Vocal Voices

Always useful to see the latest update.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

It's been updated to show to 2014 now and the fact that we've hit 400ppm.

It is always good to have information sending out the true message, if only people would listen.

Unfortunately the message has been counterbalanced today by the, wait for it (drum roll), news from the G20 that China and the USA will ratify the Paris Accord. This aims to keep global warming well below 2C (3.6F), and 1.5C (2.7F) if possible, compared with pre-industrial levels and for emissions to stop rising by 2030 at the latest. Obama has hailed this as "the moment we finally decided to save our planet".

The subliminal message from politicians and the media is for us not to panic, they are on top of things. What bloody nonsense! Suff's post shows that we are already on target to overshoot the lower figure of 1.5C sometime around 2020. That is a decade earlier than the emissions targets are supposed to flatten out.

Nobody has any real idea of the time lag between CO2 levels reaching a certain ppm figure and its effects, but what they do know is that the higher the number the higher the temperature. By 2030, the time when emissions should stop rising, the ppm could be at 405ppm, or thereabouts, and that figure will keep rising because we do not have a big enough reduction figure for CO2.

So is this "the moment we finally decided to save our planet"? Err, no, Mr Obama, the "planet" could not care less. It will survive despite us.

Workingman wrote:So is this "the moment we finally decided to save our planet"? Err, no, Mr Obama, the "planet" could not care less. It will survive despite us.

The best way for the planet to survive is to kill us off.... Food for thought.

Average annual ppm climb for the last decade is now over 2ppm, around 2.3 in reality. The ppm increase for 2015 has now been adjusted to 2.9, the highest we've ever seen since they started keeping records, slightly higher than the other giant El Nino event (1998). If we take the current decadal average increase of 23ppm and add the 5 years to 2020, we get an increase of 34.5ppm. As we finished 2015 at around 396ppm that gets us to around 430ppm by 2030. A figure they did not want to meet ever and certainly not before 2070.

The current state of the arctic ice tells a sorry tale and my personal belief is that 2017 will be the first of the real shocker years. Not that anyone will really sit up and take notice, two more years like it without the roof falling in and most people will just accept it as normal. Sadly people don't equate hundreds of deaths of heat prostration in very hot countries as the roof falling in, nor the flooding, nor the wild storms nor the harsh, exceptional, winters.

By the time the roof really falls in it will be about 5 decades too late to do any meaningful thing about it on a global scale. Leaving us with those habitats which were imagined in the science fiction of the 1970's. The sad point about that is those habitats will support, at most, 1bn people. Pity about the other 7bn who will be on the planet at that time..

Arctic ice today (updates daily).

Oh FFS!. Research by the University of Reading predicts that ships will be able to transit the Arctic for most of the year by 2050. That is because the Arctic will be virtually ice free and accessible to open water ships.

The research says that if CO2 emissions are not curtailed to keep global temperature rise "well below two degrees" then moderately ice-strengthened vessels could be crossing the Arctic by the end of the century for 10-12 months of the year. However, it also says that this (disaster) may also provide economic opportunities, because of potentially reduced costs and journey times between Asia and the Atlantic.

What! It is these economic "opportunities" that have brought us to the brink in the first place.

"If we experience a 2-degree increase in global temperatures, we will get close to an Arctic that is effectively ice-free for part of the year; that's less than a million sq km of ice cover," said Reading's Dr Ed Hawkins.

"So, even if future emissions are consistent with the Paris agreement, it will of course mean shipping routes will be more open. Not every year, but more regularly than they are now."

"Open water vessels won't be hugging the Russian coast quite so much, and ice-strengthened ships will be going right over the pole," he told BBC News.

The incentives are clear: if vessels can transit the Arctic, they will shave many days off their journey times between the Pacific and North Atlantic ports, and save fuel.

In addition, by plotting a more central course, they can avoid the fees they would otherwise be charged for going through Siberian waters.

So, if you were thinking of doing something for the environment: don't bother. Forget recycling, keep your windows open in winter and just turn the heating up, draw your curtains and keep the lights on 365/24/7. Why not? If governments and big business are going to take "advantage" of global warming we have a civic duty to help them.

Doesn't it make you glad that you're not young ?

You could take a mid strength reinforced ship right over the pole today. Even a light strength one could make it with icebreaker support and a moderate icebreaker (1M) as the US and Canada have, could provide that support.

I'm looking forward to next year because it's looking like you will be able to sail right over the pole in an unstrengthened ship next year. Even if that doesn't put the scientific community into a tailspin, it should be a wakeup call that daydreams of seeing the impact of climate change in 2050 are exactly that. Daydreams.

What it does mean for me, in the latter days of my life, is that I have to prepare my grandchildren and below for what is to come. They have no clue as they live in a sea of "wouldn't it be better if". It won't and it will be 100 years too late to do something about it when the "holy sh1t" factor comes into play.

Personally I'd like to see that come home to roost sooner rather than later. We still have plenty of winter ice and a good separation between the seasons. As soon as that breaks down there is nothing the human race can do, besides put the whole planet on a war footing in terms of dealing with Climate change and the overshoot from that could be a new ice age if we get it wrong.

Idiots. It's the only thing that comes to mind.

I agree that it will, unfortunately, take a major climatic or environmental disaster directly attributable to human actions before anything meaningful will be done.

A report the other day said that microplastics that we humans, and only us humans, use to make ourselves pretty had entered the food chain via fish and shellfish. Apart from the damage to food stocks the consequences are unknown. Nobody seemed bothered.

Another report informed us that nano particles of man-made pollution are being found in the brains of those with various forms of dementia and that cases of pre-dementia were being found in those as young as 12 - 14.

We also learn that residents of the wetlands south of New Orleans are being moved because the land is being lost to rising waters. There are also problems in the south of Florida and Belize. We already know of problems for Bangladesh, the Maldives and in Micronesia.

The trouble is they are 'minor', for the moment, and do not frighten us enough. What we really need is a series of record breaking typhoons slamming into the western Pacific. The same with hurricanes, one after another, pounding the eastern shores of America. A few record breaking droughts in the food baskets of the world might make us sit up and take notice, as would a huge chunk of ice breaking away from the Antarctic and heading for the Indian ocean.

The above will happen one day, but by then it will be too late.