‘One degree and we’re done for’
New Scientist is warning us ‘One degree and we’re done for’.
“Further global warming of 1°C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know.”
So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288).
A meeting on Siberian climate change held in Leicester, UK, last week confirmed that Siberia has become a hotspot of global climate change. Geographer Heiko Balzter, of the University of Leicester, said central Siberia has warmed by almost 2°C since 1970 - that’s three times the global average.
Meanwhile, Stuart Chapin of the University of Alaska Fairbanks this week reported that air temperatures in the Alaskan interior have risen by 2°C since 1950, and permafrost temperatures have risen by 2.5°C (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0606955103).
There’s tonnes more info in the full article but the point is very clear; we have limited time to counter the greatest threat to life on Earth as we know it. We must act fast to reduce atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases. — DS
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