A Trio of Global Warming Reports

Three important reports in the news today: One saying that reversing climate change is well affordable, and another saying that Global Warming is irreversible.

Confused? Read on.

The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that €530 billion will need to be invested across the world by 2020 to reduce emissions to 70% below "business as usual" and avoid dangerous levels of global warming. Overall, €810 billion would need to be invested by 2030 to to avoid such a scenario, the reportexternal adds.

810 billion euros over 20 years shared out among the whole world is chickenfeed compared with the sums shovelled into the diseased maw of the banking industry to keep its directors in the manner to which they are accustomed. Trivial. Pusillanimous. And in spending this money, not only are we saving the livelihood of our children and grandchildren, but also we are remedying the malign effects of a global economic slump.

All that is lacking is political will.

So what of the other report? Susan Solomon is a respected climatologist, and says that the extra heat and CO2 absorbed by the oceans will be released over the coming centuries, so that CO2 abatement alone will not put things to rights.

Here this blog can flash DON'T PANIC! in big friendly letters. Carbon abatement alone is not enough; carbon sinks with decarbonisation is the answer.

To round it off, Tim Lenton at the University of East Anglia has just released a report on ways of remedying the damage Exxon and the others are doing.