Dahr Jamail | As Casualties Mount, Scientists Say Global Warming Has Been “Hugely Underestimated” Monday, 20 October 2014 11:07
Written by
Dahr Jamail By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report
As we look across the globe this month, the signs of a continued escalation of the impacts of runaway anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) continue to increase, alongside a drumbeat of fresh scientific studies confirming their connection to the ongoing human geo-engineering project of emitting carbon dioxide at ever-increasing rates into the atmosphere.
A major study recently published in New Scientist found that “scientists may have hugely underestimated the extent of global warming because temperature readings from southern hemisphere seas were inaccurate,” and said that ACD is “worse than we thought” because it is happening “faster than we realized.”
As has become predictable now, as evidence of increasing ACD continues to mount, denial and corporate exploitation are accelerating right along with it.
The famed Northwest Passage is now being exploited by luxury cruise companies. Given the ongoing melting of the Arctic ice cap, a company recently announced a 900-mile, 32-day luxury cruise there, with fares starting at $20,000, so people can luxuriate while viewing the demise of the planetary ecosystem.
This, while even mainstream scientists now no longer view ACD in the future tense, but as a reality that is already well underway and severely impacting the planet.
It is good that even the more conservative scientists have come aboard the reality train, because a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-led (NOAA) study published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has provided yet more evidence linking ACD with extreme heat events.
To provide perspective on how far along we are regarding runaway ACD, another recent study shows that the planet’s wildlife population is less than half the size it was four decades ago. The culprits are both ACD and unsustainable human consumption, coupling to destroy habitats faster than previously thought, as biodiversity loss has now reached “critical levels,” according to the report. More than half of the vertebrate population on the planet has been annihilated in just four decades.
Let that sink in for a moment before reading further.
Meanwhile, the situation only continues to grow grimmer.
NASA announced that this August was the hottest globally since records began in 1880. Days later, NOAA confirmed this and added that 2014 is on track to become the hottest year on record.
Shortly thereafter, NASA announced that this September was the hottest since 1880.
And emissions only continue to increase.
Global greenhouse gas emissions rose this last year to record levels, increasing 2.3 percent.
The effects of all these developments are especially evident in the Arctic, where sea ice coverage reached its annual minimum on September 17, continuing a trend of below-average years. According to the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center, Arctic sea ice coverage this year is the sixth lowest recorded since 1978.
Equally disconcerting and symptomatic of the aforementioned, 35,000 walruses crowded onto land near the Northwest Alaska village of Point Lay late last month, when they couldn’t find their preferred resting grounds of summer sea ice.
Earth
The European Space Agency announced that, due to billions of tons of ice loss, a dip in the gravity field over the Western Antarctic region has occurred, making even gravity itself the latest casualty of ACD.
A recent analysis of 56 studies on ACD-related health problems revealed that increasing global temperatures and extreme weather events will continue to deleteriously impact human health on a global scale.
On a micro-scale, another report showed how Minnesota’s warming (and increasingly wetter) climate is escalating the risk of new diseases in the area, according to the Minnesota Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment.
Further north, warming temperatures continue to disrupt the fragile ecological balance in the Canadian Arctic, which is warming faster than most of the rest of the planet. Canada’s minister for natural resources provided a new report detailing the impact ACD is having on that country’s forests, which are being impacted “faster than the global average.”
In neighboring Alaska, summer heat and invasive insects are taking a similar toll on interior Alaska birch trees, according to experts there.
Wildlife populations continue to struggle to adapt to the dramatic changes wrought by ACD. In California, one of the largest populations of state-protected Western pond turtles in the southern part of that state is struggling to survive as its habitat, a natural two-mile long lake, has become a smelly, severely alkaline death trap due to drought and fires there.
Exposing the Big Game 
And the worst thing about these cruise ships is that our spineless politicians allow them to dump all kinds of human waste directly into the oceans because the companies are too cheap to pay disposal fees!!!! (We’re looking at you, Alaska) And then blame otters, sea lions (fill in the blank) for fish decline.
I will never set foot on a cruise ship if my life depended on it until they clean up their act.
The utter rapidity at which climate is warming is unbelievable, even for the scientists who study it themselves. The IPCC has consistently underestimated the rate and severity of warming and its consequences yet even their modest forecasts have not been believed. The time is long past due to speak the truth
So true. But like animal rights issues, most people don’t want to hear a truth that requires change.