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

Can't Hear You

[Anonymous Coward]

La La La La LA!!!!

Can't hear you! Not happening! No consensus!

Love,
George

[George W. Bush appears by kind co-operation of Exxon, Inc]

Re:Can't Hear You

[gowen]

Something tells me that increased solar activity has more to do with global warming.

Something may well tell you that. But it isn't science.

Re:Can't Hear You

[rk]

People like to claim this, and there's some truth in that the solar energy output does fluctuate, but when I worked for NASA, when we calibrated our images, we treated solar energy output as a constant, because those variations were too small to affect the calibration. The eccentricity of orbit played a much larger role in varying the solar energy received on planetary surfaces.

The approximate average temperature of a body Tb illuminated by a blackbody radiator (which stars are close enough to to make little difference) of temp T, with radius R, where the body has an albedo A and is distance D away is given as:

Tb = T * ( 1 - A)**.25 * ((R/2.0*D)**.5)

If we assume Earth's albedo is .36, the temp of the sun is 5860 K, the solar radius is 696,000 km, and the Earth is 1.5e8 km away, we get 251 degrees K, which is very chilly, but this doesn't include greenhouse and convection effects (try this calculation on Venus to see what I mean!)

If we make the Sun 100 K hotter, the new temperature on earth goes to 255 degrees kelvin. Now, I'm not a solar scientist (and there's several on /. whom I've had the pleasure of meeting over the years who can correct me if I'm wrong), but I don't think the sun's mean temperature varies by anything close to that amount. With that, you get a 4 degree kelvin increase in solar heating. That's it.

Unless one wants to reject all of physics from Maxwell onwards, I think another explanation than increased solar activity would have to be found for warming effects. This doesn't mean that I buy the gloom and doom scenarios put out by those who warn of global warning (nor do I reject them), but I do believe that good science is required, and I've seen more than enough bad science brought up by both sides of this debate.

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.

Yes Yes

[LiquidCoooled]

All those problems, but whats on the mind of most people here is - will it affect my WoW ping times?

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.

Who's still denying it these days?

[wing03]

So, I hear republicans and big oil business folks still call this a theory.

We, north of that country, just barely (and fortunately) elected a government who feels the same way.

We're having a winter heat wave here in Southern Ontario while our summers have been bloody unbearable with bad air days...weeks, high humidity and high temperatures while massive flooding and totally untypical weather hits different parts of the world.

Exactly, what are these folks not seeing when it comes to denying global warming?

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.

Re:Wake up Americans

[TFGeditor]

"You have no right to damage the Earth! It's not yours."

[joke]

The hell it isn't. We paid for it.

[joke]

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:Some government-sponsored sensationalism, anyon

[Anonymous Coward]

try RealClimate.org and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

I've read all the papers (a few in summary form only) from the conference on which this report is based. The BBC report accurately reflects what I have read.

Re:Wake up Americans

[caffeination]

Oh no! You didn't close the [joke] tag properly! Everything you've said or typed since you wrote this post has been a joke!
  Close it quick!

So DO something about it

[Dekortage]

Here in New York (USA), the energy sector has been decentralized, so we can choose our suppliers for electricity. I've chosen one that is entirely based on wind and hydro power. Sure, it costs me an extra $10-$20/month, but it is one small thing that _I_ can do.

We keep looking to governments to impose a change on us, but what are we doing about it for ourselves?

Re:Wake up Americans

[lbrandy]

Citizens of the US: It's time to make your government take actions to stop global warming. You, the US, are the biggest contributor to global warming. In spite of this fact, the US does nothing. Join the EU and the rest of the world.

I'm going to ignore your silly troll, that got modded up, and provide some truth admist the $EMOTION-mongering:

Here is the data (mostly from 2002): Greenhouse gas emissions. As a point of information, while the US totally dominates total greenhouse emissions, we aren't #1 per capita, we are just #6. We are behind Paraguay, Luxembourg, Jamacia, Belize, and Australia. And before Canada gets all high and mighty, we are at 23.35, and you are at 23.11. And, for the record, the US has done alot to cut back on its GHG emissions, despite the fact that it is not part of Kyoto. Therefore, the quote "In spite of this fact, the US does nothing." is catagorically false. You may decide we haven't done enough, and I'd probably agree.

You have no right to damage the Earth! It's not yours.

Tell that to Luxembourg. Har har.

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/

Fossil-fuel outfits and their PR firms, that's who

[Engineer-Poet]

More info and details here.

You do realize that "co2science.org" is run by fossil-fuel PR flacks, don't you?

We're not denying it, we're just questioning wether it's linked to CO2.

Which conveniently allows the fossil-fuel interests to avoid any remedial actions which might affect their profits. Slick, that.

PR firms are noted for producing bovine excrement. They are really good at polishing it to make it look good, but it doesn't change its essence. If you want to know where climate scientists stand, you should read stuff written by climate scientists.

The cornerstone to the IPCC Report is the Michael Mann (et el) "hockey stick" graph

Sorry, but that's an outright lie. See Myth #1 (and read the rest). You can find the Keeling curve and atmospheric composition data derived from the Vostok ice core (going back 650,000 years) at The Ergosphere.