The Outlook for Climate Change

It looks as though 2019 will become the second warmest year on record, since record of global temperatures began to be taken in the later part of the 19th Century. Predictions are always hard but if 2019 does not end up as the second warmest, it will certainly be in the top 5 warmest years, according to the US National Ocean and Atmospheric Adninistration. The trend towards warming is undeniable; there will always be some years which buck the trend but if you consider things on a decade by decade basis this planet is warming at about the rate about a degree Celsius per century. That rate will almost certainly increase over the next decades.

I do not wish to be alarmist – Extinction Rebellion are spreading more than enough alarm without suggesting any real means of mitigating climate change.

I have always thought that the starting point of trying to mitigate or slow done the rate of global warming is through energy use, which is responsible (in my view) for most of the global warming the planet is experiencing. In recent years I have formed the view that to prevent rapid global warming we must not only curtail fossil fuel energy use but also population expansion.

Eventually we can address the use of fossil fuel in energy use. I doubt if humanity will ever be ready to address the growth in population. The planetary outlook is not hopeful unless we can refrain from breeding and curtail our numbers.