More tardiness

Not "starting to debate" irreversible climate change.... This issue has been around for three decades and has been "debated" by scientists, forward-thinking members of the United Nations system, and environmental ethicists. This administration as well as those of Clinton and Bush the First have actively ignored it. Exxon and other corporate powers have actively produced propaganda saying it's not a problem. And news outlets such as the Washington Post have been slow to say anything counter to this ongoing, active ignorance. Now it's as if there's beginning to be real concern? Too late, WaPo.

Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.

This "tipping point" scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad, because the answer could determine how drastically countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible.

There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world's fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.