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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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So the ice is going to melt...it'll make for some nice beachfront property in Wisconsin!
Fuck the next generation, I'm cold now!
*DrugCheese rants*
here are some articles that disagree. Articles
This site provides links to resources skeptical of those sort of doomsday scenarios.
Surfs up? Or how about we take a chapter from Futurama and hope that nuclear winter cancels out global warming?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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.
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.
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
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.
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 |
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.
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?
Someone needs to tell these dooms day wacko's that historically the climates have changed and fluctuated - that's what planets do! Besides global warming the planet has had global freezing (ice ages). I even heard at one point that there wasn't oxygen on the planet until it got polluted by those damn plants and vegetation! - that's what I heard..... I've read that in the last hundred years the planets average temperature has raised one degree (don't ask for the source, I'm not going to look for it). I don't know about you, but when I hear it has only changed one degree, I tend to believe that is pretty damn constant - considering I cant keep my house the same temperature for an hour let alone a hundred years....
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those that know Binary and those who don't.
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 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.
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)
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.
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?
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
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?
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."
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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...
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