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Runaway Daily
Posts in the 'What is RCC' Category
Climate Change Strategy for Nonprofits
Posted on October 13, 2011 in Organizational strategy, What is RCC
Nonprofits need to consider their entire “environment” when planning for the future. This means the natural environment as well as the state of the economy, business and political trends, and funding prospects.
I think that climate change is going to become a much bigger issue in the next few years, and that it will affect the economy, business, politics, and society much more than it has to date. In doing so, it will affect the mission of most nonprofits – and funding prospects for all nonprofits.
Why Al Gore Was Wrong
A few years ago, Al Gore came out with An Inconvenient Truth – a presentation, book, and movie about climate change. He said that we have to cut CO2 emissions to keep climate change within a limit of 2C (3.2F) of warming. If we didn’t, the world would go into “runaway climate change” – fast, out-of-control warming, melting of the polar ice caps, sea level rise, and extreme weather.
What is “abrupt climate change”?
Posted on January 31, 2011 in What is RCC
To ordinary people living their lives, today’s global warming is imperceptible, and even the effects – changes in weather, in growing seasons, and so on – take hold gradually. The most dramatic recent predictions, from MIT and others, are for 10F – that’s 6C – of warming this century. While this would change life as we know it, it’s still “only” an average change of about 1F per decade; not a really earth-shaking deal in any specific ten-year period. The effects come from the accumulation of warming, one decade after the next.
There is a kind of climate change, though, that would be far more immediate in its impact. Abrupt climate change (Wikipedia entry here) is a sudden increase of anywhere from 2C to, perhaps, 10C of warming – that’s 3F to 16F – in about one to three years. Even at the low end, abrupt climate change would disrupt rainfall and change temperatures so much that getting the harvest in at today’s levels would be impossible, and widespread starvation would be almost impossible to avoid. Wars and more or less widespread breakdowns of order would probably ensue. At the higher end of the scale, the impact would be many times worse.
MIT in Journal of Climate: 10°F Warming by 2100
Posted on June 21, 2010 in What is RCC
An MIT report says the world is on track to get much warmer, much faster. An increase of +9F this century is predicted – nearly 1F per decade. This is on top of the 1F increase seen between pre-industrial times to 2000, for total global warming of 10F by 2011.
MITers and "roulette wheel" of temperature increases
Total warming of 10F means a very different world, one in which the natural world is decimated and feeding current and projected populations is impossible.
The report, which was the subject of stories earlier this year, has just been published in the prestigious Journal of Climate. If the report is correct, the survival of most people on Earth is at risk. A 10F warmer planet will support many billions fewer people, and with a transition period quite possibly marked by massive war and conflict. Any steps that save many lives are likely to be so draconian as to feel like wartime, even if implemented as benignly as possible.
Why “Runaway”?
Posted on March 5, 2010 in What is RCC
“Runaway climate change” is what happens when global warming becomes self-sustaining. A global warming spiral kicks in if:
- The environment absorbs less CO2. About 50% of our current emissions are absorbed by the environment – roughly half of that by the oceans, the other half by plants on land. This uptake of CO2 by the environment may already be in decline.
- Reflection of sunlight drops. As snow and ice cover retreat – as cover is smaller in geographic extent, or seasonal cover lasts for less of the year – dark ground and even darker water are exposed, which absorb sunlight, further warming the earth.
- More CO2 and methane are emitted from nature. Soils, forests, peat, the seas, organic deposits in permafrost, and methane clathrates all emit some CO2 and methane. As the environment warms, “natural” emissions increase.
