Amateur Climate Change

ice cubes

This final part of the year is always an opportunity for making a balance.

In my opinion the balance is clearly negative as we are still sending not only too much CO2 to the atmosphere, we are sending more than ever. And this is the important part, because any possible improvement will not be effective until it gets a real effect on emissions.

The annual meeting in Doha, COP18, were not a significant step forward, and in spite of alleviating Obama’s victory and strong commitments in renewable energy as in Germany, the global emission path is still upwards with the driving force of emerging economic powers, mainly China.

In the other hand renewables are growing in many places and electric cars are not just in the labs.

I do not think the skeptics are winning the concept battle, I think there is more and more people convinced about climate change in most places of the world, the problem is that much more action is needed and fast. Maybe the two main topics this year have been the record low ice surface in the Artic and extreme weather events as Sandy hurricane, just in time to show american skeptics what is coming next. They are important because one is very visual (my cousin, not involved in those issues, told me se was impressed by the ice surface record), and the other very important for our everyday life.

I have not written about those two subjects for lack of time, as with many other posts I have in the waiting list, so my personal balance is that I have not written about many interesting issues I should but at the same time I am happy for writing more than previous two years, arriving to 100 posts, and above all, I have learnt a lot and I still want to write posts about climate change although I doubt about the approach or style.

So, happy new year and let’s hope we, the world, will go a step forward in 2013. Because we can and we must.