Sandy Devastating, But Not Surprising, Say Climate Experts
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/31-0***SNIP
Euractiv adds:
Last month, EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard wrote that "formerly one-off extreme weather episodes seem to be becoming the new normal”.
She noted that:
The last summer was the hottest on record in the United States;
Central and Eastern Europe also suffered record high temperatures;
The United Kingdom experienced it wettest-ever summer;
Northern India endured its heaviest rainfalls;
The US and East Africa were hit by their worst-ever droughts.
Arctic summer sea ice also shrank to its smallest recorded level in September.
Hedegaard’s office declined to comment on any potential link between Hurricane Sandy and climate change. But Kristalina Georgieva, the EU's humanitarian aid and crisis response commissioner, said in a statement: "Hurricane Sandy is yet another example of the increasing intensity and frequency of natural disasters."
= new reply since forum marked as read
Let me make it perfectly clear. I give you my vision of Pennsylvania after 30 years of fracking:
I think the polluters will keep on polluting even after social collapse, until they are finally stopped in their tracks by total economic collapse. It's how they do bidness, and they already own the institutions that we pray will stop them.
I also think you are clueless about how bad things can get, or how fast. Even worse you don't seem open to any ideas that challenge your preconceived notions of how you think the world works. Nigeria isn't so very far from Pennsylvania, in social evolutionary terms.
There's no need to call on the ghosts of Mel Gibson or Jellystone Park. Just read some science.
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Planetary boundaries is the central concept in an Earth system framework proposed by a group of Earth system and environmental scientists led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Will Steffen from the Australian National University. In 2009, the group proposed a framework of “planetary boundaries” designed to define a “safe operating space for humanity” for the international community, including governments at all levels, international organizations, civil society, the scientific community and the private sector, as a precondition for sustainable development. This framework is based on scientific research that indicates that since the Industrial Revolution, human actions have gradually become the main driver of global environmental change. The scientists assert that once human activity has passed certain thresholds or tipping points, defined as “planetary boundaries”, there is a risk of “irreversible and abrupt environmental change”. The scientists identified nine Earth system processes which have boundaries that, to the extent that they are not crossed, mark the safe zone for the planet. However, because of human activities some of these dangerous boundaries have already been crossed, while others are in imminent danger of being crossed.
The biogeochemist William Schlesinger queries whether thresholds are a good idea for pollutions at all. He thinks waiting until we near some suggested limit will just permit us to continue to a point where it is too late. "Management based on thresholds, although attractive in its simplicity, allows pernicious, slow and diffuse degradation to persist nearly indefinitely."
The hydrologist David Molden thinks planetary boundaries are a welcome new approach in the 'limits to growth' debate. "As a scientific organizing principle, the concept has many strengths (...) the numbers are important because they provide targets for policymakers, giving a clear indication of the magnitude and direction of change. They also provide benchmarks and direction for science. As we improve our understanding of Earth processes and complex inter-relationships, these benchmarks can and will be updated [...] we now have a tool we can use to help us think more deeply—and urgently—about planetary limits and the critical actions we have to take."
The ocean chemist Peter Brewer queries whether it is "truly useful to create a list of environmental limits without serious plans for how they may be achieved (...) they may become just another stick to beat citizens with. Disruption of the global nitrogen cycle is one clear example: it is likely that a large fraction of people on Earth would not be alive today without the artificial production of fertilizer. How can such ethical and economic issues be matched with a simple call to set limits? (...) food is not optional."
I think their estimate of the degree to which we have passed the climate threshold is understated. We appear to have passed a major tipping point in 2006:
Then factor in the socioeconomic and political problems that are building up around the world: the ongoing global financial crisis, the disintegration of Europe, the problems in North Africa and the Middle East, the increasingly frail Chinese economy, the increasing consolidation of wealth and power at the tip of the hierarchic social pyramid, the recent stolen American presidential elections...
There's no need for Mad Max. None whatsoever.
I suspected something like that was in there somewhere. Not a word of disagreement from here. Thank you for writing that.
when you smacked me for being arrogant. I enjoy remembering that. 
perceptions vary with time, contemplation, and introspection. Understanding our own limitations can be tantamount to, humility. Experiencing not suffering, humility, allows me the space to grow, and realize others thoughts and perceptions though mostly parallel, sometimes collide. Ego in conflict with thought settles to abeyance in emotion, that later floats into introspection and eventually self awareness, that my perceptions were lacking.
Your statement following, made me contemplate my hasty post, and later search within for a reason to my reaction. It was simple, and borne of my own ignorance, of the automatic updating of linked models. In essence the error was mine, and not of your failure, to spoon feed me information. Where I am slippery, is I only suffer humility when I can't admit I was wrong, which I was.
Inner work on the energy board of a political blog. Huh! No matter how progressive this place is supposed to be, that was impressive.
Yeah, following a chain of reactivity back to its root and recognizing the misperceptions that gave it life at each stage is such a satisfying thing to do. I find that if I do it right, my ability to be honest about the scripts I uncover grows at each step. If I can sit with it all the way, sometimes I can get all the way down to the bottom and realize, "Wow, look at that - I was completely wrong, and I know why! This is so cool." The feeling associated with that discovery is one of total delight. But it always begins with some uncomfortable feeling - anger or resistance or arrogance or defensiveness or something similar.
I love listening to other people do their work almost as much as I love doing my own. That was a real treat.
