What Happened To the Climate Refugees?

Attila Dimedici writes "In 2005 the UN said that by 2010 there would be 50 million climate refugees. They even provided a map of where they would come from. However since that original story was posted the UN has taken down that page. They apparently don't know about Google cache."

Comments

United Nations University, Not the UN

[ideonexus]

This article clearly demonstrates what's wrong with America's science reporting. If the UN had released a report claiming 50 million global warming refugees by 2010, there would be dozens of news articles on it. The supposed incriminating evidence is a Google Cache page with this map that doesn't itself say anything about refugees, but does highlight areas most susceptible to sea level rise. The "50 million climate refugees by 2010" statement is not referenced anywhere in any UN report, it's a six words on one defunct graphic that was part of a larger report on world agriculture by the UN University. This 50 million by 2010 figure comes from Dr. Bogardi at the UN University in Bonn, NOT the United Nations.

The problem with this prediction being made by any scientist is that keeping track of how many refugees there are is difficult (current estimate by the UN is 1 million a year, a figure that the Red Cross lends support to with the statement that environmental disasters are displacing more people than war now) and the causes are debatable. The epic flooding in Pakistan created 10 million refugees, Hurricane Katrina added a quarter of a million refugees, and desertification in Africa is displacing millions. Can we blame these events on Global Warming? Hurricanes and floods happen without a warming world, but a warming world increases the chances of such disasters happening.

Then there are the refugees that no one realizes. In the small coastal town where I live in North Carolina, houses have been falling into the swamp one by one for decades, but the residents blame it on people building their homes in flood zones, not realizing that sea levels in their state have risen three times the rate of rise on the rest of the Atlantic coast. People didn't build their homes in the water, the water rose 1.5 meters over the 50 years since they were built, but nobody realizes this because of landscape amnesia.

You can read all about the various estimates concerning environmental refugees on Wikipedia. It took the author of this untruth less than an hour to post their nonsense and the deniers flooded the Internet with it quickly. It took me two hours to research and write this response, because I wanted to know what I was talking about, and I will only reach a very small audience in comparison. This is why I despair when considering how science could possibly stand a chance against the overwhelming confidence ignorance brings the unscientific masses.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Anonymous Coward]

"sea levels in their state have risen three times the rate of rise on the rest of the Atlantic coast [sciencedaily.com]."

What the quoted article actually says:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.

It seems more than a little illogical to state that sea levels rise higher in one Atlantic coast state than the others. And the primary sea level rise occurred well before the evil auto culture. But then I'm just an ignoramus according to the above post.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Pete Venkman]

Looks like you didn't read either.

"Furthermore, the acceleration appears consistent with other studies from the Atlantic coast, though the magnitude of the acceleration in North Carolina is larger than at sites farther north along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast and may be indicative of a latitudinal trend related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet."

The article does state that NC's coast is creeping more quickly than at other points along the Atlantic coast.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Cyberax]

"It seems more than a little illogical to state that sea levels rise higher in one Atlantic coast state than the others."

Nothing illogical. 'Sea level' is an averaged value, which depends on currents and winds.

"And the primary sea level rise occurred well before the evil auto culture."

Coal was used in large quantities even before automobiles.

"But then I'm just an ignoramus according to the above post."

And here we both agree.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[FrootLoops]

Maybe I missed it, but why do you say "This article clearly demonstrates what's wrong with America's science reporting"? The author of TFA, Gavin Atkins, appears to be Australian. The hosting site, Asian Correspondent, doesn't appear to be related to American news. I agree with the general statement that science reporting is more often than not just terrible, but I don't see how America's science reporting enters in here. In any case, thanks for the thoughtful post!

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[webdog314]

from Wikipedia:
"The United Nations University (UNU) is an academic arm of the United Nations"

You are either a terrible researcher or a liar.

Right, just like California State University is an academic arm of the California state government, which should be held accountable for everything they put out...

You are either an idiot, or... no, you're just an idiot.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[bunratty]

So any statement made by any researcher involved with the UN is essentially the same as an official statement by the UN? Furthermore, if I can show that any of these statements by any researchers turns out the be wrong, the entire field of study and research institution they're involved with is called into question? Using that logic, I can call into question any aspect of anything that's studied and any research institution.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[bunratty]

Avalanches have always and will always happen, and there's nothing we can do about it. We can, however, trigger avalanches so they happen when people aren't around so people don't get hurt. Diseases have always and will always happen, and there's nothing we can do about it. We can, however, develop vaccines and treatments to minimize human suffering. Just because we can't fully control nature doesn't mean we can't influence it.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[FooAtWFU]

This article clearly demonstrates what's wrong with America's science reporting.

America has no science reporting. It has sciency reporting, in the Steven-Colbert "truthiness" sense. Now consider that the media is the main way that "climate change" gets communicated to the people of America. The media... and politicians. Is there any surprise that lots of people are insanely skeptical of it? I'd even say that with those inputs, calling it all a load of nonsense is a very rational response.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Deep Esophagus]

The UN Environment Programme specifically cites those figures in their report, and a 2008 report on un.org's own news site repeats those claims:

Citing a report from the UN University, UNEP said that there were now more than 19 million people officially recognized as “persons of concern” – people who are likely to be displaced because of environmental disasters. UNEP said that figure is expected to grow to about 50 million by the end of 2010.

That article clearly demonstrates what's wrong with the UN's science reporting. You can't have it both ways -- expect us to believe what the UN says about climate when we can't prove them wrong, and expect us to ignore their claims when they have been proven wrong. Making outrageous predictions like the above is political grandstanding at its worst, and has no place in science.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[pubwvj]

This is like the livestock's long shadow mess they did a while back. They claimed that raising meat is responsible for more global warming than transportation (e.g., cars). This became widely quoted and used as an excuse by the vegan crowd for trying to force every to stop eating meat. The problem was the report was full of errors and in general a fraud. It didn't include the full costs of transportation yet it over included the costs for livestock resulting in totally distorted numbers. More importantly it didn't differentiate between the grain fed confinement animal feeding operations vs the pastured farming of livestock which are two entirely different things. All animal farming got painted with the same broad brush. Additionally, they completely failed to mention that the growing of vegetable and grain crops for humans has the exact same problem and that it takes several pounds of veggies/cereals to equal one pound of nutrients of meat. Finally the FAO did retract their report but they didn't make a big deal about the retraction like they had when they published it and the vegan crowd continues to use the flawed original report as justification for their eco/political terrorism. The UN, FAO, etc are very irresponsible with their reports and press releases.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[pubwvj]

Also not in the news is the fact that the sea level used to be a LOT higher than it is now and it used to be a LOT lower than it is now. Things change. That's life. None of it had anything to do with humans.

The planet has also been warmer and cooler in the past. When the planet was warmer there was more diversity of life, large swaths of land that are currently too cold for much bio-diversity were more useable by nature and man. When it got colder it was hell. Things change. Given my druthers I would take warmer, please.

With all of this angst over "Global Warming" people are missing the real issue: cut pollution.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[electrosoccertux]

shhh being anti US is all the rage over here on /. you'll spoil our fun!

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[bunratty]

The data have always showed warming due to burning fossil fuels, ever since Arrhenius predicted it over 100 years ago. The impending ice age approaching was hypothesized by researchers doing exactly what you're doing -- instead of looking at the global temperature trend looking at small geographical areas. Clearly global temperatures are rising. There isn't a "scare campaign" that I can see, just predictions based on a scientific hypothesis, and observations that match those predictions. The problem with rising sea levels is that hundreds of millions of people will have to relocate, abandoning trillions of dollars of infrastructure. Solar power can be used with energy storage systems. Try reading some research on the areas you're discussing instead of spreading misinformation like your post does.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[phantomfive]

You make a valiant attempt to explain away the article, but the actual explanation is much simpler. The UN University indeed is the one who issued the report, but they are merely a UN think tank. Furthermore, UNEP also cited the report, and UNEP started the IPCC, so it is not unreasonable to say that the UN was claiming this. The UNEP is as much a part of the UN as the IPCC.

To really understand this, you have to look at the claim. Let's look at what the UN actually said:

there are now about 19.2 million people officially recognized as "persons of concern"-that is, people likely to be displaced because of environmental disasters. This figure is predicted to grow to about 50 million by the end of the year 2010.

Note that the number is not environmental refugees, but actually persons of concern. There is a huge difference between the two, and the second is probably not inaccurate.

Now, on the website in question, UNEP said this

Fifty million climate refugees by 2010

This is obviously not what the original researchers were claiming. Who knows why UNEP put that on their website, but it is most likely an error of their PR agency, not of their science. In short, the scientists were probably right, but the propagandaists were wrong.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[angel'o'sphere]

If yo would read what he posted and compare it what you post, you would see: you are wrong.
Average all over the world as you calculate, might be 16.5cm but at that particular place it is 1.5m

Do you get it? At that particular place that was very clearly written in the orignal post.

angel'o'sphere

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[mvdwege]

Perhaps it escaped your attention, but the bit you're quoting says nothing about the amount of refugees, it is rather an assesment on the areas that are at risk of producing refugees for whatever reason, including rising sea levels

Which was exactly wat the OP was pointing out.

Another data point for the hypothesis that climate denialism correlates with stupidity, I guess.

Mart

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[angel'o'sphere]

Currently we're seeing an unparalled scare campaign by the UN and some environmental organizations based on the same data that three decades ago showed an iceage approaching

Can someone provide some links regarding those organizations?
I learned 1975 that we likely run into a global warming, and I never heard about anyone proclaiming an approaching ice age. After all the next ice age is due in 35k years and not in the next 100 ... that is a complete nonsense claim. (Considering that we don't even know by what ice ages are caused ...)
angel'o'sphere

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[bunratty]

No, it's the continued observations of the warming that has been predicted for over 100 years. If we do not see the predicted warning, then feel free to say the researchers were wrong.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[dave420]

Or increased/moved currents in the ocean, driving more water to a single place, coupled with a local geography that makes a localised increase in retention more likely.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[urusan]

You can already call into question any aspect of anything that's studied at any research institution. There's no need to acquire special justification. Questioning past results is an important part of science. Otherwise we'd have the Sun revolving around the Earth and supposed cold fusion.

That said, one should really have a logical argument based on all the relevant available facts when calling such things into question. Otherwise it's all just a waste of time for everyone involved...particularly the scientists involved, who could be making new discoveries in that time.

In this case, the best one can say is that the idea that 50 million refugees would materialize so soon was wrong, and that Dr. Bogardi of the UNU made a serious mistake in his prediction, which was possibly driven by the desire for creating scary headlines. That last bit about the headlines and anything further is speculation and politics, which is outside the realm of science.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a student living in Bonn. I had never heard of the "UN university" so I looked it up. Bonn is a tiny university town and
already has one big university, the aptly-named University of Bonn, so I was suprised to discover that
it had another university hiding somewhere. As it turn out the "UN university" consists of four levels of a UN office building in the middle of the UN compound. From the website "The offices of UNU-EHS are located on the 22nd and 26th-28th floor of the Langer Eugen building on the UN Campus." It is fully funded by the UN and has nothing to do with Germany or Bonn. You made it sound like its some kind of private institute using the UN name, but its not. To call it a part of the UN is completely accurate.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[YesIAmAScript]

It doesn't say "at risk", it says "likely". And the reasons are for climate reasons, although not all due to rising sea levels.

This correlates with the story slashdot printed which is that 50M refugees were predicted due to climate reasons.

And the real numbers were much much lower.

The climate change issue has been so poorly represented on both sides. One side says nothing is happening at all. While the other makes overly dire predictions and draws unprovable conclusions (Katrina is due to global warming) in order to try to scare people into action.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Broolucks]

The issue is that speedy changes might wreak havoc on many population centers, forcing them to relocate. A warmer planet might be nicer for humanity, but you'll be sacking one or two generations in the transition. To the extent that we are not willing to accept something as radical as sacrificing swaths of people all around the world for the good of their great-grandchildren, we'd rather make sure that if we can prevent it, we will. We can warm the planet at a slower, safer rate.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[ScentCone]

In short, the scientists were probably right, but the propagandaists were wrong.

And yet it's the propogandists that influence the minds of Hollywood celebrities and other high-profile people who then spout off on the subject and encourage people to vote one way or another on politicians that want to involve trillions of dollars on the subject, or use it as a vehicle by which to tax one group and give it to another group. That's the problem.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[rgbatduke]

And a careful analysis of CO_2 levels and temperature from examining ice cores shows that more or less without exception CO_2 levels lag temperature rises by hundreds of years. The actual evidence shows almost no climate sensitivity to CO_2 forcing. This actually makes very good sense, given the orders of magnitude involved. The earth's climate and its fluctuations are dominated by solar state first, gross geographical changes and long-lifetime oscillations in the chaotic pattern of circulation (e.g. PDO) second, and things like CO_2 levels a distant and almost irrelevant third. A fact that is already starting to be quite apparent as we enter solar cycle 24 heading towards a probable 200 year low peak level of solar activity. Get used to nasty winters -- if we actually start a Dalton, or worse Maunder, style solar minimum we'll all need our woolies and there will indeed be a climate-based human catastrophe. It will be the exact opposite of the one the hysteria of the last 20 years has focused on, of course, but so be it. I bet they still won't make Al Gore give back his "Nobel Prize".

rgb

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Maxo-Texas]

For certain spacings, yes.

In this case, putting a solar panel on every plot of 299ksq (so a 15 k square or hex grid) should do it.

To be fair-- you are including mountains (darn high installation expenses!), swamps, etc.
I'm sure there will be a subset. And there are multiple kinds of solar power.

And if the power isn't 100% sufficient, you apparently need to keep the gas/oil turbines spinning at a low rate so they can ramp up when the wind dies or the clouds block a section.

Still, most houses could be powered for less than 10% of their lot size. In my case, I'll be powering during the day with a grid tied system with no batteries. That should reduce my power costs by about $500 per year and payback the system in 20 years assuming no increases in the cost of power (which in my area have doubled to tripled over the last 20 years).

The anti-solar side overstates things to the negative.
The pro-solar side overstates things to the positive.

But photo voltaic solar is getting cheaper every year now and we are about to hit a period of inflation. $10k in a solar power system could pay for itself in 15 years and then produce a 50% to 75% return over the next 10 years. Plus- saved money- you don't pay taxes on. So saving $500 is like earning $750.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Paleolibertarian]

1. All causations involve correlations. Carbon dioxide certainly is a greenhouse gas, greenhouse gasses do cause warming, so certainly an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause warming. If it isn't the carbon dioxide causing the warming, what is it?

Actually there IS a strong correlation between the variability of the Sun and global temperatures. I.E. When the sun is hotter the Earth is warmer and when the Sun is cooler the Earth is cooler. Yet. this data is completely ignored by climate scientists.
--
There are 10 kinds of people in the world.
Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're saying is true in terms of the climate lag, but your understanding of what it means is miles off. The fact that warming cycles due to orbital changes are followed by changes in atmospheric CO2 does not invalidate or in any way call into question the fact that CO2 causes additional atmospheric warming, nor that anthropogenic emissions have caused substantial warming.

A good idea in the future would be to take anything you hear about climate change and search the Skeptical Science page for it. Read this for more information:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[jvillain]

The problem is that we are now starting to get a long trail of predictions from the global warming advocates that have failed to come true. Another favourite of mine is that hurricanes were going to be rampaging across the Atlantic due to the warming. Catrina being just the start. That is why Al Gores book is covered with photoshopped hurricanes including one turning in the wrong direction. Only problem is that hurricane activity has dramatically dropped since Catrina. Yet we are expected to spent trillions with a T of dollars based on these predictions from computer models that can't be verified in any way, haven't had their code released for review or had their algorithms reviewed. This "Just take my word for it" mentality is what we are supposed to bankrupt our countries on. Just look at the disaster wind power has become for the UK and others to see what the problems are.

1. During the study period, wind generation was:

* below 20% of capacity more than half the time;

* below 10% of capacity over one third of the time;

* below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve;

* below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month.

Link

The head of the UK power grid is saying that homes are going to have to get used to not always having power at home.

Link

Then there is the actual life expectancy of windmills. Is this really what we should be spending money on?

Link

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[Maxo-Texas]

Close. The right starting and ending letters...different middle, "pula".

po----tion

Cut po-pula-tion.

Nothing we do will matter if we don't stop incenting new babies and let the population naturally fall to 3 billion (even 2 billion- the planet would be a paradise with 2 billion).

If you don't take these measures now- you STILL have take them when we hit 9 billion (10 billion... 11 billion) and life will be a lot more miserable then with dead fisheries, high cellulose fruits and vegetables and no meat except for the wealthy.

We can fix most of these problems in one generation.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[HiThere]

If it's warm AND MOIST, then the planet will indeed support more diversity. But that diversity takes time to evolve (not just centuries) and I don't think people would give it an opportunity.

For that matter, life over most of the globe was a lot more diverse before people invented archery and nets. This is true whether it was warm, cool, or cold. The only exception is the tropical rain forests, where the climate was so intense that most tools were quickly destroyed by it. Then diversity tended to hang on until stainless steel was invented.

But I do agree that cutting pollution is the most important step, and that global warming is only ONE of the reasons that it should be done.

P.S.: Global warming is not intrinsically a bad thing. It *is*, however, bad for fixed species, individuals, and objects. Fertile areas have a tendency to turn into deserts more readily than deserts turn into fertile areas. Fences, highways, canyons, etc. tend to put obstacles in the way of species trying to migrate into a more hospitable location. And when they get there they're likely to find that it's outside the wildlife sanctuary that climate change has rendered inhospitable. And that some person has claimed the ownership of everything non-human on that turf. Which means THEM, if they try to live there.

In other words, expect climate change, whether warming or not, to decimate the existing species, which are already disappearing faster than at any time since the last Giant Meteor impact. (The dinosaur killer.)
P.S.: I don't think it's a coincidence that a bunch of volcanoes went off on the other side of the world at about the time of impact. I think the shock waves set them off. It's not an either/or kind of causation, but rather a both/and.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[im_thatoneguy]

Stop whining about me lighting your house on fire. Houses have burned before in this area and houses will burn again. None of it had anything to do with humans. Sure I poured gasoline on all the bushes around your house and threw a match into the mix... but it's not like "a burning bush" is a new phenomenon--we even have documentation of this in biblical times. Relax!

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[cdrguru]

I'd say you are an order of magnitude off of "paradise" - we need to get to around 250 million if we want "sustainable".

Even trying to cut the population in half (more than half, really) would require nearly preventing all births for 10-20 years. Sure, it is possible but it is entirely possible that you would wreck the motivation people have for having children completely. If you push too hard on this there is the possiblity that people will just give up.

This is a factor that some of the more radical environmentalists refuse to accept - that if you push hard enough the result will be that people will just give up entirely. All it takes is about 15 years of zero birthrate and you're not going to get it back, ever. Absolutely it is hard to disincent the drive to reproduce - but if you succeed the result could be catastrophic.

How hard would you have to push? Well, in the US and Western Europe today the population growth is negative. Many people feel that it isn't fair to bring children into a world of declining expectations and looming destruction of the environment. Mostly this is among educated young people. In the US we are left with immigration as the only population growth factor there is and I suspect Western Europe is pretty much the same way. This portends some very drastic changes in the coming decades as the population shifts away from educated European-extracted peoples and towards Latin American folks that have been subsistance farming for generations and no goals higher than survival. In most inner cities today the idea of the straight-A student is a subject of ridicule, as is the idea of going to college - what, do you want to be seen as trying to prove yourself better than your peers?

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[The End Of Days]

Yeah pretty much everyone thinks everything would be great if everyone just listened to them. Doesn't make you right in any way, though.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[nomadic]

So? What do you think happens when the debate moves to pollution? The same people whining about how global warming can't be real because climate has changed in the path here start whining about how pollution isn't really that bad and poor manufacturers shouldn't be forced by the statists to spend 3% of their revenues on pollution control technology because that will usher in a permanent economic depression. This same debate will be played out, only talking about dioxins instead of CO2.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[CapOblivious2010]

Also not in the news is the fact that the sea level used to be a LOT higher than it is now and it used to be a LOT lower than it is now. Things change. That's life. None of it had anything to do with humans.

It always seemed to me that the whole "are humans causing global warming or is it natural?" debate totally misses the point. Who cares if we're causing it??? The important questions are: is it real? Can we reduce it? At what cost? Is it better to live with it, or try to avoid it?

Whether or not it would have happened without industrialization is completely irrelevant!

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[93 Escort Wagon]

The problem is that we are now starting to get a long trail of predictions from the global warming advocates that have failed to come true. Another favourite of mine is that hurricanes were going to be rampaging across the Atlantic due to the warming. Catrina being just the start.

Thing is, climate experts never said that - only Al Gore did. As soon as his book came out I heard quite a few climatologists expressing concern over that statement, since there weren't any models that predicted hurricanes would increase in number, and the idea that they'd increase in magnitude was not widely accepted. But Al Gore is, first and foremost, a politician - and his thought process is fundamentally different than that of a scientist. It's like the Republican guy who recently lambasted Planned Parenthood because "90% of their business is abortion" when it's actually 3% - it's not even remotely true, but it played to the fan base and that's what mattered.

Al Gore is also the guy who said the scientists who were pointing out problems with current climate models should "just shut up". That's not good science; and it's doubly silly since a number of those guys were still believers in global warming but were just pointing out the issues with the current climate models.

In the end, the fundamental issue is that these non-scientists give people who don't believe in anthropogenic global warming an easy target. You don't have to argue with the models, and you can ignore the fact that the earth has demonstrably been warming. Thanks to guys like Gore, you can instead focus on his pseudo-science - almost like shooting fish in a barrel.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[steelfood]

Maybe because its fallacious assertions are repeated on /., a U.S.-based website, possibly to be picked up by larger and larger U.S. "news" outlets.

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[RockDoctor]

The planet has been richer in CO2

Well established.

, sulphur dioxide

Plausible, but please cite your sources (and make them worth reading - peer-reviewed journal articles or better).

and nitrogen dioxide in the past.

I don't recall having heard this assertion before. Your evidence is?

[Hint : I am a geologist, and can understand complex arguments and data.)

Re:United Nations University, Not the UN

[DarenN]

One side says nothing is happening at all.

You know, I've never actually heard anyone saying this. The contention of the skeptical side is that the current warming trend is not anthropogenic.

For myself, my major problem is that the catastrophic positive temperature feedback predicted by the people who believe the warming is anthropogenic makes no sense and has little evidence historically to back it up. The very long term temperature cycles show that what we should be actually worried about is the ice-age that follows quickly after most temperature maxima. If the temperature feedback positied existed, the planet would look like Venus - after all, both temperature and CO2 levels have been higher than they are now.

Should we be happy that it didn't happen?

[js3]

Shouldn't we be happy that it didn't happen.. instead of gloating about it?

Interglacial Period

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sure, we're in an Ice Age, and in an interglacial period where we'd expect ice sheets to be retreating and temperatures warming, but give me money and power and I'll put a stop to it!

no. we gloat and marginalize them.

[dlt074]

these people are dangerous. we must be pointing this out at every opportunity and never forget that this whole Global Warming er i mean Climate Change is nothing more then a political movement. it seeks to control, regulate and enslave everyone... all under the premise that the world needs saving and their way is the only true way. convert or die.

what should be scaring the hell out of everyone is the very 1984, Winston Smith way they went about trying to edit their propaganda. what happens when they learn from this and the collective memory forgets their false prophecies?

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[ArcherB]

Did Slashdot become Fox News?
Deniers on my Slashdot?

Are facts that you don't like suddenly "Fox News"?

Let me see if I got the formula right:
Facts I don't like = Fox News
Fox News = Fake
Facts I don't like = Fake

Nice!

Scientific American throws in the towel

[jollyreaper]

Scientific American (irony not intended)

Okay, We Give Up
We feel so ashamed
By The Editors | Friday, April 1, 2005 | 55

There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.
In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either-so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.

Scientific American is a trademark of Scientific American, Inc., used with permission

© 2011 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Re:Scientific American throws in the towel

[jmac_the_man]

So wait. As I understand it, the problem with Intelligent Design is that it's not falsifiable, right? There's no way to set up an experiment with observable results to disprove the statement, "A supernatural Creator created mankind." That's the problem, right?

By contrast, a subset of modern evolutionary theory states that "Dinosaurs became extinct roughly 65 million years before the first humans." This is falsifiable. Lets say an archeological team discovered a fossilized brontosaurus near a pyramid site in Egypt. Let's also say the brontosaurus had a block shaped like it was used in constructing the pyramids strapped to its head. Let's further say that the brontosaurus was found in the same soil layer that you'd expect other ancient Egyptian artifacts to be found in. And then lets say they found another brontosaurus near the Mayan pyramids. And one near the Great Wall of China. Eventually, science would come to the conclusion that humans and dinosaurs coexisted. (The fact that no one has been able to do this points to the strength of the original theory.)

The statements "Man is causing Global Warming" and "Man is not causing Global Warming," by contrast, are both falsifiable. A lot of the "Man is causing Global Warming" science is hard to falsify, but that's because the people doing that research are hiding their original numbers and only using massaged data to "hide the decline" in the amount of Global Warming taking place. For once, a scientist put out an easily falsified Global Warming theory, that is "By 2010, there would be 50 million climate refugees, and they'd come from these specific places." 2010 has come and gone, and there aren't 50 million climate refugees. Therefore, his falsifiable statement has been proven false.

The correct scientific thing to do is to discard his prediction and move on. Moving on means making changes to similar predictions that are based on the same data, or directly on his prediction. It means giving up whatever money was set aside to deal with the climate refugees. It means maybe next time, listening to the people who say that there won't be 50 million climate refugees in the next five years.

It doesn't mean mocking the people who disagreed with the original prediction for something that has nothing to do with what they said or did. A challenge to a theory isn't "an attack on science," but refusing to let go of an idea that has clearly been proven false is.

Re:Scientific American throws in the towel

[jbengt]

The theory there would be 50 million climate refugees in the next five years . . .

Technically, that would be a hypothesis, not a theory.

Also, the quote from the GP: 'For once, a scientist put out an easily falsified Global Warming theory, that is "By 2010, there would be 50 million climate refugees, and they'd come from these specific places." ' is in line with TFA, but does not jibe with the report that TFA purports to refute.

Anthony Watts is a known shill

[mangu]

The author of that propaganda piece is a known shill of whatever industry pays him.

Here's a video that he tried to take down unsuccessfully.

Re:Anthony Watts is a known shill

[tripleevenfall]

Ad hominem is not useful in evaluating the article, and does nothing to address the veracity of it.

Re:Anthony Watts is a known shill

[tripleevenfall]

Science and religion aren't held to the same standard on /.

Religion is dismissed because "science is repeatable". Global warming can't stand up to the criticism they give other kinds of faith, but is regarded as not only science but the holy grail of science.

Re:Anthony Watts is a known shill

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you under the impression that events that have happened regularly throughout history are suddenly "because" of human caused climate change when that hasn't been the case before?

How illogical.

Re:Anthony Watts is a known shill

[tripleevenfall]

It's sampling bias.

The same poppycock that results in people believing things like "deaths come in threes" or that there are a massively larger number of earthquakes worldwide versus how many there were before we had the ability to measure and detect them like we do today.

Re:Anthony Watts is a known shill

[Mashiki]

Well, the news says it is the worst weather (and the highest count of tornados) since 50 years.

If it bleeds it leads. This is sensationalist news, nothing more, nothing less. And highest count in 50 years? Well in the US they only have about 50 years worth of tornado tracking that's considered reliable in most places, and some of those are only reliable to 1970, but tornado numbers have been far higher. Hell where I live the 'accurate temperature and tornado count' is only goes back to about 1973.

Re:Anthony Watts is a known shill

[sonicmerlin]

People like you getting modded insightful are why I avoid Slashdot these days. The "hockey stick" talking point has been debunked so many times, including on this site, that all I can do is roll my eyes when people bring it up. The lack of trust that computer professionals have on this site for climate scientists' conclusions boggles the mind.

Someone needs to read his links

[mangu]

If you had taken a quick look at the link you provided, you'd have seen this graph that shows how temperatures rise very quickly after an ice age and then slowly creep down over millennia.

If we are in an interglacial period, climate should be cooling, not warming.

Re:Someone needs to read his links

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... RIGHT side of the graph?

Take another look. Particularly at the x axis.

Re:Someone needs to read his links

[emt377]

If you had taken a quick look at the link you provided, you'd have seen this graph that shows how temperatures rise very quickly after an ice age and then slowly creep down over millennia.

If we are in an interglacial period, climate should be cooling, not warming.

I see about one degree per 10000 years on the upswing. Sustained over a century or more, one degree C per 25 years means it's 25/10025 = 0.25% caused by interglacial warming and 99.75% something else. Or, rounded to the nearest integer, 0% and 100% respectively. Clearly, finding out what this 'something else' is rather than pretend it doesn't exist would seem to be prudent.

Didn't know about the UN prediction...

[wisebabo]

... but here in Vietnam we DO hear quite a bit about the rapid encroachment (and salinization) by the ocean into the Mekong delta. It is clear that with the ocean coming in (I seem to remember an encroachment figure of 1.4km/yr.) and that hundreds of thousands have already been displaced because they can no longer farm there. (This has driven the growth of the big cities which is where I live). The government is constantly projecting that millions more will move in the next few decades (This is from their Thanh Nhien News which is a pretty widely read paper, there's an English website you can visit).

Of course matters will soon be made even worse as upstream countries start damming the Mekong. (They may be doing so because the freshwater source in the Himalayas is losing its snowpack cover. This may also be due to climate change.)

Vietnam is supposedly one of the most susceptible countries to sea level rising but I can imagine things could be even worse in an even poorer (and closer to sea level) country like Bangladesh.

Re:Didn't know about the UN prediction...

[phantomfive]

Vietnam is supposedly one of the most susceptible countries to sea level rising but I can imagine things could be even worse in an even poorer (and closer to sea level) country like Bangladesh.

It is. National Geographic has a fascinating article on how Bangladesh deals with things like rising oceans and other types of floods. Note that they also have one of the highest population densities in the world, which makes it even harder to deal with.

Re:What it really comes down is...

[bunratty]

I've never heard anyone say "what we do to the planet is the only thing that affects weather and climate". That is not what the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming states. It states that in addition to all the natural effects on climate, humans can raise the temperature of the Earth several degrees above where they would naturally be if they hadn't burnt billions of tons of fossil fuels. Humans' impact of climate is dwarfed by natural effects, but that doesn't mean we can't affect the climate. You're employing a false dichotomy.

Oh goody.

[Toze]

Another religious debate. /flee

Almost as good as the 'FBI confirms aliens' post

[guanxi]

Slashdot now reposts Daily Caller propaganda? It's almost the quality of the 'FBI confirms aliens' post recently. I like this comment in the Daily Caller article; I'm glad /. helps drive their page views, and can follow instructions:

Be sure to leave comments on any website that makes this claim, and link to this and the Asian Correspondent website.

The article is a bit absurd. It looks for the 50 million refugees in the Bahamas, St. Lucia, Seychelles, and Solomon Islands. Safe to say, if you look for 50 million carbon-based humans there, you won't find them.

What is a 'climate refugee' and how many are there? Does this disprove AGW or point to some evil conspiracy? It's surprising to see /. wasting space and its reputation on this nonsense.

Maybe /. will become News of the World for geeks: Sensation for nerds but stuff that doesn't matter.

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[tripleevenfall]

The facts aren't contrary. This was a completely valid prediction. The election of Barack Obama prevented this.

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." -- Barack Obama, 3 June 2008, upon winning his party nomination.

What happened to the climate refugees?

[kawabago]

Their arrival has been delayed by bad weather.

DID the UN claim that?

[mangu]

I would like to know why the UN said this in the first place

Is there any evidence that the UN made this prediction at all?

From TFA to the original paper there is a huge difference. For instance, TFA cites population growth in islands like Bahamas, St. Lucia, and Seychelles, which were never mentioned in the paper.

What Dr. Myers actually said is that there were 25 million refugees in 1995 fleeing disasters caused by desertification and global warming and that number could double in ten years. This seems a perfectly reasonable claim, if one wants to discuss it the best way would be to get hold of Dr. Myers method for counting refugees and defining which ones are "environmental" and see if that prediction became true.

Now, instead of doing this, TFA says the UN has "removed" a page that they, so much smarter than the UN that they are, recovered from Google cache. Then they invent a lot of false data, but they never realized that the actual paper is readily found by googling so their lies are easily debunked.

Re:DID the UN claim that?

[Broolucks]

I think this underscores a major problem in this debate, though: nobody actually reads the papers, nor make a serious attempt at parsing the whole picture. People read press reports, aggregates, blogs, and everybody knows how much information gets distorted through these lenses. Or they will focus on a single graphic and give it much more relevance than is probably warranted by the hour an intern spent making it.

So the thing is, you will get people who will interpret some piece of information as saying that China will get flash flooded or something equally inane. Those of them who are climate alarmists will believe it, whereas those of them who are climate deniers will point to that as evidence that climate change is full of shit. Neither will realize that they are basing their beliefs on distortions. This makes reasonable discourse on this subject particularly difficult, since there is nothing you can say that you can guarantee won't be grossly misinterpreted by either fringe, and that's essentially what laymen will see in the end.

Re:Please stop bashing the UN

[downhole]

I really hope you're joking... otherwise, this is basically evil. It's okay to lie to the people, as long as it's supposedly in service of what you think is a greater good? This is exactly why so many smart people don't believe in AGW. People see that you're lying about this, and they start to wonder what else you're lying about.

Add up the lies and ridiculous hyperbole about what global warming is going to do, the blatant money-making schemes (see carbon credits), the political power-grabs by the same people who have been trying to grab more and more power for decades, the ad-homium attacks against the opposition, and the ineffective things that we're supposed to do to stop it, and it's no wonder that so many people think that it's all a giant scam.

Original paper is NOT about global warming

[mangu]

With so many people posting their own version of facts, it helps knowing the past history of such people, so that you can disregard their claims. What made me google for this Anthony Watts was the claims he made that the UN had predicted 50 million refugees coming from Bahamas (population 330000), St. Lucia (population 173765), and Seychelles (population 84000).

With numbers like these, something looks wrong. So I googled for the original study to find out what it said. it was no surprise that neither Bahamas, Seychelles, or St. Lucia were mentioned there.

What it says is that there are million of refugees coming from regions affected by desertification and that number is increasing.

And you know what's the funny thing about all this? If you take the trouble to actually read the paper Dr. Norman Myers wrote, you will notice that he does not mention global warming at all. What he calls "environmental refugees" are, in his own words, "people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt."

In their haste to deny global warming, people like Anthony Watts do not even try to find out who they should write against...

Re:Original paper is NOT about global warming

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In that vein, it should be noted that (outside of highly unlikely corner cases of 1 meter rises in sea level causing a boat full of people going 'Dude, where's my island?' to wash up on your shores), it can be a bit tricky to identify the root cause of somebody's refugee status.

A reasonable percentage of Africa's ghastly little bush wars, for instance, are proximately about some goofy ethnic struggle or an ego clash between two psychotic strongmen; but the punchline generally boils down to the fact that the local subsistence agriculture/pastoralism hasn't actually been providing subsistence of late, which really stirs people up.

The assorted uprisings that a number of arab states are currently seeing are in the same boat. It isn't as though the populace just noticed that their leaders are brutal kleptocrats. A spike in food prices, though, has pushed them from feeling poor and downtrodden to feeling desperate and downtrodden.

Even if one wishes to leave macro-level climate out of the picture entirely, it isn't at all difficult to identify regions where high-intensity agriculture, and often shoddy practices, are converting farmland to desert or marginal scrub at a fair clip.

Re:Original paper is NOT about global warming

[Intron]

Other points to note are:

1) Some wars are fought over resources - like the Kenya-Ethiopia conflicts. So are those war refugees also environmental refugees? Its not very clear who you count.

2) The UN article started with a total of 25 million environmental refugees in 1995 and predicted it could double by 2010. That's where the 50 million number comes from. I don't see anyone providing the actual number now. How far off are they?

The clue is in the title...

[fantomas]

The clue is in the title: "Scientific American"... it is a journal that believes the scientific method is the best method to use when trying to interpret information.
  I guess if you prefer another methodology for resolving diverging points of view, interpreting data or explaining unknown phenomena you need to choose another journal? Something with a title like "Politics weekly" "Sociological review" "Religious opinions" or so forth?

Whether or not the scientific method is the best method to resolve all debates is another issue... but I think it's a fair guess that "Scientific American" probably thinks it's the methodology it will use to approach problems. Probably an American bias there as well I should imagine ;-)

Just wondering

[Sycraft-fu]

If we can disregard any research or claims that are funded by the coal and oil industry, because their backers have a stake in things, can that go the other way? Can we disregard any research funded by a green group, or someone with carbon credit stakes? Both stand to gain from pushing anthropomorphic global warming (yes green groups stand to gain, more money, more influence, more of their agendas get implemented). How about stuff financed by the UN? They have a stake in it too as it would give them more control, something they very much want.

Just saying that the whole "Attacking the funding," thing cuts both ways. You cannot act as though one side is pure and noble and the other is evil and corrupt. Rare is that the case with humans. Both sides have humans with agendas on them.

Finally if you are going to go after someone for their funding source, you should go and provide some evidence. If he's funded by big energy, provide a citation.

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[rainmouse]

No, but I read the title of the summary. "What happened to the climate refugees?" And, I can answer that. They've all taken refuge, hiding in all the alrmist's cavernous asses.

It's terribly sad that the majority of comments on the linked article are vastly more informed and actually relevant than the rather childish posts appearing on this article in /.
The actual projection was not even about global warming and yet here all people can talk about is the utterly irrelevant bickering of reds v blues from a continent making up less than 5% of the worlds population.

No this is why

[presidenteloco]

It's because many people's minds can't even grasp an issue that has 200 year-scale inertia.
"Oh, it didn't happen this year. See. They're lying." Comments like that just show the profound total
misunderstanding about the scale in space and time of these phenomena.
Read "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer. He has a sobering discussion of the planning that conservative
organizations like the Pentagon are doing for global warming's effects. He also discusses how the real recent
data is worse than the worst-case projections of IPCC.
Gwynne's got a brain the size of a planet so he's actually capable of thinking rationally about these issues
and you should probably believe some of what he says.

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[Gerzel]

Here's a fact you might or might not like.

Science changes.

In fact the ability for science to change is one of the most basic requirements for something to be science. Scientific fact is ALWAYS based on the data and knowledge we have available at the time and can change if new data and knowledge come available.

Just because the exact nature of the theory and its associated hypothesis have changed doesn't mean that the basic theory itself has necessarily been invalidated.

An example would be Newton's laws with the introduction of Relativity and Quantum physics. Both contradict Newtonian physics in many places, but we still use and teach Newtonian. Why? Because Newtonian principals are still valid, they just have to be modified in light of new discoveries.

+Infinity

[Sycraft-fu]

People need to understand what a problem these kind of tactics are. The reason is that many of the "Ok for use with GW because it is so important," tactics are that of con men. For example requiring complete acceptance of the claims and shouting down anyone who questions it as a denier or an idiot, that's a favourite of con men. That's how they distract from their lack of evidence, it to attack anyone who dares question their claims.

Another favourite is claiming consensus. This one is used by the most common con men, advertisers, all the time. "4 out of 5 doctors agree," "Trusted by more people," and so on. They try to sell you on the idea that since most people agree with a stance, it must be right. Of course Feynman pointed out that is bunk, since most people aren't that good. Having a lot of opinions one way or another doesn't matter.

Yet another is a position of authority sort of thing. Something along the lines of "You can't question this because you don't understand how it all works. You have to be a highly trained expert to understand it, which I am and you are not, so you need to take my word for it." They just brush off bothering to explain anything by claiming that you can't understand it anyhow, it is a mystery that your mind cannot penetrate, so just take their word on it.

They also love to have claims where no matter what happens, it supports their position. X happens, they claim "This is clear evidence of what I said." Then the opposite of X happens, they claim "This is again clear evidence of what I said." They are able to tell a story to explain how anything fits their claims. They don't revise their claims based on new evidence, they shoe-horn the evidence in to showing how it supports their claims.

Well you'll notice that these things are common with con men, and if you want a great example look no far than most religious evangelicals. However you'll also notice a lot of this goes on the the global warming debate. Now that doesn't mean that the people involved are con men necessarily, however it really gives many people pause. Why are you acting like con men if you aren't trying to con people?

I know why the religious types do it: They have a preordained conclusion, that being whatever they take their holy book to claim, that they want to be true. They then do what it takes to try and support that. They aren't looking at evidence to reach a conclusion, they are trying to force evidence to support their conclusion, ignoring or shouting down that which doesn't, and getting mad at anyone who questions them because they have no real support.

Fine, but why then do AGW types do this, if their position is one on science, on fact? It gives many cause to wonder.

Re:April 1st

[Sir_Sri]

that doesn't make the article any less insightful. The first 4 paragraphs are not practical joke funny, they're irony and sarcasm. The last paragraph is the only traditional 'joke' part of the story, but the rest of it is definitely insightful, as the article itself clearly recognizes. There are lots of comedy shows that use comedy to be insightful about the political process after all.

Ironically the anti-ICBM stance from 6 years ago might have been wrong. Though obviously the success and failure of anti-missile systems is probably classified to varying degrees, it's hard to know if the stance against anti-missile systems was based on wildly out of date (and therefore useless) data, or just overzealous evangelizing, or if it actually is right, and all this money the US, Russia, Chicom and israel are spending on it is being wasted.

Re:That map is from 2007

[ArcherB]

The map sited this(PDF) paper as a source. That paper was written in 2005. Emanuelle Bournay was the cartographer who drew the map.

From the paper:

As far back as 1995 (latest date for a comprehensive assessment), these
environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million
traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and
ethnic troubles). The environmental refugees total could well double between 1995
and 2010. Moreover, it could increase steadily for a good while thereafter as growing
numbers of impoverished people press ever harder on over-loaded environments.
When global warming takes hold, there could be as many as 200 million people
overtaken by disruptions of monsoon systems and other rainfall regimes, by droughts
of unprecedented severity and duration, and by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.

Re:The shape of the sea surface changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, atmospheric scientists and oceanographers know about heat capacity and thermodynamics.

Observations of ocean temperatures show:

1. The upper layers of the ocean have warmed.
2. The warming is top-down, not bottom-up (contrary to the implication in your link that the atmosphere has warmed due to the oceans).
3. The amount of ocean warming is entirely consistent with the heat flux attributable to atmospheric warming.
4. The observed ocean warming is able to explain much of the observed sea level rise (due to thermosteric expansion), with glaciers explaining most of the rest.

In short, yes, the oceans have a much larger heat capacity than the atmosphere. No, this doesn't mean that the atmosphere is unable to influence ocean temperature or sea level.

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[Mashiki]

The only evidence is that we're still exiting a glacial period, and have no clue how the environment works. We've only scratched the surface of our understanding of how the interlocking segments of the entire climate move together.

As for keeping it civil? Better let the warmists know, their new civility is 'attack'.

Re:Please stop bashing the UN

[quantaman]

I think you're being too harsh on the actual AGW proponents. In my experience the scientists actually make fairly conservative claims, "the lies and ridiculous hyperbole about what global warming is going to do" mostly come from the AGW-deniers. They either blow out of proportion some isolated statement from a scientist, or in this case heavily distort the original report to make it sound ridiculous.

As to why so many smart people believe in AGW, I think this article is a great illustration. If you just read the summary a smart person might think this was pretty damning for AGW, it's only when you read the comments when you realize how distorted the original article was. If you don't happen to read the right resources and are stuck in the information bubble where the original article came from, a smart person could very easily be mislead about many topics.

In The Middle Ages, We Called These Guys "Church"

[RobotRunAmok]

The world was always coming to an end, the Apocalypse was just around the corner, you were a sinner, you needed to change your ways, but buy some indulgences and we'll let you off the hook. Hurry, sign here, The End is Near.

Nowadays, The Roman Catholic Church is out of the Apocalypse & Indulgences business, so the Church of Global Warming has risen to fill the void. Same threats and labels (replace "heretic" with "denier"), same hucksterism (replace "indulgences" with "carbon credits"), same promotion of despair-in-the-face-of-overwhelming-forces (replace "God" with "Science!!"), same hypocrisy by the movement's leaders (replace the avarice and power abuse of various archbishops and cardinals with the jet-set lifestyle of Al Gore and his rockstar acolytes).

Sorry, Ye Faithful, I don't need to be a student of "climatology" to know how this ends. I'm already a student of history, and we've been through this all before...

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[Culture20]

The actual projection was not even about global warming

What was it about, then? Regular political/religious refugees?

Warm areas have no life at all

[mangu]

When the planet was warmer there was more diversity of life, large swaths of land that are currently too cold for much bio-diversity were more useable by nature and man. When it got colder it was hell. Things change. Given my druthers I would take warmer, please.

Are you aware that the warmest parts of the globe are deserts?

Ice ages might be bad for biodiversity in the Northern latitudes, but our main problem today is desertification and global warming only makes it worse.

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[Anonymous Coward]

The facts aren't contrary. This was a completely valid prediction. The election of Barack Obama prevented this.

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." -- Barack Obama, 3 June 2008, upon winning his party nomination.

Uh no. What Obama really said was:

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

You only quoted part of the sentence, you left out the modifier that changed it from ridiculous to reasonable. Why do you Obama haters do that? What's the point? How can you think lying about him is a legitimate tactic when in practically the same breath you accuse climatologists of lying about global warming to advance some sort of twisted agenda?

What it says to me is that you are just another tribalist - the kind of person who is likely to say "My country, right or wrong!" because you aren't intellectually honest enough to realize that the full quotation continues with "If right to be kept right, if wrong to be set right."

unless you live under a rock, or are just stupid,

[toby]

You'd know that there *are* millions of climate refugees.

Start here or here or here ("12 out of 13 'flash' appeals in 2007 related to weather"). Here's 3/4 of a million soon to be refugees in just ONE island nation (now go add up the rest).

Pretty nice writing that snide and ignorant summary from your comfortable suburban basement, wasn't it?

The Ulitmate Resource

[Paul Fernhout]

The Earth gets something like 10000X times more energy every day than we use that day in our civlization.
    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

So what is the problem you are so worried about? There is room for quadrillions of people living in space habitats in the solar system, too. Why be such a doomster? Renewable energy is now close to the price of fossil fuels, but without the environmental costs (where fossil fuel companies privatize short-term profits and socialize long-term costs). We mainly have social problems, not technical ones. See also:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

Have you really studied the technical possiblities for making the world work for everyone, and further, making the solar system work for quadrillions of people? We do have some big problems, but we have billions of people to help solve them. It's problematical to on the one hand say humans are a geological force and then on the other to deny that such a powerful force could be used to some benefit if we had the social will to do so. Thin film solar, wind generators, moving away from meat consumption, grinding up rocks for fertilizer, and maybe even cold fusion, are all parts of the solutions.
http://remineralize.org/
http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog#177
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/

It is people who have used their creativity to come up with those sorts of ideas...

Re:So, where is the google cache link?

[rainmouse]

What was it about, then? Regular political/religious refugees?

Environmental refugees. Drought, Earthquake, Mudslide etc. At the time of the report in 1995 there were 24 million refugee's and climbing. Using the growth rate there were some speculation on the map that the figure could reach as high as 50 million by 2010 but this estimated figure was not even mentioned in the report.