The heatwaves seen in Europe during 2003, which killed tens of thousands of people, will come back every year with a 2C global average temperature rise. Southern England will regularly see temperatures around 40C in summer. The Amazon turns into desert and grasslands, while increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere make the world's oceans too acidic for remaining coral reefs and thousands of other marine lifeforms. More than 60 million people, mainly in Africa, would be exposed to higher rates of malaria. Agricultural yields around the world will drop and half a billion people will be at greater risk of starvation. The West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the Greenland ice sheet melts and the world's sea level begins to rise by seven metres over the next few hundred years. Glaciers all over the world will recede, reducing the fresh water supply for major cities including Los Angeles. Coastal flooding affects more than 10 million extra people. A third of the world's species will become extinct as the 2C rise changes their habitats too quickly for them to adapt.
Optimism! And rises of three degrees, four degrees, and even five degrees are becoming more likely by the day. It's important to note that the consequences don't become correspondingly more nightmarish as you move up the scale; they become exponentially more nightmarish, in part because they unleash new forces that further accelerate warming. Arctic permafrost dissipates and the carbon trapped beneath it rises and then things get even hotter. That sort of thing.
Amidst all this, conservative Senate Democrats are waving off the idea of serious action in 2010. But not because they're opposed. Oh, heavens no! It's because of abstract concerns over the political difficulties the problem presents. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), for instance, avers that “climate change in an election year has very poor prospects.” That's undoubtedly true, though it is odd to say that the American system of governance can only solve problems every other year. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) says that “we need to deal with the phenomena of global warming," but wants to wait until the economy is fixed.
You're left with a continually dysfunctional body of idiots who are allowing the disintegration of the planet for billions of people around the world. A group of 5-6 moderate Democratic Senators, backed by a cohort of 40 Republicans derailed Copenhagen and continue to derail any progress on fixing our dying planet.Lisa Lerer’s Politico piece on how moderate Senate Democrats don’t want to do a cap-and-trade bill is extremely frustrating. Neither Mary Landrieu nor Ben Nelson nor Evan Bayh nor Kent Conrad nor Mark Pryor seems to want to say that they don’t think climate change is real. Nor do they want to say that they don’t think it’s a problem. Nor do they want to say that they don’t think it’s a problem caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. Nor do they want to deny that legally binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions are the only reliable way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But it’s also clear that none of them want to say something like “voting for legally binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions would be the right thing to do, but for selfish reasons I choose not to.”
But they also don’t want to vote for legally binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
So you’re left with . . . well . . . it’s not really clear what it is you’re left with.
I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.It was a decade with basically zero job creation. O.K., the headline employment number for December 2009 will be slightly higher than that for December 1999, but only slightly. And private-sector employment has actually declined — the first decade on record in which that happened.
It was a decade with zero economic gains for the typical family. Actually, even at the height of the alleged “Bush boom,” in 2007, median household income adjusted for inflation was lower than it had been in 1999. And you know what happened next.
Abdulmutallab acted alone. There can be little doubt the operation was intended to go off on Christmas, for the obvious symbolism, so we would have seen evidence of a coordinated attack by now. The inescapable if preliminary conclusion: al-Qaeda can’t get enough dudes to join Abdulmutallab. And what does it give the guy to set off his big-boom? A device that’s “more incendiary than explosive,” in the words of some anonymous Department of Homeland Security official to the Times.
As always, Andrew's coverage of the situation is the best on the web.The reformist website, Rah-e Sabz, reported that an elderly man was among the dead after being shot in the forehead in Valiasr crossroads in Tehran city centre. Three others were said to have been shot nearby at Kalej Bridge in Enghelab Street. Rah-e Sabz, citing witnesses, said crowds held up the elderly man and started chanting slogans against Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Crowds also prevented security forces from taking away those wounded in the shootings. According to other eyewitness reports, members of the hardline Basij militia attacked demonstrators with daggers and knives. Disturbances were also reported in Isfahan and Najafabad, where the Rah-e Sabz described the situation as "severe".
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