Inevitable cataclysm or not? The very possible world we face on a much more rapidly heating planet than was predicted
I think it’s the moral equivalent of a war crime… The consequences of what they’ve done are just almost unimaginable.
Al Gore
UK climate scientist Bill McGuire finally tells the full truth that his colleagues fear to say in public, only in private among themselves. In his new book “Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide” he lays out what is inevitably in store for humanity in the near future, and beyond, because of human-caused climate change since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century. And while all the Earth’s plant and animal species face cataclysm in decades now instead of by the end of the century, McGuire says we still have a little time left to stop the worst effects, but not much, especially since all this change is happening much more quickly then earlier computer models and estimates have predicted.
What sheer hubris human beings have deployed as they go about despoiling the planet, now as we have in the past. This should be surprising to no one. And also, who could possibly think mere computers could predict the vastly changeable parameters of global climate altered irrevocably, not by the forces of nature, but by oblivious human greed, stupidity, and market/profit-driven forces above all else.
All this is what I’ve been thinking for many years now, but no one wants to hear it. After this summer, it’s evident we have rammed through the tipping point with our human-caused climate change, and now must act much more quickly, despite the denialists. And this must immediately include engineering technologies that enable us to cope with the new extremes they are already here. We aren’t going back to the climate we once foolishly and selfishly took for granted .
The weather and climate news of the past two weeks, along with books like “Hothouse Earth” should convince even hard-core climate change deniers that they can’t keep burying their heads in the sand and driving their huge trucks, pickups, and SUVs as if they were totally free to do so, and a livable planet be dammed. Just for starters.
Soon it will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped, says expert
Read in The Guardian:
Also recommended reading: “Falter“ by Bill McKibbon