Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

hope at the end of our tether S 183
• Bigger hurricanes;
• Forest dieback;
• Changing ecosystems;
• More tropical diseases in formerly temperate areas;
• Rising ocean levels—faster than once thought;
• Losing many things nature once did for us;
• Losing things like Vermont maple syrup;
• More and nastier bugs;
• Food shortages due to drought, heat, and more and nastier
bugs;
• More death from climate-driven weather events;
• Refugees fl eeing fl oods, rising seas, drought, and expanding
deserts;
• International confl icts over energy, food, and water;
• Runaway climate change to some new stable state, most likely
without humans if we do not act quickly and effectively.
Some of these changes are inevitable given the volume of heattrapping
gases we’ve already put into the atmosphere. There is a
lag of several decades between the emission of carbon dioxide
and other heat-trapping gases and the weather headlines, and still
another lag until we experience their full economic and political
effects. The sum total of the opinions of climate experts recounted
in chapter 1 goes like this:
1. We’ve already warmed the planet by 0.8°C;
2. We are committed to another ~0.5°C to 1.0°C warming;
3. It’s too late to avoid trauma, but;
4. It’s probably not too late to avoid global catastrophe, which
includes the possibility of runaway climate change;
5. There are no easy answers or magic bullet solutions;
6. It is truly a global emergency.
Whether or not item 4 above is correct is anyone’s guess, since
the level of greenhouse gases is higher than it has been in the past