Alarming Reports on Climate Change — But What Should We Do?
Consider today’s report from the United Nations to the effect that we are doing a terrible job with respect to sustainability and that we’re nearing the “tipping point” re: global climate change. Add to it this bundle of joy on the same subject from Scientific American. Together they raise a few interesting questions:
1) Are they unbiased and scientifically accurate? They certainly jibe with nearly everything I read about the combined effects of population growth and the consumption/destruction of natural resources, but they’re sure to be assailed by the forces that profit from our business-as-usual approach to transportation, energy, consumerism, etc.
2) More importantly, assuming for a moment that the reports provide accurate depictions of the declining health of our natural environment, what do they mean in practical terms? Will they make a difference? How, if at all, do they provide a mandate for citizens of Earth, aggregated as we are in the 200 +/- sovereign countries, to take real action?
The problem is that it doesn’t matter what reports like these tell us. At so many levels within the realms of business and political reality, we live in a world where substantive change is as difficult as it is vital to our survival.
Craig
These two reports are indeed alarming. It seems as a species we no longer live in harmony or balance with nature, ourselves or each other. The fraying of the fabric of a civil society continues unabated.
What’s disheartening is that whatever we do here in the U.S. — if we stopped all fossil fuel use tomorrow — would have little impact on climate change based on what China, India and other nations are doing or plan to do.
This doesn’t mean, of course that we should fail to act, but it does mean we face a difficult future.
Has a comprehensive description of global warming and climate change been written that quantitatively describes all of the global warming gases, their sources of origin including man-made sources, the sinks for global warming gases and the error bars for each generation and absorption source or sink? If so, I would like to read it and prepare a comprehensive summary of the analyses.