The Key Climate Change Unknown

The Real Unknown of Climate Change: Our Behavior

Justin Gillis, September 18, 2017 (NY Times)

“As Hurricane Harvey bore down on the Texas coast, few people in that state seemed to understand the nature of the looming danger…[Scientists in Texas] have spent their careers issuing a larger warning, one that much of the public still chooses to ignore…Because of atmospheric emissions from human activity, the ocean waters from which Harvey drew its final burst of strength were much warmer than they ought to have been, most likely contributing to the intensity of the deluge…[Most likely,] the most savage heat waves that we experience today will likely become routine in a matter of decades…[and the] coastal inundation that has already begun will grow worse and worse…

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…[While many people are coming to their own commonsense conclusions,] some senior Republicans continue to question the link between human-caused emissions and rising temperatures…[Real uncertainties about details remain but they cut in both directions…[If they go against us, there] could be 80 or 100 feet of sea level rise...The truth is that the single biggest uncertainty is, and has always been, how much carbon pollution humans are going to choose to pump into the air…And yet most of us have still not bestirred ourselves to care, much less to march in the streets demanding change…Is this failure to act the legacy our generation wants to leave for the generations yet to come?” click here for more

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