All I want for Christmas is to have laid out for me clearly, with demonstrative scientific and economic evidence, what the most serious damages global warming has caused so far. I’d much appreciate the wrapping paper on the present not include a litany of “coulds,” “possiblys,” “mights,” “maybes,” etc.
As a reminder, over the course of the past 130 years, the planet has warmed 0.8 degrees Celsius with something on the order of half of that occurring before the Eisenhower Administration. Yes counterfactuals make this extremely hard to do, I get it.
My stocking will surely have only coal in it.
I hope the coal you receive is at least clean. Wouldn’t want any of that dirty coal business.
The dirty “secret” of the climate change discussion is that in fact coal does kill, but that is because of the particulate emissions and radioactive coal ash created from its combustion. When we ultimately do transition away from coal (in a long time), the benefits of cleaning up the air and water from this kind of pollution will be claimed as the original intended benefits of the program to transition, wholly aside from the issue of CO2.
I would prefer some nuclear fusion in my stocking.
130 years is a blip in the curve of human history. Try again harder Mr. Rizzo.
So, we have learned a lot from this comment, thank you for advancing the conversation.
What does “130 years is a blip” mean? We asked a simple question about what demonstrable damages (and you can read here to see suggestions: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/) have been attributed to the accumulations of CO2 and 0.8 degrees of warming that have already occurred?
So, what, exactly, am I supposed to try harder about?