National Climate Assessment: Starting at the Back of the Book.

There is a lot of good information in the recently released National Climate Assessment, but you are probably not going to get around to reading all 800+ pages of it. One of the best strategies might be to start with the ending. The final appendix of Frequently Asked Questions has some useful perspectives and some good information for busting prevalent myths.

The last graph illustrates the relationship between the reduction of carbon emissions and the stabilization of CO2 levels. Each year that we burn billions of tons of hydrocarbon fuels we are adding to the atmospheric load of this very persistent greenhouse gas. Sometimes we hear about reduced annual emissions, say from the recent shift from coal to natural gas as a fuel for electric power plants. This is a bit like talking about reducing the annual federal spending deficit. While a reduction is a step in the right direction, we still end up with more debt or CO2 than we had the year before. We are talking about heading in the wrong direction a bit more slowly, not heading in the right direction. I’m not highlighting that fact to depress you, but just to make clear the mountainous size of the problem we face. Right now, with both our debt and our greenhouse gas levels, we are the equivalent of a fat person who is trying to reduce his calories to the point that he’s only gaining five pounds a month instead of ten.

Acknowledging the problem is the first step towards a solution.