Runaway is on the way.

Climate change may have slipped off the mainstream media's radar of late, but after reading truly terrifying new book called "The Crisis of Civilization", I am worried. The book is so brilliantly referenced, I simply cannot find any fault in it.

It seems unless the world cuts CO2E (Carbon Dioxide and equivalents) emissions by 90% within 15 years, global warming will pass the point of no return, and we can look forward to a word up to 8 degrees warmer than it is today (15 degrees). The reason why you have not heard this before, is that conventional climate change models do not include "positive and negative feedback". These are things which either amplify or subdue the effect of climate change. As we pass each feedback point, the rate of climate change will increase beyond our own impact, and when we pass a crucial threshold (thought to be somewhere between 1 degree and 2 degree above where we are today) we will have triggered so much warming, that further feedbacks are inevitable, no matter how much we emit.

Examples of the feedback affect are the cooling of the gulf stream. As arctic ice melts, the warm current that provide unnaturally high temperatures in Western Europe, will shut down, meaning that in the UK for instance, we will not feel the temperature rise in the same way as the rest of the world. Another negative feedback is that plants grow slightly better in higher concentrations of CO2, but both of these are negligible and highly regional. More importantly, there are a number of positive feedbacks. Desertification is one, which quickens forest loss, as is the melting of the permafrost in Siberia, which if it continues will lead to runaway global warming ON ITS OWN, because millions of years of methane is stored in the (up until now frozen) tundra (bog/soil) underneath. For the unaware layman, methane is some 23 times more potent a greenhouse gas the CO2. We should be worried.

It is strongly arguable that we should be grateful if the economy contracts. If the austerity plans that we are undergoing fail, this could be good. However, there are certainly better, more equitable and egalitarian ways to scale back the intensity of our economies. There is a "quality rather than quantity" option. However, if we continue to adapt towards the "quality economy" at current rates, we will have to many years of waste before we get there. Ironically, brutal austerity might be our best bet if we are to avoid setting off 6 degree global warming. Practically speaking, the best thing to do in the immediate future is to encourage any politician which plans that under normal economic circumstances would be regarded as sacrilege. George Osborne's plans might be wrong when held up to a traditional criteria, but if the government fails in their objective to boost consumption growth, we may have to accept the plus side.

Most people do not understand what an "eight degree world or even a six degree world" would look like. It almost certainly could not sustain current levels of crop production, which depend on 10 fossil fuel calories for each food calorie anyway- a paradigm which will definitely not continue beyond the next 20 years. A joint study between Finnish and Swedish climate scientists found that for every 1 degree temperature increase, crop yields decline 10%. It is a pretty safe bet that world population is going to be a lot smaller in the future than it is now. For those who do not trust climate scientists due to the hyped up "climategate" scandal, it would ask them "what was the scandal?" they probably do not even know that after a thorough government investigation, the scientists had committed, surprise surprise no fraud after all. Doubt over climate change is perpetrated by think tanks and political groups financed by corrupt and selfish business interests who put short term profit above the ability to survive the future.

If we do not avert runaway climate change, it is likely we will all die in methane fueled fireballs in around 2100. I'm not joking. There are enormous undersea stores of "methane hydrates" which will start to release enormous eruptions of methane as the ocean acidifies. We have already past the point where the oceans can no longer hold any more of such gases. It is no longer a sink for greenhouse gases, so it just releases any extras. Methane clouds will dramatically aggravate global warming, sparking forest fires in many regions of the world. The Amazon rain forest has no naturally inbuilt resistance to such fires because it is used to a certain degree of moisture (it is a rain forest). As the Amazon heats up, it will disappear. It is expected that it cannot survive beyond 4 degrees of global warming. This means 2 degrees in effect, since when we pass 2 degrees, 4 degrees and so on will be inevitable. It is not known when global temperatures will stabilize, but by the time global warming stops, civilization will be dead.

There is not much time to act. Most people on this earth are so financially stretched that the only way to make a change is to have good leadership from the top. The rich must pay there fair share, because they have the financial capacity to do so. Politicians must take a lead, but not the current lot. We must realize that they have acted like The Boy Who Cried Wolf for so long, and we should not longer fall for the lies of the corrupt and morally bankrupt parties who have ruled us for the last few centuries. The people who have been running this planet for the last few hundred years are loosing it, and it is time for us to embrace the last echelons of democracy, by seeing past the damn of lies and propaganda and voting for parties that will either a) accidentally bankrupt the economy through failed economic policies or b) more hopefully "Green" parties that will oversee a transition to an economy that has healed itself through a radical yet feasible transition rather than a sudden bankruptcy.