CO₂

Well, I usually check in on RealClimate, they mostly have some good news. For example if CO2 levels are increasing with 2 ppm per year (and add a few percent on that per year), and we are now at 380 ppm (up from 270 ppm pre 1850), where will we be 2040? There is not a large chance that technology has changed remarkably long before 2040, well, with exception to a major wake-up catastrophe coming in between. Let’s see, electricity will be produced by coal and gas until 2020. Then maybe we have a few additional nuclear plants, just to cover the increased consumption. Our car and truck fleet will be exactly the same 2020, and only start changing by then (thanks Detroit!). I cannot imagine that the third world suddenly will stop burning whatever trees they find for fuel the next decades? Nor that the emerging markets decrease rainforest destruction?

So we are left with some hope, like wind power king Germany (10+% electricity now from wind – way to go!) and a minuscule % of energy world production from other renewables (solar, geothermie, bio crops).

With these assumptions (consider also Stuart again) we reach about 450 ppm CO2 the year 2040. So what does IPCC (for example) comment on such levels? Feed-back loops, melting of Greenland, arctic warming, hurricanes, shifted agriculture/desert areas in say Africa, heat waves (in german), dry spell in western US

? It’s gonna be rough, hot times. It hurts for all the people affected.

As a matter of fact, if I was told this, in a certain didactical way, and I was without any chance of working myself up from my poverty, combined with some high testosteron levels at the age of 20, I would easily be coerced to some rather radical thinking. Hmm, maybe we should take a little bit more care of the poor world, to mutually reduce extremism getting a grip in some regions?