Featured Stories  Other Pamplin Media Group sites  Good reasons
to be concerned for future  I am a concerned father, grandfather
and community member. Why am I concerned?  1) Two degrees:
Almost every government in the world has agreed that any warming
above a 2°C (3.6°F) rise would be unsafe. We have already raised
the temperature 0.8°C, and that has caused far more damage than
most scientists expected. A third of summer sea ice in the
Arctic is gone, and the climate dice are loaded for both
devastating floods and drought.  2) 565 gigatons: Scientists
estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and still have some
reasonable hope of staying below two degrees. Computer models
calculate that even if we stopped increasing CO2 levels now, the
temperature would still rise another 0.8 degrees above the 0.8
we’ve already warmed, which means we’re already four-fifths of
the way.  3) 2,795 gigatons: A team of London financial analysts
estimates that proven coal, oil a