World headed for irreversible climate change by 2017…but you’d never know it
Yes, I know this is not exactly “news” as it is a story from last November. Still, it bears repeating in light of this recent article by Noam Chomsky in Al Jazeera. Chomsky points out, correctly, that although the most vocal critics of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tend to be from the climate change denier camp, they are not the only ones who take issue with some of the IPCC’s findings. There are also many climate scientists who think the IPCC warming projections are far too conservative and that global carbon emissions (and hence temperatures) are rising much faster than predicted. But amidst all the din of climate denial in the media, you simply never hear about these astonishing critiques. Here is an excerpt from the article:
The International Energy Agency reported that, with rapidly increasing carbon emissions from fossil fuel use, the limit of safety will be reached by 2017 if the world continues on its present course. “The door is closing,” the IEA chief economist said, and very soon it “will be closed forever”.
Shortly before the US Department of Energy reported the most recent carbon dioxide emissions figures, which “jumped by the biggest amount on record” to a level higher than the worst-case scenario anticipated by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That came as no surprise to many scientists, including the MIT programme on climate change, which for years has warned that the IPCC predictions are too conservative.
Such critics of the IPCC predictions receive virtually no public attention, unlike the fringe of denialists who are supported by the corporate sector, along with huge propaganda campaigns that have driven Americans off the international spectrum in dismissal of the threats. Business support also translates directly to political power. Denialism is part of the catechism that must be intoned by Republican candidates in the farcical election campaign now in progress, and in Congress they are powerful enough to abort even efforts to inquire into the effects of global warming, let alone do anything serious about it.
World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns | Environment | The Guardian.
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We will have to suffer consequences in order to understand our future. Things must change.