by David Spratt | Third in a series | Part one | Part two
Published at ReNewEconomy on 10 April 2013
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Photo courtesy Greenpeace |
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Photo courtesy Greenpeace |
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Increasing heat content in the oceans (blue) show the claims that global warmed has "stopped" to be fallacious. Courtesy Skeptical Science. |
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The global average temperature is now higher than at any time during the Holocene, the period of human civilisation |
Global climate change and land degradation have to be put on a war footing internationally - meaning that all nations need to pull together and treat this threat as we would a war. . . . Only through uniting and diverting all the resources required to deal with climate change and land degradation can we avert unimaginable tragedy. We have all the money we need. All we cannot buy is time. – Allan SavoryI've been a climate activist since the millennium turned, twelve long years ago. Like so many others I've rallied, marched, petitioned, organized, lectured, blogged, fumed, despaired, studied, argued and hoped. Now, sadly, it seems that we have to come to terms with a painful reality: Our fight against global warming has not worked.
Note: As a followup to the post of my contribution to this year's Melbourne Sustainability Festival Great Debate, here is the contribution by Guy Pearse. – Davidby Guy Pearse
Record snow in a warming world? The climate science is clear.bit.ly/WXOLUBNesbitt was challenged by a leading Christian pastor and popular southern California radio talk show, David Housholder (@LibertyHous):
@jeffnesbit Dude. Weather is complex. Climate has never been stable. Can you name a more random set of data? davidhousholder.com
We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We'd have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate. Before we knew those numbers, our fate had been likely. Now, barring some massive intervention, it seems certain.
Note: This wonderful story from Bloomberg New Energy Finance today can be summed up in it final para: “New wind is cheaper than building new coal and gas, but cannot compete with old assets that have already been paid off... For that reason policy support is still needed to put megawatts in the ground today and build up the skills and experience to de-carbonise the energy system in the long-term.”
As Giles Parkinson notes today in RenewEconomy: "The analysis by BNEF is significant. Australia relies more on coal than nearly any other industrialised country, but it also has some of the world’s best renewables resources, which it has been slow to exploit. But is this likely to prompt a review of the Coalition’s energy policies – which are based on the premise that renewable energy is expensive and unreliable? Don’t bet on it."
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Illustration by Mr. Fish, TruthDig |
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A 2009 WWF report says "a 'war footing' may be the only option" to re-industrialising at the necessary speed |
If you are not scared or getting scared, you are not paying attention. Yet another rollercoaster year for climate policy and investment is ending as a remarkable chorus of conservative voices from the World Bank, the World Meteorological Organisation, the International Energy Agency and others state that climate change is happening and on track to get much worse in terms of danger and expense. These are realities, not just risks.