Grim climate change report prompts UN call for 'breakthrough' [action]

Climate change…is a problem that is, at last, both universal and personal for every human on the planet. Climate change makes moot past environmental issues precisely because it isn't about an obscure species or remote place. It's about us, and our fate. It is about the real possibility of the unraveling of modern civilization.
-Hal Clifford, Los Angeles Times

*******

One final component of the consequence discussion that needs to be directly addressed is the realistic possibility of profound rapid climate change. There exists numerous “sleeping giants”, specific natural aspects of the climate system which could set of powerful feedback loops on a very short time scale, meaning months or years. A few examples of these potential rapid change inducing feedback are as follows: methane hydrate destabilization, soils causing land biosphere to turn from absorber to emitter, the North Atlantic “ocean conveyor belt” shuts down, the Greenland ice cap melts, or the west Antarctic ice sheet slides into the sea, as well as other geographically specific events in vital locations such as the Amazon, the Tibetan plateau, and the Sahara.<42> While it is not the prerogative of this paper to go into each of these possible scenarios, each one is in fact backed by legitimate scientific evidence. The difference between these sleeping giants and other basic feedback loops becomes a matter of time and scale; the giants could develop far faster than humans can react to control them, or their impacts might be so large that there would be no possibility of an effective human counter effort. These may come across as outlandish doomsday forecasts and likely will not all come to fruition, however their presence alongside the litany of other trend-based effects creates a legitimate basis to prescribe a necessity of action to halt the contemporary warming trend.

<http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/wbp/rapid-climate-change/437>