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A Countdown To Global Catastrophe?
An anonymous reader writes "From The Independent: The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.
For the full story, see this article."
From tsunami to Kyoto not impacting the environment at all to dropping emissions, to overblown disaster movies, scientists resigning various environmental organizations, and other speeches. People are even connecting the environment to the tsunamis, which have nothing to do with the environment, and everything to do with Earthquakes that are going to happen anyway. Lets get some perspective here.
Global warming states that the maxima of BOTH hot and cold will increase. Nice to see people are too ignorant to even know what the actual theory is.
Apparently we have another person who was asleep in math class when they taught the concept of rate of change. The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. They're talking about comparable changes in temperature possibly happening over the next 100 years.
Sadly, the actual report is not online, it costs £5 to buy, which is pretty mad IMHO.
You can find the original press release and list of recommendations, here though.
I'm a trained biologist, but not *not* an eco-nut. However the variety of scientific evidence coming out lately, combined with the interesting stuff on global dimming has got me seriously worried. And I mean seriously.
I'm sure you are right and the Earth's biosphere will probably cope, over the space of a few thousand years. However I have a two year old daughter, and I would really rather prefer her to enjoy the fruits of our society, rather than watching N. American and Europe become a dust-bowl over the next 40 years.
Time to actually take this stuff seriously.
Precis on dimming: Global warming effects may have been masked by particulate pollution which appears to have reduced the amount of sunlight getting to the Earth by a massive 30% in some cases).
Is that what it sounds like? Based on what?
From the publisher's site
Key recommendations of the Taskforce include:
1. The G8 and other major economies, including from the developing world, form a G8+ Climate Group, to pursue technology agreements and related initiatives that will lead to large emissions reductions.
2. The G8-Plus Climate Group agree to shift their agricultural subsidies from food crops to biofuels, especially those derived from cellulosic materials, while implementing appropriate safeguards to ensure sustainable farming methods are encouraged, culturally and ecologically sensitive land preserved, and biodiversity protected.
3. G8 governments establish national renewable portfolio standards to generate at least 25% of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025, with higher targets needed for some G8 governments.
4. G8 governments increase their spending on research, development, and demonstration of advanced technologies for energy-efficiency and low- and zero-carbon energy supply by two-fold or more by 2010, at the same time as adopting strategies for the large-scale deployment of existing low- and zero-carbon technologies.
5. All industrialised countries introduce national mandatory cap-and-trade systems for carbon emissions, and construct them to allow for their future integration into a single global market.
6. A global framework be adopted that builds on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, and enables all countries to be part of concerted action on climate change at the global level in the post-2012 period, on the basis of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities.
7. A long-term objective be established of preventing global average temperature from rising more than 2 C (3.6 F) above the pre-industrial level, to limit the extent and magnitude of climate-change impacts.
8. Governments remove barriers to and increase investment in renewable energy and energy efficient technologies and practices by taking steps including the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies and requiring Export Credit Agencies and Multilateral
Development Banks to adopt minimum efficiency or carbon intensity standards for projects they support.
9. Developed countries honour existing commitments to provide greater financial and technical assistance to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change, including the commitments made at the seventh conference of the parties to the UNFCCC in 2001, and pursue the establishment of an international compensation fund to support disaster mitigation and preparedness.
10. Governments committed to action on climate change raise public awareness of the problem and build public support for climate policies by pledging to provide substantial long-term investment in effective climate communication activities.
Sure, if you ignore the fact that many plants require a certain amount of direct sunlight.
I take it you haven't really looked into this at all. .5 miles by about 2) and drill a nice long hole in the center. Then you pump in a few thousand gallons of water and seal the hole up. Next you use a fairly large mirror (which in zero g can be very lightweight) to focu light down on the long axis of your asteroid, which should be spinning along said axis.
First off no ftl is needed, and even were it needed we know general relativity is neigther complete, nor totaly prohibitive of 'ftl' travel.
We also do NOT need to strip mine every ounce of metal, or even close, to make high volume colony ships.
A simple way to do it is to find a fair sized asteroid (say
What happens next is the asteroid heats up till the rock softens. As this happens the water turns to steam from the same heat and applies presure to the inside of the rock. Done right you 'inflate' the asteroid into a hollow shell a couple miles across and several long.
This becomes the basis for your space craft.
now travel times might seem like an issue, but with ion drives and solar sails, and perhaps bussard ram-jets for engines you get up to a sizeable percentage c. At these speeds time dialation can turn a 400 year trip into a 4-10 month trip for the occupants.
Now admittedly this won't hold 6+ billion people , but it could hold several hundred, many thousands if we find a way to make long term hibernation work (not as far fetched as it sounds). However quite a few of these could be built (and you wouldn't want just one big one any way) and we could send off a few billion colonist this way.
The amazing thing is we can see how to do all of this, at our current level of tech this would take a huge world wide effort, but it's not impossible and with the advancement of technology this could eventually be reduce to feasability equivilant to another moon landing.
And this isn't the only way to do this sort of thing that doesn't involve going beyond what we are almost certain to be eventually possible.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
No, that's wrong. Volcanoes on average put in 100-200 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Humans dump about 6 BILLION tons each year. Here is a reference. here is another
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?