"PARIS, Feb. 2 — In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.
They said the world was in for centuries of climbing temperatures, rising seas and shifting weather patterns — unavoidable results of the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
But their report, released here on Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said warming and its harmful consequences could be substantially blunted by prompt action."
This is one report the White House could not edit or control. However, in their normal taking credit for anyhting that they can, even when it is not their doing, or something they believe in, the Bush Joke House added the following:"The Bush administration, which until recently avoided directly accepting that humans were warming the planet in potentially harmful ways, embraced the findings, which had been approved by representatives from the United States and 112 other countries on Thursday night.
Administration officials asserted Friday that the United States had played a leading role in studying and combating climate change, in part by an investment of an average of almost $5 billion a year for the past six years in research and tax incentives for new technologies."
Rapidly followed by:"At the same time, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman rejected the idea of unilateral limits on emissions. “We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution,” he said."
So we take credit for the study, but since we support big oil and other mega industry more, we do not agree that taking action that may reduce their profits would be a good thing to do. (That would reduce the value of our personal stock portfolios too much).
One final quote from the NYT report:"The new report says the global climate is likely to warm 3.5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit if carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice the levels of 1750, before the Industrial Revolution.
Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling, or worse, as a foregone conclusion after 2050 unless there is a prompt and sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an aggressive expansion of nonpolluting sources of energy."
This is not a happy prospect.
A very interesting novel called Transcedent by Steven Baxter includes some disturbing and most likely good predictions of what life in the US (and the rest of the world) may be like after 2050 when the sea has risen enough to flood parts or many of the major coastal cities in the the world. I may not be alive then, but all I know is that it is not a future world I would enjoy living in.
