The vast increase in weather anomalies has coincided with the increase of CO2 in the air so there can be no question as to the cause of the weather extremes: Storms, heat, drought, floods, and so forth that are plaguing many parts of the world. And all the scientific evidence supports the connection.We are squabbling over what to do, and the IPCC is not getting the cooperation it needs. Somehow, the reports and pictures of record wildfires, storms, floods, heat, etc. are not registering. Going up 1/2 degree C will make things half again as bad. Going up two degrees will make things twice as bad.
WE ARE NOT APPRECIATING HOW BAD THAT WILL BE. AND IF WE LET IT GO HIGHER (I AM ANTICIPATING 3°C) IT WILL BE HELL FOR MANY MORE PARTS OF THE WORLD AND DOUBLE HELL FOR OTHERS. And we are saddled with a moron for a president and a population that on the whole that does not comprehend what is happening. It does take some scientific knowledge and reasoning ability to understand that climate change is not like a bad cold that can be cured, it is like a bad cancer that keeps getting worse and the treatment, if it can be made to work at all, will be enormously expensive, but we have no other place to go. So like blithering idiots we shut down our science operations, and have a president do nothing but feed his ego. If you do believe the Bible, it could well be the end-times, and we have the devil himself as president to be sure all goes un-well. So the output of carbon dioxide has continued to increase despite promises, and the United States is the worst contributor, not even acknowledging the existence of a problem.
1. It is illusive and nearly impossible to communiate what it has done elsewhere and what it is going to do. 2. Much of what it does is to amplify what would have happened anyway but resulting in record fires, winds, rainfall, droughts, flooding and more. 3. The cause, too much carbon dioxide and methane, is invisible and has no odor 4. How it works is difficult to explain, usually with a diagram full of arrows and much text 5. The scientists who have done impeccable research are conditioned to speak carefully lest they have missed something, so the force of their arguments is lost except to other scientists.6. So the war-like mobilization that is necessary is not happening despite the efforts of scientific bodies. However, as has been evident before, is simply that what humans can do has outrun their ability to understand themselves.Perhaps the worst of all are two "phenomena." One is the total commitment of the fossil fuel companies to sell as much fuel as possible while knowing it was killing the planet. The second is the willingness of such a large number of people in the United States to not realize they are voting for a president who is, expect for bullying and lying, functionally illiterate and who is using them as fodder to further his own personal aims. "...We must...find our way to “negative emissions,” extracting more carbon dioxide from the air than we contribute to it. If emissions, by miracle, do rapidly decline, most of the necessary carbon absorption could be handled by replanting forests and improving agricultural practices....If not, “massive technological CO₂ extraction,”....will be required. Hansen estimates that this will incur costs of $89 trillion to $535 trillion this century, and may even be impossible..."
In my 78th year, an enormous sadness has come over me. I believe we have killed the ability of the earth in the long run to be a home for humanity. I have spent my life learning (MIT '63, '65, '67) and photographing for over thirty years (above and wawrzonek.com). When I was a child my hope was that before the time I reached this age the problems of my childhood would have succumbed to human intelligence and reasoning.
However, it is the continued burning of fossil fuels with the encouragement of the president (to the extent of at least talking about subsidies to the coal industry) that has put the entire world at grave risk.
Despite the warnings by Dr. James Hansen and the colossal eruptions of weather anomalies, fossil fuel emissions have continued to grow. Now the IPCC reports have become increasingly pessimistic. The report in the Guardian suggests we have only 12 years to make major reductions in our carbon emissions. Perhaps an even more compelling summary in the Washington Post illuminates how drastic the IPCC considers the present situation. And this appeared prior to the news that the oceans are 60% warmer than previously thought.
The graph below (just like the one above except focusing on the present) is my attempt to project past results simply by extrapolation. The violet curve is a visual "curve fitting" based on modification of a single term exponential. The green line is an Excel 4th order polynomial expansion. It suggests approximately a 20 year limit for holding the rise to 2°C.It jibes well with other, more sophisticated predictions. It is important to realize that these small numbers imply big changes. Empirically it has been found that a 50% increase in temperature implies approximately a 50% increase in the impact of warming. Accordingly a 100% increase (2°C) would imply a doubling of impact.It is exceedingly important at this point not to mince words. If one adds up the heat waves, hurricanes, typhoons, sea level rise, wildfires, floods and drought and doubles them it will be as if a giant earthquake struck the entire planet. To stop this, we and every other nation, must turn ourselves inside out over the next 5 years so we can implement the necessary changes over the next 10 to 15 years. If the United States had a great leader, it would be possible. With Donald Trump in control, the earth is history.