Global Warming No Matter What

According to a news blurb in New Scientist, global warming is now inevitable even if all greenhouse emissions were to stop at 2000 levels immediately (way beyond Kyoto, baby). The reason is basically that the oceans take much longer to warm than air and land, and so they are keeping temperatures lower than they otherwise would be. As the oceans slowly absorb the increased atmospheric heat, though, we'll see our temperatures go up even further.

The bad news is that even if we commit ourselves to no further increases in greenhouse emissions (the furthest thing from reality at the moment), temperatures will still increase for the next 100 years or so and global sea levels will rise several inches at minimum, dooming low-lying countries like Togo no matter what. The even worse news is that if we keep going as we're going and wait until things start to get bad before we start making drastic emissions cuts, it'll take another ~100 years on top of that for the oceans to stop warming, meaning things could get VERY uncomfortable before they get better if we don't start cutting emissions ASAP. Happy Friday.