We’re still playing games with global warming

~ susie

Cold in New York

Wildfires during California’s “rainy” reason. Arctic cold through most of the country. Warm weather and no snow in Siberia. Why is everybody sitting around, waiting for someone else to do something?

A new study published in Nature suggests that climate change is even worse than scientists had previously anticipated, upgrading the forecast from “dangerous” to “catastrophic.” According to the study’s authors, temperatures are currently snared in an upward spiral: As earth gets hotter, the heat prevents sunlight-reflecting clouds from forming, trapping more heat and further exacerbating the problem. The result could be a temperature climb of 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

The alarming report follows yet another confirmation, this time by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that humans are almost indubitably the drivers of climate change. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has expressed concern, stating that “if this isn’t an alarm bell, then I don’t know what one is. If ever there were an issue that demanded greater cooperation, partnership, and committed diplomacy, this is it.”

But the unnerving escalaton in climate change is unlikely to be abated without significant U.S. support—and for the time being, the Republican Party insists on stonewalling any efforts to offset the human-caused warming process. Given that the U.S. is the second biggest contributor to climate change, its participation in any international resolution is absolutely vital. Yet with one major political party blocking such support, the odds seem increasingly likely that 2100 will, indeed, bring with it a “catastrophic” increase of global heat.

H/t Edward Tayter.

Published by susie

3 thoughts on “We’re still playing games with global warming”

  1. The Republicans who represent the fosssil fuel industry could be decimated by the Democrats in 2014. The Democrats are perfectly poisioned to defeat the Republican Party in the fall. Whether they will or not remains to be seen. 1% Hillary has no intention of hurting her Wall Street doners. She’ll be content to smile alot and blow smoke up all our arses as she seeks to claim her god bestowed prize.

  2. “…Why is everybody sitting around, waiting for someone else to do something…”?

    Because to do something means realizing that using lots of fossil fuel energy to extract, make, sell, and then throw away a lot of stuff is kind of silly. And if people realized it was silly they might stop doing it.

    And then balances of power might change, and people might come to think that putting their own communities first if far more important than worrying about the balance sheets and relative power of fossil fuel companies and big banks.

    We might even have an outbreak of – gasp – democracy.

    So that it why we don’t do anything. A continued stranglehold on power by the ruling class is far more important than the continued existence on Earth of any organism that could be classified as “mammal”.

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