Seen in Insurance Journal:
Scientist Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.[...]
“What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change,” Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. “We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that’s what these figures say. It’s not next year or next decade, it’s now.”[...]
Flannery said that the recent economic boom in China and India has helped to accelerate the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but strong growth in the developed world has also exacerbated the problem. “It’s a worldwide issue. We’ve had growing economies everywhere, we’re still basing that economic activity on fossil fuels,” he said. “The metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course clearly with the metabolism of our planet.”
That should throw a new topic into the mix of perpetual debates, shouldn’t it?
I wonder if we’ve reached the point of needing to shift public debate from “is it happening / what can we do to stop it?” to “it is happening / what should we do to prepare for it?”
On a related note, I caught a bit of CNN on my flight yesterday, including a feature on the NYT ad to Draft Gore. I can’t help but wonder if it’d be more worthwhile for Gore to be drafted into a “climate czar” kind of role. He’s become a good spokesperson in the eyes of some, and you’ve got to wonder if his strengths lie in ecological evangelism rather than in attempting to be ringmaster in the three-ringed circus of looniness in Washington.