Scientists: End fossil fuel combustion now!
2015Christine Frank 2015-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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VOL. 33, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 In a recent climate study published by James Hansen and 16 colleagues, the world was warned that two de grees of warming could lead to a rapid, catastrophic melting of land-based ice sheets and a sea-level rise of three me ters or 10 feet in 50 years if fossil fuel combustion does not cease immediate ly. That large a rise in sea level would flood most coastal cities and render them uninhabitable, forcing millions of people to flee inland.
The report was released four months before the UN climate summit in Paris, where nations are to formulate a bind ing agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change, which is reaching runaway proportions.
Hansen and his team are convinced that the warming limit of two degrees Celsius, which was decided upon with no scientific basis whatsoever, is a for mula for ecological disaster and eco nomic collapse.
With warming of only 0.9 degrees Cel sius above pre-industrial levels, there is already an enormous loss of the planet’s ice masses, with widespread effects on natural and human sys tems—weather, species behavior and biodiversity, food production, water re sources, and health.
It is a crime to cultivate the delusion that we can adapt to climate change while continuing to burn hydrocarbons for the sake of convenience and the pri vate profit of the Carbon Barons.
Low-lying, small-island nations have long demanded a one-degree Celsius limit, whereas, a total of 100 nations support a ceiling of 1.5. So then, what should it be?
Looking at paleoclimatic evidence from the warm interglacial period pri or to this one, the researchers found that sea levels rose five to nine meters while the global temperature was less than one degree centigrade warmer than today. We must remember that the human climate forcing of fossil-fuel combustion is much stronger than that of the natural alterations in Earth’s or bit and axial tilt, which are what influ enced the flux and flow of the great ice masses of the past.
The study also draws upon geological evidence in the Bahamas that power ful storms in the North Atlantic were caused by increased temperature, pres sure, and moisture gradients as the planet warmed and the ice melted. In addition, a good deal of the paper focus es on how the Gulf Stream that warms Britain and Western Europe was shut down in ancient times due to the injec tion of freshwater from melting land ice that dramatically changed seawater salinity and affected the thermo-haline circulation of the ocean.
Both of these conditions could be re peated if Earth’s energy imbalance— more heat trapped by greenhouse gases, with consequently less being released into space—is not corrected soon.
The main thing to understand as we get close to the Paris summit is that greenhouse gas emissions have risen 2.6% per year since 2000, compared with 1.5% from 1973-2000. Turning the atmosphere into a waste dump for carbon pollution has led to carbon di oxide concentrations of 400 parts per million, over 40% more than pre-in dustrial levels.
When we consider that paleoclimate CO2 of 450 ppm was enough to melt most of Antarctica, and that current (Above) 400,000 marched in NYC in 2014 to demand action to stem climate change. Huge worldwide protests are planned this year.
growth rates have more than doubled since the 1960s, we are perilously close to an irreversible cataclysm. That is why Hansen declared an overshoot sev eral years ago when he maintained that atmospheric concentrations over 350 ppm are too high, hazardously so, and called for a drawdown to 350 or lower.
The world continues to feel the heat. Only nine months into 2015, it is safe to say that it will probably be the warmest year on record given the temperature records that have been broken around the globe so far. The El Nino will un doubtedly be adding to the trend. Tem peratures have climbed steadily up ward from 1950 to 2010, and there has been no hiatus or slowdown in warm ing over the last 15 years, as some have thought.
As far as the status of the cryosphere is concerned, all we need do is take a serious look at the present to see what the future will bring. New observa (continued on page 4, in “Northern California climate activists set sights on COP21”)
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INSIDE SOCIALIST
NSA spying — 2 Greece’s Syriza — 3 Climate protests — 4, 5
Iran nuclear pact — 6 Sanders & labor — 7 Joe Johnson —8 U.S. imposes nuclear pact on Iran See page 6
Canada news — 9 Atomic bomb — 10 Theatre — 11