Climate Change: Instant Karma?

Written by OligarchyNot   

The climate as a whole has warmed by approximately 1.5 degrees since 1880 (the beginning of the industrial revolution). If the climate continues to warm beyond 2.0 degrees, we enter uncharted territory and we may not be able to reverse or slow down the warming process by reducing the amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere. There is some disagreement as to when the planet becomes uninhabitable, but it is somewhere between 2 to 10 degrees of warming. The effects of climate warming can lead to cooler weather patterns, but there's a difference between weather and climate -- weather patterns change seasonally and can be dramatic in their extremes; changes to the climate (or global surface temperatures) are slow and subtle, but can have long-term effects. Climate determines what the weather is going to be. Our climate has been steadily warming since around 1880 when humans began adding to the natural levels of CO2 released into the atmosphere, increasing CO2 levels three-fold beyond their natural fluctuations. Scientists used to believe it would take the ice sheets decades or even a millennia to melt, but were shocked to see the ice sheet on Greenland completely disappear in 4 days this July. To see NASA’s climate statistics, go to:

http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#globalTemp

The statistics don’t lie. Instead of being alarmists as some have claimed, climate scientists have been overly conservative in their predictions of the potential effects of a rapidly warming climate and how quickly those effects will take place. The 4-day melting of Greenland’s ice sheet makes it apparent that it will be us, and not our children or grandchildren, who will experience the initial effects of human-accelerated climate change. For the generation who had the ability to try to forestall this happening, but did nothing thanks to greed and avarice, this is called instant karma.