10 September 2014
Andy Revkin in Audubon Is Well Worth A Read
Posted by Dan Satterfield
The Audubon Society has a very well done report on climate change with some hard hitting facts. Well worth reading.
The Audubon Society has released a well done report about climate change. Part of their report is a great piece by NY Times Dot Earth blogger Andy Revkin (Click the image below to read it). One thing worth noting however, and that is that you might be the idea from it that we can continue as we are for 49 years and still be ok. We almost certainly cannot, because every year we delay switching from fossil fuels is more damage to our present climate. If we have not changed in 50 years, then we are in for a dramatic change that will result in an Earth that is vastly different from what our grandparents knew.
Click to read Andy Revkin’s piece.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
In no special order:
1. While we develop more fuel efficient cars we are preparing to export coal and crude oil overseas to add to atmospheric CO2.
2. The 99% of climatologists who acknowledge climate change have not written an open letter to world leaders stating that our goose is cooked unless we immediately put the brakes on economic “development” and start to save what we have.
3. The greatest immediate threat is the warming of the Arctic, the melting of permafrost and the release of methane. At some point soon this will become an irreversible positive feedback mechanism.
4. A warming continental shelf ocean will allow methane clatherates in sediments to melt and add to the feedback mechanism.
5. If we can’t maintain or repair current infrastructures in the U.S. (sewers, bridges, highways, ecosystems) how do we except to protect cities against sea-level rise?
6. If cattle are a significant global source of methane, are people willing to forgo an animal protein diet?
7. If worldwide agriculture is imperiled by increasing flood and drought how do we create sustainable food supplies?
8. If global population increase continues to add to all of the causes of climate change, how do we put the brakes on exponential growth?
9.Since the multinational corporations control the global economy how do we as separate nations bring them under control?
10. If the United Nations can’t at least debate these issues how do we bring attention to these problems and their potential solutions to the literate world?
The Union of Concerned Scientists once had a “Doomsday Clock” representing how close we were to nuclear war. We now need a Doomsday Clock representing how close we are to global glimate change extinction.