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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Wed Nov 11, 2015, 08:35 AM Nov 2015

2015: halfway to +2 C…..

Fresh Climate Data Confirms 2015 Is Unlike Any Other Year in Human History

By Eric Holthaus

Over the past few days, a bevy of climate data has come together to tell a familiar yet shocking story: Humans have profoundly altered the planet’s life-support system, with 2015 increasingly likely to be an exclamation point on recent trends.

On Monday, scientists at Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office, said our planet will finish this year more than one degree Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels for the first time. That figure is halfway to the line in the sand that scientists say represents “dangerous” climate change and global leaders have committed to avoid—an ominous milestone.

This year’s global heat wave—about two-tenths of a degree warmer than 2014, a massive leap when averaged over the entire planet—can be blamed most immediately on an exceptionally strong El Niño, but wouldn’t exist without decades of heat-trapping emissions from fossil fuel burning. Separate data released on Monday by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed the current El Niño, a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, has now tied 1997 for the strongest event ever measured, at least on a weekly basis.

"We've had similar natural events in the past, yet this is the first time we are set to reach the 1 degree marker and it's clear that it is human influence driving our modern climate into uncharted territory," said Stephen Belcher, director of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in a statement.

more
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/11/10/huge_el_nino_pushes_climate_toward_records.html

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2015: halfway to +2 C….. (Original Post) n2doc Nov 2015 OP
kick, kick, kick..... daleanime Nov 2015 #1
It's so hard to hold this knowledge, and all its implications. femmedem Nov 2015 #2

femmedem

(8,194 posts)
2. It's so hard to hold this knowledge, and all its implications.
Wed Nov 11, 2015, 11:22 AM
Nov 2015

But we must. We must.

And we must share it, until everyone understands that we're in the midst of an emergency, and it's going to take all of us to keep this planet habitable.

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