World headed for irreversible climate change in five years
“… it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”,
Lowered Evapotranspiration Causing Drying and Heating of Southern Hemisphere
Huge areas of the Southern Hemisphere are now drying out. This could lead to increased drought stress on vegetation and less overall productivity, and as a result less carbon absorbed, less cooling through evapotranspiration, and more frequent or extreme heat waves
Burning Our Forests For Fuel Will Doom Our Planet
Bioenergy is an urgent problem that requires a real and immediate reduction of CO2 emissions. Burning wood to replace fossil fuels will increase CO2 output for several decades. And there is no assurance that energy from wood-fueled power would replace energy from gas-fired plants; it may just all be additional to the CO2 loading.
Cleaning Up the Excess CO2
The other way to reduce the air’s excess CO2 is to unbalance the carbon cycle, typically by preventing some of the CO2 captured by photosynthesis from going back into the air when cells decompose. One has to stash dead biomass where the air can’t get to it. While sealed landfills help, it is only the ocean depths that would appear to have the capacity to draw down all of the CO2 that we have added since 1750.
Australian Professor Writes of the Likelihood of Runaway Climate Change
Rather than decarbonising, the world is carbonising at an unprecedented rate, and it is doing so at precisely the time we know we have to stop it. 2.5 degrees Celsius is likely by the end of the century in spite of our childlike belief that climate change can be averted; the cost will prove incalculable.
The Urgency to Address Global Climate Change: Possible Implications for New Directions of Climate Change Ethics
Dr. John Lemons writes “I wish to be clear that I am not faulting those involved in the ethics of global climate change in their traditional focus of studies or influence with policy makers and decision¬–makers. Indeed, the work of such ethicists is never finished because each time a new climate change issue arises it introduces new questions for analyses. And, make no mistake that I believe ethicists have contributed greatly to a deeper understanding of the problems and prospects of global climate change. Simply put, my recommendation is that global climate change ethicists continue looking at proposed climate change policies and arguments through an ethical “lens” while, because of the urgency of taking action to combat global climate change, at the same time devoting new serious attention to examining when nonviolent civil disobedience is ethically justified.”
