The John James Newsletter 25
3 November 2014.
IPCC: rapid carbon emission cuts vital to stop severe impact of climate change
Climate change is set to inflict “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” on people and the natural world unless carbon emissions are cut sharply and rapidly, according to the most important assessment of global warming yet published. The stark report states that climate change has already increased the risk of severe heatwaves and other extreme weather and warns of worse to come, including food shortages and violent conflicts. Carbon emissions will have to fall to zero to avoid catastrophic climate change.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/02/rapid-carbon-emission-cuts-severe-impact-climate-change-ipcc-report?CMP=ema_565
Climate conference end acrimoniously
Behind the scenes particular countries had insisted on the removal of sentences, paragraphs and diagrams from the report’s summary that didn’t suit their perceived national interest.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/climate-conference-analysis-a-new-urgency-appears-20141102-11fmn7.html
Climate report huge omission obscures the real danger – methane
Rapid warming in the Arctic – where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global rate – is thawing an incomprehensibly vast stockpile of nature’s own carbon which has been trapped in ice for millennia. The scale of this threat is mind-boggling. There is over three times more heating power stored in this “permafrost” than that which has been caused by human greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of the industrial age – and this refers only to that located on land (as opposed to the coastal seabeds).
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/climate-reports-huge-omission-obscures-full-danger.html
IPCC significantly under-state the rate extent of impending change
At the heart is the omission of major feedback effects from the climate-models. The entire suite of the climate-change projections for the next 100 years come from models that omit significant ‘positive feedback’ effects thatt are already starting to become major sources.
http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/IPCC_AR5_Underestimates_Climate_Change.pdf
9 significant scientific findings too recent to be included in the new IPCC report
The IPCC reports, released roughly every six years, are the most comprehensive, authoritative consensus on climate change among scientific experts. However, the cut-off date for literature for each Assessment Report was in 2013 , so it’s worth taking stock of recent scientific advancements and climate-related events that have occurred since then. We discuss research highlights around four areas: sea level rise, extreme weather and climate events, ecosystems, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and temperature.
http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/10/9-significant-scientific-findings-too-recent-be-included-new-ipcc-report
The Last Hours
The threat is described in a new mini-documentary
http://lasthours.org/
And the talk I gave in Katoomba in June last year.