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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."
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.
when technology advances, all boats rise!
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.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Global Warming has only negative side effects. You will go to hell for making statements to the contrary.
Bah!
Or you could have people paint their roofs white and use lighter tar on the streets white instead of the pitch black crap (would make night driving better too I assume), etcetera, to send back some solar energy once it gets on earth. You could genetically engineer grass to be light/white instead of green, and be "viral" so that entire patches of normal grass would be taken over by the stuff. It should also be emo grass, so it can cut itself.
That is why the melting of the artic/antartic would be a big problem - that white ice/snow reflects energy back to space, when it gets smaller, it effectively increases the amount of energy we recieve (I guess the oceans get warmer) and makes the whole warming process go that much faster.
Anyway, a few trillion gallons of white paint would be easier to procure and distribute than sending mega mirrors up to space -- even if they are made of mylar or something similiar.
I thought the radical Environmentalist wanted 5.5 - 6.0 billion people removed from the face of the earth.
http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/Message.htm
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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?
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
Watched that? Good.
Now remember that MIT oceanographer? The one they've got on there to say that CO2 doesn't matter because it all comes out of the oceans really anyway?
He was substantially misrepresented, and he's not happy at all about it. I'm especially amused by the manner in which the film maker responds to criticism: 'Go and fuck yourself.'
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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