What remains to be seen now is how the planet is going to react to the damage: Robert Corell, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative and reviewed the UNEP report's scientific findings, said the significant global temperature rise is likely to occur even if industrialized and developed countries enact every climate policy they have proposed at this point. The increase is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change.(Washington Post, emphasis added). The question is "how catastrophic" and when. Some scientists already see some damage.
Some islands are already being evacuated as the oceans rise, some villages in the Arctic are having to move because the permafrost is melting under them, reefs are dying as the oceans warm, and the melting of ice sheets is accelerating.
Remember that this prediction of double what was expected to cause some catastrophe is new, and is worse than expected by almost twice. Will it increase even more in the near future?
Legislators, military, and other government officials seem so oblivious to the realities, even as they give lip service to the dangers.
What will they say when millions die in this century and we move closer to failing as a fit species?
The next post in this series is here.
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