[Terrapreta] climate realities: two views

[dyarrow at nycap.rr.com]

Looking Reality in the Eye

Beyond the Point of No Return. 
By Ross Gelbspan, Grist Magazine, December 11, 2007. 

"As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow 
optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of 
some of the world's most prominent climate scientists, is preventing 
us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human 
enterprise... 

To keep ourselves afloat, we need to change the economic and political 
structures that determine how we behave... 

We need, in the face of this oncoming onslaught, to reorganize our 
social structures to reflect our most humane collective aspirations... 

We are crossing a threshold into uncharted territory. And since there 
is no precedent to guide us, we are left with only our own hearts to 
consult, whatever courage we can muster, our instinctive dedication to 
a human future -- and the intellectual integrity to look reality in 
the eye." 

350 Is the Number Every Person Needs to Know. 
Commentary Bill McKibben, The Washington Post, December 28, 2007. 

"This month may have been the most important yet in the two-decade 
history of the fight against global warming. Al Gore got his Nobel in 
Stockholm; international negotiators made real progress on a treaty in 
Bali; and in Washington, Congress actually worked up the nerve to 
raise gas mileage standards for cars. 

But what may turn out to be the most crucial development went largely 
unnoticed. It happened at an academic conclave in San Francisco. A 
NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward 
and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per 
million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's a number that may make 
what happened in Washington and Bali seem quaint and nearly 
irrelevant. It's the number that may define our future... 

450 parts per million... [is what] the European Union and many of the 
big environmental groups have been proposing in recent years, and the 
economic modeling makes clear that achieving it is still possible, 
though the chances diminish with every new coal-fired power plant... 

But the data just keep getting worse. The news this fall that Arctic 
sea ice was melting at an off-the-charts pace, and data from Greenland 
suggesting that its giant ice sheet was starting to slide into the 
ocean make even 450 look too high. Consider: We're already at 383 
parts per million, and it's knocking the planet off kilter in 
substantial ways. So, what does that mean? It means, Hansen says, that 
we've gone too far. 'The evidence indicates we've aimed too high -- 
that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 
ppm,' he said after his presentation... 

The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius -- which 
is what 450 parts per million implies -- sea levels rose by tens of 
meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human 
enterprise should it happen again. And we're already past 350. 

Does that mean we're doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor 
telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is 
over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up 
cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2 each 
year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number 
will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage... 

The weaning has to happen now, and everywhere. No more passing the 
buck. The gentle measures bandied about at Bali, themselves way too 
much for the Bush administration, don't come close. Hansen called for 
an immediate ban on new coal-fired power plants that don't capture 
carbon, the phase-out of old coal-fired generators, and a tax on 
carbon high enough to make sure that we leave tar sands and oil shale 
in the ground. 

To use the medical analogy, we're not talking statins to drop your 
cholesterol; we're talking huge changes in every aspect of your daily 
life. Maybe too huge. The problems of global equity alone may be too 
much -- the Chinese aren't going to stop burning coal unless we give 
them some other way to pull people out of poverty. And we simply may 
have waited too long. 

But at least we're homing in on the right number. 350 is the number 
every person needs to know." 

Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence in environmental studies at 
Middlebury College and the author of the forthcoming "Bill McKibben 
Reader."