This article was published in the Guardian UK after I had posted my diary yesterday.
Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change
“The Earth may have left a ‘safe’ climate state beyond 1C global warming,” the researchers concluded, with the whole of human civilization having developed in temperatures below this level. Passing one tipping point is often likely to help trigger others, producing cascades. But this is still being studied and was not included, meaning the analysis may present the minimum danger.
I am sorry that is even more pessimistic than I was in my diary yesterday, but the article is a must-read.
Prof Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who was part of the study team, said: “The world is heading towards 2-3C of global warming.
The time for studied objection is over.
It is time for unrelenting and vociferous objection.
Quite frankly, nothing else matters.
I will not go quietly into that good night.
Politics and wars be damned.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
[I apologize to Dylan Thomas for my abuse of his poem]
“We’re not saying that, because we’re probably going to hit some tipping points, everything is lost and it’s game over. Every fraction of a degree that we stop beyond 1.5C reduces the likelihood of hitting more tipping points.”