In December of 2015 the world emerged victorious with the transcendental first ever global accord in the fight against global warming, where in Paris, representatives from 196 countries agreed to decrease the use of fossil fuels that generate heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions like methane and carbon dioxide (CO2) as soon as possible in order to avoid an increase in atmospheric temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, that would lock the planet into a future of catastrophic impacts.

 

For years, global negotiations on carbon dioxide emissions has been that two degrees Celsius is the point of no return, and a limit directly or indirectly agreed to by negotiators at international climate talks. However, James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the first person to warm US Congress, back in 1988, that global warming threatened the world, is warning today that it’s crazy to think that 2°C is a safe limit noting that it was a “prescription for disaster” which would lock in several meters of sea level rise by 2050.

 

His conclusion came after reviewing records of average and extreme perturbations in the climate during the Paleolithic era showing that 50 million years ago, Earth was free of ice and sea level was 70 meters higher on average than it is today. Both phenomena resulted from natural variations in mean temperatures due to slight changes in the sun’s output and Earth’s orbit over geological time scales. However rising temperatures today, over far shorter time scales in which neither the sun nor the orbit are factors, are caused primarily by higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

 

I have to grant that not every scientist is fully convinced about the timing, the consequences and that the previously presented study represent a definitely conclusion that we are running out of time and we are heading towards disasters. Some consider that global temperature is an “output index” of the climate system rather than corresponding to the range of underlying human “input factors” (such as greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions, land use, population and others), and carbon dioxide concentration target in parts per millions (ppm), or in amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, in magnitudes of thousands of millions of tons or gigatons of CO2 (GtCO2) could be much less ambiguous. This has indeed been recognized by many campaigners, such as Bill McKibbin’s social movement “350.org” which campaigns for an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 350 ppm.

 

But what about if Hansen is correct? What is at stake here is the future of our children’s, our grandchildren’s, humanity and our civilization itself. On the other hand, I also have to grant that Hansen's analysis, conclusions and predictions are based on carbon dioxide concentration as well, and as a matter of fact, we have already past the McKibbin’s 350 ppm to be at about 397 ppm and heading towards the level of 450 ppm that has been associated with an average global temperature rise of 2°C. and even most significant, many Hansen’s predictions are already happening.

 

The Arctic ice has been melting in the summer at a higher rate than what was estimated by the UN’s IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) in 2007 and in fact, that region of the Arctic is free of ice today. On the other end of the planet, a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea. Both situations are snowballing with the momentum of a runaway train and these dangerous changes from accumulated anthropogenic greenhouse gases tends to more activities conducive to further greenhouse gas emissions, leading humanity to face the first clear evidence of dangerous climate change in which nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by its impacts.

 

But this is not the only event that validate a key “feedback” that makes higher levels of warming possible and happening. According to data from NASA and NOAA, July of 2016 was now the hottest month on record and the 10th consecutive record hot month in a row.

 

Furthermore, according to an article in The Washington Post a new study stand out from all the others, not only because of its implication but because it also proves that many of what has already been predicted will occur and other predictions that under mind the severity of the situation could be wrong.  

 

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, leading climate scientist, credited, among other major findings, with discovering that chlorofluorocarbons, (used in aerosols) are indeed greenhouse gases, announced on July 2016, that a study using satellites confirmed a major reorganization of the cloud systems pushing poleward, expanding what are called subtropical dry zones in both hemispheres between 20 and 30 degree in latitude, in a way already predicted by climate change models. It confirms that storms bringing much needed water to the US West are indeed moving poleward and away from the Southwest, thus indicating that the already severe drought that for years has been hitting this region from California to Colorado and New Mexico will likely continue over coming decades and as long as greenhouse gas emissions are released to the atmosphere. It also explains the unusual precipitations fell in regions of Chile where in few days they have seen more rain than what they normally see in a whole year.

 

Most researchers believe these are evidences that we’re hurtling towards the 2°C limit set in Paris much faster than anticipated and even if we slow down this runaway increase in global average temperature, are we safe at 2°C?

 

The inescapable, terrifying conclusion, so far, is that the climate target that Western governments have agreed on is not even close to being achieved. And even worse, the agreed target that we are failing to reach is not in itself strong enough to stop a dangerous climate change that has already cut into the global food supply and global crop yields,  affecting all aspects of the hydrological cycle with more frequent and severe droughts and floods as well as projections for this twenty first century that will make the mega droughts of the past seem like walk in the park while half of the planet’s population already live in urban areas and this number will increase together with the pressure to supply them with food and clean water as they still don’t wake up to the reality the will have to face as the worst is yet to come.  

  

This conclusion is not in the sense that all the human factors (technology, economics, politics and culture) may conspire to prevent the necessary emissions reductions (though they may), but meaning in a much ample sense that manipulating the world’s development pathway to deliver a re-stabilized global climate with an average temperature way below the 2°C above pre-industrial levels requires a higher level of understanding of the climate system and the extent of human influence upon it. It’s why the world has been willing to embrace a universal global temperature target for better or worst but has kept well away from the adoption of a global population target that is projected to increase up to 25 billion by the end of this century with no one is asking if we are going to be able to offer food, jobs, social services and more to this much people, or why nothing is said about the fact that current Agriculture technics are another significant source of GHGs to the point that even if we were to get rid of fossil fuels immediately, but continue to use traditional methods of animal agriculture at the current scale, by 2030 we may still significantly exceed the limit of carbon dioxide need to stay way below the 2 °C.

 

In deed. an analysis in 2009 by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, environmental specialists members of the WorldWatch Institute and advisers at the World Bank Group, showed that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.564 million tons of CO2e per year, or 51% of the annual worldwide GHG emissions. They thoroughly review the direct and indirect sources of GHG emissions from livestock and concluded that some of these are obvious but underestimated, some are simply overlooked, and some are emissions sources that are already counted but have been assigned to the wrong sectors, totaling 25,048 million tons of CO2e attributable to livestock been undercounted or overlooked.

 

It is disputable to include or exclude one or another anthropogenic source of emissions or the percentage of contribution according to one’s own interests, but in any case, livestock production still represents a hefty portion of emissions that merits serious scrutiny since by keeping GHGs attributable to livestock off the GHG balance sheets, it is predictable that they will not be managed and if we project its increase in terms of the influence of the livestock production industry, by the year 2050 we can expect a dangerously exponential increase of animal agriculture thus GHG emissions induce by a global consumption of meat and dairy that can be expected to have risen up to 76 per cent against the 2007 baseline, concluding that CO2 cannot be reduced to safe levels in time to avoid serious long-term impacts unless all the sources that releases GHG gases are included and we still have to face and deal with what to do with the CO2 that has been accumulating and remains in the atmosphere for up to 10 years.

 

Our civilization has no other option but to re-invent the way things are done but it is comprehensible that without a new viable alternative to produce our food without degrading the environment and extracting CO2 from the atmosphere there is not much to be said or do to preserve our civilization from alienation.