Warming in the Pipeline

There are brutal fires across Austrailia right now and horrible flooding in many places including Italy, and winds clocked over 200 mph in Acapulco, one of the strongest winds ever recorded. We can't ignore the effects of climate change happening right now.

A paper just out, "Global Warming in the Pipeline," says we'll exceed 1.5°C this decade, and 2°C before 2050. They recommend increasing the price of GHG emissions and the development of "abundant, affordable, dispatchable clean energy". We need East-West cooperation that accommodates the developing world, and "intervene with Earth's radiation imbalance to slow the geo-transformation of Earth's climate. 

"The danger caused by climate's delayed response and the need for anticipatory action to alter the course of fossil fuel development was apparent to scientists and the fossil fuel industry 40 years ago. Yet industry chose to long deny the need to change energy course, and now, while governments and financial interests connive, most industry adopts a 'greenwash' approach that threatens to lock in perilous consequences for humans." 

They followed up with a video to explain the paper and answer questions: 

"Solar radiation absorbed by Earth has increased about 3 watts per meter squared in the North Pacific and North Atlantic. On global average, the solar radiation absorbed by Earth has increased about one watt per meter squared. This increase of absorbed solar radiation is the reason that Earth's energy imbalance has almost doubled since 2015."

The energy being poured into the ocean is at about 800,000 hiroshima atomic bombs per day! 

"The first thing that we must do is reduce emissions as rapidly as possible but fossil fuels are providing most of the world's energy - almost 80%. Most of today's emissions and future emissions are from emerging economies, nations that want to raise their living standards. . . . We've reduced global energy from 0.08 to 0.07 in the past half century. It's not plausible for it to go to near zero by midcentury. . . . 

I think that it is a shortcoming of our scientific community to not make clear to the political leaders what the situation is. . . . not you and not the rest of the world is going to suddenly get off of fossil fuels. They're just too convenient. They raise standards of living. . . . It's not going to go to zero in a few decades and there are no plans to do that. . . . The fossil fuel industry does not control the future and can't solve the problem with two political parties that are both taking money from the special interest. In my opinion, we're going to have to get a party that takes no money from special interests and that's the only way we'll get policies that young people want and are needed to assure their future. . . . The fact that 1.5°C is going to be exceeded must be interpreted properly to mean the emergency is much  greater than these politicians either know or pretend. . . . There's much more reason for action at a much more urgent pace, and that's the real message of all of this."

This little bit is just a drop in the bucket, just a taste of the article and video. It sounds pretty bleak, but they speak with almost a chipper tone! It's all possible to slow this down if we can get it together and make caring for the world a higher priority than personal profits.