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Billions Face Risks From Climate Change
gollum123 writes with a link to a kind of grim BBC story. According to a report drawn up by 'hundreds of international environmental experts', billions of people face drought and famine, as well as an increase in natural disasters, as a result of climate change. Individuals in the poorest countries face the most danger, due to a lack of infrastructure and geographic location. "The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world. Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft."
Siberians are happy about global warming. Siberia is now a happening place. Some Northern European countries are also digging it.
Table-ized A.I.
Care to elaborate on that? The models are available for you to play with. The basic experiments (CO2 laden air traps more heat) are easy to replicate. The satellite data indicating that the atmosphere is warming is available. The fact that we're releasing carbon into the atmosphere by the millions of tons is fairly simple to calculate.
None of that is absolutely conclusive, and could well be misleading or wrong, but when it comes to making policy it would be nice to have a more constructive argument than "I just don't buy it."
The countries objecting are the 3 biggest oil consuming nations and one of the biggest oil exporting nations. Go figure that.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I agree with that. We can't be certain. We've only got a few decades of really good data, and a few hundred years of approximate data prior to that. That's not enough to be certain to any degree about events that will play out over hundreds of years.
But that doesn't matter. We need to act on this whether (no pun intended) we're certain or not. The very fact we're not sure means we have no choice *in case we're right*. Not being certain works both ways. We're not certain it's a bit disaster, but neither are we certain it isn't. If we don't start taking action now then in 50 years time it may be too late. If we do take action then it might mean we all end up less wealthy, maybe even out of work if we work in a polluting industry, but is that really so bad if the cost of doing nothing is potentially the end of the human race, or even the sum of life on Earth? Sure, I'm a bit of a tree-hugging hippy liberal (lower case 'l') at heart, but I care that my children and children's children don't end up starving to death in a desert wasteland. With no trees. To hug.
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OK, how 'bout the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere is not linear, it's logarithmic. Adding more CO2 beyond a certain point doesn't have that great an effect on temperature. Changes in solar output does. I don't buy it either.
BTW, when did genuine skepticism turn into trolling?? I wasn't expecting some kind of eco-inquisition.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Blocking solar energy is just a Really Bad Idea all around. I mean, not only does it reduce our ability to collect solar energy for electricity but it reduces the ability of plants to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Stupid stupid idea.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Just shut your carbon hole and buy your credits from Gore's company, then you can continue to pollute with impunity.
Or you can buy credits from me. I'm still working out a pricing schedule, and I won't actually do anything, but if you pay me enough money, I'll take responsibility for your carbon sinning. If everyone does that, then the world will be nearly pollution free, except for me, the most polluting person of all time, of course!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The US and other G8 countries are spending a bunch of money to compensate for a warmer world, including things like alternative energy, GM food, and the like. The US is also apparently funneling a bunch of money through the MCA. This is all good. my question is we are spending money to hedge against the risk, then why are we not also spending some money to reduce the suspected causes of the risk. If it were a terrorist risk, we would have no problem spending $500 billion to fight even the most unlikely causes. OTOH, we can't even ask industry and individual to try not to pollute so much. It amazing me that we will fine people who throw a 1 oz tissue out a car window $500, but have not problem with the same person producing 1 kg of CO2 for every mile driven in the big truck or SUV, multiplied but the 60 commute every day. Insane.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
and for all deniers I provide this practical list, pick your poison:
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sigamajig...
Canada is also a happening place. And they take in almost anybody. And I believe and they have a homesteading program where you can get your own large tract of land for free or nearly free. If I weren't already an American, I'd go for it even if I had to steal, jump fences, work aboard a cargo ship, swim and take assumed names along the way.
People forget that never in the history of Man has the climate not been changing. We survivors are the ones that went from where conditions were not survivable to where they were better. The ones who stayed behind are history. (Note to people in southern Florida: if your children can't breathe seawater, now would be a good time to find some land that won't be under water when they're grown.)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You do realise that it doesn't necessarily follow that global warming == warmer climate?
One example is the gulf stream that is the only thing keeing Northern England and Scotland from being under metres of ice is already starting to change direction as a result of global warming.
>> Does anyone else see there's more going on here than environmental alarmists would have you believe?
Yes, that its largely the American population (also conicidentally per capita the worst polluters by far) who are in denial and are grapsing at any available feeble excuse to avoid having to change their behviour.
50 years ago ?! Computers and microwaves existed. Nuclear weapons existed. 50 years ago, parity violation was confirmed in an experiment conducted fractions of a degree above absolute zero...
50 years ago, people were building the first DEDICATED WEATHER SATELLITES ! (Launched 47 years ago...)
You don't think people could measure atmospheric temperatures accurately enough to feed into a climate model a whole 50 years ago??? Get a clue, you're just ignorant of scientific history. Accurate temperature measurement for meteorological purposes was one of the first things developed in the history of science-as-we-know-it, given its obvious utility, especially at the height of the maritime era.
Hell, during the British Empire, weather stations were dotted around the globe recording temperatures to within a fraction of a degree almost 2 CENTURIES AGO.
Just how long do you think 50 years is? My mum is over 50 years old! Maybe you meant 50 jovian years, eh?
Okay, first off, I'll pretend I fully buy into the "human-caused global warming" schtick. I don't. We may be CONTRIBUTORS, but not the root cause. But anyhoo, I'll bite in the "human-caused" thing for the sake of argument.
Please propose a scientifically reasonable solution as to what is causing global warming if it's not human based, and one that's consistent with 100,000+ years of earth temperature variations along with CO2 levels and solar activity, data of which we do have.
Even if the human race were to cease all industrial and agricultural output of greenhouse gas NOW (this very second), it wouldn't make a bit of difference in the warming trend. The material we've put in the atmosphere will continue this trend for at least the next century. So what exactly do they expect people to do?
You are correct that we cannot just limit everything, even the most conservative models that assume we all buy hybrids, cut down on driving, and stop increasing global population, still lead to runaway levels of CO2 in a century or so.
I attended a physics colloquium by a government scientist, the guy who actually got Bush to include the bit about alternative energy and 'switchgrass' in last years State of the Union address. So this guy answers to Bush, convinced Bush to mention this, and even this guy himself,who you might assume would thus be an oil-lobby crony, says we have to have an action plan ready within a century or so.
So seriously, show me a single professional scientist who says we don't need to do anything to stop global warming, or has a reasonable explanation as to why CO2 levels are HUGELY above anywhere they've been over the past severla hundred thousand years, and is fully consistent with CO2, solar, and temperature data over this time span.
Now anyway, what this government scientist proposed to do is immediately work on alternative energy programs and get ourselves off of carbon-based sources. One plan is do nothing, as you are implying we do, which could be an acceptable solution if you're statistically certain we're not the cause of warming and that nothing disastrous will happen. Are you statistically certain, other than your contrarian desire to say you don't buy the global warming theories?
What this guy did do is propose energy plans for all energies, from coal, to nuclear, to wind, to solar, and showed that NONE except solar are able to satisfy our expanding energy needs and to fully power the country renewably while reducing carbon footprint.
It makes perfect sense thermodynamically too, as ALL power (except geothermal) is solar energy anyway, so you get the highest efficieny if you go straight to the energy source itself. There are great improvements in solar heating techniques (ie, use mirrors to heat liquid in a pipe to turn turbines), and that is where he thought the future is.
Doing that in the next few years will allow us to reduce the carbon footprint and not get stuck in this level.
Another thing to consider are that the ocean has been absorbing CO2 for the past 100 years anyway, and when that saturates, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will skyrocket.
make world, not war
I've got to start off by saying: I'm a conservative Canadian, nowhere near a vocal tree hugging liberal.
To all those that don't believe man is impacting the climate, I call BS. People said the same thing about the hole in the Ozone Layer (caused by CFC's prevelant at the time). People said the same thing about Acid Rain (caused by VERY bad emission controls on Auto's).
Let me bottom line this, read up on the melting at the poles, and at Greenland. Take a look at the average temperature per season per year for the last 20 years. Take a look at the number of Islands that have *disappeared* due to rising water levels. Lastly - consider that more people are alive today then have existed for our ENTIRE history.
The UN doesn't exist to "spread America's wealth", countries like Canada and NZ contribute the same or more PER PERSON than the US (when it pays - which is increasingly rare). The UN exists so that all the people of the World have a place and forum to voice their concerns on GLOBAL issues. I would argue that the changes we are making to our climate are perhaps the most important such issue to ever be discussed at the UN.
If after all the evidence you don't believe we're impacting the Climate, then be prepared to kiss your ass goodbye - if war and famine don't get ya, the drought will.
Killer
"All those scientists around the globe, that practice science everyday and have studied years and years worth of data are wrong. I saw something on the TV that said so."
Another favorite:
Ok, fine we have global warming, but it's not going to effect anybody.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow, I am completely surprised at the number of posts attempting to dispute global warming. Pathetically, most of said posts attempt to call into question the impartiality of the scientists that did the research as if they have some political agenda of their own. It's more than a little ironic that the term "sheeple" gets tossed about by those who are generally regurgitating political dogma.
And for the others who point to past predictions of environmental degradation that never materialized (global cooling, for instance) as reason to ignore the current forecast -- I beg of you, please stop. We obviously still don't know exactly how everything works but when the current body of knowledge and the majority of the scientific community is predicting something severe, we would be stubborn to the point of idiocy to do anything but plan accordingly.
Personally, I don't need any government study to convince me that global warming is happening. Look at a satellite map of the Arctic thirty years ago and compare it to one today. Thirty years is to the planet the time equivalent of an afternoon to us. Ever get that depleted hot flush a day before the flu kicks in?
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
example: katrina. (the city still hasn't recovered).
i honestly dont believe any actions on emissions now will show results for the next 50+ years, but in the mean time things will continue getting worse, and we should be allocating more funds to disaster relief and trying to prevent the end of this spike in co2 from getting any higher.
this denial and refusal to prepare based on "uncertainty" is like playing chicken with a freight train.. sure it "might" veer off the rails and not hit you, but all evidence points to it plowing straight on through. do you really want to be standing on the tracks when its perfectly feasible not to?
at this point the evidence is so blatant they might as well go to the airport and proclaim "man will never be able to fly"! at this point it's very much religion-like political fervor rather than weighing of evidence and reality.
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That's what we're becoming. So totally wrapped up in the idea that we have some sort of "right" to exist that after engaging in hundreds of years of logical scientific inquiry, finding mountains of evidence that the planet's weather is dynamic, vibrant, and above all fickle, that there are regular up and down periods of cold and hot, we then turn a blind eye to it and against everything we just spent all that time digging up, and proclaim that the world should always have been exactly as it was on June 17, 1931, in Passaic, NJ or something to that effect, and that we must move Heaven and Earth to make it stay that way.
.0003 of that time?
Of course, I'm sure the ancestors of the present day people thought that as they watched the Earth begin to thaw from the last ice age, and the oceans rose to cover the continental shelves and give rise to the planet-wide myths about a globe covering flood. Except, they didn't have scientific evidence in huge piles of books showing that this sort of thing happens all the time regardless of what the bipedal monkeys are up to.
It has been warmer than this in the past. Much warmer. It has been colder than this in the past. Much colder. We know this for a fact. We know that this happens with or without our activities. And we know that there is NOTHING we can do at our present technological level about it. So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it when for over half a million years it happened several times and we've only had this supposedly evil technology for only less than
Because the global warming is real and there are people in this world and always have been who want the masses to hand over power over their lives to them. And so they trot out to us a false premise, that we are totally responsible for an actually natural occurence in the long span of planetary history, and another one that they can save us from ourselves if only we give them the reigns of power. Seems like the phoney-baloney oil crisis that never happened in the 70s, the phoney-baloney global starvation crisis that never happened in the 60s, the phoney-baloney Communist scare of the 50s that was horsehockey, and ten million other crises.
It seems on the surface that we are supremely full of ourselves and yet in truth we are terribly dubious, completely without hope, and utterly given to embracing our own fallibility. There is no faith in ourselves in this idea that we caused global warming and still none in the idea that we can stop it. Only false hollow beliefs put forth to enrich the power of others.
Have faith in our progress and our natures that we are not so bad as we would think and as others would posit. We have greatness unknown and unmatched simply waiting to be explored. Once we dreamed of exploring the universe and doing so in style and comfort where now we dream simply of returning to primitive conditions lest Mother Earth shrug us off in anger over our insolence. Mother Earth is a nonentity and the physics of the world merely uncaring and indifferent to us. We cannot make the world stay in steady state, we can only live around it, and we are supremely capable of doing it. It was never of question if we can, but if we will.
There are problems with how we treat the environment, but growing the power of the state over the power of the individual, regressing to dreary primitive states, embracing inanities like hemp and bio diesel, and forgetting all the wonderous things we've thought up in the past to overcome each problem in turn, is to turn our back on being human, and all the best things about that. We can solve the problems and there need be no doom and gloom, and the solutions need not involve handing more power over to those who have far too much already and not nearly the wisdom to know what to properly do with it.
The world will shrug. We will move with it.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
They didn't destroy the ozone layer because we stopped emitting them in such large quantities, and now some of the damage caused is beginning to reverse. People who say we cried wolf over acid rain, the ozone, ddt, etc. are being disingenuous. These disasters didn't come about because we did something and the policy worked.
Yes mankind is producing more CO2, but still it's insignificant compared to other natural sources such as volcanoes and vegetative decay. Your views on our industrialization, and the slightly increasing temperature is a loose correlation.
Vegetative decay is a yearly cycle and not a net producer of CO2, unless the vegetation doesn't grow back next year. Clear cutting forrests being a prime example, and an effect of industrialization.
Volcanoes are not a larger source of CO2 than industrial output, and i'd be interested to know your theory of how volcanic activity has dramatically increased in the last 100 years compared to the previous 600,000. That doesn't correlate at all with the ice core data, much less loosely.
The planet is warming up a bit because of increased solar flux, and not man-made CO2. That's what the data says.
Solar flux means the net transfer of solar energy at the earth, and is affected by both the amount of energy received at earth and the amount of energy retained. Increase in solar output by itself can only account for 30% of the measured temperature increase, ergo the remainder is an effect of increased solar energy retention, exactly how the CO2 greenhouse model predicts. That is what the data says.
The enemies of Democracy are
Consider, there is currently a honey bee plague that is killing up to 90% of hive populations in N. America. How fucked up is that?
Actually, that's one thing that probably doesn't belong in the list. It's a disaster for beekeepers, and a major problem for some commercial crops that depend on honeybees. But the actual scientists (i.e., biologists) studying the phenomenon haven't generally considered it a disaster at all.
Honeybees are a domesticated species that is not native to North America. Like some of the other critters we introduced (English sparrows, starlings, carp, etc.), they partly escaped and went wild, and took over the niches that had belonged to hundreds of native species. They might not have done so well in the wild, except that humans maintained a large population that could replentish the supply as the natives evolved ways to fight them. But generally, honeybees have been a disaster for most native species of small pollinators.
Now that there are almost no wild honeybees left, the native bees and other small pollinators (that survived) have been expanding their populations. Biologists studying the phenomenon have generally treated this as a recovery of the original diversity that had been suppressed by the human-supported invader. The resulting diversity makes for a more stable ecosystem in general. And many of the native pollinators are doing a fairly good job of pollinating most of the crops. The main problem is that we can't control them as easily as we controlled honeybees. And most of them don't form huge colonies, so harvesting what honey they have isn't very practical.
The main "disaster" is the human one: We've lost much of our honey crop. But this isn't really a disaster for the ecosystem; it's just a minor local agricultural problem in one crop. And much of that problem can be attributed to something that biologists have generally warned about: It was a monoculture, depending totally on a single domesticated insect. Monocultures are inherently unstable, susceptible to crashes whenever a single parasite or disease shows up. It's not the first time we've seen crashes in a single monoculture crop, and it won't be the last.
If we want a reliable honey crop, we can't do it like we have been. We need a variety of bees, preferably of several species, so that a single disease or parasite can't wipe out the entire crop, and so that populations can be kept somewhat separate to impair the disease/parasite's rapid spread. But there's no sign that our agricultural system is learning that lesson.
There's no obvious tie-in of this with the climate change phenomenon. Nobody is suggesting that the honeybee die-off has anything to do with the warmer weather.
But the warming will allow the Africanized "killer" bees to expand farther into North America. They are good honey producers; maybe we need to learn to cultivate them. That's why people were experimenting with them South America, after all, when the big "Oops!!" happened and a bunch of them escaped.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Looking back up through the discussion the majority of posts have been from skeptics, and none of them have given particular reasons why the IPCC's report is wrong. We have
I've never heard of a massive conspiracy between the loosely knit scientific community before, but this is basically what skeptics are saying. Our kids might look back at discussions like this and wonder what the hell skeptics were thinking and why they couldn't accept that they had to make small lifestyle changes.
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