“More than £150m worth of deals recorded amid post-Scottish referendum boom as forestry starts to lure institutional investors.
“Forestry sales have reached a record £151m in Scotland, smashing the previous record by 50%.” From: www.theguardian.com
GR: This is how Scottish investors fight deforestation and ecocide.
Insightful perspective and comments.
“Humans will be extinct in 100 years because the planet will be uninhabitable, said the late Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner, one of the leaders in the effort to eradicate smallpox during the 1970s. He blamed overcrowding, denuded resources and climate change.
“Fenner’s prediction, made in 2010, is not a sure bet, but he is correct that there is no way emissions reductions will be enough to save us from our trend toward doom. And there doesn’t seem to be any big global rush to reduce emissions, anyway. When the G7 called on Monday for all countries to reduce carbon emissions to zero in the next 85 years, the scientific reaction was unanimous: That’s far too late.” More: exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com
The nuclear threat and global warming aren’t really comparable. Nuclear war was avoided (well, so far anyway), but we have already emitted enough CO2 to create storms that will increase in destructive power for the next century or two.
Excerpt from: Why the Paris talks won’t prevent 2 degrees of global warming
…the planet will inevitably surpass the 2 degree Celsius benchmark during this century, even with the calculations and intended pledges of the officials involved with the UN Convention on Climate Change and this week’s talks.
“These calculations show that even if countries fulfill their pledges, emissions will keep rising globally through 2030, and without any sign of stopping,” Barrett said. “And there’s no way you can meet any temperature target as long as emissions keep rising. The only way you can stabilize the climate is if global emissions head toward zero.”
Oppenheimer said the tipping point for reaching zero emissions greenhouse gases comes somewhere near the mid-century.
“The projections suggest that sometime after 2050 or 2060, but perhaps as late as 2100…
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“Arctic Sea Ice Is ‘Well Below Average’ for November Sea ice on both sides of the Arctic Ocean was well below average in November, according to an update released Wednesday by the United States National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.” From: elispiritweaver.wordpress.com
GR: We keep coming up short.
“The perceived debate on climate change has discredited traditional climate science communications to such an extent that we are just now implementing policies developed during the Kyoto Protocol era that began in 1992. New climate science knowledge is simply not making it out of academia and into public policy. One of the biggest examples is the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report telling us strong negative emissions (removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than we emit every year) are now required.” From: www.truth-out.org
GR: We have the technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We need to get started. Considering the “suicidal” nature of the build-up of CO2, the costs of removal are really not a problem. However, we must also cut emissions, and we must not relent on our efforts to do so.
“As delegates at a Paris summit haggle over how to curb global warming, the role of nuclear energy in limiting climate-changing emissions is the subject of fierce debate between champions and critics of atomic power.” phys.org
GR: Nuclear energy is not the answer. It’s support is merely an attempt by large investors to retain control over our energy sources.
“UNEP [this graph] provides a slightly more optimistic assessment of the situation. The authors of this report note that peaking global greenhouse gas emissions near current levels globally by 2020 and then reducing them to less than half of current levels through 2050 has about a 66 percent chance of limiting warming this Century to below 2 C (hitting around 1.8 C by 2100). But this assessment may be rather optimistic considering that we will still hit in the range of 450 ppm CO2 and 550 ppm CO2e by mid Century which would be enough, according to our understanding of paleoclimate sensitivities, to hit between 1.9 and 2.2 C from CO2 warming alone and between 2.5 and 3 C from the total warming effect of all CO2 equivalent gasses.” robertscribbler.com
GR: I am drawing attention to this story again because everyone needs to look very closely at its discussion of the projections and the probabilities for our future.
“The perennial cry: we need to talk about climate change. And this week, with world leaders in Paris, we have been. But only up to a point. For the likely impact of the rising global population is almost entirely absent, not only from the debate about climate change, but also from that about loss of biological diversity, food and water security, disease, pollution and energy.” From: www.theguardian.com
GR: There are reasonable alternative suggestions for our main problem, but the fundamental fact is that all of them–climate-change, food production, over-consumption, wildlife loss–would be more manageable if there were fewer people. Perhaps climate-change is the scariest because it has the potential to wipe out most living creatures on Earth. From a wildlife point of view, however, this potential makes climate change desirable for its potential to eliminate the human species. It’s a gamble. Winning requires two things. First, global warming eradicates humans, and second no equally destructive species arises in their place.
GarryRogers Nature Conservation 