all-time high.
IEA spokesperson Faith Birol said “This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2.0 C (3.6 F).”
The IEA’s goal of limiting global temperatures to rising 2 degrees celsius represents the benchmark which they believe crossing will cause widespread climate and ecosystem changes that could potentially endanger hundreds of millions of people.
“Our latest estimates are another wake-up call,” said Birol.
If skiing on July 4th seems to weird to you, it should. It’s not just your imagination. Anomalous weather patterns that we can observe empirically—what Thomas Friedman calls “global weirding”—are becoming the new norm.
And, incredibly, this isn’t front-page news today. Tellingly, two of the top stories on New York Times today are about home prices reaching a new low and the debt ceiling. It’s a world of dangerous highs and lows it seems, but none is more dangerous than the one announced by IEA yesterday.
According to the report much of the world’s energy infrastructure is “locked in” as far as 2020 when you consider plants currently contracted or under construction. Meanwhile, Germany, previously a leader in nuclear power, is planning to abandon it.
But the biggest threat lies in the developing world. While richer countries make up 40% of total emissions output, developing countries account for 75% of the 2010 gain. And geo-economic dynamics make pressuring those countries seemingly impossible.
Human problems are usually only addressed when met with urgency. We don’t deal with bubbles until they pop. It’s the nature of the beast. Unfortunately this bubble doesn’t appear to be fixable. Get your July 4th skiing in while you can, because when this bubble bursts it’s going to burst all over us, in the form of Tsunamis, “waterspouts,” and god knows what else.
May 31, 2011 at 5:39 pm, Laura Chandler said:
Please go back to your fake “end of world” fears brought to you by religious fanatics and ignore actual warning signs, brought to you by science. This will get 10% of Camping’s press or less……
June 01, 2011 at 7:25 pm, john charles webb jr said:
The IEA’s goal of limiting global temperatures to rising 2 degrees celsius represents the benchmark which they believe crossing will cause widespread climate and ecosystem changes that could potentially endanger hundreds of millions of people. (end quote from article)
The thin wisps of condensation that trail jet airliners have a significant influence on the climate, according to scientists who studied U.S. skies during a rare interruption in national air traffic after the September 11 terrorist attacks.”During the three-day commercial flight hiatus, when the artificial clouds known as contrails all but disappeared, the variations in high and low temperatures increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) each day, said meteorological researchers”. end quote from linked materials below
from > http://articles.cnn.com/2002-08-07/tech/contrails.climate_1_contrails-cirrus-clouds-david-travis?_s=PM:TECH
airline filth (opinion) is actually masking (reducing) the actual figures regarding ‘global warming’.
we are already at the two degree increase in earth temperature and this increase is masked by the presence of CO2 apparently caused by airlines .
summary : during the 5 days that air traffic was stopped after 9-11 , the earth’s mean temperature was measured @ 2 degrees above previous measurements .