Climate Experts To World: Act Boldly Now, or Pay Severely Later
There is still time to avert worst impacts of climate change, but
that means serious action and less talk
Published on Friday, November 30, 2012 by Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/11/30-3
It's Not Just That Corporations Are Ignoring Global Warming, They Are
Profiting From It
Friday, 30 November 2012
<http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17666-it-s-not-just-that-corporations-are-ignoring-global-warming-they-are-profiting-from-it>
Doha climate talks deadlocked
December 3 2012
<http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/doha-climate-talks-deadlocked-1.1434990>
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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/30
Published on Friday, November 30, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
Climate Change Is Happening Now - A Carbon Price Must Follow
The extreme weather events of 2012 are what we have been warning of
for 25 years, but the answer is plain to see
by James Hansen
Will our short attention span be the end of us? Just a month after
the second "storm of a century" in two years, the media moves on to
the latest scandal with barely a retrospective glance at the
implications of the extreme climate anomalies we have seen.
Hurricane Sandy was not just a storm. It was a stark illustration of
the power that climate change can deliver - today - to our doorsteps.
Ask the homeowners along the New Jersey and New York shores still
homeless. Ask the local governments struggling weeks later to turn on
power to their cold, darkened towns and cities. Ask the entire
north-east coast, reeling from a catastrophe whose cost is estimated
at $50bn and rising. (I am not brave enough to ask those who've lost
husbands or wives, children or grandparents).
I bring up these facts sadly, as one who has urged us to heed the
scientific evidence on climate change for the past 25 years. The
science is clear: climate change is here, now.
Superstorm Sandy is not the first storm, and certainly won't be the
last. Still, it is hard for us as individual human beings to connect
the dots. That's where observation, data and scientific analysis help
us see.
No credible scientist disputes that we have warmed our climate by
almost 1.5C over land areas in the past century, most of that in the
past 30 years.
As my colleagues and I demonstrated in a peer-reviewed study
published this summer, climate extremes are already occurring much
more frequently in the world we have warmed through our reliance on
fossil fuels.
Our analysis showed that extreme summer heat anomalies used to be
infrequent: covering only 0.1-0.2% of the globe in any given summer
during the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. During the
past decade, as the average global temperature rose, such extremes
have covered 10% of the land.
Extreme temperatures deliver more than heat.
The water cycle is especially sensitive to rising temperatures.
Increased heat speeds up evaporation, causing more extreme droughts,
like the $5bn (and counting) drought in Texas and Oklahoma. It is
linked to an expanding wildfire season and an increase by several
fold in the frequency of large fires in the American west.
The heat also leads to more extreme sea surface temperatures - a key
culprit behind Sandy's devastating force. The latent heat in
atmospheric water vapor is the fuel that powers tornadoes,
thunderstorms, and hurricanes. Stepping up evaporation with warmer
temperatures is like stepping on the gas: More energy-rich vapor
condenses into water drops, releasing more latent heat as it does so,
causing more powerful storms, increased rainfall and more extreme
flooding. This is not a matter of belief. This is high-school science
class.
The chances of getting a late October hurricane in New York without
the help of global warming are extremely small. In that sense, you
can blame Sandy on global warming. Sandy was the strongest recorded
storm, measured by barometric pressure, to make landfall north of
Cape Hatteras, eclipsing the hurricane of 1938.
But this fixation on determining the blame for a particular storm, or
disputing the causal link between climate change and this or that
storm, is misguided.
A better path forward means listening to the growing chorus - Sandy,
extreme droughts and wildfires, intense rainstorms, record-breaking
melting of Arctic sea ice - and taking action. Think of it like
taking out an insurance policy for the planet.
We can fix this. The answer is a price on carbon. We must make the
price of fossil fuels honest, reflecting their cost to society
including the economic devastation wrought by storms like Sandy, the
toll on farmland and ecosystems, as well as priceless human lives.
Whether that price takes the shape of a carbon tax, as some in
Washington are now willing to discuss, or a carbon fee, as I have
advocated, a price on carbon lets the market find the most effective
ways to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels. It also moves us to a
sustainable energy future where energy choices are made by
individuals and communities, not by Washington mandates and lobbyists.
A carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, will increase
consumer costs. So the money that is collected should be distributed
to the public. As people try to minimize their energy costs to keep
money for other things, their actions will stimulate the economy,
drive innovations and transition us away from fossil fuels.
If we make our demand for action clear enough, I am optimistic that
our leaders in Washington can look beyond the short-term challenges
of today to see the looming, long-term threats ahead, and the answer
that is right in front of them. We can't simply allow the next news
cycle to distract us from the real task ahead.
Back in the 1980s, I introduced the concept of "climate dice" to make
clear the difference between natural variability and climate-change
driven extremes. As I predicted, the climate dice in the 21st century
are now "loaded". It's not just bad luck Sandy pummeled America's
coasts, extreme drought devastated its midlands and wildfires
scorched its mountains.
We loaded the dice. We changed our climate.
© 2012 The Guardian/UK
Dr. James Hansen is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space
Studies and adjunct professor in the department of earth and
environmental sciences at Columbia University. He was the first
scientist to warn the US Congress of the dangers of climate change
and writes here as a private citizen. Hansen is the author of "Storms
of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe
and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity."
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