Report Says Climate Change Already Evident, Emissions Gap Growing

Dupple writes "Following on from a world bank report of 4 degree C warmer world comes this story from the BBC. 'The effects of climate change are already evident in Europe and the situation is set to get worse, the European Environment Agency has warned. "Every indicator we have in terms of giving us an early warning of climate change and increasing vulnerability is giving us a very strong signal," observed EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade.'" Here's the report in question. There also comes news we've hit record levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Comments

Cap and Trade solves everything!

[Sarius64]

Wait, you haven't heard? We have Cap and Trade in California now so Global Warming is solved.

Re:Cap and Trade solves everything!

[akboss]

Hey I thought of the future generations. Yesterday I had a Bovine slaughtered and turned into wonderful steaks which I ate 1 last night. So what have you done lately? I took out a belching farting bovine that was killing us all. You probably drove your Prius around town thinking your better than the rest.

Re:Is there enough data

[ledow]

Nope. And won't be for several thousand years, if that's what you're after.

Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels and then those people put in charge of whatever-crackpot-carbon-saving scheme now will be able to do an I-told-you-so then. When, really, everything we did made zero difference whatsoever.

There is no way to gather a significant amount of data to suggest that we're doing anything "bad" or that anything "good" we do is working without comparing to some 10,000+ year cycle that we've never observed. Best records for such things go back a few hundred years, and beyond that the data is very sketchy and specific only to specific areas (e.g. ice cores, etc.).

Re:Is there enough data

[ColdWetDog]

to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?

No but the evidence is pretty good that it is primarily forced by CO2. And, in a very real sense it makes little difference if it's anthropogenic or due to His Noodlieness eating that giant bean burrito. We will still have to deal with relatively rapid environmental changes that will cause rapid economic and political pressures which, on top of the fact that there are too many humans running around, is going to create some 'interesting times' for us all.

The new news is that we seem to be plugging along the worst case scenario trend lines. So instead of having 50 to 100 years to deal with issues we may see dramatic changes in 10 - 20. It also makes it less likely that we can reverse the process by economic or political means which means that there will be even more pressure to start tossing some Hail Mary passes.

Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?