Sunday, October 16, 2011

The high cost of inaction. Estimate: Last 7 years' inaction means roughly 3/4 degree F additional warming

Update: to help your well-meaning friends who could contribute effectively, pair this "high cost of delay" info with Steve Easterbrook's The power to change systems, on the need to find & use leverage points for solving systemic problems. To "work smarter not harder" is essential now.

See RealClimate for the story: The high cost of inaction. The post - on an update of an earlier article by Pacala & Socolow in Science - buries the lede, which is:
"[The 2004-2011] seven years of inaction, even if we immediately begin implementing the ["wedges" climate action] strategy now and fully carry it out over the next century, have larger climatic consequences over the next century than one might expect (namely, "an additional ~50 ppm of CO2 would be added to the atmosphere by 2111.)"
- which they estimate would translate to ~0.4 degree C global temperature increase, or .72 degree F.


Inaction today has major repercussions; it's another point unknown to the average citizen.


"Democracy doesn't work if people don't know what is going on."

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