Global Warming? Better Figure Out How to Live With It

Also, check out U.S. News’ Q & A with Al Gore, and U.S. News’ story on the insurance industry cashing in on the global warming problem.

U.S. News & World Report:

Even if people everywhere unplugged their appliances, left their cars home, and shuttered their factories today, enough fossil fuel emissions are already in the atmosphere to heat up the planet an additional 1 degree Fahrenheit this century, experts say. In reality, however, emissions are increasing—and scenarios put the likely temperature increases at 2.5 to 8 degrees over the same span.

While politicians wrangle over mitigation, i.e., cutting emissions of gases like carbon dioxide and methane, some environmentalists and policymakers are increasingly focusing on the controversial concept of adaptation—preparing for changes increasingly seen as inevitable.

Adaptation has long been the third rail of green politics for fear it would pull the focus away from fixing the problem. For many, however, the next debate in the climate-change debate is not why the planet is warming, or if we can stop it. It is this: How do we live with it?

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From U.S. News & World Report

Neo-swamp coastal wetlands, such as those being created by planting mangrove trees in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, are seen as effective barriers to the more severe storms that could be the result of warmer air and rising sea levels. It’s just one way scientists are trying to get ahead of the global warming problem that many now see as inevitable.