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A group of scientists who were on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 issued a report last week, entitled The Copenhagen Diagnosis, that is alarming, to say the least:

** Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2 degrees centigrade. Even with zero emissions after 2030, every year of delayed action increase the chances of exceeding 2 degrees centigrade warming.

** Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.190 centigrade per decade, in every good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.

** A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.

** Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. This area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.

** Satellites show great global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be 80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.

** By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4, for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as 2 meters sea-level rise by 2100. Sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperature have been stabilized and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.

** Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets. Amazon rain forest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds ("tipping points") increase strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.

** If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2oC above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society -- with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases -- need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

Did you get that? The goal, if we have any chance of reversing what humans are doing to the planet, is to get our emissions 80-90% BELOW the levels we were discharging back in 2000.

Man, is this bleak...

But - the first step is to get the naysayers on board so that we can all work in tandem on this problem. It should be the number one focus of all nations in the upcoming decades.

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