Slashdot Mirror
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."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Is there really any way the modern world will slow down to accomodate the environment? Personally I think most leaders have already thrown in the towel. Our best bet is to fund family planning to prevent the 6 kids per family that we see in some countries. The planet just can't sustain 11 billion people.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Nothing wrong with that. It's when people go from "I haven't seen enough proof" to "which means that global warming or cooling can't exist, so there should be no regulations whatsoever placed on manufacturing" that stupidity rears its ugly head.
I'm usually one to jump on the Stop Global Warming bandwagon, but the pretty picture in the BBC article sure does seem to indicate a large range of probablities between the "best case" and "worst case" scenarios.
In the "worst case", the entirity of the British Isles are inundated.
In the "best case", everything but the coastline becomes a desert.
While this looks like very good science, it's not going to be very useful as a basis for public policy. Science is all about showing all possible outcomes, in hopes of divining the truth. Public policy tends towards simple, overly general statements like "Global Warming will flood London" or "There is no threat from Global Warming". To the frustration of many, I'm sure, this report seems to support both positions.
On a technical note, when I hit the Executive Summary page before the Slashdot story went live, around 11am CDT, it said "This document has been accessed 361 times." A refresh a few minutes later bumped it up to 369, so it's a real-time counter. It'll be interesting to see how the Slashdot effect changes that number, and whether the counter survives the Local Warming of their web server.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Nobody's claiming that anthropogenic sources would be the SINGLE reason that global warming may be happening. The bizarre thing is when the anti-environmentalist fruitcakes claim that since it wouldn't be the only source of warming then it should be ignored. It's like seeing a guy get hit by a car, then walking over to him and kicking him. Yeah, the car did more damage, but that doesn't mean the kick had no effect.
There's miles and miles of ice over Antarctica (a land mass). If it all melts, ocean levels will rise. However, if the Artic ice cap melts, ocean levels will be unaffected, because it's already floating.
The greatest threat from global warming isn't rising sea levels, it's global climate change that will destroy most of the current 'breadbaskets' of the world. Not only that, but the increase in the amount of energy in the weather system of the planet will create more powerful storms, causing worse floods, and making them more erratic, meaning the land will dry out, and then it will rain heavily, washing away topsoil.
I think if you didn't call it global warming, but called it global climate change, more people would have
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
1. There's been a measured increase in Solar activity and radiation, which is *where* we get our heat from, obviously. Once the Sun gets over it's current temper tantrum, temperatures will get more moderate.
2. If Dinosaurs ruled a tropical paradise 65 million years ago, wouldn't the current trend of Global Warming just be the Earth returning to a Tropical state?
3. Isn't is just a little bit arrogant on the part of humanity to assume that we really affect the environment that much? What about bovine methane? What about a single volcanic eruption spewing more CFC's then we've ever thought about using?
I mean, even the Russians are saying Kyoto just kills economies...
I think this was just sponsored by the upcoming release of "The Day After Tomorrow." We all know that global warming is happening, it's just extra convenient that this comes out right when a movie with a similar plot is about to come out.
stuff |
Global Warming may not exist. What should we do? We have two possibilities: Take measures to curb CO2 emissions, or go on like we always have. If we go on like we always have and global warming does exist, we're screwed. If we go on like we always have and global warming doesn't exist, we'll be fine. If we take measures and global warming does exist, we save ourselves. If we take measures and global warming does not exist, we lose some money.
Clearly, the cost/benefit/risk assesment points to taking measures now, because the possible cost of not taking measures (end of civilzation) is far too great.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I've seen some responses already that doubt global warming, which is good, and they're more articulate than usual.
Yes, global warming is real. Do we have anything to do with it? Probably not. Claims that our production of carbon dioxide will destroy life as we know it demonstrate ignorance of how the entire carbon cycle works. Plankton and plants absolutely THRIVE on carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen as waste. This is elementary school biology, folks.
The Earth will not bake us to oblivion, and we will not cause some horrific ice age. Things we DO need to be concerned about are ozone depletion and deforestation, because these directly affect the chemical cycle of this planet. The fact is, we simply don't know enough about the long-term trends of terrestrial climate to make credible doomsday scenarios. As it is, we are recovering from the "Little Ice Age," which means we're going to warm up. The planet has its own way of keeping the climate stable and self-sustaining. Thinking humans can make or break it is arrogant and egotistical, to say the least.
I am not a climatologist, but I wish people would avoid jumping onto bandwagons whose positions they have not examined with any depth.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
. . . they'd be called F.U.D.
Follow the money, and ask yourself:
Who is more likely to be venal, deceptive, and prone to manipulate data:
Flacks for fossil fuel industries and pro-business think tanks, or atmospheric scientists and climatologists?
Great, so we are forced into another ice age, we lose parts of the population, we lose parts of cities...
It's part of Earth's cycle. We sped it up, sure, we could have prevented it, possibly...
Yes, this will be modded as a troll or overrated but the cycle will go on with or w/o us. We are an insignificant part of the history of our planet and although we are intelligent enough to continue to be here I don't think that the earth cares one way or the other.
Once that's the opinion of everyone we will be a lot better off.
Yes. The amount of ice above the surface, converted to liquid water, combined with the ice below the water line, is enough to raise sea levels. Water is not just removed by sea water freezing. Precipitation also piles up ice on top of already formed ice sheets, removing even more water from the oceans (and leaving the salt content of that water behind.)
I think the change in the amount of salt in the seas is a bigger issue in the near future as it has the potential to alter the currents in the oceans, as ice melts and dilutes the salt content.
My take on the whole thing is that it's normal for the earth to go through large climate changes and that many coastlines have been above and under water, even in human history. What I'm not convinced of is that mankind is too blame, or through changing our behavior can actually do anything to alter what just may be a natural cycle. We may be as much at the mercy of climate change as we are to tornados and hurricaines.
Wow... the British have a "foresight project"?? They're actually recognizing that the reactive nature of democracy might be a disaster when it comes to environmental issues?? They're spending taxpayer money on problems that haven't occurred yet?? Amazing.
It occurs to me that over on my side of the Atlantic, we have an administration almost universally described as "the worst administration in modern history in terms of manipulating science to suit its politics."
I guess, given our political climate, we could try to start up a "nosight project"... "Project See No Evil", maybe? Obviously it would have to be an offshoot of the Department of Homeland Security, and its focus would be determinining how terrorists are actually responsible for global warming.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
A hell of a lot of people are affected by irresponsible idiots breeding like rabbits.
Burn more coal and oil. Forget more friendly alternatives, BushCo doesn't make money when you don't burn fossil fuels.
All while Bush is the only president to ever provide funding for alternative fuel sources. Yeesh. I've got a much better idea. Let's make cars based on Stirling engines powered by the radioactive decay of Pu-238. You'll only need about 1/2 ton of the stuff per car, and your vehicle could run for hundreds of years!
Or we could simply realize that as the problem gets worse economic pressures will naturally solve the problem.
FWIW, hydrogen fuel cells have some serious energy density problems. Gasoline has an energy density of 44MJ/kg. Hydrogen fuel cells appear to be about 15-30 MJ/kg. And the more advanced the design, the more expensive, complex, and dangerous it gets.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
it's really not popular, but I don't agree with the doomsday global warming scenarios either. ...I mean, even the Russians are saying Kyoto just kills economies...
Cool! So if we don't agree with scientific findings or worse yet, if those findings might cost us money, then those findings are not valid?
I guess the people who are trying to wish away evolution are going to wish away global warming as well.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
especially since there are at least a dozen ways we're likely to wipe ourselves out before that future
You really think so? It's been widely suggested that among the top three modern contenders - global nuclear war, asteroid strike, and ecological disaster - none would quite do the trick. A nasty enough asteroid strike might reduce the population down to a few thousand or even a few hundred humans wealthy or powerful enough to live in shelters for a century or two... but probably not extinct us as a species.
Today, other than essentially irrelevent theories like "We're actually living in a computer simulation and it gets shut down" or "alien species decide to exterminate us" (irrelevant because little or nothing can be done even if they are possible), about the only reasonable chance we seem to have of causing our own extinction is nano-terrorism - the "grey goo" scenario. And, really, that may not turn out to be any more reasonable than yesterday's fear that "a nuclear weapon will set the atmosphere on fire."
I think when people say environmental issues are about our survival as a species, they overstate the case. But survival isn't all that matters; there's quality of life, too. Global warming probably has no chance to wipe us out as a species, but it certainly could - and probably will - lead to widespread famine and disease.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
A hell of a lot of people are affected by irresponsible idiots breeding like rabbits.
Really? Who? In every developed country, there's more than enough food for everyone. Anything that can't be grown locally (due to a variety of problems) can be easily imported. The only ones I see without food are underdeveloped countries where they can't or won't develop a strong enough economy to meet the needs of the people.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The problems pop up when peaple try to show some type of "link" that a warming or cooling trend is a direct cause of anything done by humans. THAT is psuedo-science.
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.
For all intents and purposes, yes. There is a slight variance because of the difference in density between freshwater ice and saltwater liquid. The mass of a freshwater iceberg is equal to the weight of saltwater displaced, but the volume of freshwater is slightly more.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Just because something is phrased in an inflamatory manner, doesn't make it wrong. The thing is that its not just natives, there's plenty of white trash with 9 or 10 kids and sitting around collecting welfare. I don't understand why you like paying for other people who decided "making babies" was a career. Other people's right to be fuckwads has to end where it starts impacting everyone else.
What then? The companies can produce twice as much, at no real extra cost, precicely because they are more efficient.
The corporate doomsday scenario (companies going bust, trying to curb emissions) is only valid if you assume greater efficiency is impossible and that companies are doomed to produce unusable, useless pollutants in vast quantities.
There is no reason to believe this scenario. Indeed, it is a lot LESS likely than global warming! All you need to boost efficiency is a better method of production. Get more out, for a given amount in. There's a limit to how efficient you can get, but we're nowhere near that level, yet.
Added to all this - research costs money. Spending money improves the circulation and therefore the economy. Hoarding all the cash in the pockets of a hundred or so individuals does nothing for industry or the economy as a whole.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The oceans bulge around the equator because of the earth's spin, so more liquid water == more equatorial bulge, and therefore rising sea levels (in some part of the world).
Or you add Total Cost Taxes to cars. Want an H2? Pay $15,000 extra for guzzling gas and spewing harmful emissions. Want to use your factory to pollute? Expect a nice hefty Tax on not using pollution controls. Once the government gets out of the hands of their corporate overlords, we'll be able to implement a system where the people who want to be pigs pay for their transgressions instead of spreading the cost of defending oil supplies, cleaning up the environment, complying with the Kyoto protocol, and researching alternative fuels over the entire population. I don't see why my money should go to secure the extra oil that you use. All mideast operations and foreign aid should come out of a tax on vehicles that get less than 25mpg.
Add economic costs to wasteful items, and people will choose the non-wasteful ones. It's capitalism, baby!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Sure, why retaliate if somebody flies an airplane into a building? Every single one of the victims would've died of something anyway. The terrorists just sped it up.
I don't think that the earth cares one way or the other.
Even if the earth did, there are probably plenty of planets just like earth. The universe won't care.
On the other hand, we live here. I don't believe we have "a responsibility to take care of the earth" or whatever, and the extinction of the human race isn't a big deal in the cosmic sense, but exactly why shouldn't we try to survive?
Except, you know, it might not get over it, at least not completely... AFAIK, current solar models suggest that sun slowly grows hotter and hotter through it's normal life. So I wouldn't gamble on current situation being a tantrum that will pass. It could even be just the opposite, there was a "cold tantrum" that's ending now, and we could in fact get a "hot tantrum" next.
I guess. But don't expect it to become a stable "paradise" very quickly, be prepared for a few thousand years of total climate chaos...
No, it's not at all arrogant. I mean, just think how big part of earth land area is controlled by human activity. And the thing about human activity is that it's increasing, and I don't really see it decrease. I mean, just do the math, and consider size of human population on Earth, and how it'll keep growing, and growing... There's no way 3rd world cultures and economies can develop to 1st world phase (close to zero population growth) very fast, and even if they could, 1st world has enough trouble trying to figure out what to do with society where half of people are retired and expect to live off the work of those who are still at working age.
Also, stuff like volcanic eruptions are spikes, human activity is constant (plus it's *adding* to volcanic activity etc not replacing it). Also, bovine methane is still mostly produced by *our* cows, and we control their populations.
So it's us all right, we're *not* too insignificant, quite the opposite.
and just why do you think all those cows are there?
you will never see a holstein "in the wild" because modern cows are the creation of human agriculture. they exists because we demand that they do.
and we are responsible for their belches. and their manure. and the soile they erode.
2 1337 4 u!
Oh, wait. All those things came about by government regulation, despite the huge fuss that private industry kicked up about it, and despite all the right-wing gloommongers predicting instant economic meltdown if we outlawed pea-soupers. And in fact they'd be impossible to get any other way, by the basic, Economics 101 argument of the Tragedy of the Commons. Isn't it remarkable how little economics people know who say that there is an "economic" solution to every problem?
If just a fraction of the trillions of dollars which have been wasted on the political, economic and military defence of oil interests were diverted into R&D of alternatives, we would have a cheap, clean energy source by now. Countries could be more secure: they could be self sufficient in energy and not be at the mercy of oil producing countries. Most importantly, they would not need to piss off a large section of the world's population to power their cars and industries.
OLPC Australia
Or we could simply realize that as the problem gets worse economic pressures will naturally solve the problem.
HUH? This is exactly the kind of problem where economic pressure completely fails to drive solutions to the problem.
As long as we can't partition off the world into little cubicles where folks are forced to live with the results of their own actions, problems like this will always be soemone else's fault. Economic pressure will continue to push people in the direction of letting the atomosphere deal with the filth that they produce (at $0/per ton, it's hard to beat!)
Social or Political pressure may force a change, but economic pressure will always favor individuals making maximum use of shared resources regardlees of the cumulative effect.
Stories like this should be flagged -1, Flamebait before they are posted. What more can you say about this pseudoscientific crap? The idea that you can manipulate climate to some unspecified favorable end by manipulating the CO2 emissions of wealthy nations is absurd. Repetition of the same tired arguments does not make them anymore true. I can understand that increasing global temperature will cause sea-level to rise, but what is the cause and effect with flooding? There is none. Another thing, what is worse than global warming? Global cooling! I for one like an early spring. Happy earthday everyone.
an ill wind that blows no good
When not a single weather person (meteorologist or whatever they are) cannnot tell me if it is going to rain 24 hours from now, in my local area, using the most advanced models available, why should I expect some group of scientists to tell me that the globe is warming over the next 20 years? I've seen alot of data from those weather baloons, etc... Depending on the way you interpret the data, it appears we could be increasing by a couple of degrees over the next 10 years or DECREASING over that same time. The margin of error is enough that it could go either way. All this doomsday "save the planet from evil humans!" BS is just that, a bunch of scare tactic BS. There is no solid evidence, and it doesn't look like there will be anytime soon. We just can't handle something as complex as the weather, yet.
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
"All while Bush is the only president to ever provide funding for alternative fuel sources. "
Really? Didn't Carter provide funding for alternative energy? He was the one who put in the alternative energy tax credit.
Do you have a link to a non right wing source that backs up your statement that bush is the ONLY president to provide funding for alternative energy.
"Or we could simply realize that as the problem gets worse economic pressures will naturally solve the problem."
Or maybe it won't. You have no guarantee of that.
The problem is that the price of natural resources fluctuates according to extraction and not total volume. For example if we increase logging in all national forests the price of wood will go down because the supply will increase. The supply is not increasing because there are more trees in the world it's increasing because they are being cut faster.
In our current scenario we will see the rate of extraction continue at current levels until there is no more and then the market will crash. In other words rationing will not be made in a sane and gradual manner it will come abruptly when we run out.
Finally the atmosphere may go out of whack way before we run out of any fuel. I don't think that it will happen gradually either.
evil is as evil does
The bigger threat is agenda based junk science.
www.junkscience.com
Sure. We've already got solutions. People just don't like them. The *only* semi-safe, inexpensive (or possibly inexpensive) material with higher energy densities than fossil fuels are atomic materials. While it may be infeasible to put a reactor in your car (although the waste materials I suggested *would* work), small reactors could be used at pumping stations to produce cheap hydrogen/oxygen fuels.
The core of the problem is getting past this silliness that anything that generates power == evil. There's no way to extract energy from a fuel without leaving some waste. The trick is that nature has been doing all the grunt work up until now. We can't continue pulling fossil fuels and natural gasses and expect them to continue forever. We've got to build more powerful energy providers. Thus nuclear plants produce more power, expend less waste, and create hydrogen fuels that are exceedingly clean and cheap.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
An enormous amount of CO2 was sequestered in the Proterozoic and Paleozoic in the form of marine deposited carbonate rocks (limestone CaCO3) and most of the worlds coal was deposited in the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian. The burning of fossil fuels is only circumvention of the carbon cycle, where these carbon sinks would otherwise be subducted and released through volcanic activity this process of recycling has been going on for millions of years. The sum total of ALL INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY is akin to a few more active volcanoes on the world._ wa rming/page.cfm?pageID=965
m l
The CO2 emissions according to this site
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global
For the last 245 years for the top 20 industrialized countries are roughly half of the CO2 emissions of the 12 most currently active volcanoes
9581925304 M tons in 245 years - volcanoes
4960020000-M tons in 245 years -Industrial Countries
http://www.ees.nmt.edu/Geop/mevo/geochem/co2.ht
That's a half-truth at best. I'm assuming you're not talking about nuclear power, first of all, since its funding history is long. Carter did fund it, in a sense, by offering tax credits to homeowners investing in solar energy.
You twisted my words. I did not say "alternative energy sources", I said "alternative fuel sources". Heating your home is a lot different than powering your car.
I agree that hydrogen is a dumb way to go.
Perhaps Bush is pushing for it because it will keep energy under the thumb of huge corporations.
I think he's pushing it because it's the only alternative offered at the moment. It's worth mentioning that his administration has offered up enormous tax breaks to people who buy hybrid cars. Whether you want to thank Bush or Congress for that is up to you. It still doesn't change the fact that it's never happened before.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"In our current scenario we will see the rate of extraction continue at current levels until there is no more and then the market will crash."
It is much easier to extract oil from a field that is full than from one that has been drilled previously. This is part of the reason why so much oil comes from the middle east. The older oil fields in the US, etc. are more expensive to operate and thus not profitable Extraction levels will slow as the fields are depleted (and thus become more expensive to operate). No sharp crash.. Further, not all fields are of the same size; some will run low before others.
ice from the north pole displaces just as much water when it's ice as when it's water - because it's floating, melting that shouldn't change the level.
BINGO! You are correct. But acknowledging this fact would mess up a perfectly dandy argument in favor of the Kyoto protocol. That's why it tends to get conveniently overlooked...
Okay, the impending Ice Age caused by global warming will create huge glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, mostly Europe, but global warming is causing all the glaciers currently in Europe to melt.
So, are we both saved and doomed, by the huge glaciers being formed as they simultaneously melt?
Boy, this global warming is tricky stuff!
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
My point is that Carter was intensely intenterted in energy policy. It is inconcevable that Bush is the only president in history to provide funding for alternative fuel sources.
I am simply asking for a citation from a non right wing source.
evil is as evil does
Has the average temperature on Earth been going up recently? Yes. Is it due to human activity? Maybe. Can we do anything to stop it? Perhaps. Is the planet likely to go to hell within any of our lifetimes? Probably not.
But I don't care about that. I'm in favor of efforts to reduce noxious emissions for an entirely different reason - my health. Sure, the EPA has some restrictions on what kind of crap you can spew into the air, but the air in and around most US cities is nasty! It's easy not to notice if you spend all of your time in the city, but whenever I go for a long bike ride, where I need to get a lot of oxygen into my lungs, I can really tell that the air near big cities is harder to breathe. And believe me, it's no fun to be finishing a hard bike ride, taking in deep lungs-full of air, and finding yourself stuck behind a bus spewing out black soot.
I've seen plenty of posts already arguing that we shouldn't bear the burden of reducing emisisons for a dubious long-term gain. But I don't think anyone would disagree that doing so would clean up the air around us in the short-term, and that alone, to me, is worth the cost.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
Wow, economic wishful thinking... unfortunately this is not the way it works. By the time market pressure will be strong enough to push a major change in the motoring industry, a lot of damage will already have been done. It is always more expensive and difficult to de-polluate than to change our consumption habits. You need real political initiative if you want to boost alternative energy.
On the other side, I don't know what's wrong with Americans, but it seems like they always think that Kyoto is an international evil plot to crush their economy. The fact is, even if some of you can doubt the evidences of global warning presented by many indepedent and credible scientists, you still have to admit that reducing air pollution will necessarily benefit Earth's population (reducing asthma and other breathing disease, improving air quality, etc.). The problem is that USA actually has the highest emission rate per capita. Considering that, I think that you are accountable to the rest of the world for polluting the air (there's still no borders for air...). When you talk about pollution, you need to think globally.
The rhetoric used by Bush is also ridiculous (saying that the Kyoto protocol will heavily damage USA's economy). Germany has ecological laws that actually created new jobs and they have already almost reached their Kyoto's objectives. When you develop a new sector, you create new jobs. It's true that you will lose jobs in the "old" sector, but manpower will be reallocated to the new ressources. Every good economist should know that.
It is also true that oil reserve won't be everlasting. Hence, they need to be preserved for more important use than "burning" them. The US government has the moral (toward its population and the rest of the world) and economical (to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence toward oil-producing country) motivation to ratify the Kyoto engagement.
I thought it was Carlin, tried doing a quick search for it and ran across this one, which made me laugh more and think more:
"There is nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine . . . been
here 4 1/2 billion years. We've been here, what, a 100,000 years, maybe
200,000. And we've only been engaged in heavy industry a little over 200
years. 200 years versus 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think
that somehow we're a threat? The planet isn't going away. We are." -- George Carlin
*DrugCheese rants*
The earth will not reach a historic temperature high (historic here means in earth history) with the current predictions. Before last ice age, it was warmer than it is now.
What is insteresting is that of the last 250.000 years of climate data collected, the past 14.000 years since the last ice age has been unusually stable. This stabillity can well be shifted enough to trigger instabillity by the predicted changes.
There is very little reason to doubt that exactly the stabillity of climate has permited the rise of human civilisation. With this stabillity there were no longer need to live as nomads and civilisations could evolve.
One could interpreet the migration as a result of global warming, I wont, there are too many other factors. But it may become a problem - the earth population is exploding while the fertile land is decreasing.
In the search for fertile land people will migrate. This will cause problems such as civil wars or instability of civilized nations as they give in to the pressure - your continued consumption and security may be threatend.
The point here, really is that there are so many unpredictable scenarios that has a huge range of impacts. The only sane thing to do is to minimize our influence and hope the best.
The non-believers of GW usually deny it because it will cost money here and now to take counter messures, they don't think about the posible economic gain in the long run. Say eg the US depence on oil.
Evidently some day there will be no more. Discussions are on when. Meanwhile US insist not to do anything because it will affect profit in the next decade - even if the negative effect will be earned back in the long run.
Say you have a that runs 1 miles a galon, You can buy one that runs 10 but it costs 10.000$. With the current price of gas 1$/galon, you have to drive about 11000 miles to earn it back. This is done in one year. (numbers made up for easy calculation). And then you say, but it will take a whole year to earn it back - it's not worth it!
Insisting not to take positive countermessures is the same thing - uh no, it will just cost a lot of money here and now. Try look at the postive perspectives of improving efficiency.
What non-scientists sometimes don't understand is that global warning is correlated to human activity above and beyond any natural cycles of the earth. There is some small chance that that correlation is a fluke, a statistical aberration, but statistics is a another very concrete science which is well used by good scientists. And these statistics give very strict confidence limits on the statements made by scientists; generally these confidence limits hover around 5%, 1% or 0.1%. So yes, there is at worst a 5% chance that the correlation between human activity and global climate change is due to natural cycles, but that leaves a 95% chance that it is US who are changing things.
Take a stats course, then take a geology course. Inform yourself and then consider the evidence for yourself. Don't simply take for granted that an oil funded think tank with a political agenda is going to present unbiased evidence.
Good luck earth.
The better term is "Climate Change," which nullifies all the snide remarks about snowstorms and such. It was called "Global Warming" when less was known about it, though the majority of the media still refer to it that way. Most models show that some parts of the planet will get colder (such as northern Europe if the Gulf Stream is curtailed due to ocean salinity). Also, the energy in the atmosphere will increase, causing more violent storms. Witness the hurricane that hit Brazil earlier this year, where those kind of storms have never been before.
:-). We can only infer from historical patterns and climate modeling, which the critics (and vested interests) attack and attack and attack while continuing to buy those SUVs and live in places with incredible energy requirements just to stay comfortable (e.g. Phoenix, Las Vegas). Remeber also that there are two kinds of skeptics, those who are open to new information and willing to be convinced, and those who will never be convinced (for many reasons) and will just nitpick arguments to death.
Unfortunatly, there really isn't any "conclusive data". We need to build a second Earth so we can use it for experiments
The main thing that would happen (according to most models) is that weather patters will change. Areas that are currently fertile and produce much of the world's food supply could suddenly (within decades) stop producing.
Even the US Department of Defence feels that this is the biggest threat that the U.S. faces in the mid-to-long term.
I'm not saying every car should be scrapped (though you'll have a hard time justifying that SUV to me), but that we really need to consider our actions now.
It just seems to me the conserv(e)ative thing to do would be not make dratic changes in the environment, and also to understand that the supply of fossil fuels is finite, and work to preserve our standard of living for future generations.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Aargh. Scientists are funded by government. In the US, both houses of congress and the executive branch are run by people, hmm, how to put this mildly, disinclined to regulating energy.
If climate researchers were purely concerned with funding, then American science would be contrary to the science of other countries with goernments more inclined to strong regulation. Fortunately for science, this isn't the case, and for the most part, US science is in the same ballpark as other countries'.
This particular dog has been hunting way too long by now. It's just incredibly irritating to see how it keeps getting sent out all the time.
If I knew where my bread was buttered I'd just shut up, frankly. That's bad enough.
What's worse is having to have such altruism as I can muster painted as opportunism. Bah! I may be wrong, but I'm not doing all this squawking for the money!
Of all the global-warming-is-bunk propaganda ploys out there, (and they're all getting wheeled out today, it seems) this is the one that most effectively and reliably makes me just furious. I can't believe people are still buying it. You can't imagine how obnoxious it is.
As usual, for the real scoop see the IPCC Scientific Working Group Report please and thank you.
mt
This is the point that I fear a lot of people miss about "environmentalism." It's not about prohibiting people from doing stuff, it's about not destroying the place where we live. Too often, I think problems get framed like "we want to drain this swamp to build a golf course for the people, but all these silly environmental regulations stopped us" when in reality, the swamp feeds an ecosystem that coincidentally sucks up excess water that would otherwise flood the surrounding areas.
I'll go out on a limb and say most environmentalists will admit they don't know the consequences of what we're currently doing, which makes conserving (the root of "conservative," by the way) what we have all the more important.
So we're expected to believe these guys as to what the Earth will be like in 10 years -- but at the same time, your local weatherman can't even tell you what the weather will be like tomorrow? Seriously, the world climate is a lot more complicated than any simulation could ever hope to recreate.
Global Warming. We will warm up the earth and either melt or be drowned. US government, consistent with the IPCC.
Climate Change. The earth will have rapidly chaging temperatures resulting in the destruction of humankind. The IPCC consensus document, very badly misrepresented.
"Run out of oxygen" theory. We'll ruin the atmosphere to the point we can't breathe it. Totally irrelevant, surface ozone site, very badly misrepresented.
Nothing. All of the above are bunk. A technical paper about middle atmosphere temperatures. Important enough within the field, but not broad enough to merit that summary.
"Various scientists publicizing all possible viewpoints" is a consequence of the importance of the issue. People who don't much care for the scientific mainstream's conclusions will dig up some iconoclasts. Research is about stuff that is uncertain, after all. The stuff that makes it into undergrad textbooks is pretty much settled, but that isn't what scientists think about.
What gets publicized isn;t the same as what people in the discipline think about. The IPCC position is the best representation of the scientific mainstream in this matter. That doesn't guarantee it's right, of course. Science is not infallible. On the other hand, it's a better bet than the various fringe positions you will see here and there. I could find you a better sampling of those than you found, but I'd rather not.
mt
Mass transit is a joke because people have redesigned the world around the increased convenience of cars. The downtown area in my town, within walking distance of most homes in town, is dying. Meanwhile, 5 giant malls have been built, none of which can be reached except by car.
Maybe $5/gallon gas or $5000/year luxury tax on cars would have some effect on this. The people who use cars the most should be paying more for the privilege instead of paying for roads out of the general tax revenue.
Human beings create only a fraction of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The VAST majority comes from volcanos and forest fires....I know I'll get modded down on this left-wing enclave, but the facts are the facts
You're less likely to get modded down if your post includes actual facts with actual references. Your post could be considered a troll because it contains a lot of bluster with none of it backed up.
Saying that they use statistics and the scientist actually doing this are two separate entities.
As well if they do actually use math you should know I could say I did a statistical test and got my data to have a 1% confidence that this phenomenon is caused by humans but that still doesn't mean that my model was correct.
The problem which you easily skimmed over is that Ecologist, Geophysicist, and etc. do not have an accurate model. They are using very limited data sets and claming that it is a prediction of the earth's weather pattern. As you well know if you have finite and small data points for what could be a rather large cycle, large data, you CANNOT make a claim such as what is being touted. Simple put little data does not equal good data and without good data statistics means nothing.
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" -Confucius
Precisely the right term for this attitude -- silly. Most people do not think through the facts about how much energy ANY modern lifestyle requires. Much of the "wealth" of the developed world is due to the productivity of labor which in turn is built on the ability to apply LARGE amounts of energy to the tasks at hand. Japan is about as efficient as any developed economy in terms of energy use per capita, at about half the US level. But even Japan uses five times as much per capita as China, and ten times as much per capita as India. If you want to live with modern products and conveniences, you have to produce and use the energy that makes them possible.
This is about the fourth or fifth post in this thread that makes the above, rather peculiar, argument. Of course what the original poster was driving at is that we are moving out of an ice age into a warmer climate. I may or may not agree, but could see arguing that human caused CO2 emissions are dangerously accelerating the problem. However, that isn't what is being advocated in the quote above. Instead, for all practical purposes what is being suggested is that we reverse the natural process to preserve the status quo. Radical environmentalists take it even a step further and are really pushing for a roll back of technology to return to a mythical age of man living in a more "natural" state.
I've noticed that appeal to preserving the status quo, coupled with the bum's rush argument that "we don't have time to stop and think -- WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING NOW!!!", is pretty prevalent among the environmentalist fanatics. I really don't trust their motives, especially since I'm 52 years old and well remember the "ice age is upon us" stories and the claims we would be out of oil by 1985.
I'm a conservationist. Environmentalism is agenda driven quackery.
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
Exactly.
The problem is that people think that punishing people for riding cars will make them ride mass transit more. Or that making transit better will make people magically decide to ride it.
It needs to be a coordinated effort to make mass transit more usefull, start designing cities around pedestrian traffic (but with accessible perimiter or "back street" parking for people that do live in outlying areas.
Make it easy for me to drive into the area, ditch the car, and then walk/ride to where I need to. I'd love to be able to take transit instead of my 45 minute commute, but I live up in the hills/mtns above Silicone Valley, and it's not feasible. However, I wouldn't mind a 25-30 minute drive down out of the hills, and then hop on a rail line into San Jose. Especially if it offered wireless ethernet, and had a coffee shop near the station.
The BART is great around the Bay Area, at least, where it goes... It's great, but it's not well integrated into the SF transit system, and it really needs to extend down into South Bay, but I haven't taken CalTrain up to the BART spur by the SF airport since they put it in. Too hard to get to CalTrain. Easier to just drive into SF via the mountain highways.
1) The measured increase of the Solar radiation over the last 250 years has been about half a watt per meter squared. The increase in radiative forcing due to the change in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is about 1.5 W/m2. See http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf page 8 for a graphical representation of different forcings and the level of understanding of each. (For comparison, total solar radiation is 340 W/m2, and some models project that human induced radiative forcing change will increase from a couple W/m2 now to 7 W/m2 or more by 2100 - which would be like increasing the Sun's output by 2%. Which is kind of disturbingly large.)
2) Ok. So the Earth survived warmer and colder temperatures in the past. Does that mean it will be comfortable for us to live through the transition to those new states? Not really.
3) Um. CFC's in the environment are 100% human made. If you are talking about GHGs, the vast majority of the _change_ in the last thousand years is human activity related (bovine methane emissions I count as human activity related, as are rice paddy methane emissions). The occasional volcano like Pinatubo that manages to spew aerosols into the stratosphere can induce a year or two of measurable global cooling. However, you will note that even Pinatubo wasn't enough to prevent the 1990s from having record high global average temperatures.
And see above: several percent increase in the sun's effective output due to human influence. If there are any positive feedback loops (like retreating glaciers decreasing the earth's albedo, or increased evaporation increasing the GHG content of the atmosphere), then we can really make a difference... in a bad way (for us).
It is a tricky balance to see how much we can reduce GHG emissions without killing economies, but we can do at least _some_ reductions...
I am not a tree hugging hippy, i believe in being environmentally responsible. so lets look at the whole thing from another perspective
1) the amount of people with severe allergies and as-ma is increasing exponentially.
2) SUV's use 10 times more resources and create 3 times more waste that normal cars (both manufacturing use and disposal).
3) more Americans buy SUV's as a status symbol than any other country.
4) people who buy SUV's don't need SUV's
5) technology exists and is in mass production that can
a) make cars that get 60+ MPG,b) are safer and use less natural resources in their production.
as long as people drive SUV's around we are fucked. because the SUV points to a general opinion that i don't care what happens in the future i want to look good now.
what we need to do is outlaw any car that way-es over 1 ton and gets less then 60 MPG and our economic and political world will be a much better place.
The oceans bulge around the equator because of the earth's spin
No. The tidal bulge is due to the moon's gravitational force. (The moon does orbit around the same axis that the earth rotates on. This is the case with most observed planets)
and therefore rising sea levels
The sea levels would rise everywhere, but the increase would be larger towards the equator.
Of the viewpoints you listed, only 1 of them has reached any sort of international consensus. That is the viewpoint that humanity has been significantly changing the radiative balance of the atmosphere (with a net increase), and that climate change will result. Climate change includes (but is not limited to) an increase in global mean surface temperatures in the short and medium terms, and probably the long (multiple century) term too failing some non-linear event like thermohaline circulation collapse.
Check out wikipedia's article on global cooling if you want to see the real story about this so-called "global-cooling scare" that the Global Climate Coalition and other skeptics groups like harping on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Christy & co. (your "nothing" link) are a real minority in the global climate community, and the only reason anyone ever hears about them is because industry looks for any dissent at all to publicize (like intelligent design people looking for the outlier biology professor to talk against evolution).
And I think you are exaggerating the air pollution results too: yes, there are significant health effects from particulates and ozone (which are in part visible because we've improved health in other areas so much that we have increased lifespans during which to get cancers, and our infant mortality rates have dropped such that baby deaths from air pollution are now a visible percentage of the whole), but we'll still be able to breathe.
Remember when looking at any global warming predicition, these are the same models used to predict your local extended forecast. Considering they can't reliably predict 10 days out, how much credit can you really give a prediction years out?
While the Earth's temperature may be rising, it has done that in the past before man even existed. Are we the cause this time? Noone can truly say for sure, and even *IF* we are, is it a bad thing? Looking at the geological history of the Earth, we are overdue for another ice age.
Now this isn't to say that we shouldn't be looking at alternate energy sources, because we should be. For national security reasons if nothing else. Being dependent on a foreign countries for fuel is not wise, especially when there are many in those countries that would like to see us dead.
Which world do you live in? Sure much of the US may be designed around automobiles, but much of the other 95% of the world is not.
I will agree that these problems are difficult, but they are indeed solvable, I submit CFC's and their damage to the ozone as a problem that was global and impossible to compartmentalize or to use your word partition but that we have made significant progress on. The economic effect in healthcare cost and damage to individuals was part of the equation that prompted the world to take action.
Meanwhile, the government is doing bugger all in other polluting aspects that might piss off the voters. 3 million more cars on the road since Labour came to power, for example, and the scrapping of the escalator in fuel taxes.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.