April 9, 2016

Climate Disruption in Overdrive: Submerged Cities and Melting That "Feeds on Itself"

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35398-climate-disruption-in-overdrive-submerged-cities-and-melting-that-feeds-on-itself
"A major study published in Nature Climate Change shows that the planet is warming a stunning 50 times faster than when it comes out of an ice age. The implications of the rapidity of this warming, for those who care to digest it emotionally, are horrifying. The study shows that even if carbon reduction targets are achieved and the planet's temperature is kept below the 2 degree Celsius warming threshold, sea-level rise will still inundate major coastal cities around the world, forcing one-fifth of the total world population of humans to migrate away from the coasts. New York, London, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Cairo, Kolkata and Shanghai will all be underwater. As though to reinforce this point, NASA recently released data confirming that February was the warmest month ever measured globally, at 1.57 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial baseline temperature average. The new record easily smashed the old global temperature record, which was set just one month before, in January. This means that while it took from the advent of the industrial age until October 2015 to warm the planet 1 degree Celsius, humans have managed to warm the planet another .57 degrees Celsius in just the next four months since then. Let that sink in for a moment before reading further. As if that isn't enough, a study recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience revealed that carbon emissions are now the highest they have been since the age of dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. According to the study, the current pace of emissions is even beyond the highest-known natural surge of carbon that exists in fossil records, an event that occurred 56 million years ago that was believed by many to be caused by the release of frozen stores of greenhouse gases from the seabed."