A quick link to a post from Joe Romm's Climate Progress that presents an accessible synthesis of the scientific literature on and likely consequences of continuing on our "business as usual" emissions path. The impacts of which include:
•Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States
•Permanent Dust Bowl conditions over the U.S. Southwest and many other regions around the globe that are heavily populated and/or heavily farmed.
•Sea level rise of some 1 foot by 2050, then 4 to 6 feet (or more) by 2100, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter
•Massive species loss on land and sea — perhaps 50% or more of all biodiversity.
•Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”
•Much more extreme weather
•Food insecurity — the increasing difficulty of feeding 7 billion, then 8 billion, and then 9 billion people in a world with an ever-worsening climate.
•Myriad direct health impacts
... these will all be happening simultaneously and getting worse decade after decade. Equally tragic, a 2009 NOAA-led study found the worst impacts would be “largely irreversible for 1000 years.”
No comments:
Post a Comment