Expecting Grandchildren?

For those of you with children in the house you can probably expect to bounce a grandchild on your knee at some point in the next 20 years. That grandchild, if it survives the repeatedly forecast flu pandemic, or the red level threat from terrorists, or the dire effects of lack of credit, will likely live to see the next century. Now, ignoring the fabricated threats the media wants you to be afraid of, take a look at the threats predicted by cold hard science.

" Results of the studies are depicted online in MIT’s “Greenhouse Gamble” exercise that conveys the “range of probability of potential global warming” via roulette wheel graphics (shown above). The modeling output showed that under both a “no policy” scenario and one in which nations took action beginning in the next few years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the odds have shifted in favor of larger temperature increases.

For the no policy scenario, the researchers concluded that there is now a nine percent chance (about one in 11 odds) that the global average surface temperature would increase by more than 7°C (12.6°F) by the end of this century, compared with only a less than one percent chance (one in 100 odds) that warming would be limited to below 3°C (5.4°F).

To repeat, on our current emissions path, we have a 9% chance of an incomprehensibly catastrophic warming of 7°C by century’s end, but less than a 1% chance of under 3°C warming."

Should we not act decisively RIGHT NOW we can kiss the greenland ice sheet goodbye, raising sea levels approximately 20 feet, and a good portion of the antarctic ice sheet, raising them perhaps another 50 or more, agriculture worldwide will collapse, water shortages will be severe. I'll leave it up to your imagination to project the social upheavals that will follow.

Please contact your representative in Washington and express your support for the Waxman Markey climate bill. It is a small but necessary first step. After you have done that, plan a diet that reduces your family intake of meat, plan a schedule that reduces your automobile use, plan a renovation that enables you to stop using air conditioning, build a solar hot water heater, get some solar PV panels. If we don't lead, who will follow? Do it for your grandkids.

Read more about the MIT research at Climate Progress.