ABC Offers a Guide on Global Warming and Consequences of Paris Accords

FILE - In this May 18, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington. A White House official says President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)


There's a pile of annoying 'splainin' up front for people who lived in caves in Siberia and then it gets down to the so what from pulling out of the Paris Accord.

The Associated Press interviewed dozens of scientists and consulted computer simulations, and they say without the U.S. pledges, the dangerous 2-degree rise is nearly inescapable.

But they also say that even with the U.S. doing its share, preventing that warming is going to be unlikely and will require even more cuts than contained in the Paris agreement.

University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado said blowing past the 2-degree mark would be a potential "tipping point" that would lead to "a new and irreversible state in the climate system."

ABC:  A guide to global warming, Paris pact and the US role

When the Rockhouse gets to cliche, it's time to exit and the idea of tipping points has come to mean everything up to the plastic toy bird which bobs for ice cubes in your friendly suburban bar.

Note:  beware of friendly suburban bars since the people coming out of there likely drive and they may kill you without even remembering it.


While it's fashionable to believe such pollution started with the Industrial Revolution, it actually preceded that by about two millennia when humans started smelting ore for minerals.  Humans haven't been polluting the air for two hundred years; the figure is closer to two thousand.

A new study combining European ice core data and historical records of the infamous Black Death pandemic of 1349-1353 shows metal mining and smelting have polluted the environment for thousands of years, challenging the widespread belief that environmental pollution began with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s and 1800s.  (Science Daily: Human activity has polluted European air for 2,000 years)


But ... don't worry; be happy.

Phys.org:  Acidified ocean water widespread along North American West Coast

A three-year survey of the California Current System along the West Coast of the United States found persistent, highly acidified water throughout this ecologically critical nearshore habitat, with "hotspots" of pH measurements as low as any oceanic surface waters in the world.

The researchers say that conditions will continue to worsen because the atmospheric carbon dioxide primarily to blame for this increase in acidification has been rising substantially in recent years.

- PO


At the same time, California seeks to align with China for people more sensible about pollution and climate change than America.  I don't currently have the link for that but it came in a statement for Jerry Brown, Governor of California.