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:Who's still denying it these days?

[SammysIsland]

The fact that your comment was modded down is upsetting. It just goes to show that the readers here are modding down unpoular views rather than off topic comments. This is typical left wing bahvior. I see it every day because I live near a college campus where this type of behavior is rampant.

Global warming is a scare tactic, and we shouldn't react so quickly when tactics such as this are used to sway our opinions.

Re:so,

[Cerberus7]

I had heard Bush was part of a cult-like political group that believes we can do whatever we want because Christ will come back before it's too late to save us all. Do you have a reference for this? Given your name, I can kinda guess where you stand on the issue. Anyhow, they're in for about as rude a surprise as the 9/11 hijackers.

Re:Sounds inevitable then

[gfxguy]

Good post, thanks for the links.

But is your opinion based on what you got from the media or was it formed through scientific reasoning?

I was watching CNN the other morning and they had a push for Christiane Amanpour, and at the end of the "ad" she says something along the lines of "I think a journalist's job is to make a difference."

And that sums up what's wrong with the media.

Re:Can't Hear You

[GR1NCH]

Here we go again, with the ignorant hate of GW Bush and the United States. Did you even KNOW that the US uses a considerably higher percentage of renewable energy sources than countries like the UK and Japan.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page /trends/table1.html
check it out 6% Renewable energy in 2004, and it never dropped below 5% in this 5 year period.

So what do we see from the UK over the same period?
http://www.restats.org.uk/electricity.html

Hmm it hits a peak of 3.58 in 2004, but for the majority of this time the US used twice the percentage of renewable sources during this time period.

now I point to energy production:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2038rank.html
So lets see... I'll save you the math I did but I calculated that the US DOES produce 10X as much non-renewable electricity as the UK. But look at the flipside of the coin we are producing 21X as much renewable electricity as the UK.

So yeah we are probably leading the world in pollution, but we are probably also leading the world in renewable energy usage. I agree, YES, we should use more renewable energy. But its not because GW is evil, its not because the United States is a terrible polluting machine, and its not because of that media scare tactic (in other words crock of ****) known as Global warming. We should the Earth is going to warm up and cool down on its own and what we do is not going to change that much. But, we are going to run out of fossil fuels and we are going to fill it up with disgusting toxic sludge. Lets go for the heart of the problem instead of pointing fingers and spreading fear.

Re:Sounds inevitable then

[GR1NCH]

If someone made a comment like this about someone's arguement FOR global warming it would have been moderated as Flamebait, instead this is moderated+5 Funny. Once again demonstrating the problem with /.'s moderation system.