It’s the weekend. Got plans? Hope they’re not long term ones… Have a look at this latest post from Climate Progress - one of the best, well referenced antidotes to the insane complacency, breathtaking stupidity and unjustified arrogance of the denialist disinformation websites and blogs.
The post is entitled:
NSIDC bombshell: Thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100
Click on the title to read the original post. It’ll stop you worrying about your pension.
The title might sound dramatic but wait until you read the text. It’s also worth reading the comments too for the sense of resignation that previously hopeful people are starting to express. In there (at #82) you will find one from yours truly delineating the latest thoughts from Greg Craven (the author of “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?” – the book I assisted with that is linked to in this blog’s side bar). Greg recently did a speech, to the assembled multitudes of the American Geophysical Union, which was astonishingly powerful. Afterwards he talked to some members about their private thoughts. These are his own words (from the Manpollo.org site):
“Oh, and one last thing. You deserve the full story, but for now here’s the bottom line: we’re ****ed. AGU rattled me to the core because my worst-case fears were not just confirmed, but exceeded (I found four paleoclimatologists who admitted to making plans for survival retreats), and my last hope–for the scientific community to enter the public debate–was completely dashed.”
Paleoclimatologists are the guys who work out what happened to Earth’s climate tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of years ago. They know how the climate could turn (probably will now as this latest information suggests) because it has turned dangerously in the past under less of a kick than we are currently giving it. They know about prehistoric mass extinction events, due to this type of climatic kick, when large proportions of life on Earth died out and things didn’t settle down again for hundreds of thousands of years – millions in some cases. When the Lindzen’s of this world preach to their faithful (I use the word advisedly) followers on Wattsupwiththat that climate sensitivity is lower than the IPCC best estimates and claim that any warming will be small and inconsequential, remember what is probably happening already and the knock on consequences.
Friedrich Schiller said: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens," which means "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
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