Procrastination Penalty
It's been a long time since The New York Review of Books, (God bless it), did anything that could rightly be called a book review, so I guess it's not so surprising that they chose to provide commentary on the latest IPCC's 4th Assessment 'Summary for Policymakers.' Still, I was surprised.
Bill McKibben summarizes the summary and judges it a "remarkably conservative document" -- dire warnings issued in poor prose, opaque and bloodless language. Literature, it ain't. McKibben does us the service of restating the most salient findings in plain English and underscores a notion he picked up from realclimate.org, that "climate change is a problem with a very high 'procrastination penalty'." That is to say, the longer we put off dealing with it, the worse the consequences get. Indeed, put it off too long, and there may be nothing we can do.
As a postscript: Procrastination is one thing the Review can't be accused of. Upon closer examination, I see the McKibben piece is from the March 15 issue.
Bill McKibben summarizes the summary and judges it a "remarkably conservative document" -- dire warnings issued in poor prose, opaque and bloodless language. Literature, it ain't. McKibben does us the service of restating the most salient findings in plain English and underscores a notion he picked up from realclimate.org, that "climate change is a problem with a very high 'procrastination penalty'." That is to say, the longer we put off dealing with it, the worse the consequences get. Indeed, put it off too long, and there may be nothing we can do.
As a postscript: Procrastination is one thing the Review can't be accused of. Upon closer examination, I see the McKibben piece is from the March 15 issue.
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