5 Minutes to Midnight

Seemingly borrowing the phrase from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Rajendra Pachuari, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is emphasizing that time is running out to take action.

We may utilize the gifts of nature just as we choose, but in our books the debits are always equal to the credits.  May I submit that humanity has completely ignored, disregarded and been totally indifferent to the debits?

And as a side note, William R. Polk's analysis of the crisis in Syria includes the under-reported aspect of drought.  Collapsing agriculture lead to poverty and competition for resources.  The situation was poorly handled and helped spark the civil war.  It may not be directly linked to climate change, but that sort of devastation becomes more likely as temperatures continue to rise.

Update (September 21):  James Hansen, et al in the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society conclude that "humanity stands at a fork in the road".  If all available fossil fuels were burned, the world be made uninhabitable by humans.  Adaptation is not a long-term strategy.

Update (November 1):  President Obama has issued an executive order directing federal agencies to make plans for handling the impacts of climate change.

Update (November 12):  A leaked version of an upcoming IPCC report describes the social disruption expected from climate change.

Update (November 22):  The state of the science for climate change:



Update (December 3):  A report from the National Academy of Sciences evaluates the potential for abrupt effects of climate change.

Update (December 7):  More on the NAS report:

"The planet is going to be warmer than most species living on Earth today have seen it, including humans," added Tony Barnosky, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. "The pace of change is orders of magnitude higher than what species have experienced in the last tens of millions of years."

From the summary:

Update (March 2, 2015):  More about how drought contributed to the conflict in Syria.