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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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I'll have to be a global warming agnostic. I've seen credible viewpoints that indicate that in the next decades we will either be swimming like "Water World" or freezing in a new ice age.
I just get the feeling that our science into yet up to the task of interpreting our climate.
The funny thing about global warming is the lack of trend data over a long period of time. For example: ice ages happend and as far as we know they were natural trends in earth climate. Chances are we might speed up a radical climate change but I doubt we're the single reason for it. In any case we won't be able to have fully clean power for quite some time.
:(){
Just what was needed. This report may well be the proverbial slap-in-the-face-with-a-wet-haddock some companies needed to kick-start their conservation projects. I don't want my gulf stream to go away!
HAH! I just wasted a second of your life making you read this, but I wasted a minute of mine thinking it up. DAMN.
Since so much of ice sits underwater, and water expands when frozen, wouldn't it make sense that melting icebergs would actually shrink the oceans, or at least keep them the same size? I know there's a lot of ice on top of land masses melting as well, but what about all the ice in the water?
Am I an idiot for thinking this way?
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
which will cause bigger problems first: global warming or magnetic reversal??
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Unless you can explain how people will be impacted by global warming... they won't care. This study is really on the right track, it gives
global warming an economic cost (and making it clear that hundreds of thousands of homes could be under water regularly).
Now we need a similar study for US Costal areas. Will New York go under water?
Isn't increasing the standard of living the best proven way to decrease the birth rate? Countries with the largest upper-and-middle class have the lowest birth rates. Perhaps capitalism will also solve this problem. It did right here in the USA. The farm families breeding like rabbits have been replaced with the 2.35 kid nuclear families.
There's nothing wrong with 6 kids per family, there's something wrong with making limitations on a basic human right, such as having kids.
Guipo
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
Our best bet is to fund family planning to prevent the 6 kids per family that we see in some countries.
That should be all countries. Just in my neighbourhood I know a family of 5 and a family of 6 and a family of 9 (I believe). This is in Canada and I'm quite sure this happens in the States and pretty much everywhere. Two kids is the ONLY responsible thing todo (and no that does not mean you should kill triplets, just don't attempt more after that). Really I think China has the right idea. After all, someone having children is not purely a personal decision, it's a societal decision because someone having their own kids that will end up entering into OUR society. That means resources need to be shared, jobs fought for (because they've got a shot at a fair life as anyone else once they're born, can't blame them for their parent's behaviour), and space to be divided, and social safety networks to be strained further! Unless one wants to adopt an Ann Rynd approach to the value of others, there really is no choice but to limit the reproductive freedoms of others because they burden us all.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
This isn't a global warming problem though it is another effect of the root problem. The root problem in the Western world is our short sightedness. If buildings were built to last a few hundred years instead of a few decades, they would probably think more seriously about building in a 500 or 1000 year flood plain.
In any case, 20 billion pounds a year is meaningless in relation to the infrastructure cost of avoiding global warming without changing lifestyles (good luck if you think you can change lifestyles in any direction other than towards increased decadence). So, this study, even if taken seriously, still does not demonstrate the cost effectiveness of avoiding global warming. Until a solution to global warming is identified that is provably cheaper in the short term than our short term economic losses demonstrably caused by global warming, it won't fly. Jumping up and down and screaming about fears for the possible future won't change that fact, especially since there are at least a dozen ways we're likely to wipe ourselves out before that future.
I'm not saying global warming is 100% real. However, there is SOME evidance to support it, and given that, why not have lower emission vehicles? If nothing else, I would prefer not to be able to see the air (the green sunsets in LA are neat however).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Look at america, the average family is 2.5, and dropping. Europe is under that. Do you know why. Freedom. So you give countrys freedom and they will prosper. Prosperous countrys generally have low birth rates. Its a proven fact, look at the birth rates for industrialized countrys. Sociology 101 man!
Guipo
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
I have seen numerous theories on the climate subject.
The following viewpoints have been presented over the past 30 years:
- Global Cooling. We will freeze to death shortly.
- Global Warming. We will warm up the earth and either melt or be drowned.
- Climate Change. The earth will have rapidly chaging temperatures resulting in the destruction of humankind.
- "Run out of oxygen" theory. We'll ruin the atmosphere to the point we can't breathe it.
- Nothing. All of the above are bunk.
Which is true? All these viewpoints have been presented at one time or another, and, up to now, none of them (including the last one) have been true.
Is this just another Waaahhhhhmbulance to ignore, or does this article have revolutionary proof that is worth my effort to read?
I'm willing to understand that science changes over time. But to have various scientists publicizing all possible viewpoints as the truth over the past 30 years is too much for me to handle.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Anyway, call me a psycho, but I'm eagerly waiting for it. A good big old climate change would just be the necessary step to understand that, definitely, mankind is not eternal.
God of climate, of the raging seas, of the crushing sky, you 0wn us. Even if I am to die, give us the chance to realize that now is the time to act !
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
Everything grinds to a halt, buried in bureaucratic largesse and seventeen pounds of paperwork just to buy a car.
The global warming doomsday crowd has pretty well demonstrated that they will never be satisfied. Why do we even bother paying attention to them? It only encourages them.
The direct reply to my original post totally missed the point, I think. Obviously, climatologists have considered the overall impact of increased CO2 levels, but what I find bothersome is people who turn it into a political issue. Either rising CO2 levels are our fault or they aren't, but whose fault it is should not be a political issue. Unfortunately, it gets treated that way.
To the parent poster, I would say this: I doubt climatologists are idiots, but I cannot doubt that those who harp so seriously on the global warming issue are not politically motivated to do so.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
The predictions are far from doomsday, they're well within the realms of what is likely, whether global warming is real or not.
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)
Has nothing to do with the fact that it's Earth Day today...
There is only one way to halt human impact on the planet, and that would be to remove the human element. Otherwise we have the horrible motives and thoughts on both sides of the spectrum.
One camp says "Global warming is a farce" the other says "Humans are destroying M.Earth." Enviro-friendly doesn't mean 0 impact, it means less impact than if we didn't exist. Completely ignoring the fact that yes, we may be intelligent creatures, but we affect the environment on a proportion to our population on the planet.
It makes you wonder if a beaver really cares about his affect on the local environment around him... and if he does, does he try and fix it later?
Not that we're on the same level as a beaver, but we have clear cut forests and then done nothing to help the growth along... and now 50-70 years later those forests are regrowing but in a much tighter configuration than before. The risk of fire is far increased as well as the sanctions the EPA has put in place to prevent controlled burns to get rid of the undergrowth in a method nature has been using for millenia. So the undergrowth builds up until it is nearly impossible to have a burn that will stay controlled for very long.
We as a mass of intelligent creatures are playing a dangerous game, attempting to keep an unchanging environment that by OUR very nature is nigh impossible. If we are to prevent ourselves from damaging the environment irreperably then we need to enter domes, otherwise our very presence and natural existance affects the environment in the same way a beaver dam affects the creatures downriver.
So, the only solution that eco-nuts have that makes any sense is lets all live in domes, and the only solution the ignorant are pushing towards is a destruction of our atmosphere and environment that will lead us to live in domes.
I dunno about ya'll but I'll be buying my Oxygen compressor soon, since the moderate voice is always drowned out to the extremists.
Let's make cars based on Stirling engines powered by the radioactive decay of Pu-238
:)
Wow, I'm pro-nuclear power, but not like that
Gasoline has an energy density of 44MJ/kg.
Whats the energy density of rice? It always amazing me how little food we animals need to eat to continue functioning and moving around. Can we get some mitocondria-based fuel cell research going?
All while Bush is the only president to ever provide funding for alternative fuel sources.
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.
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.
Wind, solar, and hydro can be small-scale and therefore owned by individual consumers, and the big, corrupt companies might go out of business.
Horrors!!
Original, many of those in high places believed "hey.. cool.. with global warming we will have more than the current 6 weeks of sun a year in London. How great for our economy."
By now it seems that what is more likely to happen is a shutting down of the gulf stream" giving London the weather currently experienced in SIBERIA.
Like everything else (including the current US and Australian -- yes... I am Australian -- administrations' denials that that global warming is real), it only becomes an issue when it affects You personally.
Note. I believe that global warming is a real effect. I don't believe that some of the more "Everybody is going to die" scenarios are real, but I am more than willing to say "hey look, we just don't know... so lets just back off a little on our current pumping of crap into the environment so if the doomsdayists turn out to be right, we don't have so much damage to undo, and in the meantime we get cleaner air to breathe".
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Of course you have to keep in mind that (and I'm pretty sure about this, not certain though, it's hard to wrap your head around) 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. However melting or mining ice from the south pole will cause the sea level to rise, because it's on land at the moment.
Hope that made some kind of sense, and if I'm wrong about any of it please correct me!
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
it's real, and it's both naturally occurring cyclical, and also man made. Both, not one or the other or not happening at all. Plenty of science behind both ideas. No one disputes naturally occuring cycles, and frankly it strains credulity to think putting millions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere year after year after year, plus the extra heat of buring "stuff" all over the planet, that wouldn't normally be there has "no effect". Of course it has effects, and they are large. Some substances are burnt on purpose to provide all the goods and services we require, releasing the gasses and heat, and some is accidental, such as huge forest fires that have been set by humans. It ads up. We can't take the chance on ignoring it. We need a transition plan, a backup plan, or we are risking our human "data" we all care about. If we can care enough about relatively trivial things like some bean counters figures to have backup plans and pre-catastrophe planning and remediation, we can do it with other systems as well, like OUR LIVES.
All that is irrelevant of course, we need alternatives to fossil fuels because they are a FINITE resource, and we need to use what finite resources we have to build the infrastructure leading to some sort of sustainable energy products. We have to use what we have, we can't keep holding out for some pie in the sky magical backyard fusion reactor that isn't here and has a slim chance of arriving anytime soon. Unless one cares not a whit for suceeding generations of course, then it wouldn't matter as long as "they got their's so screw everyone else". I have heard that numerous times, and it appears to be a large part of the anti science luddites rationale, that somehow magicvally "the future will take care of itself". We have actual verifiable science that extreme and long lasting weather changes can happen in very short time periods. Numerous examples of ice age maalls fouind intact, never rotted much, with summer grasses and flowers in their mouths and stomachs. that's an example of an immediate and long last cold snap, it can NOT be anything else. Not over "millenia" or "hundreds of years" but like in one day, something just changed, and changed dramatically, and lasted thousands of years. Cold (literally) hard anecdotal evidence. And we don't know when it would hit a tipping over point, all we can do is guess at it. No one's science is that good, but the evidence that it has happened is right there to stare at.
I just checked on google, lotsa linkages to places that can show how the ice has melted more, you can get anecdotal from people who actually have LIVED in the arctic regions for all their lives (unlike rush limbeau and similar) and have first hand accounts, etc..they all say it's melting when it shouldn't be. that's a short time historically, it's not millenia or hundreds of years or anything, just one persons lifespan. That's the bottom line data.
And the weird thing is, as it melts, it exposes open terrain which is darker than ultra white snow and ice, which in turn means more heat is absorbed instead of being reflected (albedo effect it's called), which further accelerates the process. And then you can get into the gulf stream elevator effect with too much freshwater mixing into the salt, which would lead to a slowing of the gulf stream, which would REALLY suck worse than just over all average temp drop or a scosh of a few feet of flooding, because most of north america and europe rely on the gulf stream and japanese currents to moderate the weather, to moderate the cold in other words. Less ocean currents moving, less "warm" gets transformed northward, then it gets bad. Not just a little coastal flooding, but sucky OMG cold bad and THEN where does the energy come from? We, as a society are supposed to WAIT until something like that happens, or should we take what we know now and deal with it?
We don't have much of any control over the macro weather systems (we have some they admit to and some they don't admit to because of treaties, etc), but
Obviously, fossil fuels are finite resources. Cheap oil even moreso. As supplies diminish, scarcity (real, not the artificial OPEC type) comes into play, driving prices up. So let's say for the sake of argument that a unit of energy produced from fossil fuel today cost $X and the same unit of energy produced from renewable resources costs $Y. Currently Y > X by enough that renewables are not cost competitive for most applications. But we've already established that X is going to increase over time, and historically Y has decreased. The closer Y gets to X, the greater the number of applications for which renewables are cost effective and the more widely renewables will be adopted, which will in turn drive prices down for renewables due to greater economies of scale in the production of the hardware, etc... for renewable power generation. So Y keeps going down, X keeps going up, and eventually Y=X, then Y There are unanswered questions, mainly how fast is Global Warming happening and how fast will greener power sources become cost effective. And you probably have a lot better chance of figuring out the latter than the former.
Penn and Teller debunk global warming and other environmental myths in the last episode of season 1 of their Showtime show, _Bullshit!_.
Here's a link to their page on that episode: http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/topics.do?topic=eh
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
IT's speculated that the Alberta (canada) oil sands contain mor eoil then the whole of the middle east. We'r ein no danger of running out soon. The exploitation of the Albertan oil sands is pretty low, the cause being the higher expense of extracting oil from the oil sands. However this is a constand cost, whiel the oil in the middle east slowly gets mroe expensive due to exploitation and politics. Alberta has all the oil you'll need for next century, with no political strings.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The problem is that USA actually has the highest emission rate per capita.
No. Have a look and see for yourself.
Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, and Qatar are all ahead of the US, and Trinidad & Tobago (they need to select a unified name), Luxembourg, Australia, and Canada aren't that far behind. Furthermore, CO2 emissions per capita for the US from 1980 to 1999 actually decreased by 3%, which is more than can be said for Austria (increased by 10%), Italy (11%), Japan (15%), Spain (28%), Australia (32%), New Zealand (45%), and Ireland (46%). China's has increased by 53%, and India's has increased by 120%. While the latter two's per capita emissions are still a small fraction of those of the United States (2.3 and 1.1 metric tons per capita, against the US's 19.7) and the US's emissions were 23.2% of the world emissions, China and India combined have about 2.1 billion people, are just getting into strong national consumption economies, and were responsible for 16.5% of the global emissions. Those are the two places where work should be concentrated in lowering the emissions growth rates. Or maybe have them address their underground coal fires that spew the same amount of CO2 into the air in China alone as the US does from its cars every year.
Get in early, and you might be able to head off a rapid rise. Instead, the deal was to cut them a lot of slack because of their economic conditions. That's why it will never make it through Congress.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
What, you mean only the ice over water on the North Pole will melt, and the ice over land such as Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, Russia, and such will still stay ice for some reason? Or does any water melting from that ice somehow not alter the sea level?
If it seems that easy to undermine such a concept being presented by a number of scientists, then you may want to reconsider whether you're taking everything into account.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Human nature could well destroy all human life. Most people don't want to become involved unless it directly affects them. The unfortunate thing about the damaging the eco system is that affects may not become apparent until it is far too late.
Personally, I don't believe that mankind is intelligent enough to save itself. My prediction:
Mankind will continue to argue about whether or not global warming is a problem. Many of those who will argue that it's unproven or just not true will have business agendas of their own and will believe that if it is a problem that there is still time for them to make their fortune before being forced to change their ways.
The eco system will the stressed until finally a slow but unstoppable cascade effect will occur. Once the point of no return has been passed one species after another will become extinct and death and destruction will climb up though the food chain.
By the time people stop arguing about the dangers of abusing our eco system it will be far too late. A massive world effort will ensue where all the wealth gained from raping our planet will be spent on a desperate search for a way to save ourselves but we will only find a grave.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You are overlooking the fact that the water expands when it warms up
In the case of Ice -> water it contracts. Ice is less dense than liquid water - which is why it floats. Liquid water does change desity as it warms up, but not very much. Averaged with all the temperature changes of all the oceans of the world this is not going to be a significant factor.
In order for sea levels to rise ice that isn't currently floating would have to melt. And it is, most of the glaciers in North America are loosing mass as is the Greenland Ice Sheet. The Antartic Ice sheet is loosing its Ice shelf in clumps (something that happened in the 60's in the artic).
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
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...
Actually, as posted elsewhere, this is incorrect. Frozen H2O forms a structure that actually is less dense than liquid H2O, which is why ice floats.
Don't forget that much of this ice is above the waterline, which once melted would transfer below the waterline, raising sea level.
The single largest imbalance in the earth's ecology is humanity. We take up more space than other species, we consume more resources, and we don't produce many things useful to other species.
If human civilization (which is mostly based on costal settlements) were to collapse as a result of rising oceans, what would the ecological impact be? Very little, I suspect. Most species would still have their niches. The niches would just move up hill and toward the poles.
The only species that would be heavily impacted would be those costal species that could not relocate faster than the water rises. I can't think of any, except humanity: we are not ourselves without our cities, and our cities cannot be moved.
Thus, global warming/flooding is not an environmental problem, it is an enviromental solution.
Global flooding is an economic problem though...
vi is my shepard, I shall not font.
One thing I remembered about Sept 11, 2002 was the lack of planes. Afterwards, analysis found some interesting impacts on the weather. Check out this URL, as I don't think many people noticed it:
1 2, 00.html?tw=wn_story_related
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,525
Makes you wonder what the long term affect is of everything we do...
The problem here is that all accurate data we have only dates back about 100 years -- and really, only in depth data for last last few decades. How old is the earth? Better, how much time would we need to measure weather and climate trends? We have only "hints" of past climate changes and suggestions as to what caused them. Is there any evidence of increased solar activity during past "warming" trends 600 million years ago? Good luck finding some...
It's easy to say "The last 100 years has been warming -- and we have increased industrial pollution over the past 100 years" and suggest causation. Problem: correlation does not equate to causation.
I've taken statistics and geology (upper divsion for one, lower for the other) and have considered the evidence for myself. I would suggest you do the same and not take for granted that reports that do NOT support your suggestions are biased and those that *DO* reflect your opinions are unbiased.
Actually, as posted elsewhere, this is incorrect. Frozen H2O forms a structure that actually is less dense than liquid H2O, which is why ice floats.
... is less dense than liquid H2O". Hence, when melted it will compact back into liquid and NOT raise the sea level. It's a question of mass, not volume!
Don't forget that much of this ice is above the waterline, which once melted would transfer below the waterline, raising sea level.
This is true, but the part of the ice that is above the waterline is entirely made up of the extra "structure that