Domain: gwynnedyer.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to gwynnedyer.com.
Comments · 6
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Climate Wars: Interesting series on this stuff
A bit dated from 2009, but a good series on future-casting the Geo-politics of climate change. http://gwynnedyer.com/radio/
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Re:North Korea
So what happens if nuclear-armed China and India lose 38% and 25% of their food production capability? It's not something to worry about in the next decade but beyond that if GW really starts taking a bite out of their food production... If I was going to put my money on something triggering a nuclear war that would be it.
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Why it matters
Antarctica is one of the major feedbacks:
The protective covering of floating ice that has shielded the Arctic Ocean from solar heating for so long is now going fast, and we will probably see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the August-September period as early as the 2020s. Mercifully, this is the smallest of the three major feedbacks in terms of its impact – but it triggers a bigger one.
The warmer air and water in the Arctic then starts to melt the permanently frozen ground and coastal seabed (permafrost) that extends over more than ten million square km. (3 million sq. mi.) of territory, a considerably larger area than Australia. This melting releases a huge amount of methane that has been locked into the ground for millions of years. Methane is a far more effective warming agent than carbon dioxide, and so we spin closer to runaway.
[...]
Those are the killer feedbacks. Earth has lurched suddenly into a climate 5-6 degrees C higher than now a number of times in the past. The original warming usually came from massive, long-lasting volcanic eruptions that put a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere – but in every case it was feedbacks like these that carried the planet up into a temperature regime where there was a massive dieback of animals and plants.
Considering we're already experiencing major extinctions I'm not sure I want to stack ecological disasters.
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Climate Wars
Gwynne Dyer has written a book that is an excellent starting point for this issue: Climate Wars. He is a journalist and military historian who spent a year or two interviewing military planners who see exactly this issue on the horizon. Check out his website for a three-part radio series based on the book, for those who might not want to invest the time to read the entire book.
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Re:Bad Title
Actually a generation of automobile drivers that were born and grew up in a world with automobiles are much better drivers then those who haven't. The rate of accidents are much higher in developing countries where most drivers are first generation drivers.
Ref: http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Smeed's%20Law.txt
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Re:My government is hypocritical
As a U.S. citizen, I must say that I am utterly embarrased at the actions of my government. On the one hand, there's no way that they'll let Iran or North Korea even so much as attempt to build a reactor, but as soon as India wants on the scene, oh well, no problem. After all, we wouldn't want them to cut us off from that practically free labor force, right?
It's because the neocons think China is the new USSR, thus the best way to contain China is by encircling them with military allies (if they have nukes that's only better).
This article from a few weeks ago gives some background though misses the prediction on the passage of the deal.