Point of No Return?

Eric Holthaus gives an overview of this year's climate disasters such as rampant wildfires, including the first in modern times in the Olympic rainforest. He mentions James Hansen's recent study which indicates sea levels could rise much faster than previously predicted. There's the study on the loss of plankton which caused an oceanographer to remark, "This was alarming to me because if the basis of the food web changes, then . . . everything could change, right?"

Maybe we just need to be beaten over the heads with this information constantly.

But for all the gloom of the report he just put his name to, Hansen is actually somewhat hopeful. That's because he knows that climate change has a straightforward solution: End fossil-fuel use as quickly as possible. If tomorrow, the leaders of the United States and China would agree to a sufficiently strong, coordinated carbon tax that's also applied to imports, the rest of the world would have no choice but to sign up. ...[A] potential joint U.S.-China carbon tax is more important than whatever happens at the United Nations climate talks in Paris.

Update (August 11):  Fires in Alaska are an additional threat to the permafrost. Melting permafrost adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Update (August 22):  How bad is it? And some balance.

Update (September 16):  Tom Dickinson writes about drought and wildfires.