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The tropics on fire: scientist’s grim vision of global warming
Ian Sample, Guardian
Tropical forests may dry out and become vulnerable to devastating wildfires as global warming accelerates over the coming decades, a senior scientist has warned.
Soaring greenhouse gas emissions, driven by a surge in coal use in countries such as China and India, are threatening temperature rises that will turn damp and humid forests into parched tinderboxes, said Dr Chris Field, co-chair of the UN’s Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
(16 February 2009)
Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates
Kari Lydersen, Washington Post
The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.
“We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,” Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
(15 February 2009)
Plan B (Cascio on geoengineering)
Jamais Cascio, Gristmill
Geoengineering is risky but likely inevitable, so we better start thinking it through
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I’ve been writing about the geoengineering dilemma since 2005, and Grist’s David Roberts — no big fan of geoengineering — asked me to give my take on where the issue stands today. My top-line summary?
Geoengineering is risky, likely to provoke international tension, certain to have unanticipated consequences, and pretty much inevitable.
Just to be clear, here’s what I want to see happen over the next decade: An aggressive effort to reduce carbon emissions through the adoption of radical levels of energy efficiency, a revolution in how we design our cities and communities, a move away from auto-centered culture, greater localism in agriculture, expanded use of renewable energy systems, and myriad other measures, large and small, that reduce our footprints and improve how we live.
This plan, or something very much like it, is required for us to have the best chance of avoiding disastrous climate disruption. Could we make it happen within the next decade? Definitely. Are we likely to do so? I really want to say yes … but I can’t.
And that’s a real problem, because we’re not exactly overburdened with global warming response plans that have a solid chance of actually doing something about it in time.
Jamais Cascio is a cross-disciplinary futurist specializing in the interplay between technology and society. He co-founded Worldchanging.com, and now blogs at OpenTheFuture.com.
(9 February 2009)
Geoengineering Megaprojects are Bad Planetary Management
Alex Steffen, WorldChanging
Mega-project geoengineering proponents love to set up the following argument:
1) Climate change is real and worse than we thought.
2) Humanity will not or cannot reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, or will not or cannot reduce them enough in time to stave off catastrophe.
3) Therefore, we need to find other approaches to lowering the planet’s temperature and/or pulling greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere and the best way to do this is through mega-scale geoengineering.
4) Anyone who opposes this argument is unrealistic and afraid of the adult responsibilities of planetary management and will lead us over the cliff into runaway climate change.
It’s a brilliant political argument, raising a threat and then making those who oppose your response to that threat part of the threat itself.
The biggest problem with it as a policy argument is that it’s riddled with inconsistencies, false assumptions and half-truths. Let’s go through the argument and the bright green response:
(9 February 2009)
