[MCN] Climate, science, and the persistence of uncertainty

[Lance Olsen]

"What one can say with confidence is that success in understanding the oxygen cycle of the biosphere in truly broad terms will depend on how good we are at weaving together the related strands of biospheric, atmospheric, hydrospheric and lithospheric evolution throughout geologic time."

Preston Cloud and Aharon Gibor. “The Oxygen Cycle.”
Scientific American, September 1970


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A recent Ambio article by some heavyweights in climate sets out the situation well enough. 

A team including the likes of Will Steffen, Paul Crutzen, Veerabhadren Ramathan, Johan Rockstrom, Marten Scheffer and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber begin the abstract of their article <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357752/> by saying “Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced …”  

They end it saying,“we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.”

Their analysis is echoed across the scientists side of the situation. But it doesn’t take a scientist to get the drift of what’s going on. 

Liam Denning is former investment banker, former editor of one of the Wall Street Journal’s most closely read columns —Heard on the Street — and a former columnist for Financial Times. Writing about need for the Green New Deal for Bloomberg <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-11/the-green-new-deal-is-unrealistic-get-real>, Denning has come to the conclusion that, “We have built our standard of living on forms of energy that we now know pose a threat to our very existence,” and that, “this is a conversation that is long overdue — and necessarily begins with a shout, not a whisper.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/ <https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/>
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