9 Reasons Why 2013 Was Not The Best Year In Human History
9 Reasons Why 2013 Was Not The Best Year In Human History
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/16/3034511/climate-bad-news-2013/

If news about the world's environment scares you, please look away now. Nothing new to see here, move along. It's all doom, but you knew that already. This post is just troll bait. It's not my fault and anyway I won't be around to see it. Carry on regardless and continue to enjoy your SUV and 3rd world fine green beans while you still can. Maybe a 3rd runway and fracking will let us keep our collective feet on the accelerator pedal long enough to do, ugh, what?

Globally, we've probably hit peak kids and the birth rate is now below replacement levels ( Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24835822 ). But people alive now will live longer so total population will continue to grow for a while. It should peak at approximately 11bn and maybe we can grow enough food to avoid too much chaos as it falls back to a sustainable 3bn or so in a few hundred years. It's going to be a bumpy ride but we can get this sucker down on the ground in one piece for a soft landing that most of us walk away from. Or maybe human nature means the best we can hope for are pockets of sanity and not too much attention from the four horsemen.

Here's some stuff that may have happened in 2013 according to the article.
1. Global CO2 levels hit 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history.
2. It's getting hotter, faster. If you think that's on pause, you're looking at the wrong stats.
3. A huge number of animals and plants face extinction.
4. The world suffered deadly heat, drought, and wildfires.
5. Choking pollution shut down population centers.
6. Countries suffer disasters, but still commit to doing even less about emissions.
7. Sea levels broke records, amplifying the effects of storms and floods.
8. Much of the world is going double or quits on fossil fuels.
9. We are woefully under-counting methane emissions.

And I'll add to these,
10. We hit peak fish.
11. A few more multi-drug resistant bacteria appeared

And there's the catch with limited models and modelling. Perhaps population growth doesn't catch up with us, but exponential growth in resource use, energy use and pollution generation still does.

Here's a sound track from back in 1971 in a previous period of strong environmental consciousness. Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me" (And it's got a saxophone solo) Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Lyrics) Back then, we didn't think we'd last 10 years. Here we are 40 years later and it's all the same, just more so. The models can to be quite good at showing trends but they're not good on timescales. Perhaps in 30 or 40 years time our kids will be having the same conversation with their kids. "We got away with it so far. But it looks like you're screwed. Here's what they said in 2014 and it's still true, just more so."
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It has to do with the fact that we're frying the planet

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