Well, to look on the bright side we won’t have to pay so much to heat the house
The Guardian has gotten hold of a copy of the newest IPCC report, and it's almost hilariously armaggeddonish. The IPCC report (and remember, this report has been watered down at the insistance of major industrial states that still, at this late hour, believe that they can make global warming go away just by closing their eyes and screaming "We can't HEAR you!!!") says that we might not have any more than eight years to start reducing CO2 emissions if we want to keep the temperature rise to stay at 2°C or less, otherwise the earth will be warming up to 6°C in the next 93 years.
Eight years to beat sense into the heads of all the industrial powers on this planet?
Could I have a pony to go along with that hideously optimistic timeline? It won't make up for the inevitable runaway global warming, but at least it will give us a way to get around town without driving a carbon fountain.
Portland is a miserable place to be when it gets up over 32°C (last year, we had a week and a half of 32-40° weather. The house kept us cool for a while, but eventually soaked up enough heat so it was an oven day and night, and the formerly temperate climate here has spoiled us.) If global warming ends up increasing the temperatures here by 6°C, not only will we lose the Mount Hood glaciers (and our water supply for a large chunk of the year), we'll (or our children) will end up with several months where the weather goes up above 32°
And we're in the north. I can't imagine what will happen in the southern USA, or what will happen to farming in the Midwest (or, as is more likely, in southern China, which appears to be where a large chunk of our foodstuffs [and plastics, often mixed together for our convenience] are coming from these days. Everything else has been outsourced to China, so why not food?) when the arable zone pushes up into western Canada (which, if they're lucky, won't have been given to the US as a mark of fealty by the US-worshipping Conservative Party) and leaves the USA with a large inland desert where it used to produce ridiculously large harvests before the water and the climate went away.
But, to look on the bright side, at least we might not have to buy 500 gallons of heating oil to keep this poorly insulated and increasingly decrepit house warm during "winter."