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UK Releases Global Warming Report
ben_ writes "The UK Government's Foresight Project, tasked with visualizing the future, has published a hard-hitting report on the flooding consequences of global warming. The story's also on the BBC."
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here are some articles that disagree. Articles
This site provides links to resources skeptical of those sort of doomsday scenarios.
More likely, you've been hearing the same forecasts, and not paying enough attention to the timeframe. Many simulations show that a period of swimming like "Water World" increases the Earth's albdeo sufficiently that it *induces* a new ice age - several decades later. We're not that good at simulating something as complex as the climate out more than a few years. However, please realize that we *are* very good at measuring CO2 and its impact on the atmosphere, and that marginal scientists aside, no other variable - sunspots, orbital precession, yadda, yadda, has changed nearly enough - or in as obviously correlated a fashion - as atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Just because there's still a very very small number of scientists out there who question it does not really mean there's a "difference of opinion in the science community."
IIRC, the amount of ice in an iceberg that sits above the waterline is exactly the amount by which the volume shrinks when the ice melts, so the waterline remains the same. The main concern about melting ice and sea levels comes from the Antarctic ice cap, most of which sits on land.
OTOH, it's not just about sea levels; it's also about temperature and salinity. Melting the Arctic ice cap might not raise sea levels, but it would dump a whole bunch of cold fresh water into (relatively) warmer, salt water. This could have drastic effects on marine life and on major currents, including the Gulf Stream.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Guess what will happens if we add up HUGE (3.6 billion people) growing 10% a year economies of CHINA and INDIA. Offshore outsourcing and following knowledge transfer are the reasons for this exponential grows. Just imagine of the future impact of these economies when 3.6B people will start driving cars and use A/C. Don't forget that these nations don't really have environmental regulations.
While I certainly support family planning, I don't think the world's biggest problem is population growth. According to the CIA World Factboook the world's average fertility rate was 2.65 children born/woman in 2003. In another 20 years people will be complaining there aren't enough children being born to support the older population, something which is already happening in the richer countries.
It may hurt your sensitivities, but it's 100% true. Note that I work at Indian Affairs in Ottawa. You'd lead a mod to the Parliament Buildings if you saw how much money we waste on Indians every year. To be sure, a few do raise themselves out of squalor, but most are content to have us build them houses (which they destroy, the average house on a reserve lasts 5.5 years), smoke and drink alcohol.
Don't lecture until you've studied my friend.
Actually the population of the US hasn't been self sustaining for 30 years or so. We have immigrants that keep us growing. Japan has closed borders and they're having huges issues with an aging population.
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This is the problem with science in the context of public policy, and why that statement about the Bush administration's science policy is a bit out of whack.
Almost by definition, anything that recommends a solution is bad science. Science isn't very good at outcomes, but that's what politicians need.
In the case of global warming, it's difficult because the costs are imposed now, and the outcome is always in doubt. If we do X, there's no guarantee that X will happen. So are you willing to spend hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars and affect every industry for possibly no gain? Nope.
Science doesn't determine goals, direction, and priorities - politicians (and the public) do. And that's how it should be. Scientists don't pay a price if they're wrong.
Yes really, and by the way nice Troll.
No one is saying that the "Earth is hotter than it ever was" but you and the rest of the Anti-Warming FUD Trolls. What we are saying is that the Earth is warming, and a lot of our civilization is in danger of sever flooding. You mention it was warmer in the past, very true, and also one of the reasons why many Roman and Greek ports are now inland, the oceans in that area have receeded to some degree. Now imagine as warming kicks in (and the recent warming trend has been shown to be highly positively coorelated to the start of the industrial revolution, and continues to be postively coorelated with global pollution levels). Some of those ancient ports will be on the water again, the result? Many of our coastal cities are swimming.
Like it or not global warming is occuring, it's not the hottest it's ever been, but that doesn't matter, all that matters is that when it gets hotter, we're in trouble.
Yes. But that extra ice is the part that sticks out above the water. The weight of the ice (including the part sticking out) is exactly the same as that of the displaced water. So when the ice melts, the resulting water will have precisely the same volume as the hole in the water displaced by the ice.
I just read the BBC article and they're talking about the floods a couple/few years back. The main cause of flooding in recent years has been down to heavy rainfall on already saturated ground. I really can't see why this has anything to do with Global Warming.
:o) with the first recorded major flooding in the 1800s.
Here is a link about flooding in the Tonbridge region. The river Medway (which starts off as the Eden in my home-town) has been flooding for a long long time, as I learnt in Geography lessons
Can anyone who's read the report (slashdotted now) shed any light on why this is being attributed to GW?
Wow, I'm pro-nuclear power, but not like that :)
:-)
.72 MJ per hour to operate. For cars, you tend to need a lot more horsepower. Here's the conversion:
Ford was worse. At one point, they wanted to put a nuclear reactor into a car!
Whats the energy density of rice?
Pathetic. About 15 MJ/kg. And it's pretty hard to come up with kilograms of rice or corn when compared to other fuels.
It always amazing me how little food we animals need to eat to continue functioning and moving around.
Well, your body is generating about 200 watts of constant power. That means that you need about
1 Watt = 0.00134102209 horsepower
For a 150HP engine, you're talking about an energy drain of about 112 KW. That's 403 MJ of energy per hour. Realistically, cars only expend a lot of energy when accelerating. Thus an economy car tends to use more like 20 HP for cruising. That works out to a constant power requirement of about 15 KW. 15KW is 5.4 MJ per hour.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You are ill-informed on every point you make. If you are genuinely interested see the IPCC reports .
mt
Don't you mean the massive battle between the scientists and oil companies?
Only about 3 out of every 1000 scientists is an "environmental skeptic."
Do you also wonder about the massive battle between scientists about whether cigarettes cause cancer?
> Where is my logic flawed here?
You're forgetting that a lot of the ice is above the water. So when it melts the resultant water flows into the sea.
Let me try.
Weather is like fluctuations, which is quite unpredictable.
Climate is the trend.
The Energy Research and Development Administration was created in 1974, and spent tax payer dollars (AKA funding) on solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear energy research.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Folks, hate to break it to you; but it supposed to get warmer. It is the end of an Ice Age and part of the natural cycle of things. These tend to run in 1000 year cycles.
About 985AD, Leif Ericson's Viking colony in Greenland raised wheat. How, because it was warmer then than it is today! Circa 43BC, Julius Caesar wrote of the red wine vineyards in England. Sorry, it is too cold today to have such grapes in England.
The area that I live, Dallas, Texas has been under water a number of times. I'm not worried about it going back under water in my life time. So, it is not the end of the world, my children friends, but part of the natural cycle on this planet. Think in geologic time spans and it will make a lot more sense.
My 2,
Will
Although the local weather patterns are chaotic, general weather patterns are not. The Earth's temperature at a single point varies a lot, but the average temperature does not vary much. In fact, there are only so many factors that can influence long-term temperature trends, such as how much heat Earth absorbs, the amount of sunlight it receives, etc. Scientists *are* able to model these factors accurately, so long-term prediction of weather trends is possible.
As a real-world example, meteorologists are able to predict long-term weather patterns such as El Nino, whether the coming weeks will be unusally hot/cold/dry/wet, etc. Just because they're bad at telling you whether it's going to rain on Tuesday doesn't mean you can discredit their concerns about global warming.
--If the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
London today is beautifully sunny and spring like, yet only two days ago it was pissing with rain, grey and overcast. In two days time it might be back to the grey gloom, it might be sunshine and scattered showers or it might be a howling gale. This is because Britain has weather.
Three years ago I was living and working in Jakarta. I haven't been back since December '01 but my prediction is that the temperature is just under 30 celcius (its late evening now) with high humidity and they've probably had a heavy rain shower sometime in the past day or so. This is because Indonesia has climate.
[Checks the yahoo weather page for Jakarta]
Scattered thunderstorms, 100% humidity and 25 degrees celcius at 2000h WIT. I was a little high on the temperature prediction, so sue me.
Regards Luke
#include witty_one_liner.h