Bad news day

The global warming sites will be busy over the next few days digesting a couple of new papers in Nature talking about the huge reduction in fossil fuel use believed to be needed just to keep warming within 2 degrees:

Both papers come to the same broad conclusion, summarized in our figure, that unless humankind puts on the brakes very quickly and aggressively (i.e. global reductions of 80% by 2050), we face a high probability of driving climate beyond a 2°C threshold taken by both studies as a “danger limit”....

We feel compelled to note that even a "moderate" warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture.

Well, I was hoping to buy an apartment on the moon by 2050 to avoid all that trouble, but NASA may be spoiling my contingency plans:

NASA will probably not build an outpost on the moon as originally planned, the agency's acting administrator, Chris Scolese, told lawmakers on Wednesday. His comments also hinted that the agency is open to putting more emphasis on human missions to destinations like Mars or a near-Earth asteroid.

This is just goofy if you ask me. Look at all the trouble with just piecing together a modestly sized space station, coming up with a new rocket to get there, and the unresolved issue of protection from deep space radiation. If you can't even work out to have a base on a place only a couple of days away from the earth, you may as well give up on Mars planning for now too.

And what will astronauts do on an asteroid that a space probe couldn't do as well?

Oh well, at least I'll be able to live in a cyberworld from my underground bunker (while the backyard bakes over summer) when Kevin Rudd's high speed internet comes on line.

Oh, wait a minute. Not even that?