Monday 30 May 2011

Climate Change Reaches Disaster Point

We can't say we haven't been warned. The International Energy Agency has announced that greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to 2C, the lowest level of dangerous climate change, all but out of reach.
In 2010, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, a rise of 1.6Gt on the previous year.
The Copenhagen climate summit set out five possible scenarios for our future climate and was hoping to hold the increase in global temperature to a disasterous, but manageable, 2C.
A 2C increase was the lowest rung on a catastrophic ladder which would see summer heatwaves on a par with the heatwave of 2003 which killed tens of thousands of people across Europe, higher rates of malaria, starvation of half a billion people as more agricultural yields fail and the world's sea level rising by seven metres increasing coastal flooding.
Unbelievably, we are on course to surpass that and have moved into the catastrophic area of a 4C increase where the Arctic permafrost thaws to release the methane and carbon dioxide currently locked in the soils into the atmosphere. At the Arctic itself, the ice cover would disappear permanently, a 13m rise in the sea level, submerging many island nations. Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey become deserts and mid-Europe reaches desert temperatures of almost 50C in summer.
While some world leaders are continuously joining hands to fight terrorism, one wonders why they cannot offer similar efforts to control climate change, a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism according to the UK Government's chief scientific adviser.
The physical effects of climate change has become much more noticeable lately with floods in Australia, Brazil and Indonesia and swathes of tornadoes sweeping across America this year killing over 500 people.
Future generations will look back and wonder why we allowed such a disaster to unfold and the only reason they can possibly reach is the selfish World leaders who condemned billions of humans for short term financial gain. Disgraceful doesn't begin to cover it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

lucy,

leave the tornadoes out of this. it is the worst year since 1950. in other words, in 1950 it was worse. consider this, in 1950 the usa had ohe third the people we have today. these same tornadoes in 1950 would have killed one third the people...

q

Lucy said...

It isn't the amount of tornadoes or the number killed, it is the intensity of them when they do arrive. 4 tornadoes of force F5 this year which are rare apparently, 50 in the past 60 years.

1950 was the year when accurate figures began to be collected and the SPC website shows no F5s in 1950.