Climate Warming’s impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto
Posted by Danger on November 23rd, 2009 filed in COMMON-FUCKING-SENSE!, Climate/Environment, Feed your head
WASHINGTON – Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.
As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.
And it’s not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen:
_The world’s oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.
_Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.
_Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.
_Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.
Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn’t forecast results quite this bad so fast.
“The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought,” said Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
And here’s why: Since an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas pollution was signed in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, the level of carbon dioxide in the air has increased 6.5 percent. Officials from across the world will convene in Copenhagen next month to seek a follow-up pact, one that President Barack Obama says “has immediate operational effect … an important step forward in the effort to rally the world around a solution.”
The last effort didn’t quite get the anticipated results.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:04 PM
Why doesn’t this frighten most people? It scares the shit out of me! I know there are a lot of people who are focused on this issue and that is honestly wonderful! For example, there is a restaurant in Boulder, CO (as well as a hotel) that is focused on generating ZERO waste! EVERYTHING is reused & recycled. Both are very popular and THAT IS FANTASTIC! However, I have to ask…WHERE IS EVERYONE ELSE? WHERE IS THE REST OF THE FUCKING WORLD? We all need to WORK TOGETHER – NOW! I don’t want to sound high and mighty (honestly, I don’t) but when I was ten years old, I remember writing a lengthy letter about the environment to the president…asking him to take action and preserve what little we have left! This was not for a school project…this was something I did, on my own, in my spare time. Now, if a ten year old can (years ago) see and understand the negative impacts we have on our environment and find what she saw so upsetting that she took it upon herself to do SOMETHING about it…then ANYONE can! I believe that everyone does see this but most turn a blind eye for one reason or another (which is a related yet very different topic that I don’t feel I should even get into right now). We are too distracted by money, power and violence to even care (so it seems)! If we don’t do something NOW (not next year, not next month, no next week, not even tomorrow) then in a few years, we will not have ANYONE to blow up, control or repress! Think of it that way if you must! If that maybe opens your eyes just a crack.
I pray for the r(e)volution of the human race!
November 24th, 2009 at 4:00 AM
Re: Wildfires in Australia, the Very Bad thing I alluded to somewhere else here, do a google or YouTube search on ‘Victoria Black Saturday’.