Friday 8 September 2017

Today's news - Climate change

It's not exactly new news. From the Independent, re: Hurricane Irma.

Jeffrey Kargel, from the Department of Hydrology & Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona, urged governments to question their denial of climate change and get to work making their countries resilient enough to be able to deal with such extreme weather events.
“I have one thing to ask the American government and all other climate change denying politicians around the world: have you wondered at all about climate change, hurricanes, glacier melting, ocean warming and sea level rise in connection with the safety of places near and dear to you, such as the Mar-a-Lago Resort? It is time that you start worrying about that," he said. "And while you are at it, please have some concern about the rest of the U.S. and the world.
“Put most simply, Planet Earth's climate is in upheaval and we know exactly what is causing it: right now, the rapid pace of climate change is set by government policies in the U.S. and many other countries. We cannot turn it around in a few years or even in a decade.  But we can worsen it in a few years or a decade.”

Some of that preparation must be about asking the companies that can be blamed for the events to pay for them, according to Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford.

“As yet another hurricane barrels into the Caribbean, with extreme precipitation and the impacts of storm surges both exacerbated by past greenhouse gas emissions, we must begin to ask ‘how long can we expect taxpayers and those in the path of the storms to foot the entire bill for the impacts of climate change?'," Professor Allen said.

“In a paper published today in the journal Climatic Change, we show that nearly 30% of global sea level rise from 1880 to 2010 can be traced to products sold by just 90 large corporations. We need to start a conversation about whether it makes sense to exempt companies selling products that cause greenhouse gas emissions from all liability for the consequences of their use. As we found in 2008, giving companies unlimited license to make private profits while society underwrites the risk ends badly for everyone.”


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