[Reader-list] 17 Nobel Laureates, for what it is worth

[Nagraj Adve]

There's nothing in this post ln Real Climate that is new (I could not
access the attached memorandum itself), including the climate sceptics
crap at the end, but still worth reading.
Naga


On Wednesday, 17 Nobel laureates who gathered in Stockholm have
published a remarkable memorandum, asking for “fundamental
transformation and innovation in all spheres and at all scales in
order to stop and reverse global environmental change”. The Stockholm
Memorandum concludes that we have entered a new geological era: the
Anthropocene, where humanity has become the main driver of global
change. The document states:

    Science makes clear that we are transgressing planetary boundaries
that have kept civilization safe for the past 10,000 years. [...]
    We can no longer exclude the possibility that our collective
actions will trigger tipping points, risking abrupt and irreversible
consequences for human communities and ecological systems.
    We cannot continue on our current path. The time for
procrastination is over. We cannot afford the luxury of denial.

Mario Molina
Mario Molina (Nobel prize in chemistry 1995) signs the Stockholm Memorandum

The memorandum results from a 3-day symposium (attended also by the
king of Sweden) on the intertwined problems of poverty, development,
ecosystem deterioration and the climate crisis. In the memorandum, the
Nobel laureates call for immediate emergency measures as well as
long-term structural solutions, and they give specific recommendations
in eight key priority areas. For example in climate policy, they
recommend to:

    Keep global warming below 2ºC, implying a peak in global CO2
emissions no later than 2015 and recognise that even a warming of 2ºC
carries a very high risk of serious impacts and the need for major
adaptation efforts.

The memorandum was handed over to the members of the UN high-level
panel on global sustainability, who traveled to Stockholm in order to
discuss it with the Nobel laureates and experts at the symposium.

p.s. As a little reminder of the ongoing work of the merchants of
doubt, a small band of five or six “climate sceptic” protesters were
gathered outside the symposium, some of whom flown in from Berlin.
Their pamphlet identified them as part of the longstanding
anti-climate-science campaign of US billionaire Lyndon Larouche and
claimed that climate change is “a hoax” and an “insane theory”, the
global temperature measurements are “mere lies”, the Nobel laureates
meeting “a conspiracy” and the Stockholm Memorandum a “Fascist
Manifesto”. I approached one of the protesters who carried a banner
“against Green fascism” and asked him whether he seriously believes
what his pamphlet says, namely that our meeting is a “symposium for
global genocide”. He nodded emphatically and replied: “Yes, of
course!”