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"

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Re:Can't Hear You

[BuffYoda]

Quantum electrodynamics is science. The theory was formulated to explain natural phenomena, and its testable predictions have been confirmed by everyone who has taken the time to test them. Notice you never hear of scientists 'taking sides' on the issue of quantum electrodynamics, precisely because it is science fact---disagreeing with something as testable as QED is akin to disagreeing that '2 + 2 = 4'. Yeah, there are people who do that, but we don't call them scientists. Now contrast that with a doomsday prediction 100 years into the future based on a questionable, mathematical model of a fundamentally chaotic system, whose 'advocates'[1] openly urge people to repent, change their ways, or pay in a kind of hell on earth for the consequences of their decadent, sinful lifestyles. You tell me if that's science. I call it moralizing (when I'm in a particularly charitable mood). Computers in general, and the 'models' that are simulated on them, have become the modern, socially acceptable incarnation of the crystal ball---a way for people to disguise their agenda under the cloak of divination. 'Look! Behold your impending doom and change your ways before it's too late!!!' No thanks. I'll stick with science, myself, which consists of facts and figures, equations and postulates, and which is wholly and blessedly free from moral imperatives and subjective values. [1] QED has no 'advocates'; it doesn't need them. Nor does any scientifically established 'fact'. And I quote the word 'fact' only because science is always open to revision---even to later, contradictory theories. It's only dogma that isn't.