Hope you're paying attention. On Friday, February 2nd, the 1st of 4 volumes of the 4th Assessment Report of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be released in Paris. The IPCC was established in 1988 by 2 United Nations bodies, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) "to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation." This important report has been six years in the making and has involved more than 2500 scientific reviewers, 800 contributing authors and 450 lead authors from more than 130 countries.
One of the dramatic conclusions expected from the report is that unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control within the next decade, climate change may become unstoppable. The fear is that rising temperatures and increasing levels of greenhouse gases may soon exceed the capacity of the natural systems that normally keep their levels in check. According to today's Sunday Times, about half the 24 billion tons of carbon dioxide generated by human activities each year are absorbed by forests and oceans — a process without which the world might already be several degrees warmer. But as CO2 levels rise and soils dry, microbes can start breaking down accumulated organic matter, so forests become net producers of greenhouse gases. The sea’s power to absorb CO2 also falls sharply as it warms. The latest research suggests the threshold for such disastrous changes will come when CO2 levels reach 550 parts per million (ppm), roughly double their natural levels. This is predicted to happen around 2040-50.
This is all very depressing. The planet's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, the USA, appears to be under the spell of self-serving, myopic corporations and has thus far failed to demonstrate that it wants to be part of the solution. Sleeping giants China and India are unlikely to forgo the "dirty" stage of economic growth. A grim picture indeed.
If you haven't already done so, watch Al Gore’s excellent documentary An Inconvenient Truth and get even more depressed. Call me a pessimist but this is really getting me down.
Joseph Froncioni
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