Smoke and Mirrors Will Not Save Us From Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

[marmar]

Smoke and Mirrors Will Not Save Us From Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

Saturday, 10 January 2015 10:46
By Robert James Parsons, Truthout | Op-Ed


With 2015 billed as the make-it-or-break-it year for climate control, in anticipation of next December's Paris conference, and in the midst of much vehement - if not downright virulent - controversy, it is worth proposing some perspective beyond what most of the media deign to serve up to us.

In an article that appeared in mid-November in the French online journal A l'encontre, Daniel Tanuro analyzed the "unprecedented" and "historic" agreement between the United States and China resulting from Barack Obama's encounter with Xi Jinping just before the November G20 conference in Brisbane.

The insufficiency - to put it mildly - of this agreement, in comparison with the warnings issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most recent report, is unbridgeable, he points out.

Citing the reduction of 26% promised by Obama for 2025, which ought to lower United States emissions to 5.368 gigatonnes (Gt), he notes: "According to the Kyoto Protocol (which the United States signed but never ratified), Uncle Sam should have reduced his emissions by 8% by 2012, relative to 1990. That means that the emissions should have dropped from 6.233 Gt (1990 figure) to 5.734 Gt – instead of which, they increased 0.2% per year, on average, to reach 6.526 Gt. In other words, Obama has committed the United States to reaching by 2025 a target that is almost no better than than the one that the United States was supposed to have reached two years ago." ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/28443-smoke-and-mirrors-will-not-save-us-from-acd

[Jefferson23]

1. Highly recommend. n/t

[RiverLover]

2. Very imp article. They're really concerned about this for the upcoming Climate Summit.

Thanks for posting. People really need to wake up!

Obama has committed the United States to reaching by 2025 a target that is almost no better than than the one that the United States was supposed to have reached two years ago

Also from the OP link~

...Asked what, then, a realistic prescription for survival would be, they were categorical: greenhouse gases must be reduced by 80 percent - by 2015.

That was almost six years ago. Everything seems to be on schedule for the worst, including the denial from most of those on the top on down to most of the grassroots. While climatologists making candid public assessments have been decried as "doom-and-gloom" people, they more and more appear to be the lucid voices of reality in a fantasy world.

[Duppers]

3. crushingly sad

that so little attention is paid to the most important issue of our time, by people, by governments, by most DUers.

Thanks for posting!

A big R & K.