Report: Some climate damage already irreversible

[WriteDown]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many damaging effects of climate change are already basically irreversible, researchers declared Monday, warning that even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000.

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true," climate researcher Susan Solomon said in a teleconference.

Solomon, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., is lead author of an international team's paper reporting irreversible damage from climate change, being published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

She defines "irreversible" as change that would remain for 1,000 years even if humans stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere immediately....

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMRqVHPx5vcRCKXVKbFlnKZrVJOQD95V4HBG0

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So....100 years of greenhouse emissions and it is going to last 3000 years? Why even try.

[gristy]

1. discuss here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x184147

[Lorien]

2. Because not trying will kill us faster. nt

[defendandprotect]

3. Agree . . . and I posed this spiritual question a while back . . .

"If it were only to lessen the impact on the planet, itself -- not to save humanity --

would you advocate our stopping the man-made damage to the planet now" --- ???

[GliderGuider]

5. Yes, of course we should stop the man-made damage.

We're not the only life on this planet -- what we do affects the entire biosphere. We are responsible for the deaths of billions of creatures whose only crime was to get in the way of our ambitions. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, we will not collectively cease our depredations until we're forced to by circumstance. The sooner this vicious excuse for a "civilization" runs head-first into its biophysical limits and crashes the better, as far as the rest of the life on this planet is concerned.

[moggie]

4. 3000 - 2000 = 1000

"Why even try" sounds like a RW talking point. You won't find many climatologists who believe we should just give up and let things get as bad as possible.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Absolutely! How perverted could someone be to advocate letting it get worse? n/t

[GliderGuider]

6. Here's why we should try

The conditions that will last for millennia are the peak climatic conditions we create. We are not at the CO2 peak yet, so the lower we can make that peak the less horrific the next thousand years will be. That would make the difference for the millions of species that would otherwise be extinguished by worse conditions -- including humanity ourselves.

[lunatica]

8. D'uh! So Earth doesn't become just like Venus

It can get infinitely worse than just a slight rise in temperature, which although uncomfortable, still allows for life to exist. It's like stopping a fire which started in the kitchen before it spreads and takes the house and the houses next to it. The kitchen may be destroyed but the rest of the house is still inhabitable.