Scientists Will Say We Can't

We Have At Most Ten Years - Not Ten Years To Decide Upon Action, But Ten Years To Alter Fundamentally The Trajectory Of Global Greenhouse Emissions... We Are Near A Tipping Point, A Point Of No Return, Beyond Which The Built In Momentum And Feedbacks Will Carry Us To Levels Of Climate Change With Staggering Consequences For Humanity And All Of The Residents Of This Planet.

We Have To, In The Next Ten Years, Begin To Decrease The Rate Of Carbon Dioxide Emissions And Then Flatten It Out. If That Doesn't Happen In Ten Years, We're Going To Be Passing Certain Tipping Points. If The Ice Sheets Begin To Disintegrate, What Can You Do About It? You Can't Tie A Rope Around An Ice Sheet.

It Has Become Very Difficult For Anyone To Argue That Observed Global Warming Is Natural Variability. We Have Good Reason For Being Able To Say That The World Will Be Warmer By About A Quarter Of A Degree In The Next Decade. It's The Same Reason We Had 10 Years Ago When We Said That The 1990s Would Be Warmer Than The 1980s: The Planet Is Out Of Equilibrium.

Our Analysis Shows That, For The Extreme Hot Weather Of The Recent Past, There Is Virtually No Explanation Other Than Climate Change. The Deadly European Heat Wave Of 2003, The Fiery Russian Heat Wave Of 2010 And Catastrophic Droughts In Texas And Oklahoma Last Year [2011] Can Each Be Attributed To Climate Change. The Odds That Natural Variability Created These Extremes Are Minuscule, Vanishingly Small. To Count On Those Odds Would Be Like Quitting Your Job And Playing The Lottery Every Morning To Pay The Bills.

The Last Time The World Was Three Degrees Warmer Than Today-which Is What We Expect Later This Century-sea Levels Were 25m Higher. So That Is What We Can Look Forward To If We Don't Act Soon.