Good planets are hard to come by

Figure 3. Evolution of the ENSO (el Niño Southern Oscillation) cycles from the Pliocene (5.2 - 1.8 million years ago) to the present, showing the divergence of ocean temperatures in the east Pacific Ocean (blue line) from the west Pacific Ocean (red line).

Climate change is appropriately described as a global oxygenation event affecting geological carbon deposits as well as the present biosphere. At 2ppm/year the scale of carbon oxidation exceeds the highest recorded geological rate of 0.4ppm/year, recorded at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary at 55 Ma when about 2000 GtC were burnt, triggering an extinction of species.

Hopes for a meaningful binding agreement in Copenhagen, described as "the most important meeting in the history of the human species" (Joachim Schellnhuber), and for a supposed presidential “Messiah” to wave the magic wand, collapsed in December, 2009, in the sorry mess of vested and tribal interests.

The international system required to protect the lives of the young and future generation is failing. According to the Global Carbon Project “Carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and land use changes reached almost 10 billion tonnes in 2007”. Those who deny the reality of climate change around the globe seek uncertainties in future climate projections, cf. dates of Himalayan glacier melt or Amazon deforestation. This ignores the evidence for dangerous climate trajectories even where the precise dates of future events can not be determined, namely, Himalayan glaciers melt may precede or postdate 2035. Presumably the claims of “conspiracy” on the part of the scientific world include the pioneers of atmospheric physics (Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius and Guy Chalendar), as well as those who defined the basic thermodynamic laws of the greenhouse process (Stefan, Bolzmann, Kirschner)?

Most of all those who criticise the IPCC ignore the fact that, to date, the IPCC reports have UNDERESTIMATED ice melt rates, sea level rise, feedback effects and the proximity of tipping points, not least the looming release of hundreds of GtC as methane from permafrost, lake sediments and bogs.

Governments continue to pour the planet’s dwindling resources into wars (US$1.4 trillion in 2008) and bank bailouts (US$0.7 trillion). Entertainment and media are projected to cost US$2 trillion in 2011. Between 1958 and 2009 the US (NASA) spent US$823 billion on space exploration searching for, among other things, water and microbes on other planets. Now they have found water on Mars and the Moon, while the pH of our terrestrial oceans has declined between 1751 and 1994 by 0.075 (8.179 to 8.104), threatening the marine food chain.

Good planets are hard to come by.