environment: Bad News denialists International Energy Agency
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 13: This Is Not A Test
The New York Daily News (GAAAH!) reports on the just-released warning from the International Energy Agency:
Time is running out to reverse the effects of global warming, according to a new report.
In a sobering analysis of the planet’s energy future, the International Energy Agency said that governments around the world have five years to reverse the course of climate change before it’s too late.
“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, told the Guardian. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety].
“The door will be closed forever.”
The World Energy Outlook report, which looks at the future of the planet’s energy system over the next 25 years, revealed that urgent investment in renewable power and energy efficiency is needed to keep global temperature gains at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, a crucial ceiling set by climate scientists.
Once that door shuts, that’s it. Writing a historically referenced letter to the NYDN is probably an exercise in futility. I’ll paraphrase it and send tomorrow’s letter to the WSJ in a little while, which will put me five days ahead of the curve. Whee!
Sent November 9:
The greenhouse effect was first described in the early 1800s, and first measured in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish physicist. Arctic ice melt caused by increased atmospheric CO2 was postulated in 1953, and climatologists have been studying the problem ever since. Their analyses have been steadily getting more accurate, and their predictions have been confirmed time and time again.
For fifty years environmental experts have been warning American lawmakers about the consequences of our profligate energy consumption, and for the past fifty years we’ve been kicking it down the road for “the next guy” to deal with — a strategy that just ended with the release of the International Energy Agency’s “five-year warning.” The climate-change denialists need to abandon their improbable conspiracy theories and join the rest of us in making a world that’s safe for our descendants.
We can’t say we weren’t warned. We can only say we didn’t care.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Bad News
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 8: Good Luck, Everyone. Meet You At The Double Bar.
WASHINGTON—The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.
Well, this should be good for a week’s worth of letters, at least, don’cha think? Sent Nov. 4:
Those who live for the thrills and chills provided by genuinely bad news need look no further than the new figures on greenhouse gas emissions provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Well, thrills, anyway — since the unprecedented spike in atmospheric CO2 essentially guarantees catastrophic global warming over the coming century.
Afficionadi of extreme weather events like the anomalous October snowstorm that battered much of the North-East will also have much to look forward to. Vicious storms? Destructive rain and snow? Infrastructure-crippling precipitation? Check, check and check. The many fans of wildfires and droughts will no doubt enjoy the spectacle.
One wonders whether the current crop of Republican presidential aspirants will have anything to say about the DOE’s report. Most likely they’ll propose a cost-effective, simple and comprehensive solution: eliminate funding for any such studies in the years to come. After all, what we don’t know can’t hurt us.
Warren Senders