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IEA Warns of Irreversible Climate Change In 5 Years
iONiUM writes "As a follow up to the previous slashdot story, there has been a new release by the International Energy Agency indicating that within 5 years we will have irreversible climate change. According to the IEA, 'There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is under way. Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable 5% in 2010, pushing CO2 emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn (£250.7bn).'"
As 60% of the energy usage is all the third-world countries, the answer is obvious.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
I don't expect changes to be made. Capitalistic culture has no thought of the future; people are selfish and will sacrifice their descendants to make things just a bit easier and more profitable to themselves.
I'm kind of curious to see how the world will end up by the time I die.
we are past the point of the last Irreversible claim... and the one before that... and the one before that...
There will be irreversible climate change. The corporate powers that profit from the status quo have more than enough money to continue confusing the issue for centuries to come. Short of a major catastrophe (i.e. millions dead in first world countries), nothing will ever break through the wall of propaganda to awaken the masses.
Cue deniers coming in to lie about how all the world's climatologists are in a conspiracy being funded by Big Solar or whatever.
this will turn into a discussion assigning political blame, and nothing but a lot of hot air will be generated (pun intended)
what should happen:
blame should be set aside, and fixing the problem should be talked about. seed the ocean with iron to create phytoplankton blooms to suck out CO2 and sink to the ocean floor? it has flaws. so strategize some other ideas. yes, some will have anxiety about doing such major ecosystem altering activity when we aren't sure of every infinitesimal outcome... missing the whole goddamn point about what is already happening to the climate. penny wise, pound foolish. it's time for dramatic action, not hand wringing
look: natural, manmade, whatever: obviously the climate is changing, only complete idiots still insist it isn't. so the most compelling, overarching argument is: we have a vested economic interest in keeping our environment the way we are used to it. so we can talk about a price point about what we are willing to invest to keep the thermostat where it should be. so find the price point and fit a plan of action. end of discussion
we are homo sapiens: we don't evolve fur, we kill animals and wear their hides. we don't look for berries, we slash and burn and make the berries grow where we want them. and we don't get used to a hotter earth with more violent storms. we put our hands on the thermostat, and put the earth in the climate zone we like
we are homo sapiens: we don't adapt to the environment, we adapt the environment to us. we aren't fatalistic spineless scatterbrains. this whole climate change topic is really just an engineering problem, with currently not enough engineers working on it, and too many talking heads and other assorted nitwits involved. roll up the sleeves and get to work
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For example, in the linked article.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Point is: It never changes spontaneously, for no reason. Usually it's changes in atmospheric chemistry that causes it to change.
Right now we're the ones changing the atmospheric chemistry. And it's a Bad Thing.
No sig today...
So what are any Of you going to do about it? Continue to point fingers at China? The third world? Oil companies?
How about accepting that you can't change others, and instead set examples yourself. I moved into the city, leave my A/C and heat off whenever possible, bicycle for 95% of my trips (including commuting), grow as much of my own food as I can, and buy the rest locally and in-season whenever possible.
2 years ago, I was doing none of that. Now my personal energy footprint is a fraction of what it had been. Perhaps not as much as is needed, but it's something, and none of it has honestly even been hard.
So again I ask: what are you going to do about it? What will you or have you changed about your lifestyle to help avert global disaster?
No comment.
Carbon emissions are a real problem. We don't need a bunch of zealots claiming the sky is falling unless we do things their way.
With the third world getting ready to ramp up energy production the idea of conservation is a pipe dream. China is already ignoring us and the rest will do the same.
We need to globally spend trillions of dollars on energy research and we need to do it yesterday. It's the only answer left.
Built a cheap portal to an alternative Earth that is 85 million years in the past, in order to colonize it.
Or wait for the rapture.
Because the above choices are more realistic than expecting the human race to put short-term greed aside to save the planet.
Ask a bunch of people if they would be willing to receive a billion dollar now, in exchange to blowing up the Earth 200 years in the future, you would be surprised how many of them would say yes. That is the problem with the human race.
Don't worry, according to Family Radio, the world will end several times before then.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's not "almost all China". That's completely retarded.
It's not the rate that CO2 output is increasing that is the problem, it's the level of CO2 output. China only recently surpassed US in level.
Worse than that though, it's not just a yearly output that's the problem, but decades worth of output, because CO2 stays around in the atmosphere for a very long time.
Check out this chart from a recent slashdot story: http://planet3.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cdiac.gif
Compare the area under the graph of the US relative to the area under China.
It's more appropriate to say "It's almost all US" at this point. China, having produced less CO2 in the past decades but now producing more, has only just started to catch up. It's got a long way to go.
That said, with the US not slowing down and China racing to catch up, if their rate of production keeps up then things are going to get a lot worse a lot faster. However you spin it, rate of CO2 production by the US is not sustainable, whether they're producing most of the world's CO2, or (worst case) if their dangerously high levels are only a small fraction of it. In the latter case, in the future the US would be making things generally worse, while China might be rapidly endangering the planet, but that hasn't yet happened and it still wouldn't make the problem "almost all China".
...there's no point in resisting but every point in positioning for survival.
This will mean competition for space in the lifeboat, so to speak. That will mean willingness to let competitors die off, to use violence to save our own countries, and do things which are unfashionable.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
from the summary :
Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn
that dwarfs green subsidies.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
If you think China gives one rat's ass what the IEA thinks about 'climate change' you've got more lead and mercury in your brain than a resident of Shenzhen. The only way their CO2 output is going to stop growing is if we apply tariffs. We won't do that, because we like keeping the industry that makes our stuff faaar away from our precious selves.
Funnily enough, China's actually doing a heap more stuff on reducing emissions than most countries, including starting trial emissions trading schemes next year. And their investment in renewable energies is extraordinary. Unfortunately, they're also the largest country in the world and they're industrialising their population at a crazy rate -- so whether they do enough remains to be seen.
But they certainly care a lot more than one rat's ass, and more than a lot of developed countries also.
Good Lord, look at that graph. In the past I would say something like, "China's per capita emissions are still 1/4 of ours, even though we exported all our heavy industry there." But look at that graph! Scientists are saying we need to immediately make major reductions, and instead the curve is headed almost straight up. We are so screwed.
But saying that there is a 'point of no return,' a point where massive feedbacks start making the planet vastly hotter than what CO2 could do on its own, where ocean currents stop flowing.......that stretches belief.
No one is saying that. The "Irreversible Climate Change" in the article means the 2C warming considered unsafe will be unavoidable.
The evidence for it is sparse. In fact, there is good evidence to believe the opposite: that each successive ton of CO2 causes a smaller and smaller effect on the earth's climate (see the above equation and consider its implications if you are in doubt). Thus going from 380ppm to 480ppm atmospheric CO2 will have a smaller effect than going from 280ppm to 380ppm.
Yes, the warming is proportional to the exponential of CO2, so every doubling of C02 will give roughly the same amount of warming. This is well known.
True but irrelevant. It's like saying it's okay to flood cities with water, because fish depend on it.
Something that coincides with this is the fact that 1st world countries are shrinking their industry by offloading it onto China and India.
-- no sig today
No, mon ami, it is almost all US. In fact, about 25% of world greenhouse emissions, more than any other nation, even if weighted by economic activity.
Beware of any statistics presented in English, for the publishers have an obvious incentive to skew the output for political reasons.
Zone refining requires huge amounts of energy but because of the large scale it ends up being not a lot of energy per unit. Thus the GP poster is correct but almost completely irrelevant unless he's addressing a completely uninformed audience that thinks the infrastructure is made from sunshine and puppies (ie. what the nuclear fanboys stuck in the 1970s think). Many heavy industries use very nasty stuff (eg. hydroflouric acid in oil refining).
If we ended the Federal Breeding Subsidy in the U.S., we could reduce our carbon footprint as a species in very short order. Even better: $1k per child tax ($200 federal, $800 state). Would help pay for schools too.
It was 71 degrees the other day on November 1st.
We're talking about climate, not weather (events). You're off-topic dude...
pre-industrial civilization or slavery
Right, because those are the only two options. Nice false dichotomy you've set up there. Almost had me convinced that simply whistling past the graveyard is the best course of action
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Let's face it, CO2 emissions will drop as soon as we run out of fossil fuel. And not a minute before that. There are no two ways about it. On the whole we are a greedy kind of breed and we will always rationalise reasons for doing the wrong things. So we'd better get used to this.
... Repeat until oil is finished. Expect a fluctuation in oil price in the near years to come.
Viable alternatives to fossil fuel will emerge as soon economics allow this. Remember when oil prices boomed a couple of years ago? Suddenly all kinds of research boomed as well. But the oil price all of a sudden stabilised to a level we perceive as fine and dandy.
I don't believe in a well organised conspiracy of oil producing countries as that would require much more intelligence and cooperation than portrayed by any kind of existing governing body. Instead I believe that almost everyone in the energy market is acting in the best possible interest of their limited awareness. Oil prices rise, alternative research boosts, oil prices drop, alternative research slows down,
I don't see developments going in any other significant direction in the current way the world is governed. And I don't expect world government to change any time soon. Who or what would be powerful, charming and effective enough to change mankind's nature? It would require a disproportional amount of concentrated power to achieve such a thing, which after having saved our civilisation will inevitable start at exploiting it.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
What you're stating is the broken window fallacy.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
All those things are bad for the economy, which is the reason that the governments haven't actually done anything so far.
That's not what they say in the article, and not what they mean by the phrase 'point of no return'.
The generally accepted 'safe' minimum rise from pre-industrial levels is 2 degC, which we'll reach with 450ppm atmospheric CO2. We know how many Gigatons of CO2 we're pumping into the air every year. Every new fossil power plant we build increases those emissions, and will do so for several decades. The forcing effect of the CO2 they emit lasts for several more decades.
A rise close to 2 degC is already inevitable due to the amount of CO2 we've already dumped, and are dumping in the air. If we keep building at even close to our current rate, it will be impossible for us NOT to put enough CO2 in the air to cause a rise higher than 2 degC. The longer we wait, the more we build, the higher the final temperature will be that we won't be able to bring down again without some fantastical pie-in-the-sky geo-engineering project.
Going above a 2 degC rise increases the risk that we will trigger an equilibrium change; by for example, causing enough permafrost to melt that mass methane clathrate stores release their methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas - we're already seeing a big increase in methane emissions - up to 100x in places - in the siberian arctic. The higher the rise, the bigger the risk. We don't know precisely how much bigger, because we have one shot and only one experimental model. And we're living on it.
Even assuming that that doesn't happen, the predictable effects of a 2 degC rise are bad enough with loss of arable land, alterations to fresh water routes - and quantity, increase in storm violence and damage, worse flooding of coastal regions etc. The higher we go, the worse they get.
If the IEA, a really conservative body when it comes to predictions, is saying we're going to hit 2 degC whether we like it or not if we don't radically change course in the next couple of years, frankly it's probably already to late to avoid a 2 degC rise.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Last time I checked China was building hydroelectric and nuclear power plants far faster than any other country.
Most of the 'developed' countries seem to think that going back to coal is a good idea.
No sig today...
I'm a scientist and a skeptic by nature. Not of global warming, I've read enough scientific papers myself to convince me; of the fact that humans are solely responsible.
Could someone please inform me where to look for direct access to the scientific evidence that disproves other sources of possible global warming?
Thanks sincerely.
Liberty.
The increase in CO2 is not natural, and it's not by definition irreversible.
Warning that we're about to go over the 450 ppm level isn't over hyped doomsday rhetoric. It's just simple extrapolation of current trend.
We can still argue whether 450 ppm is the correct upper limit, and scientific discussion is still ongoing. The question is: while the discussion is still going on, should we go ahead and exceed the 450 ppm level, knowing that we don't really have a way to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere if we're wrong.
Why? What if human caused changed might end up being very good for us? What if *without* human caused change, we would face doomsday and disaster? You've got all sorts of imaginary risks here that have no basis in any sort of firm rationale.
The precautionary principle, while instinctually compelling, is dangerous to follow blindly. Everyone assumes that their proposed "precautionary intervention" has no downside risk, but that's simply baseless assumption. By the tenets of the precautionary principle, we could have rationalized never starting any agriculture - the conscious manipulation of our environment, through either farming or animal husbandry, was a new, different, and wholly unprecedented activity. Naysayers back in the hunter-gatherer tribe could have insisted that such intervention into the natural world was going to doom us in 5 years.
And where would we be now?
Do you realize that it's possible for what you say to be true (and I agree with the general point) AND for it to also be true that humans are capable of altering the environment? Given that, it's also possible that the natural changes wouldn't be so bad, but the human caused changes might end up being very bad for us. So shouldn't we do something to stop the changes we can stop?
The answer to your questions lies not in the direct answer, but the indirect one. To give the answer I have to give a little background.
The Earth's climate has always been changing and it always will. The treehugger notion we could or should stop the climate from changing is great irony - because that would be a bigger imposition on the Earth's ecology than doing nothing. It would introduce a static climate never before seen on Earth - if it were possible - with inevitable and unforeseen consequences. But there are temperature zones the Earth appears not to like, and it transitions through them swiftly - and then stays on one side or another of this zone for a longer time. There are other zones that global average temperature can vary in for a considerable period of time - until it enters this unsavory zone and then rapidly crosses over it again. I'll leave the "why" of this to some philosopher or trained scientist, but it's a useful observed fact without understanding why.
Giving the average global temperature of the 21st century as 0, we reached the peak of the current temperate zone about 5,000 years ago at a level called the Holocene Climatic Optimum at about +1C. This is about 4-8C below the maximum temperature for the last 450K years or so, and there appear to be feedback effects which prevent the temperature from going any higher than that maximum because it hasn't deviated from this pattern for 2.5 million years - longer than humans have been around. There is a climate danger zone at -0.6C and if we enter it the temperature drops quickly to a new range of -5 to -8C for a very long time. Glaciers march and scrape our cities into the sea, owning the land for a hundred thousand years.
Unfortunately for our teeming billions, up until about 300 years ago the temperature had declined from the Holocene Optimum of +1C to -0.6C and was trending down. -0.6C appears to be the upper bound of one of those unsavory zones, and the next stop is -5C which is quite a drastic change. We were on the cusp of transition into the ice, and in fact that period is called the "little ice age". Each time in the last half-million years the average temperature passed below -0.7C it skipped directly over the intervening temperatures and went directly to the lower level - resulting in the die-off of terrestrial animals including humans, glaciation, and other unpleasant effects. The duration of this cold period averages 100,000 years which is likely longer than we could bear it. If it had not been for the warming currently attributed by some to the burning of fossil fuels and its concomitant CO2 discharge, we would likely already be suffering the cold dipping to -5C or more.
Perhaps 6 billion of us would be dead already, or never born - not from the cold, but from the inevitable famine and struggling for resources that it would bring. But that's not the end. 300 years from now there would be only a few million of our seven billions left, if the resulting wars didn't leave the planet uninhabitable entirely. Our entire industrial revolution, sciences and arts these last 200 years? Lost, perhaps forever.
No matter what we do the Earth will not stay habitable to this many humans forever. In the last half-million years we've had only four such periods lasting an average 12,000 years or so. This warm period we now enjoy is not the Earth's normal temperature. And when it's over, it really and truly does appear to be over for a very long time. It will be cold sooner or later. For me and mine, I
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Dead fuel is free energy; its that simple." It's not FREE. Not even remotely. So are you telling me the environmental destruction from the Alberta Tar Sands is FREE? http://s.ngm.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/img/candian-oil-sands-615.jpg. Are you saying that the cancer causing elements that are spewed into the air from fossil fuels are FREE? http://www.epa.gov/air/basic.html. Your misnomer is one of the reasons we are in this situation. And there are a thousand other articles and studies that say that fossil fuels are harmful to you and me. If you want me to site them I will.
It's great that you made your argument on your opinion. But let me give you some information about alternative energy that is from reputable sources. From MSNBC (and others...FYI from a study funded by Google): "Clean, accessible, reliable and renewable energy equivalent to 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants in the U.S....What's more, the energy can be tapped with existing technology, according to the researchers. That's largely due the recent development of drilling techniques that make methods such as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) possible." TEN TIMES what we get from coal on an annual basis without the mining destruction nor the carcinogens in the air. THAT IS FUCKING FREE ENERGY. http://futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/27/8509629-energy-from-hot-rocks-abounds?chromedomain=cosmiclog. Or CNET if you prefer: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20125837-54/geothermal-potential-reaches-coast-to-coast/
Or maybe you'd like to hear the opine of a nobel prize laureate in economics about the economic reality of solar power? Is there a Moore's Law to solar power? Actually there probably is, but if the fossil fuel industry has it's way it will probably be stymied....oh wait it already has. " In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year."--AND--"Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/krugman-here-comes-solar-energy.html?_r=1&hp.
So the question remains smarty are you with us or against us? Please give any sources that are not your opinion and actually sited to a reference to the contrary.
Thanks.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
You oppose a scientific report [an interesting word to choose], calling it propaganda. Why? Tautologically, your answer is
You also call troll to posters who point out the strong dichotomy in your belief system; that you want a scientific view, but not a science that actually works as science. Instead, you'd prefer one that finds things that you oppose to be incorrect.
I withdraw my accusations of your profligacy with resources, your perceived selfishness, and I apologise. I now think you do not understand the scientific arguments surrounding climate change and should withdraw from further commentary.
No! Climate is not related to local weather event, it has never worked this way, and it never will. Yet, each time there's a weather event these days, people blame it on global warming. EACH SINGLE FUCKING TIME. I even heard or read many times this when it was too cold.
This used to be true. Up until the end of the 20th Century, climate models had 'flux corrections', without which oceans would boil over the millennia they were forecasting. This was a flaw as the models weren't mature enough, but you can't just keep being employed without showing some progress. Some of the fundamental research was just that, providing foundations. Current climate models are nowhere near perfect, that's why a lot of people are working hard on them. However, even with no corrections, with increased temporal and spatial resolution, they still give the same ball-park figures [the flux corrections were for modelling inadequacies, not for our understanding of the atmos/ocean].
Do you know the bit you should be scared about, the bit that should appeal to your green-lifestyle skeptic? Unspoken parts of the culture of scientific research is unpalatable to scientists [ego, greed, money]. They are the same as almost every other large sub-section of humanity. No one likes having their dirty laundry aired. However, this is the beauty of the current system as it works both ways, Any researcher could make a fortune and a permanent high-level career by debunking climate change. But they can't, and they would if they could.
Mea culpa, all oceanographic and atmospheric models are useless. Sorry for troubling you.
The same thing will happen if we just continue to burn fossil fuels. We can't keep producing them at current rate for much longer. The peak oil problem is likely more urgent than global warming, so an aggressive plan for transition would benefit us either way.
Sure, we have plenty of ideas.
But I see your point. Short term benefits outweigh long term doubts. Since, long term, we're all dead anyway, I can't argue with that.
This is the kind of unscientific sensationalism we need to get away from.
Ahh. You're one of those people that thinks all the climate change research done so far is bunkum, and we don't need to worry. We're already observing changes. Have you even read the IPCC reports? Actually, don't bother answering. Looking at your other postings in this thread alone, you're clearly entirely closed to the idea that there is a problem, or that it will get worse. The rest of this is for the benefit of people who are prepared to look at the actual evidence.
For example - fresh water;
Current vulnerabilities to climate are strongly correlated with climate variability, in particular precipitation variability. These vulnerabilities are largest in semi-arid and arid low-income countries, where precipitation and streamflow are concentrated over a few months, and where year-to-year variations are high (Lenton, 2004). In such regions a lack of deep groundwater wells or reservoirs (i.e., storage) leads to a high level of vulnerability to climate variability, and to the climate changes that are likely to further increase climate variability in future. In addition, river basins that are stressed due to non-climatic drivers are likely to be vulnerable to climate change. However, vulnerability to climate change exists everywhere, as water infrastructure (e.g., dikes and pipelines) has been designed for stationary climatic conditions, and water resources management has only just started to take into account the uncertainties related to climate change.
Floods;
A warmer climate, with its increased climate variability, will increase the risk of both floods and droughts (Wetherald and Manabe, 2002; Table SPM2 in IPCC, 2007).
Food:
Water balance and weather extremes are key to many agricultural and forestry impacts. Decreases in precipitation are predicted by more than 90% of climate model simulations by the end of the 21st century for the northern and southern sub-tropics (IPCC, 2007a).
There's plenty more of that sort of thing in the IPCC reports. But if you live in a wealthy country away from the seaboard and can afford the increases in prices for fresh water, food and military spending to keep the oil flowing from areas less lucky than you; then yes, the impact won't be so bad in your lifetime. Lucky you. Shame about the rest of the planet, and our descendants though.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Citation needed (eg: real statistics)
Please don't make assemption based on your FEELINGS. That's what we get on the news each time there's a weather event, and it's not at all a scientific way to understand the issue.
No, mon ami, it is almost all US. In fact, about 25% of world greenhouse emissions, more than any other nation, even if weighted by economic activity.
The map you linked to was data from 2002, with some data from 2004. Go ahead, download the linked data and look for yourself.
In the meantime, China has been growing economically at an incredible clip, and lots of their energy comes from coal. They have surpassed the United States, and with a billion+ people moving from agriculture to Western lifestyle, are going to dwarf whatever the United States does in the future.
Beware of any statistics presented in English, for the publishers have an obvious incentive to skew the output for political reasons.
Beware of your own biases. English is the world's de-facto common language between countries. It's not like you're going to get unbiased data from China government newspapers.
Nobody's trying to outlaw CO2. People just want to prevent it from rising too far.
Keeping CO2 below 450 ppm isn't going to harm any plants, when it has been below 350 ppm for hundreds of thousands of years.
Australia's emission may be insignificant now but Australia is 14th (out of 200) in the total accumulated emissions since the start of the industrial revolution.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Notice how many heat records have been recorded since 2000, and how most cold records are much older.
Yet, everybody agrees that earth has been cooling down since around 2000.
By the way, single list doesn't help, we need a graph with evolution and trends, which this link isn't giving. Also, what this list shows (by a quick read) is that there's a lot more abnormal warm events in the northern hemisphere, which isn't surprising (the north has been warmer when the south has been cooler over this last decade).
Last, you've talked about ONE event and I didn't agree, and now you're talking about a bunch of them, with a global view of earth. This is totally different, and I may start to agree if you go on the wide scale thing, with multiple years results. Know what I mean?
No, only a couple of crackpots agree on that. Here's a link of global temperature anomalies in tabular format:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt
Average for 2000-2009 was +0.52
Average for 1990-1999 was +0.31
Average for 1980-1989 was +0.18
Doesn't look like it's getting colder, especially if you consider that every single year since 2000 has been warmer than the 1990-1999 average.
Throughout the earth's geologic history it has been must colder than now at times and much warmer and had more oxygen and less oxygen and life went on. Climate doesn't happen in a few years. Just because you anecdotally had an extra hot day or an extra cold day means absolutely squat. If you look at historical and gelogic records you will find we aren't suddenly turning into a worldwide sulfur pit. for example, an ice free north pole happened about 80 years ago. How much manmade greenhouse gases are actually contributing to global warming is debatable. Each side brings on their own so-called experts and their own so-called scientific evidence to support their contention. And climategate didn't help. What will probably happen if/when the seas rise is that the major cities will follow the dutch example and the rest will move or be moved to higher ground. To handle the floods and droughts we could build an interstate aqueduct system from rivers in areas that typically flood to rivers in areas that typically dry out and use pumps the size of the ones they used in the great salt lake. Or we will do some other engineering kind of solution. Life will go on, regardless, and we will adapt to the climate if we cannot adapt the climate to us.
Why guess? Don't you have Internet access? Too stupid to use it? It's under 5% of human output.
At least the US' emissions are only on a slight increase and are slowing down. China's have almost gone vertical in the last ~7 years 8-(
On the other hand, consider that the USA is emitting nearly as much as China with less than 1/4 the population 8-(
WTF guys!? You're doing something seriously wrong over there, especially considering that all the heavily polluting industry has been outsourced and people don't commonly ride 2-stroke bikes in the US.
Are you putting WW2 fighter engines in your SUVs now or what?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't believe the Earth will be like Venus because Venus is in a different orbit than Earth is. But I do think the Earth will change and probably become hostile to our species. We didn't always have the atmosphere we do now. and when our species dies off, another species will take our place. Our sun can probably support the deveopment of one more species before it perishes. The Human species had its chance to survive and chose badly.
Here we go again, 1st species very similar to ours survived the last ice age. You know when most of northern europe and north america were covered in fucking ice! So, I'm pretty sure humanity will survive the coming ecological apocalypse. 2nd the term irreversible need to be qualified on what time scale we are talking about the earth has been around for 4+ billion years, and has probably undergone several irreversible climate changes(the introduction of large quanties of oxygen being one). However, if you want to do your part please prepare a large concrete tomb and before it sets shoot yourself in the head, and fall into said concrete that way your carbon will be sequestered and help reduce the greenhouse gases.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
It's simple, and obvious. He thinks China is Third World. It might be illuminating to consider what the original definition of Third World was. The U.S. and allies were the First World, the Soviets and allies were Second World, everyone else (which I think included China) was Third World. Of course, everyone else got caught in the cold war crossfire and most of the Third World nations ended up dirt poor which changed what people think Third World means.
That being said, never blame on malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The majority of this species believes in an Earth that will exist forever because a 2500 year old anthology of books say so.
That statement is almost definitely incorrect, assuming you're referring to religious belief. First off, not one major religion had a fully set canon 2500 years ago, and the general pattern is one in which the world comes to an end and become a much better place when the dust settles.
The Christian anthology is about 1600 years old, put together by a committee in Byzantium around 360 CE, and finally approved by all major branches of Christianity only about 1550 CE. It makes very clear mention of the end of the world, and in fact the people who believe in this version of an invisible man often believe the world will end before global warming could kill us, making the whole issue unimportant. The Muslim anthology can be no older than 1300 years old, because Mohammed didn't exist before then. Both Sunni and Shia Islam have a firm belief in an end of the world, although they differ on exactly what signals it. The Jewish anthology is the oldest anthology, but it has a believe in a messiah that shows up to fix everything and basically ends the world as we know it. Indian and Asian faiths don't really have the same sort of formal anthologies, but Hindus definitely believe in the current world being destroyed and replaced, and Buddhists also have a definite set of circumstances in which the world comes to an end.
That covers the vast majority of religious believers. The major religions that don't have an "end of the world" scenario (Taoism, Shinto, native African faiths such as Yoruba, western paganism, etc) also don't have any sort of canon. And of course atheists also know the Earth will end in approximately 5 billion years thanks to the sun's main phase coming to an end.
I am officially gone from
I fear so too. We have such fools leading our nations and large corporations. Trolls like Rupert Murdoch are deliberately confusing the public, sowing doubts about science itself, not only climate science, and telling outright lie after lie. In 1993, I personally heard a speech from the CEO of Lennox to employees in which he said that 1) he didn't believe in global warming, but 2) if global warming was real, then good, because it would be good for Lennox's business of selling more A/C's! (He also complained that he would have made more money in the stock market than he made having it all tied up in Lennox, implying that the employees didn't work hard enough or something, but for the sake of everyone's jobs, he stayed with the company. What a guy!) They ought to be our best and brightest people. They evidently believe they are, the way they carry on. But they don't seem to understand something basic that separates children from adults, which is that you can't make problems go away by ignoring them. They've done worse. They've actively worked to deny everything, actually spent money that they are so greedy to have, on propaganda dressed up as science. What the hell! We have a huge, huge leadership problem. In Lennox's case, I know that CEO inherited the company. He didn't win his position on any sort of merit at all. He was the son of the previous leader, that's all.
What a bunch of lying, smug, lazy hedonists. Every generation can use a challenge, to keep life from becoming too easy and boring. We ought to embrace this problem. We could solve it. The US didn't go AWOL for WWII, didn't chicken out and let Japan grab half the Pacific, didn't leave the Brits to the Nazis. We demonstrated to the world that democracy is superior to fascism. Now we call them the Greatest Generation. If Rupert Murdoch had been a media mogul then, I can imagine he'd have spewed ridiculous pro-Nazi propaganda, maybe suggest that the US ought to cut a deal to sell Hawaii to Japan in exchange for peace. Solving global warming doesn't require the sacrifice that war did. Yet, we're running away from it. We don't deserve to stay #1 with that attitude. Our parents would be ashamed. All the work and sacrifice they did so we'd have a better life, and this is how we repay that.
So, we won't do enough to address this problem, not until it's far too late. Greenland will melt, and maybe western Antarctica will too, most of Florida and Bangladesh will drown, and the Netherlands may find it impossible to raise the dikes high enough. Then we'll engage in recriminations as we fight over higher ground and food. There will be war, maybe even WWIII and use of nuclear weapons. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
And if this weren't ironical enough, they can do so because they're not a democratic system, but a totalitarian one where the leaders simply need to state "Make it so!"
This is a gross simplification
LOL ! Indeed. That would be the silly kind of formula everyone would have in mind instinctively. Is this real "scientist" bullshit, or just you explaining your (not proven) feelings?
Even, let's attempt to believe that your formula could be right. If it was, then variation of c(t) in a so small amount of time (sorry, how old are you exactly?), and your human memory so weak (you aren't special are you? Your memory is mixed with emotions, right?), that it would be too small for you to feel the difference of w(t). At least never enough to be able to say:
It was 71 degrees the other day on November 1st.
and then over-over-over simplify things and say:
We've already done more damage than we can reverse.
I could say "there was so much snow last winter in my country, your theory of global warming is stupid". That would be equally non-scientific and full of weak human perceptions like above, so I don't write it. Do you need an other one of the same style? Well, by the way, "the other day on November 1st" it was so cold in here, so your theory of global warming must be shit. Is this enough, or should I add a car analogy?
I'm not going to bother providing you with citations, though I seem to recall New Scientist doing a special report on potential benefits of climate change. Haven't read it in a few years, but you can go look that up if you want, I'm sure it has several citations.
How would you even begin to quantify any of these proposed observations - or for that matter, apply them to the modern world? Even if you demonstrated a net benefit to a world of half a million hunter-gatherers, I very much doubt you could directly apply that to a globalized world of 7 billion. Same with the medieval warm period, but as that's generally considered a localized phenomenon anyway, it doesn't really count.
As for comparing tundra with rainforest, shouldn't you be comparing it with desert? Regardless, given that the vast majority of land-based human food production is done between these extremes, it's presumably the extent of temperate areas suitable for farming that's the most important factor in such calcuations.
1) Oceans are not acidic, so a drop in pH is not "increasing acidity", it's "less alkalinity".
Presumably you'd also telling me off for saying that something got colder instead of getting less hot? I'm no chemist, but I'm convinced that your pedantry backfired here. "Decreasing alkalinity" is synonymous with "increasing acidity!"
2) The historical record doesn't support any sort of assertion that high CO2 in the atmosphere is going to cause the oceans to become acidic: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/ocean-acidification-chicken-of-the-sea-little-strikes-again/
That page ... well, where to start? The first sentence is a mouthful, that's for sure. It almost sounds like it's suggesting that anthropogenic CO2 was the main driver of climate change in the past, but that cosmic rays and the sun have taken over recently! It also uses an apostrophe to pluralise a number: 1700s. My inner pedant really hates that one!
The author accuses multiple peer reviewed papers of blatantly obvious cherry picking, yet picks only specific studies to cite, offering no independent verification of his own conclusions. He claims that there is no evidence that increased ocean acidification and temperature can affect coral, yet offers no explanation as to the reef deaths that have been observed, and credibly attributed to these causes. He suggests that increased atmospheric CO2 may not affect ocean acidity, seemingly ignoring the massive interactions between ocean and atmosphere, and the very concept of carbonic acid.
Seems like blatant denialism of observed data, to me.
For the last 13 years the Earths temperature has dropped and it looks like the planet continues to cool.
CO2 continues to raise.
I think this whole article is stupid. Irreversable? Please. The Earth's climate has been in flux for thousands of years. If the planet wanted to stay at one temperature it would be ice-age like temperatures.
And what period are we in anyways? An Iceage!! Does the IEA want the planet to be in an iceage forever?
This is another example of climate change hysteria and Slashdot, again, has taken the walk down the Primerose path to Alarmism when there is absolutely nothing to worry about.
Oh, genius argument you have there, but taken a look at Mars lately? It's freezing cold even though it's atmosphere is primarily CO2! Must be global warming! Argumentum ad planetum
No, you're right, I've seen the light. We're saved! Venus never had any runaway feedbacks in its climate, no sir -- no feedbacks at all. And Mars, with all that incredibly thick atmosphere is proof that even radiative forcing is a myth. Huzzah!
Come on, Earth will never be like Venus or Mars (without massive solar changes), and making predictions based on what happens there is idiotic.
I wasn't suggesting Earth will end up like Venus, I was merely pointing out that Venus' climate is thought to have arisen through runaway feedbacks. You were, you may recall, suggesting that feedbacks in atmospheric systems could never create massive changes.
Which one of us is idiotic I'll leave to you to consider further. You can also debate whether it's you or Mars' atmosphere that's incredibly thick ...
(And when you've finished all of that, take a look at water vapour and ice-albedo feedbacks sometime. You might be surprised.)