If man-made global warming and associated climate change is a reality, as the overwhelming bulk of scientific evidence indicates, then application of the Precautionary Principal is the only sane option. However, it is already far too late to avoid fairly severe consequences. Even an untrained observer can see with the naked eye that the Andean glaciers and snow-caps (to give just one example) are shrinking rapidly and that many of them will be gone in a few years (some already are), making many river systems seasonal and devastating the agricultural economies and food producing regions of several countries. This kind of effect will be then be repeated around the world (whatever the actual timescale of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers).

A two degree c rise in global temperatures might just be survivable for some of our species (though it would still make many currently populated areas unable to sustain agriculture; low lying land flooded and higher land too hot or too dry or both) and therefore practically uninhabitable. However, even a rise of this size (which is highly likely now) incurs a substantial risk of tipping us into a self-sustaining and unstoppable cycle of positive feedback as arctic tundra thaws and releases methane and carbon; as methyl-hydrates are released from the ocean floor; as rainforests dry up due to changing rainfall patterns and burn down to leave nothing but desert …. (the list is quite long……).

If we get into an unstoppable feedback loop then no-one knows where the temperature rise would end – but it wouldn’t matter much for our species because once we get above four or five degrees then it’s pretty much over for homo-sapiens. Our grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, would be reduced to fighting over cockroaches and starving rats in their caves and eating each other and there would be no further generations.

This scenario is not an absolute certainty because it is just possible that we can take action in time, but we are leaving it very, very late, and the necessary adjustments in lifestyle and consumption will require economic and political changes that are far more drastic than anything you are talking about.

Do you think that the USA can be weaned off its addiction to cheap energy in the next decade (it either means putting petrol up to $50 a gallon, or strict rationing – depending on whether you think the very rich should be allowed to keep private cars while everyone else uses buses, bicycles or donkey carts)? The changes needed would also include the evacuation of regions that require unsustainable levels of energy (for air-conditioning for example) or water use – like most of Arizona and Nevada – and the introduction of strict controls over water (rationing again), along with all other finite consumables. Can the rich world (especially the USA) be persuaded to give up personal motorised transportation, mass air-travel, cheap imported goods and much, much more (including 80%-90% of its meat consumption)?

Basically, the entire system of capitalist growth and consumerism has to go. Do you think this can be achieved, and achieved in time? I bloody-well hope so because I am very fond of my grand-daughter; but I have my doubts.

Keep up the good work, but try and think seriously about what changes are actually required, and then what actions we need to take to ensure those changes take place. If we give up, the chances are very high that we consign our species to mass death, and quite possibly extinction. If we are serious then we need to stop kidding ourselves that it can be done without painful and traumatic changes in the way we live and the only way this can be done is to get rid of this lunatic idea that a system based on never-ending economic growth and ever-increasing consumption, regardless of the resource implicatins, can be maintained. We have, perhaps five-to ten years to start making these changes.

Good luck!

It least you have a reasonable voice here. Links to the raw data you’re talking about? Prove it.