Looking back makes looking forward rather daunting

E

arly last year the Huffington Post looked back over the past two decades considering public inaction on global warming, while noting the worsening of the world’s climate.

Texas A&M University Climate
Scientist, Andrew Dessler, who
laments the missed opportunity.

Rather than depend on rhetoric, it relied in numbers to make its case - Carbon dioxide emissions: up 60 percent. Global temperature: up six-tenths of a degree. Population: up 1.7 billion people. Sea level: up 3 inches. U.S. extreme weather: up 30 percent. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: down 4.9 trillion tons of ice.

Climate scientist at the Texas A&M University Andrew Dessler said, "Overall, what really strikes me is the missed opportunity."

"We knew by the early 1990s that global warming was coming, yet we have done essentially nothing to head off the risk. I think that future generations may be justifiably angry about this."

The Huffington Post story - “In Decades Since Leaders First Got Together On Climate, World Has Gotten Hotter, Weirder” – quoted the Professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, Michael Oppenheimer, who said:  "Simply put, we are rapidly remaking the planet and beginning to suffer the consequences.”