In short, YES! Then why aren't we doing anything about it? Politics. Politicians influenced by lobbyists. The world economic slump. Countries like China and India continue to argue that they first need to catch up economically. Surveys show popular concern is slumping. Gallup polls in 1989 and 2011, for example, show that the drop was from 66% to 51% during this period when each subsequent decade showed a continuous increase in average world-wide temperatures. The list can go on and on.
However, the epic failure of Rio+20 particularly underscores this unfolding tragedy. The fact that a whole host of world leaders (Obama, Merkel and Hu Jintao were absent, for example) were at the G20 gathering in Los Cabos (Mexico), but still did not feel it was important enough for a reasonable plane hop to Rio de Janeiro, was particularly disappointing.
I provided my history with climate change in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth. I was involved from the early '80s.
A couple of friends sent me information about a paper James Hanson co-authored in 1981:
‘Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’, J. Hansen, D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, G. Russell.
This was the year I was still working for the U.S. Senate (Hanson's famous Senate testimony actually came seven years later) and began to get concerned, even though the potential of global cooling was then currently in vogue. Here is an excellent encapsulation of the above summary paper and James Hanson especially:
- - Was right about the 1980s warming, even though this was just after the media frenzy about a coming ice age.
- - Was right about erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage – a pretty good call.
- - Was right about warming at higher latitudes being greater than the global mean.
- - Was right about the increased growing season.
- - Was right about increased snow fall and net ice sheet growth – yet 'skeptics' today still use this as an argument against global warming.
- - Was right about a partly ice free Arctic modifying neighbouring continental climates – if the most recent research about lack of ice causing a shift to the jet stream, and making colder winters is accepted – another good call.
- - Appears to be right about 2C warming being reached within a century and that temperature being the accepted limit before irreversible and detrimental effects occur.
There is nothing obviously incorrect in this paper. All this was predicted using models that according to 'skeptics', are not supposed to work, over 30 years ago in 1981, the year IBM released it’s first PC with Microsoft MS DOS.
I irregularly communicate with him and have had some personal discussions at conferences. Here is an 18 minute TED talk by James Hanson.
-
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น