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"

Comments

Re:I've heard worse

[Viol8]

"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.

Well there you go

[Unski]

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!

Re:I've heard worse

[sleekus_geekus]

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.

Some government-sponsored sensationalism, anyone?

[Woldry]

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.

Re:Sounds inevitable then

[williamhb]

That is presuming gloabl warming is real and that it's linked to CO2. You may be completely right and it's great for everyone to have an opinion on global warming and carbon dioxide. But is your opinion based on what you got from the media or was it formed through scientific reasoning?

<satire> In other news, Max Born advises people to keep on smoking and eating only McDonalds burgers until they have personally verified and reproduced the scientific data suggesting smoking 20 a day and weighing 30 stone is unhealthy, and taken a degree in cardiology. After all, those suggestions that obesity, smoking, and a lack of exercise aren't good for you were probably heard through the media. </satire>

Re:Sounds inevitable then

[eltonito]

For anyone who's unsure, may I suggest less BBC and more science.

CO2Science.Org is science? They use anecdotal evidence in an attempt to counter real science being performed by fairly independent labs.

Paraphrase from a front-page article on their website...
This town in Missouri is polluted as hell, and their temperature dropped 2 degrees in the past decade! Global warming? Clearly it doesn't exist!"

Of course, what do you expect from an "environmental" organization who is funded by Exxon and whose founder previously worked for the worlds largest coal company?

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/corporat e/giving_report.pdf
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/ab out/chairman.jsp
http://www.peabodyenergy.com/

Re:Can't Hear You

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, people don't trust the weather report 5 days from now, and yet they're perfectly willing to impose an economic cost on the USA amounting to trillions of dollars, for what is (in effect) a weather report ONE-FREAKIN'-HUNDRED years out?

Yeah, tell me about it. In fact some idiot I know keeps telling me that, just because we live in the northern United States, it's going to be warmer than it is right now in six months. How can anyone know what the weather is going to be like SIX-FREAKIN' months out?

Re:Can't Hear You

[S.O.B.]

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.