Jul 7, 2021 09:04 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 7, 2021 11:01 PM by C C.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57729502
EXCERPTS (Roger Harrabin): . . . That's not because new record temperatures were set in the north-western US and Canada - that happens from time to time. No, it's because old records were smashed so dramatically. [...] Climatologists are nervous of being accused of alarmism - but many have been frankly alarmed for some time now.
"The extreme nature of the record, along with others, is a cause for real concern," says veteran scientist Professor Sir Brian Hoskins. "What the climate models project for the future is what we would get if we are lucky. The models' behaviour may be too conservative."
In other words, in some places it's likely to be even worse than predicted. [...] Scientists are now striving to predict some of these crazy weather events that are currently taking policy-makers by surprise.
It's not just heat waves, but also pulses of torrential rain that cause devastating floods on a local level. [...] the world is probably heading for 1.5C of heating early next decade, and temperatures will push onwards to 2C and above unless policies radically change. What do we imagine things will be like with a rise of 2C, which was until recently considered to be a relatively "safe" level of change?
Baroness Worthington, a lead author on the UK's Climate Change Act, told me: "Concerned scientists are no longer concerned - they are freaked out. "They're worrying there might not be a 'safe landing' on the climate. We are working on the idea of safe carbon budgets (the amount of carbon we can put into the atmosphere without badly disrupting the climate). But what if there is no safe carbon budget? What if the 'safe' carbon budget is zero. We can't sugar-coat the potential realities of this."
Politicians are working to avert the worst of those potential realities, but even the former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher remarked in the late 1980s that making such an experiment with our only planet was folly.
[...] Mrs Thatcher - formerly a research chemist - continued: "The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. It is comparable in its implications to the discovery of how to split the atom. Indeed, its results could be even more far-reaching. It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. We shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort."
This was extraordinarily prescient, and her words were even more devastating from the lips of a towering, right-wing world leader who couldn't be dismissed as a fretful hippy.
If the world had heeded her warning back then, imagine where we would be now? But Thatcher's views were challenged by climate "sceptics" - some of them funded by a decades-long campaign of disinformation from fossil fuel firms. Rich nations fixated on economic growth rather than saving the planet from a hypothetical threat, and developing economies asserted their "right" to pollute the air just as rich nations had done.
Wealthy countries stinted the cash they offered to poor nations to get clean technology. And international negotiations consistently failed to deliver the difficult and sweeping changes Mrs Thatcher thought necessary. At last many leading nations are getting round to devising policies to reduce emissions over coming decades.
It's not just the heat dome they're worried about. We've learned recently about climate extremes in the Antarctic, the Himalayas and - dramatically shown on our interactive graphic - the Arctic. Some scientists are warning that areas of the world will become uninhabitable if current trends continue. So what are our leaders doing to keep us safe?
Well, they're talking a good show, and doubtless some really mean to curb climate change. But the impacts of global heating are happening right now, whereas major nations plan to phase out emissions by 2050.
[...] Here's the problem - the worlds of policy and business are definitely waking up to the climate crisis. But some changes in the natural world appear to be outstripping society's responses. It looks as though Mrs Thatcher was right - we needed drastic action decades ago... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS (Roger Harrabin): . . . That's not because new record temperatures were set in the north-western US and Canada - that happens from time to time. No, it's because old records were smashed so dramatically. [...] Climatologists are nervous of being accused of alarmism - but many have been frankly alarmed for some time now.
"The extreme nature of the record, along with others, is a cause for real concern," says veteran scientist Professor Sir Brian Hoskins. "What the climate models project for the future is what we would get if we are lucky. The models' behaviour may be too conservative."
In other words, in some places it's likely to be even worse than predicted. [...] Scientists are now striving to predict some of these crazy weather events that are currently taking policy-makers by surprise.
It's not just heat waves, but also pulses of torrential rain that cause devastating floods on a local level. [...] the world is probably heading for 1.5C of heating early next decade, and temperatures will push onwards to 2C and above unless policies radically change. What do we imagine things will be like with a rise of 2C, which was until recently considered to be a relatively "safe" level of change?
Baroness Worthington, a lead author on the UK's Climate Change Act, told me: "Concerned scientists are no longer concerned - they are freaked out. "They're worrying there might not be a 'safe landing' on the climate. We are working on the idea of safe carbon budgets (the amount of carbon we can put into the atmosphere without badly disrupting the climate). But what if there is no safe carbon budget? What if the 'safe' carbon budget is zero. We can't sugar-coat the potential realities of this."
Politicians are working to avert the worst of those potential realities, but even the former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher remarked in the late 1980s that making such an experiment with our only planet was folly.
[...] Mrs Thatcher - formerly a research chemist - continued: "The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. It is comparable in its implications to the discovery of how to split the atom. Indeed, its results could be even more far-reaching. It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. We shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort."
This was extraordinarily prescient, and her words were even more devastating from the lips of a towering, right-wing world leader who couldn't be dismissed as a fretful hippy.
If the world had heeded her warning back then, imagine where we would be now? But Thatcher's views were challenged by climate "sceptics" - some of them funded by a decades-long campaign of disinformation from fossil fuel firms. Rich nations fixated on economic growth rather than saving the planet from a hypothetical threat, and developing economies asserted their "right" to pollute the air just as rich nations had done.
Wealthy countries stinted the cash they offered to poor nations to get clean technology. And international negotiations consistently failed to deliver the difficult and sweeping changes Mrs Thatcher thought necessary. At last many leading nations are getting round to devising policies to reduce emissions over coming decades.
It's not just the heat dome they're worried about. We've learned recently about climate extremes in the Antarctic, the Himalayas and - dramatically shown on our interactive graphic - the Arctic. Some scientists are warning that areas of the world will become uninhabitable if current trends continue. So what are our leaders doing to keep us safe?
Well, they're talking a good show, and doubtless some really mean to curb climate change. But the impacts of global heating are happening right now, whereas major nations plan to phase out emissions by 2050.
[...] Here's the problem - the worlds of policy and business are definitely waking up to the climate crisis. But some changes in the natural world appear to be outstripping society's responses. It looks as though Mrs Thatcher was right - we needed drastic action decades ago... (MORE - details)
