The news on climate change is more than a little depressing. The IPCC Synthesis Report projects that by 2100 the global average temperature will be at least 2.5°F higher than in 1980-1999, and the most likely outcome is for 3.5°-7.0°F in warming -- assuming that we don't do anything to reduce emissions.The good news is that the future doesn't have to be that bad. D. P. Van Vuuren and colleagues, writing in the 7 October issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, report that various scenarios to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases could result in substantially smaller temperature increases. The bad news is that even under the most aggressive mitigation scenario, we can expect about 3°F of warming.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is vital, but it won't be enough. We also have to find ways to adapt to the changes that increasing global temperatures will bring.
If you're wondering about the title, I was going to title it We Can Solve It, but I decided that's a little misleading. We can't stop global warming, but we can reduce it, and we can learn to live with it. But we have to start now.
D. P. Van Vuuren, M. Meinshausen, G.-K. Plattner, F. Joos, K. M. Strassmann, S. J. Smith, T. M. L. Wigley, S. C. B. Raper, K. Riahi, F. de la Chesnaye, M. G. J. den Elzen, J. Fujino, K. Jiang, N. Nakicenovic, S. Paltsev, J. M. Reilly (2008). Temperature increase of 21st century mitigation scenarios Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (40), 15258-15262 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0711129105
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