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Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a story that may repeat itself in all mountainous areas dependent on glaciers for their water supply, the glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly (PDF) that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected. Of the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades, researchers now believe, 'those years don't exist.'"
This melt off should be an interesting opportunity for archaeology and paleontology. Will such treasures reach back 1000, 5000, 40,000 years?
Why even bother posting this? It will just dissolve into a global warming debate within seconds, and slashdotters are by far the stupidest people I've ever conversed with on the topic of climate change and global warming. Normally slashdot opinions are above average on a given topic, but with global warming they're well below average: it's all fuzzy, intuited 'science' from physicists and programmers with zero understanding of ecology, copious libertarian babble, and wanton libertarian bashing.
It's just going to be a giant flamewar, and the average reader will truly be stupider for having read it.
The environment changes, the organisms change. The universe loves organisms, and she'll never stop springing them up in places you'd never think you'd find them.
More realistic version: The environment changes, the organisms die, or at least the ones unsuitable for the new environment die. Evolution is a process of death, either death as an early termination of an organism, or death as a failure to pass on genes. If you step back and look at the grand process of life, it has a beauty to it. The great Permian Triassic extinction brought the rise of the dinosaurs, and the extinction of the dinosaurs allowed a whole new set of species to appear, including our own.
But when you bring it down to your own life, a moral person cannot possibly take pleasure in the thought of the extinction of his children, of his grandchildren, let alone the extinction of his entire species. And that is really at the heart of the issue of global warming. The geological record gives good evidence that (a) the climate can get a great deal warmer than it is today and (b) that those periods of warming are associated with large scale extinctions. There is strong evidence that a warming world will have a profoundly different distribution of precipitation. Given that our current agricultural systems are dependent on our current precipitation patterns, it seems likely that changing precipitation patterns will result in a reduction in agricultural production. If there is less food in the world, then famine is likely to result. The systems we have developed where most of us can live in cities while others far away grow our food will be put under stress. A survey of history will clearly show what happens then. The disinterested intellectual systems of reason decay. Fear grows with material shortages, and with it grows superstition. Humans start to lose track of objective reality, they start to make decisions based on illusion and superstition. As they lose track of reality, humans become increasingly unable to implement the necessary changes to survive in a changing world.
If you want to get an idea of what I am talking about, read about the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages, especially in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Read about the major mass extinctions, and then ponder the question whether humans would have been able to rise above the environmental pressures that destroyed more than 90% of species in the time of the dinosaurs. And even if we weren't to go extinct, consider what it would look like of 90% of us were to die. Not just 90% of those in some far away desert, but 90% of the people in your own country. Consider what such a world would look like. It won't happen tomorrow. It won't happen next year, nor even in a decade. If you live another 30 years, you will see enough to see the shape of things to come. But you will still be able to consume comfortably for some time to come. It is your children who will have to deal with the consequences of your selfish consumption.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Scientists, when they made those projections, were being conservative, just including the factors they were sure of and discounting factors that were not well characterized yet. How much ridicule would you be heaping on them if they had overstated their projections?
Scenario 1:
2001 - scientist says that glaciers will melt in 100 years
2011 - scientist says that glaciers will melt much faster than 100 years
Scenario 2:
2001 - scientist says that glaciers will melt in 10 years
2011 - scientist says that glaciers will melt much slower than 10 years
In both scenarios, the problem is the projection, not the events that happened in that 10-year span.
Why being so dramatic? It is a very sad state of affairs that it is now politically incorrect to mention that an alarmist statement is nothing else but an alarmist statement.
And as usual the Chuch of Global Warming is very active on Slashdot and keeps modding down comments that are not fanatically pro-IPCC.
lucm, indeed.
If you're estimating how many years of fresh water you have left, that's an engineering question. "Being conservative" means erring on the short end, rather than the long end. Factors which are not well characterized yet are assumed to be worst case, not discounted. Basically, you're trying to answer "What's the worst that could happen, so I can plan ahead for it?"
OTOH, if you're estimating the melt rate for glaciers for a study on climate change, then that's a science question. "Being conservative" means erring on the long end (i.e. no change). Basically, you're trying to answer "Is something happening?" If that's what happened then it begs the question - who took a study on climate change, and decided to use it to estimate remaining fresh water supply?
The economist was arguing the exact opposite, that the global effort to change the lifestyle and energy sources of half the population of the world would be orders of magnitude more expensive than to simply adapt as a species and relocate or provide resources in some other means to people dispersed by global warming.
But I will have to go with "nonsense" on that diagnosis.
Haven't read the article, can't comment on the said economists motives but I am fairly sure that he/she IS making his/her arguments from an ignorant position and a with a highly specialized and limited outlook of the world.
First off, saying "half the population" indicates that he lives in some past age when the developed nations (ones who are responsible for the greater part of the human influence on the climate) were approximately one half of the world population.
Which is no longer the case. "Traditionally poor" continents of Asia and Africa amount to ~5 billion of the ~7 billion humans currently on this planet.
Second, rest assured that the poor nations would be the ones who would feel the effects of global warming the most.
Millions would likely die from hunger, wars caused by said hunger and health issues (disease and lack of medicine) caused by both.
Calculating the "cost" of change in developed nations energy policy merely in dollars, when it is clear to anyone who would take 5 minutes to meditate on the subject that the current policies would cost in lives, lost generations and even in those utterly immeasurable categories such as loss of culture and civilization indicates that the proponent of the "just send aid" has traded his/her moral compass for something more... quantifiable.
Then, there is the problem of "WTF?" in such a solution.
We can't adapt energy policy of developed nations with their (comparably) functioning economies and bureaucracies but at the same time it is a perfectly acceptable idea that we should be able "to simply adapt as a species"?
I'm guessing this will be accomplished through spontaneous mutation of chlorophyll cells in our bodies so that we can harvest the energy of the Sun, dispensing with that pesky habit of eating altogether?
Or perhaps by growing gills and webbed hands and feet so that we can live under water?
Then there is the utter lack of foresight. Which does not surprise me since the said economist is working with numbers from decades ago.
I.e. Is stuck in the past.
We don't need a solution for a world of 5, 6 or 7 billion people, with maybe half of them living in the developed nations.
We need an adaptable, scalable solution for at least 9 billion humans, with at least 7 billion of them living in the developing nations.
Which is where we will be 40 or so years down the road, just as the world's supply of oil nears the end of its economical use.
And saying to those 7 billion "Ah, just move somewhere else" basically means "Come, take my already strained resources - you're gonna take them by force anyway since you and yours outnumber me and mine by 4 to 1. And you've grown up in the society where human life is very cheap.".
So, unless we come up with cold fusion in the next decade or so we MUST start relying on renewable energy resources.
Cause "poor" of the world sure as hell will not. Can not.
At the same time they will be faced with increased population and dwindling resources - perfect conditions for declaring war.
On their cousins, on their neighbors, on the "wealthy", on those of a different color...
So, developed nations either come up with a solution for both energy and the climate crisis and give it to the developing nations OR be faced with the possibility of being on a losing side of a global war couple of decades down the road.
Not that there can be a winning side in a war whose goal is to manage couple of billion humans through reduction of their numbers.
It's just that some people have a lot less to lose.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens