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Sunday, May 17th, 2015

The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit

Author:     David Roberts
Source:     Vox
Publication Date:     May 15, 2015, 12:50 p.m. ET
 Link: The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit
Stephan:   No one in politics or the media wants to tell the truth about climate change, or hear the truth; half the country doesn't even believe it's a problem, and one of the two political parties that runs the country actively sabotages any efforts to address the issue. At SR I try to deal with facts and, as near as I can discover this is the reality no one will talk about. I think this is a kind of collective cultural denial arising from fear.  Addressing climate change in a meaningful way requires rethinking the place of humans on Earth. And just like in the sandbox of our childhood, we must learn to cooperate with Earth's life-forms and meta-systems. We are one cohort in an interdependent matrix. Making profit more important than wellness is a form of mental illness. It is a social form of self-mutilation. This is a good data-based assessment of these truths.
A projection of what Phoenix will be like in 2060 Credit: Shutterstock

A projection of what Phoenix will be like in 2060
Credit: Shutterstock

There has always been an odd tenor to discussions among climate scientists, policy wonks, and politicians, a passive-aggressive quality, and I think it can be traced to the fact that everyone involved has to dance around the obvious truth, at risk of losing their status and influence.

The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit.

Here is a plotting of dozens of climate modeling scenarios out to 2100, from the IPCC:

So what’s the scenario?

The black line is carbon emissions to date. The red line is the status quo — a projection of where emissions will go if no new substantial policy is passed to restrain greenhouse gas emissions.

We recently passed 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere; the status quo will take us up to 1,000 ppm, raising global average temperature (from a pre-industrial […]

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1 Comment

  1. steve hovland on Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 6:08 am

    If these projections materialize humanity will die back to the level that can be sustained by the remaining biosphere. Problem solved. The biggest problem we have is thinking that we can have infinite population and economic growth on a finite planet.