Arrival of the Anthropocene
While the precise environmental consequences of the Second Disruption are unclear, the scientific consensus indicates that higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, have caused global temperatures to rise. As a result the world is 0.8 degrees centigrade warmer today than it was in the 1880s.
Because there is a delay between atmospheric composition and climate change, future warming is inevitable simply by virtue of past action. Furthermore, emissions of these gases have never been higher, meaning our world will proceed to get much warmer still – the key question being how much and how quickly.
And therein lies the problem with the politics of climate change. While we can be certain it is happening, almost everything else is speculation. Informed opinion agrees that global temperatures will rise by at least a further two degrees as a delayed response to present conditions. What remains unknown, however, is the time frame within which that will unfold as well as the precise consequences of such change – be it extreme weather events, rising sea levels or desertification.
Which means it is almost equally plausible that the world will warm by two degrees over the next several decades or centuries. In the context of the Earth being more than 4 billion years old such a diference is so small as to be the margin of error. For the human mind, however, and by extension the politics of global warming, it is everything. Any prediction that is deemed ‘inaccurate ’ is a weapon for vested interests to discredit the notion of global warming altogether.
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