Global warming worse than thought

On this first smog day this spring in Toronto, there’s grim news on the climate.

A new MIT study widely reported in the news suggests that the Earth will warm about twice as much as earlier predicted.  While previous estimates averaged 2.4 degrees Celcius increase this century, the MIT projections average 5.2 degrees, taking into account global dimming and other factors.

Keep in mind that Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has calculated that a 5 degree celcius temperature increase would reduce the Earth’s carrying capacity to 1 billion.  Given that current population trends will have us clearing 10 billion shortly before the half century mark, we are perhaps looking at killing off 90% of humanity shortly afterwards with our recklessness.