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More Bad News About Global Warming
IZ Reloaded writes "A UK govt report says that greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts that previously thought. Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. From BBC: The European Union has adopted a target of preventing a rise in global average temperature of more than two Celsius. That, according to the report, might be too high, with two degrees being enough to trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet.... A rise of two Celsius, researchers conclude, will be enough to cause:
* Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world
* Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia
* Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification
* Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage
* 97% loss of coral reefs
* Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus
* Spread of malaria in Africa and north America"
Even with the best will in the world (and that is sorely lacking
from certain countries - and thats not just a pop at the US, I'm
talking china, australia, india etc) we can't suddenly all switch
to nuclear and wind/solar/wave power overnight. CO2 will continue
to be released and the temperature is likely to go over the 2C
rise this century. I suspect the writing is on the wall for a
large part of the next generation of people on this planet , and
possibly us too if we live long enough.
"If they had to resort to "extinction of the polar bear and walrus" for a seven-item list of "what could happen if there's global warming," we're not in such bad shape"
You moron. The extinction of large mammals is a pretty damn serious effect. Go off and play with your toys and leave the talking to the adults.
It's inevitable, just what we were wanting to hear. Now we don't have to bother changing our ways, we can just sit back and wait for it, with a newly-invigorated sense of nihilism. If you were hesitating to buy that SUV you wanted, well, now, you may as well get it.
For a while I thought there would be the danger that we would have to do something....phew!
Perhaps the loss of Krill is far more worrying, close to the bottom rung on many food chains (phytoplankton an algae are below them) many species rely directally and indirectally upon these tiny crustaceans. The lost of such an important species would be far reaching, and its effects would be felt in all the worlds oceans.
C3PO - We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.
Er ... if you read TFA closely, the report doesn't actually say what the headline seems to imply -- i.e., that greenhouse gases have been demonstrated to be more effective in causing global warming than previously thought. It says that the effects of global warming have been modeled to be more drastic than previously thought.
This is a subtle but vitally important distinction that the writers of the article themselves don't seem to grasp. To quote from TFA:
But Miles Allen, a lecturer on atmospheric physics at Oxford University, said assessing a "safe level" of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was "a bit like asking a doctor what's a safe number of cigarettes to smoke per day".
"There isn't one but at the same time people do smoke and live until they're 90," he told Today.
"It's one of those difficult areas where we're talking about changing degrees of risk rather than a very definite number after which we can say with absolute certainty that certain things will happen."
Given that CO2 is naturally found in the atmosphere, and was so long before humanity came on the scene, and is essential for the continuation of plant life on this planet, Allen's comparison of it to an external disease-causing agent is a very odd statement.
I'm waiting to see a study on global warming that actually takes into account the fact that we are still coming out of the last ice age (or out of the Little Ice Age); that the planet (and our species) has survived far more drastic climate change in the past; and that such climate change had nothing to do with human action. When those facts (and they are facts) are taken into account, how much actual evidence is there that the current climate change is due to human causes? Is there any at all?
I don't intend this as a troll. Seriously, if anyone can link to studies that take those facts into account, I'd very much like to read them.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
I'm still out on what's happening, but it seems as is some of these people believe the earth has never been warmer than it was last week. Where are the predictions that we'll once again have huge grape vineyards in England like we did 500 years ago but don't now because it is too cold?
The question is not whether or not the Earth will survive. It is whether or not my future grandchildren will survive. It is not whether or not life will continue, it is whether or not our lives will continue. It's not a question of whether or not global warming causes are natural or not. It's whether we can do anything about it.
"Some estimates suggest the Chinese fires could be accounting for as much as 2-3% of the annual world emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels."
Link
Fact is, if you clamp down on US carbon emissions, the manufacturing sector will only accelerate its moves to other countries that have no such limits. If you make it so every KWH of electricity costs $100, then suddenly it becomes economically viable to build transmission lines from China. Without very harsh controls on everything, the economy will simply ooze into another direction that is not so heavily taxed or controlled.
Well done. You've successfully shot down a great many assertions that I never made. I believed such a tactic is known as "a straw man" argument.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I love the smell of burning strawmen in the morning.... Seriously... take a look at germany, for example. Huge investments into cutting down emissions and establishing clean energy sources. Those did in fact lead to the creation of jobs, and the establishment of world-class industries in the eco sector.
This comment does not exist.
We have NASA ice cores that show more wild swings in our temperatures and more extremes than we see now.
Well, when we're at the extreme for a temperature swing, that's a little too late to act.
We're already off the charts for something else - carbon dioxide. We know that CO2 plays a huge role when it comes to temperature, life, and oh, a half dozen other things.
Why isn't it enough that CO2 is off the charts (and accelerating off the charts) for the current geologic epoch? We know it's anthropogenic. It's not sustainable to have the rate of CO2 emissions that we have. Why isn't that enough?
I agree it's very difficult to convince the general public that they need to be concerned about something that's 100 or 1000 years off. If you want to get people to do something about it now then you have to push home the very real, measurable and immediate effects such as air quality.
Tell people they'll have trouble breathing in 10 years and you'll get more results than telling them that in 1000 years the Great Lakes will be ocean front property.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
I couldn't disagree more. What kind of interested would "those people" have in spreading this? This IS science. It's not chat talk, it's experimental studies. You can be skeptical, that is fine. But you cannot bash this as "not-science". You either are not a scientist, or you have no idea of what you are talking about. Nobody is imposing anything to anybody.
Let's say I roll dice with the normal six sides numbered 1 to 6. You can't predict any one roll, but you can do very well at predicting the distribution of results of 100,000 roles, presuming the dice aren't loaded. So "predicting the weather in five days" you'll be very poor at, but "predicting the long term weather" you'll be fairly excellent at.
Now let's load the dice. Let's put an off-center weight in that makes them 50% more likely to come up 6s than anything else. If you know how the dice have been loaded, you'll still only be negligably - if at all - better at predicting the roll in five days (although if 6s are considered "hot," the odds are a bit better for a "hot" outcome, and you can bet on that and win over time, although it's uncertain for any given day). But knowing how the dice are loaded, you'll still be able to do as excellently as before at predicting the long-term results.
Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide by 30-40-50% loads the dice. (When I went to school the logic of rolling dice was taught by 8th grade. With a post like "but we can't even predict the weather in 5 days" I have to wonder: Are you lacking basic math education, or do you know better and just expect to sway the uneducated people who've modded you up?)
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Beyond that, what's wrong with weaning ourselves of fossil fuels? I simply don't understand this nonsensical idea that we should just keep wasting oil, when it's value for producing synthetic materials is so huge. There are other ways to run engines.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Let's start by finding out why you think the overwhelming majority of climatologists state that there is such a thing as global warming, and why you think there isn't.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.