Retiring to the Mediterranean might turn out to be a very bad idea according to this latest offering from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Met Office.
It’s a map of what the world might look like in the coming decades if serious commitments to limit greenhouse gasses aren’t agreed at the global climate talks in Copenhagen in December.
It’s a bit broad-brush if you’re seriously looking for where to by that place in the sun, but in terms of what a 4 degree centigrade increase in global temperatures might mean for our globe as a whole it’s depressingly instructive.
This 4 degrees isn’t a arbitrary figure. The amount of carbon we’ve added to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has committed us to at least 0.6 degrees of warming. If leaders commit to tough targets at Copenhagen we might JUST avoid an increase in 2 degrees sometime this century.
But if we do nothing (which is, broadly speaking, what we are doing) 4 degrees is the level of warming climate scientists have agreed we will see by the end of the century. If anything it could be more than 4 degrees and earlier than 2100.
Interestingly the new map shows how the world won’t warm up evenly like a well steamed pudding. The thin crust of land will heat up more quickly than the deep, constantly circulating ocean. Higher latitudes like the Arctic, will have larger temperature increases than closer to the equator. The average land temperature will be 5.5 degrees higher than when Columbus sailed.
As a result the map tries to broadly display what that might happen where. Be it changes in water availability, falling food production,drought, the risk of forest fire and sea level rise. Cheery stuff this is not.
The map was unveiled by David (Foreign Secretary) and Ed (Climate Change Secretary) Miliband today.The unveiling formed part of a new climate change exhibition at the Science Museum in London entitled “prove it”. One of the less-than-gripping-even-for-the-science-museum exhibits is a large pile of coal.
But this is a pile of coal I hope is still there to take my grand children to see. It’s what curators are calling the “trillionth tonne.” Sometime this century mankind will squirt the trillionth tonne of carbon once locked up in fossil fuels into the atmosphere.
If we exceed that figure runaway climate change (temperature increases beyond 2 degrees) is a near certainty.
If, like me, you’re an anxious type and like to keep an eye on things climate modellers at Oxford University have created this tool http://trillionthtonne.org/ so you can watch our climate future changing before your very eyes.
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Er hang-on a minute. I’m sure these climate modellers could program some alternative assumptions into their model and it would give a very different result.
What happens for example, if the model assumes that all CO2 emissions stopped. What sort of mess would the planet be in then…?
OK I’ve taken that example to the extreme to illustrate the point that just because somebody has come up with an impressive looking model, whether it is any good or not depends upon the underlying assumptions.
The modellers seem to have assumed that we will do nothing, but that’s completely wrong for a start. Just look at the proliferation of high-tech, fuel-efficient, low-emission superminis to be seen on the road these days. its very different to even a couple of years ago. We’ve done and are doing a lot so model that please, instead of scaremongering and creating anti-carbon propaganda…
Frankly, until the beach where I used to play as a kid starts to look any different, its difficult to take this global warming business too seriously…
I’m sure they take all of that sort of thing in to account, but in any case, a handful of efficient super minis in the developing world are no match for a coal powered economy in China. You need something like Copenhagen to stimulate change – even if no one can agree, the spin off from the debates will help create new oportunities. It may spur different countries to develop their own eco-tech that in the long term could make fossil fuels redundant. Getting most the world talking around a table has to be a good thing, right?
Strange how the most serious threat to this planet and peoples lives is NOT being addressed…..OVER POPULATION
The exponential growth in the human population is the single greatest danger to this world. A whole lifetime of resource requirements for every single person born, is the cause of almost all the problems we are encountering and, will endure.
Whether you’re Obama some religious numpty, this needs addressing like yesterday. The brutal truth is, people are aggressive slaves carrying vehicles to DNA and are enslaved mentally, physically, emotionally to procreate and are rewarded for doni so with sex feelings. People will use any means for this procreative slavery from religious brainwashing to domination, deceit, aggression, etc, etc. and would pay no attention to a restrictive rule as they have no real care nor foresight for future generations. So, like China, there should be restriction to 1 child per couple and, forced chemical castration of those who do not abide. Sounds harsh but, it’s the only way and it will come eventually.
I’m not sure what the right solution is, but you’ve correctly identified the real problem Anthony…
You have as said correctly identified the problem – and the RC church attitude is not helping . If 1000 brothels were to open eg in UK in morning – the man in Rome and others would be up in arms – yet he at least is aginst contraception .
Re globla warmig – there are many scientests who maintain CO2 has nothing to do with wahts happening – but we hear little about them now on news media etc . This CO2 thing has become doctrinaire – and while global warming may be a problem – global cooling would be worsse .
i may be naive but i understood carbon dioxide was a part of the atmosphere that helped plants/trees grow and if so isn’t the problem the dramatic reduction of the forests both temperate and rain,plus as anthony says the population explosion,which in itself produces more carbon dioxide
It’s scary, the number of people who believe climate change is bunk. By the time they have their proof, it’ll be to late.
i wonder how this island and this world was formed.I understood there had been several ice ages and vice versa.I wonder what ancient man blamed.or was it just natural?????
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