NRC Report Links Climate Change To National Security

WOOFYGOOFY writes "The NY Times and Voice Of America are reporting on a study by the U.S. National Research Council (PDF) which was released Friday linking global climate change to national security. The report, which was developed at the request of the C.I.A., characterizes the threats posed by climate change as 'similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks. 'Climate-driven crises could lead to internal instability or international conflict and might force the United States to provide humanitarian assistance or, in some cases, military force to protect vital energy, economic or other interests, the study said.' If the effect of unaddressed climate change is the functional equivalent of terrorist attacks on the nation, does the Executive Branch, as a matter of national security, have a duty and a right to begin to act unilaterally against climate change irrespective of what Congress currently believes?"

Comments

Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The report, which was developed at the request of the C.I.A., characterizes the threats posed by climate change as 'similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks'

That's because almost anything that comes to one's mind is more dangerous that terrorist attacks (e.g.: cars, coal power plant emissions, nicotin, alcohol...) Well, I guess alien invasion is slightly less risky. I'm willing to admit as much as that.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[erroneus]

Now I have to take issue with your sense of what is dangerous. Terrorist attack is dangerous. Lions are dangerous too. We just don't have them in my neighborhood. Tornadoes are dangerous too. Just that they are slightly less rare than lions walking down the street.

Now if you were to substitute "likely" for "danger" you might be making some sense. But then again, global warming [aka climate change... change we can believe in] already here and things are already changing. Coastal areas should be becoming less valuable. Inland areas, especially plains areas (though not in tornado alley) should be becoming more valuable. It's all about the weather and those beautiful beaches might still be attracting tourism and vacationing, but business would be well advised not to be there where hurricanes can take our your data centers for weeks on end.

New weather patterns call for new ways of doing things. Some things will be more valuable while others less. Smart people will consider that a bit more.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that, for the 'national security' types, the bigger issue is not so much the changing value of real estate, or even the cost of mopping up a few more hurricanes per decade; but the sort of really wacky social dysfunction that can be reasonably expected in the large areas of the world where people enjoy limited mobility, paltry incomes, and a somewhat tenuous record of liking us.

Even modest price shocks in the cost of essential food items cause the bottom billion or two to get(quite understandably) jumpy. Shifts in climate and precipitation are, of course, ideal causes for serious disruptions in agriculture, and likely a certain amount of mayhem, migration of desperate people to slightly less screwed places that really don't want them coming in(if you think nativist sentiment in Greece is on the rise now...), and so forth.

As an incumbent major power, that's the sort of thing that is unlikely to be fatal; but entirely likely to make dealings with large areas of the planet just that much messier, bloodier, and more expensive...

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I was talking about deaths per year caused by the respective issues.

I recently studied how many birds die annually by "hand of man" - as in, if we weren't here with the whole of our civilization, they wouldn't die. I wanted to know because of some people's arguments against wind energy because of the occasional bird deaths, and it turned out that one of the leading causes of man-caused bird deaths - in the US at least - are window panes. Specifically, window panes kill something like four to five orders of magnitude as many birds as wind turbines. Similar numbers apply to agriculture (fertilizers, pesticides), open air power lines, automobiles, and - of course - domestic and feral cats. Even if you take the wind power market expansion into account, it's not likely that wind turbines will ever be worthy mentioning to anyone actually caring about birds. And now, show me people willing to giving up windows on account of birds.

I suspect that the situation with humans is very much like this. There are many more deaths from other causes than terrorism on the US soil that could be prevented at a much more modest cost. The problem is that these deaths are not as flashy as airplanes driven into buildings, and therefore unlikely to attract the attention of an average citizen and voter.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[erroneus]

I suspect the fight against wind power has more to do with other energy producers than eco-nuts.

After all, anyone with last can set up wind power.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

but the sort of really wacky social dysfunction that can be reasonably expected in the large areas of the world where people enjoy limited mobility, paltry incomes, and a somewhat tenuous record of liking us.

The world has many centuries of experience with famine, natural disaster, and disease, and victims of those calamities rarely if ever turn into terrorists. Terrorism is based on ideology and inferiority complexes, not rational behavior, and you can't combat it by taking rational action. If people want to blame the US, they will blame the US regardless of whether the US is actually responsible (objectively, it is still Europe, not the US, who is responsible for the largest part of global warming).

Furthermore, the policies advocated for combating global warming are going to perpetuate suffering and poverty across the world. If you want to minimize the social consequences of global warming, forget about trying to stop the unstoppable, and instead invest in economic development across the world. For developed nations, even the worst case predictions for global warming amount to little more than a rounding error in the GNP; the more nations we help to develop rapidly economically (mainly through free trade and open markets), the fewer people will suffer significant consequences from global warming.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[fm6]

Doesn't that depend on the alien? If they're "To Serve Man" aliens, it might actually be a good thing, since they'd want to farm their humans sustainably.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[erroneus]

It all starts with land. After land comes everything else. Land is a means of production, quite often... some land better than others. Land offers means of transportation... some land better than others. You get the idea. Throughout man's existance as a thinking being, land has been the most significant thing. Heck, for that matter, you don't even have to be human. Other animals value land too. And that's where it all begins.

Global warming will affect the land and what you can do with it. It will make valuable land worthless and worthless land valuable. And with value comes people trying to take it away... and when that happens...

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[erroneus]

NIMBYs are thwarted by using eminant domain laws. And they will be used as needed.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[phantomfive]

Did you take into account large, endangered birds? It's a serious question, and I think important. I could see it being more likely that a California Condor or Bald Eagle would hit a wind turbine than a window.....

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[fm6]

I agree with your math-based approach to hazards, but I think you might be understating the impact of wind farms on birds. The problem is that good sites for wind farms tend to be in migratory flyways. Other human impacts tend to be more random.

Not, in itself, an argument against wind farms, since there are ways you can mitigate the effect (careful siting mainly). Just pointing out that the scale of a project does not necessarily correlate to impact.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[TapeCutter]

Exactly, and this is nothing new, the pentagon has rated AGW as the number one medium-long term threat since well before Bush left the whitehouse.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[Jane Q. Public]

"That's because almost anything that comes to one's mind is more dangerous that terrorist attacks (e.g.: cars, coal power plant emissions, nicotin, alcohol...) "

I think there should be an official name for this, like there is for Godwin's Law: "If government wants something, sooner or later it will invoke terrorism."

"Well, I guess alien invasion is slightly less risky."

Gets riskier every year. Well... I guess it depends on what kind of aliens you're talking about.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[amorsen]

The fight against wind power is mostly fear of falling property values. That fear itself makes the land near wind turbines less valuable, whether the wind turbines cause any actual problems or not. Note: this is all perfectly rational for each individual, even if the effect viewed in total is irrational.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[HiThere]

You clearly haven't been following crop failures, though I'll admit that turning chicken corn into ethanol is one of the stupider ideas. It's not economic, and it shortens the supply of food. But it's the crop failures that are the real problem. You'll probably notice it later this year or early next year, when the stockpiles start to run low, so the price goes up. Some people have already noticed it. Suicide is rising among Indian farmers, e.g., because of crop failures. I don't know who is most affected by the failure of the Russian wheat harvest, and I don't know who is most affected by this years failure of the US wheat harvest.

Please note: Failure doesn't mean that no grain was harvested. It means that a LOT less than expected was harvested. And in the cases that I mentioned it can be clearly laid at the foot of unfavorable weather. (I'm not sure what the US corn harvest was like. If it hit the headlines, I missed it.) I seem to recall that Europe had some crop failures this year too, but I can't remember what they were, however Europe on the west side of the Caucasas isn't a big grain producer. I think I heard that Greece and Spain had some sort of crop failure.

And that's all in the last year. (Though possibly the suicides among Indian farmers date back before then, and I only saw the report this year.)

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[HiThere]

Many of the policies advocated for combatting global warming are "environment theater" combined with pork-barrel politics. That's hard to argue with. CO2 should be dealt with using a Carbon tax. Buying tickets to pollute is just begging for ineffective programs, corruption, and favortism.

Also, it's already too late to avoid major damage, so at least half the effort should go into ameliorating the effects that are already showing up, or will soon show up. Sea level rise is one that's going to require major funding to deal with, and just how it should be dealt with isn't clear. Restoring beaches is "environmental theater", however. It only works in the absence of sea level rise....and it's already risen.

N.B.: Global warming doesn't mean local warming. In one past episode of global warming Europe and the eastern US entered a mini-ice age. (That was apparently caused by a large fresh water lake created by melting glaciers spilling into the Atlantic, but Greenland melting might well do the same job. And it appears to be melting right now. OTOH, it seems to be a more gradual influx of fresh water, so maybe it won't do the same thing. I'm no climate modeler.)
P.S.: If you want to check out what I'm talking about, search for "The Younger Dryas" and for comparison "The Older Dryas".

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[drinkypoo]

For developed nations, even the worst case predictions for global warming amount to little more than a rounding error in the GNP

You, sir, are on the bad drugs.

The worst-case predictions for global warming include the long-period flooding of all coastal cities. You think that's going to be little more than a rounding error if it happens?

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[fatphil]

What about lightning strikes? Won't somebody *pleeeeease* think of the golfers!

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[fatphil]

You want bird deaths at the hand of man? That's easy - McDonalds.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[sumdumass]

It won't happen over night though. It will happen over a period of decades or more and yes, that will result in a bump. There will be plenty of time to adjust to that.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[drinkypoo]

It won't happen over night though. It will happen over a period of decades or more

That has yet to be determined. Some believe it will happen faster; not overnight, but over a period of less than a decade. I find it difficult to believe myself, but the worst-case scenarios are worse than you're accounting for. Or who knows, it's now considered to be fairly unlikely, but there is still evidence that there has been a methane clathrate gun event in the past, and we know there's deposits down there now, which means it's not entirely impossible either, and should be added to that worst-case scenario :)

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

The worst-case predictions for global warming include the long-period flooding of all coastal cities. You think that's going to be little more than a rounding error if it happens?

The IPCC report has a set of scenarios for the 21st century: the worst case scenario is a few percent of GDP.

Anybody who claims that we need to do this or that because of imminent flooding of all coastal cities is either a liar or the climate equivalent of a young earth creationist.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[sumdumass]

Some believe a supernatural being created the world in 6 days 6000 some years ago. Some believe we were a prison colony for aliens. Some believe all sorts of things. I think we live in a time when we need more then what someone believes and need to act through evidence and fact.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[drinkypoo]

I think we live in a time when we need more then what someone believes and need to act through evidence and fact.

It's a fact that sea level is rising twice as fast as projected so far. It's a fact that ice is melting faster than projected, too. That much faster? Not sure. These are valid concerns, though, scientifically even. The question is one of odds, not possibility.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

That has yet to be determined. Some believe it will happen faster; not overnight, but over a period of less than a decade.

Some people believe that the earth is 6000 years old. That doesn't make their beliefs real. The scenarios that I was talking about are the scenarios worked out by experts and written down in the IPCC report, not the wild fantasies of some nutcase.

Or who knows, it's now considered to be fairly unlikely, but there is still evidence that there has been a methane clathrate gun [wikipedia.org] event in the past, and we know there's deposits down there now, which means it's not entirely impossible either, and should be added to that worst-case scenario :)

The clathtrate gun hypothesis is speculation; there is little evidence for it. Over the past several million years, we have been through many warm periods warmer than today and no clathrate methane release occurred. And even if such an event were to happen, it would still take centuries for the oceans to warm and the polar ice caps to melt to the point that major flooding of coastal cities were to occur. And on those time scales, fear of flooding isn't meaningful because cities and people easily and naturally move over those time scales.

Global warming is real, and so is the possibility of "rapid" warming due to feedback loops. But your kind of alarmism, as well as this report, are dangerous pseudo-science and are in the same league as the kinds of superstitions that the religious right subscribes to.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[sumdumass]

And it's still a fact that all available evidence is showing decades if any.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[drinkypoo]

Over the past several million years, we have been through many warm periods warmer than today and no clathrate methane release occurred

It's called global warming, not global warmed. We're still heating up.

Global warming is real, and so is the possibility of "rapid" warming due to feedback loops. But your kind of alarmism, as well as this report, are dangerous pseudo-science and are in the same league as the kinds of superstitions that the religious right subscribes to.

The clathrate gun isn't my hypothesis, and there is some decent evidence for it happening at least once and maybe thrice in the past.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Did you take into account large, endangered birds? It's a serious question, and I think important. I could see it being more likely that a California Condor or Bald Eagle would hit a wind turbine than a window.....

Of course, you have a point there. Now that's an area for...how do you call it in English, zoning? I believe that here in Europe, habitats of endangered species are already being taken into account whenever a new location is being reviewed by the respective governmental bodies responsible for the stuff.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The problem is that good sites for wind farms tend to be in migratory flyways. Other human impacts tend to be more random.

That's why in at least some cases, they've started using modern radars to map the bird flock trajectories for a few years before settling on the safest places to put the turbines in. :-) And perhaps this might be of interest to you as well?

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[styrotech]

And now, show me people willing to giving up windows on account of birds.

I gave up Windows on account of a penguin.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

[Over the past several million years, we have been through many warm periods warmer than today and no clathrate methane release occurred] It's called global warming, not global warmed. We're still heating up.

The world has been cycling back and forth between deep glaciation and interglacial warming periods for millions of years, with a period of about 100ky. We have been in an interglacial warming period for about 20000 years. As long as this interglacial warming period isn't any hotter than the past ones, there is no reason to believe that anything different is going to happen this time around. And even with AGW, we're still quite a ways away from the peak temperatures of past interglacial warming periods.

The clathrate gun isn't my hypothesis, and there is some decent evidence for it happening at least once and maybe thrice in the past.

Yes, about 250 million years ago and maybe 55 million years ago, when there already were no polar ice caps and when global temperatures and CO2 concentrations were much higher than even projected under AGW. Of course, there is no actual evidence for this kind of event, it is merely a plausible explanation for observed isotope ratios.

Furthermore, if enough clathrate has actually accumulated that this is a real risk, it will inevitably get released sooner or later anyway. One could still argue about whether it would be prudent policy to delay its release, but climate change from a "clathrate gun" isn't a man-made climate catastrophe, it's an event that restores the planet to its usual (warmer) climate after long cold periods.

Really, you are the climate equivalent of a young earth creationist: you seem to think that the world is largely the way humans experienced it for the past 6000 years. We're adapted to the current climate, but the current climate is an unusual state to begin with; it will inevitably either get much colder or much warmer in the long run. And warmer is definitely better than colder.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

The clathrate gun isn't my hypothesis, and there is some decent evidence for it happening at least once and maybe thrice in the past.

Just to be perfectly clear about this: you are taking scientific hypotheses about possible events in the distant past and misapplying it to current climate issues. That is worse than merely being uninformed or expressing a religious belief, because you attempt to claim scientific credibility and in the process drag science through the mud.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[danbert8]

So you are saying that our projections are horribly inaccurate?

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[danbert8]

THIS... So much THIS. In all the debates about climate change, we never talk about the fact that climate will never be constant. It WILL get colder and it WILL get warmer. We need as a species to be able to adapt to both to survive in the long term. In the near term, we are much better adapted to survive on a warmer planet rather than a colder one, so if we believe we are so powerful that we can affect the climate, shouldn't we be trying to make it warmer?

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[Bing Tsher E]

So your solution is to become even more fascistic and top-down controlled?

How disappointing. We don't need to become more like China to compete with China. Maybe you think that, but what does that make you?

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[Teckla]

Similar numbers apply to agriculture (fertilizers, pesticides), open air power lines, automobiles, and - of course - domestic and feral cats.

How much do cats actually kill?

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[phantomfive]

oh yeah, that is a serious problem here because........everywhere is a habitat for an endangered animal. More importantly in this case, large birds tend to favor windy places, and so do wind farms.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

In the near term, we are much better adapted to survive on a warmer planet rather than a colder one, so if we believe we are so powerful that we can affect the climate, shouldn't we be trying to make it warmer?

Well, reasonable climatologists make arguments that AGW may be strong enough eventually to break out of the glaciation cycles, whereas if we didn't interfere with the climate, it might remain stable for another few centuries or millennia before getting colder. It's a reasonable hypothesis, but very speculative. Even if true, breaking out of the cycle now and living with melting of all ice may still be a better choice than the near certainty of glaciation in the future, because glaciation is just so much worse.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[fm6]

Could you read my post all the way through? It's not that long.

And fix your stupid link.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[ultranova]

I could see it being more likely that a California Condor or Bald Eagle would hit a wind turbine than a window.....

Do birds also tend to run at rock faces? They run into windows because those are transparent. Windmill blades are not.

But even if the answer is "yes", there's the fact that everything has potential risks to something. We can't build wind farms because those (might) kill birds. We can't build solar plants because those take up massive amount of space, thus destroying habitats. We can't build dams because those also take up massive amount of space, kill fish, and the potential sites are mostly damned already. We can't build coal plants because those spew carbon dioxide and other pollutants and the fuel source is depleting. We can't build oil or gas plants for the same reason. And we can't build nuclear plants because there's a risk of an accident and the waste products possibly leaking thousands of years from now.

Nothing in this world is perfect, so as they move from the realm of science fiction into the realm of technically possible each and every way of producing energy turn out to have problems. Nothing that has problems can be used, since someone will always protest, so it seems the only thing we can do is lay down, close our eyes and die.

I think that's the main source of AGW denialism: at some point it gets hard to not see enviromentalism as a giant evil conspiracy. It's not, it's just drawn a massive number of people who protest to feel better about themselves by protesting this or that thing without bothering to come up with alternatives - "I did my part by protesting nuclear power, it's someone else's problem to think about what we'll use instead" - but it sure behaves like one.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[phantomfive]

Do birds also tend to run at rock faces? They run into windows because those are transparent. Windmill blades are not.

That's nice. Honestly I don't care about your guessing, I'm really interested in the data.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[ultranova]

That's nice. Honestly I don't care about your guessing, I'm really interested in the data.

Then maybe you should Google the data rather than post guesses on Slashdot and complain when you get other guesses in return.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[HiThere]

Yeah. Any particular even could be a random weather fluctuation. But that's why I mentioned three separate parts of the world as being affected. If you still want to predict that's normal weather randomness...well, we disagree.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[phantomfive]

I didn't guess, I asked a question.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[drinkypoo]

Anybody who claims that we need to do this or that because of imminent flooding of all coastal cities is either a liar or the climate equivalent of a young earth creationist.

Well, it's happening to them one (or more) at a time, so we'll see how many it happens to, and then we can make our determinations. It ain't over.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

Well, it's happening to them one (or more) at a time, so we'll see how many it happens to, and then we can make our determinations. It ain't over.

So, when confronted with facts and scientific expert opinion, you just wave your hands. The fact is that although AGW clearly exists and leads to sea level rise, that is intrinsically a slow process, on the scale of centuries, because melting of ice caps and warming of oceans just are slow processes. Neither you nor I will live long enough to see any significant deviation from the slow, steady sea level rise we have experienced for a century. And that means that using sea level rise as a justification for political or economic policies is wrong.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[drinkypoo]

The fact is that although AGW clearly exists and leads to sea level rise, that is intrinsically a slow process, on the scale of centuries, because melting of ice caps and warming of oceans just are slow processes

Yeah, I've heard that. I've also heard about how it was supposed to take a lot longer than it has already.

And that means that using sea level rise as a justification for political or economic policies is wrong.

Well, I'll tell you what. I'll move to higher ground, and you do whatever you like. But I'm not going to be happy if I have to pay to relocate people who were too short-sighted to handle it themselves.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[kenorland]

Yeah, I've heard that. I've also heard about how it was supposed to take a lot longer than it has already.

That's because you listen to people with a political agenda who deliberately distort the facts. You can look at the data yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png

Do you see any change in the rate of sea level rise since 1900 there?

Sea level rise, temperatures, and even carbon emissions have done nothing unexpected; they behave just like you'd expect for the level of emissions we have.

I'll move to higher ground, and you do whatever you like. But I'm not going to be happy if I have to pay to relocate people who were too short-sighted to handle it themselves.

Well, then you should push for political change that abolishes federal flood insurance and restricts what FEMA and USACE can do. As long as you vote for people who push for these programs, you are subsidizing people who make poor housing choices. In fact, you are subsidzing a lot of rich people's beach houses and a lot of big developers who snap up cheap land in flood planes and turn it into pretty mansions that they can sell because the tax payer pays for rebuilding.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[erroneus]

Like it or not, eminant domain had practical purposes when dealing with larger issues. The needs of the many often outweigh the needs of the few or the one. I don't advocate the use of eminant domain lightly, but we're talking about managing the nation's energy needs and the quality of the air and, of course, global warming. I don't advocate eminant domain for private industry. That sickens me. I do advocate it when it serves to better the general situation.

Changes in the US infrastructure need to be made. Long ago, decisions were made to favor cars over trains. The auto lobby's interests won out and now we've got problems which would have been more manageable had they not. Government addiction to corporate money was a problem long ago and remains a huge problem today. To be a bit fascist now isn't any worse than what we have today... which is already a bit fascist as it turns out.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[sumdumass]

I suggest the only think remarkable here is your ability to know about them. This happens all the time and will happen in the future too. The difference is in you knowing about it.

In the long run possibly

[Chrisq]

The thing is you have to weigh up the possibilities of people starving in a century against the probability that a group of muzzies will bomb the subway next week. Whereas ideally you should counter both it is a lot easier for the government to get praise for finding another bomb factory than to carry out actions that might show effects in 20 years time.

Re:In the long run possibly

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Pigs are *not* racist. They eat just about anything (or anyone) you feed them with. Equal-opportunity digesters, so as to speak.

Re:In the long run possibly

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm gonna go with irony.

Re:In the long run possibly

[fm6]

As the saying goes, what has posterity ever done for us?

Re:In the long run possibly

[khallow]

than to carry out actions that might show effects in 20 years time

The only effects of AGW mitigation that will appear in 20 years time is a loss of wealth and economic activity. Benefits are modest and long term. Costs are short term and rather large since one is restructuring their transportation and energy sectors to considerable degree.

Re:In the long run possibly

[sumdumass]

Didn't you know that when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts looking like nails? It doesn't matter if its actually a nail or not.

Re:In the long run possibly

[Chrisq]

"muzzies"?

So you are a racist pig...

Let me examine your world view. Would it also be racist to call Catholics papists or Protestants proddys. Is this just confined to religion or are different ideologies also races - do you have a conservative and liberal race?

Re:In the long run possibly

[Stuarticus]

No that would probably be described as bigotry.

Interesting contrast

[ThorGod]

Okay, seriously, the universe, "nature", definitely poses a greater threat to humanity than humanity itself. Sure, we could nuke ourselves to oblivion. But that's just one way...asteroids, mega-volcanoes, hurricanes, Tsunamis, an ice age, floods, droughts, etc etc can all be plenty destructive or even lead to annihilation. Contrast that with "terrorism": no-known "nuclear threat", doesn't even have a country identity. Terrorism's basically a bunch of violent yahoo's looking for ways to hurt the US. They're still just people and with no where near the destructive capability of what "nature" can bring to bare.

Re:Interesting contrast

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Anthropogenic Climate Change that's the issue here. WE are the problem, Pogo. What the Intelligencia are saying is that the effects will be every bit as severe as any attack imaginable, and we have within our power the ability to do something about it. It's like your parents telling you it's time to get serious about your future.

If it were just an act of God, like asteroids or haemorhoids, they'd probably let it alone, but they're calling to light the incompetence of those in Congress who can't find their ass with both hands, much less extrapolate probable scenarios from scientific studies and available data.

CIA to Congress: While you're fiddling, we see Rome starting to burn.

Re:Interesting contrast

[Genda]

The issue is and has always been magnitude. Human beings are just piss poor at gauging real threat. We gobble up oat bran then pack burgers away like they're going out of style. Silly Rabbit... We worry obsessively about terrorism, something that's killed what, 10,000 U.S, citizens maybe in the last century? By the way, this isn't to ignore the fact there are places like Israel where terrorism is a real problem (both the terrorism coming in and going out.) Then we shake in our boots over air travel (the safest means to get from here to there) and are blithely mowed down by the hundreds of thousands by our cars and driving through traffic

The universe is a real threat and its worth the ridiculously small investment globally to protect ourselves from the worst possible extinction threats. That said, global climate change threatens to; devastate our infrastructure, food availability, promote the spread of tropical diseases, impact global political and economic stability and change the very shape of the land we live on. Over then next century humanity will choose whether to live on primarily land or water. Threats from deep space are a popcorn fart in a hurricane by comparison. We need to stop being lead by our phobias and begin getting straight about what we're facing as a collection of cultures and as a species.

To paraphrase Dickens, "It is the best of times, it is the worst of times..." We stand at the crossroads and only sane, sober, logical choices will now call the day. Its time to forget about the boogeymen. Slap or governments back into shape. And most important, inform the wealthy and powerful that in the face of threatened billions, their wealth and power are delusions. Dangerous delusions. Its time to do what is best for all of us, and not a vanish few who think the world is their oyster.

Perhaps scientists will gain some listeners

[h00manist]

After years of horrible persecution of scientists and accusing them of crimes for the results of their research and voicing their opinion, taking us back to the middle ages, perhaps now they will gain a bit more respect. But we're still far from paying them anything near what they deserve, anywhere in the world.

Why did it take...

[joocemann]

...over 20 years to conclude that which was obvious. If you were humble enough to trust experts, the impact of AGW was clear for a long time -- the drastic products of AGW are easy to estimate. If 7BN people can't do well right now, it only makes sense that environmental instability would push many into desperation and chaos.

Re:Why did it take...

[Anonymous Coward]

...over 20 years to conclude that which was obvious. If you were humble enough to trust experts, the impact of AGW was clear for a long time -- the drastic products of AGW are easy to estimate. If 7BN people can't do well right now, it only makes sense that environmental instability would push many into desperation and chaos.

dark humor ahead: But we have a very efficient (albeit costly) military industrial complex to prune excess foreign and domestic populations at convenient intervals.;-)

Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

"does the Executive Branch, as a matter of national security, have a duty and a right to begin to act unilaterally against climate change irrespective of what Congress currently believes?"

As is usual with these sorts of rhetorical questions, no. While climate change and its side-effects are a serious security concern, the executive branch "acting unilaterally" is usually saved for things that are extremely urgent. Not "will unfold over the next few decades" urgent, but "will happen in less than the next 30 days, or 30 hours, if we don't do something now" kind of urgent. By contrast, there's ample time to talk about the problem and try to develop a consensus to respond to it using the plain, old democratic process. Let's see how congress and other elected representatives react to this report, and the next, and the next. There's no justification for invoking executive powers as a response to an unfolding of a slow-motion catastrophe.

Dr. Strangelove

[scubamage]

Quick, we have to hurry before our cave superiority is compromised!

Re:Dr. Strangelove

[fm6]

It's mineshafts, you cultural illiterate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iesXUFOlWC0

Re:Are the nuts right.

[erroneus]

They are only conspiracy nuts when it's not the government thinking these thoughts? Uh... Got news for you jack. The government is people. And so are the conspiracy nuts. So... seriously... how different is it all really? After all, we've got government ignoring, banning and denying science and other facts left and right, day in and day out. Sure, it might make you sleep better believing your god (government in this case) is always watching over you, but really? How much government nonsense do you buy on a daily basis? I never ONCE believed that going to Iraq or Afghanistan was "for our freedom." They were never a threat to that. The only threat there is from the people who want to take it... correction, from the people who have taken it.

Pentagon beat them to it

[Black Parrot]

by several years

It's only climate change when NY or NO are flooded

[tp1024]

All the other hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons (the same phenomenon in different names) don't matter.

Climate change is currently used as a convenient lie to hide the decay of the United States of America and its inabliity to maintain or build infrastructure due to lack of any way whatsoever to raise a sufficient amount of taxes for any purpose other than its military.

BTW the fusion reactor ITER costs a whopping 10 days of US military expenditure to build and run for 30 years.

Re:Perfect

[Luckyo]

No offense, but that doesn't say much about politicians.

It does say a LOT about the people of the nation in question however.

Re:Perfect

[equex]

germany just called, they have some spare power to sell because of green startups

Last chance! Get them while they last!

[PPH]

Sounds like a bad advertising campaign. Emotional appeals: Marketing 101.

Out of scientific arguments already?

Re:How about aline invasion?

[hamburger lady]

a line invasion? let me guess, you really hated geometry.

Re:It's only climate change when NY or NO are floo

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who lost power for a week during Sandy and lives within walking distance of Hoboken I can tell you I heard many people saying "This is worse than Sept. 11th" in the sense of disrupted lives. 2 million people lost power, 100s of homes were destroyed and thousands of people are displaced at least until next spring. Sure, Sept. 11th was a horror but as far as disruption of America's most economically important city...this was much worse. Sept. 11th destroyed a block or two of downtown Manhattan, Sandy destroyed city blocks from NJ to CT. Sept. 11th only seemed more economically devastating because we wasted 1 trillion dollars on wars afterward. The actual direct impact was, truth be told, not that major compared to this. So yeah, for people who lived through both Sept. 11th and Sandy it's a comparison we've all thought about!

Posted anon because comparing Sept. 11th to a hurricane is super un-politically-correct but at the same time it's what people were talking about in their cold dark apartments waiting for the flood water to recede...

Re:The answer is no. The question is bad.

[hey!]

Well, I don't know about "extremist", but "alarmist" might be better. "Sloppy" might be best of all.

That climate change has national security implications is kind of a "well, duh" proposition. Of course it has national security implications, through its potentially destabilizing effect on other nations at the very least. Climate change has a huge impact on the military due to its effect on vector borne infectious diseases. Only recently have historians begun to appreciate the huge and possibly decisive impact malaria had on the American Revolution, and to this day the US military has considerable public health efforts to protect the immunologically naive American troops, who grew up in a hygienic temperate environment, deployed in tropical or squalid conditions.

The executive branch has regulatory and monitoring functions assigned to it by Congress, and considerable leeway in implementing policy within the constraints established by legislation. For example it may be tasked with monitoring the spread of agricultural pests -- a topic closely related in several ways to climate change. Within that function it can draft regulations and propose programs which it then submits budget requests to Congress.

So the executive branch has considerable influence on how or even whether the US government responds to the prospect of climate change. It's hardly extreme to suggest the executive branch should have a policy stance toward it. It's just wooly-headed to compare it to terrorism, a totally different kind of security concern with different causes, different effects, and very different planning horizons.

Re:In the long run possibly...NO Change Possible?

[BoRegardless]

Sea level has risen 150 feet in the last 20,000 years or so. What God given rule says it will not go up another mere 5 feet regardless of man?

What happens if man's efforts consuming 10% of the productive output of the nations of the world produce no effective change?
What happens if the national effort causes the US to go into a depression that causes a population die off & collapse of average incomes?
What if changes the bureaucrats (who always know the right thing to do) make the climate change worse?
How long will it take to make significant change?
Can the developed nations change and overcome the effect of underdeveloped nations?
What happens when the United Nations tries to tell every country what to do? Does everyone lose their national sovereignty?

There's one plan

[Andy Prough]

that would completely protect coastal flood zones, provide nearly unlimited green energy with almost no carbon or heat footprint, and would almost completely insulate the country from the effects of large terrorist or economic attacks. It would also provide almost unlimited clean, fresh water supplies. The surplus energy from the project would be of such a large quantity, that the US economy would be transformed by becoming a worldwide power grid contributor almost overnight.

Think Hoover dam here.

But folks won't go for it. Solves too many problems.

Re:There's one plan

[Genda]

Hydro has been investigated to death. It will never provide more than a fraction of the nation's power needs and has significant environmental problems of its own. There are a huge number of exciting energy and fresh water technologies showing up. Great ideas that beginning to not only look feasible, but profitable. Check out this month's article on Cold Fusion in Discover magazine. It seems a number of breakthroughs in CF including a theory as to what is actually happening is getting a very good reception from applied physicists. There is solid evidence that anchored lighter than air win turbines could harvest 100x more power than ground based wind turbines. Solar cells have passed 33% efficiency, and new technologies promise cheap ubiquitous solar collection on an infinitude of surfaces. OTECs placed around the world in deep water along the equator could produce huge electrical energy, vast amounts of fresh water, and equally vast supplies of seafood (diverse ocean based aquiculture.) This doesn't even mention that being on the equator, they would be perfect launch sites for space traffic. We can even take the energy we produce now and us it to generate hydrogen, methanol, and petroleum directly from water and CO2 in the atmosphere giving us unlimited supplies of carbon neutral fuel. By the way, anyone who's worked with sodium hydroxide knows how much water is can suck out of the air. Solar powered portable water supplies wll soon be sent to the driest places in Africa to save millions of lives. When we look for solutions to making the world a richer place, rather than how can "I" enrich "Myself" to the world's detriment, we all become richer.

We now have the means in our grasp to resolve the many problems facing humanity, however it would demand giving up petty political bickering, religious conflict, national self interest, but most of all prying the white knuckled, crypt keeper death grip of the bankers and mega-corporations from our governments and and financial resources. A very few men of vision and courage, backed by global regions and working in concert could forever transform what was possible for being human, but we'd all have to stop being obsessed with our pasts or some silly apocalypse and focus instead on the future. Perhaps even a future worth living in for all people.

Re:There's one plan

[Andy Prough]

Hydro has been investigated to death. It will never provide more than a fraction of the nation's power needs and has significant environmental problems of its own.

You are thinking of a dam - wrong direction - more like a coastal barrier. And in fact, hydro is cheaper than OTEC by a few cents per kilowatt-hour, although your idea of offsetting the cost with fresh water, seafood, and space traffic launch site benefits would be very intriguing.

however it would demand giving up petty political bickering, religious conflict, national self interest, but most of all prying the white knuckled, crypt keeper death grip of the bankers and mega-corporations from our governments and and financial resources

With the correct system, religious conflict has little or no impact. But you are right about prying the pennies from the death grip of the Bilderberg Club.

Re:There's one plan

[WOOFYGOOFY]

The Princeton wedges plan has the benefit of being immediately implementable and distributing the burden of meeting our energy needs across a spectrum of alternative energy sources along with very achievable conservation measures along with pricing in the real cost of fossil fuels.

http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/

Practical , doable , economical. Check Check Check.

Re:There's one plan

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Also, a very very detaqiled study has shown that htere's enmough wind energy to meet 100% of all nations' needs. This looked at everything from where the wind blows and doesn't to storing and transmitting the energy to the amount of land mass needed for windmills to the amount of raw materials and rare earth products needed to build all the windmills : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/10/is-there-enough-wind-energy-to-meet-the-worlds-needs/

\http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120909150446.htm

http://inhabitat.com/carnegie-institution-study-finds-there-is-enough-wind-power-to-meet-global-energy-demand/

We can do this, but we have to contain and neutralize the political power of the fossil fuel companies and their ideological compatriots.

We elected this congress

[infidel_heathen]

... now we have to deal with the repercussions. People get what they deserve.

Re:We elected this congress

[infidel_heathen]

President Obama may have his faults, but at least he is not a science-denying ignoramus who thinks rape is a gift from god.

The government is omniscient?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a conclusion could be taken to mean that the govt (exec branch, never mind Congress or courts) would be allowed to flounder around and do anything it pleases so long as it can come up with some connection with a theory of global warming. (Such things generally can be reversed if they screw up.)
If this were limited to thinking about geo-engineering to lower the temps a bit it might have some merit, but the actions of 0.3billion out of 7 billion people otherwise might not have such an impact, even if that 0.3 bil use lots of energy. The US is very far from alone, nor is it the greatest contributor to the currently blamed activities, but a blank check to "do something" sounds like a terrible idea to me.
The problems of people building on sand near the beach and lowlying areas have been well known for many years. That there have been no big storms before
since about 1962 has led to a lot of this, ignoring the fact that there is a multidecade oscillation of the Atlantic that eventually restarts the hurricanes hitting
this area. It is perfectly reasonable to figure that yes, it might be a good idea to build fewer such buildings there, rebuild on higher ground, maybe just fix it so
the subways in lowlying areas on Manhattan don't have airvents all over the place, and fix them so maybe they could stand a few hours of waves. Heck: part of that
area used to be swamps. If the storms to be expected are a bit bigger than they might otherwise have been, a "normal" hurricane blowing in off the ocean can do this kind of thing, cold front or not. Read some of the history of the storms of 1878-79 along the east coast sometime: they were described as "tidal waves" because they created such enormous floods along the Delaware Bay, wiping out some of the then communities. The current crop of storms is not that unique. NYC just got a jackpot due to the configuration of the land, which acted as a funnel to catch the wind/water. In the 1950s-60s nobody moaned about global warming causing the hurricanes. They just bemoaned the damages (and fixed things up) but people gradually got greedy for beach property and forgot that there were good reasons why those areas didn't have buildings on them in the first place.

(BTW there are still a few ruins visible from the 1978-79 storms in odd corners, which is how I happened to look that up.)

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[gagol]

The real threat is the scaremongering about everything and anything and refusal to question status-quo in order to protect the interests of very few very rich people. Let's face it, US is fueled by fear and paranoia.

War against Climate Change

[Nyder]

What could possible go wrong? but hey, we got a war against everything else, so a new one isn't a big deal, right?

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Draconian?"

Really?

I always was curious as to how you climate change denialists imagine this ever dark-and-sinister "green agenda." Do you just imagine some dimly-lit, raspy figure tenting his fingers and intoning in a rattling hiss: "Yessss, yessss, just a few parts per cubic inch fewer of carbon dioxide and then they will all payyyyy. Evvvvery time I hear the lamentful wail of a businessssssssman who must adhere to my lunatic whimsssss, I am set upon with a mighty erectionnnnnn. Yessssss..."

Seriously dude, running your car with a slightly lower-volume engine and not being allowed to straight-up vomit toxic gas into the air without paying a fine isn't exactly the same as unlawful search and seizure. I can kind of appreciate the notion that using the specter of global warming as a threat is bothersome to people who don't "believe" in global warming, but lower pollution is pretty well agreed-upon as better for the environment and, you know, people.

If you really think I'm being glib, please tell me what the awful, unthinkable measures you, your family, your friends, or even your employers have undergone that have just torn their lives asunder so as to condemn this apparently-fabricated-by-the-majority-of-the-scientific-community "agenda."

Slippery slope ...

[Turminder Xuss]

Careful there, NRC. If you start assessing risks from unintended consequences as security threats it won't be too long before you're looking at obesity, a much greater risk to the population of the USA than either terrorism or climate change.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[bunratty]

Like switching to energy sources not derived from fossil fuels? How is that draconian? We have to do it at some point anyway because fossil fuels will last only the next few centuries. We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up. Oh, wait, too late for that. Well, let's switch ASAP before energy prices go sky high.

Re:In the long run possibly...NO Change Possible?

[pixelpusher220]

What happens if man's efforts consuming 10% of the productive output of the nations of the world produce no effective change?

So you wouldn't have gone to the moon?

What happens if the national effort causes the US to go into a depression that causes a population die off & collapse of average incomes?

Wars do far more damage. This is called investment and is the single best way to stimulate an economy. All that gov't spending? pays people who then buy things thus increasing demand. Is gov't spending the solution to everthing? of course not. But when big big things need to be done, the private sector simply isn't going to do them.

How long will it take to make significant change?

Sometimes you don't know the answers before you start. And waiting makes it worse. Did JFK know we could get to the moon in under a decade? Of course not, he just picked a date based on some basic assumptions and we went to work.

Can the developed nations change and overcome the effect of underdeveloped nations?

If we can invent more efficient and less harmful technologies...we can sell them that stuff

What happens when the United Nations tries to tell every country what to do? Does everyone lose their national sovereignty?

If you can come up with a better plan than the UN for dealing with international issues, by all means. Lots of people have tried.

Re:It's only climate change when NY or NO are floo

[spire3661]

The undisputed major casualty of 9/11 was Liberty. Sandy is NOTHING compared to that.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[symbolset]

The solution may be closer than we thought.

Scaremongering

[Kid Zero]

I didn't vote for the guy who wants all this power, so I can laugh at you people.

Re:Scaremongering

[fm6]

Sure, if you can make a joke about it, it must not be a problem. I call that the Rush Limbaugh fallacy.

Re:Scaremongering

[SeaFox]

You must have not voted at all then, because none of the candidates don't harbor a desire to be a King in name and authority.

Re:Are the nuts right.

[sjames]

I'm not really a fan of the executive acting unilaterally, but with an obstructionist House whose committee on science, space, and technology includes a member who claims that evolution and the big bang theory are "all lies straight from the pit of hell" and another that claims that women can't get pregnant from "legitimate rape", I can understand the temptation.

no spin zone

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Let's be clear. The people equating statistically improbable disasters - asteroids, aliens all that- to the absolute certain fact that global warming will, if left unchecked for too long, deconstruct civilization are engaging in a type of self soothing via fuzzy thinking. This is what denial is.

The people denying that the threat is imminent and reasoning that it is therefore amenable to current political processes are doing something a little more subtle.

They are creating an imaginary causal linkage between three phenomena which are, in reality, causally unlinked. This is therefore a type of magical thinking.

The first phenomena is the pace at which global warming will proceed. No one knows with certainty how quickly it will proceed or what effects each step of the progression will have on factors effecting national security. What we do know is it's worse than we thought, proceeding faster than we projected.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/02/23/203730/mit-doubles-global-warming-projections/

That pace is in no way related to the second phenomena , the ability of a (gerrymandered) minority of politicians to block urgently needed action at the federal level. Funded by and beholden to the now-classifiable-as-genocidal gas and oil industries, scientifically ignorant and proud of it, the pace of warming is in no way effected by their continued inaction, and nothing about their inaction obliges global warming to back off for our collective sake.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/03/17/203822/media-copenhagen-global-warming-impacts-worst-case-ipcc/?mobile=nc

The third phenomena is what level of ecological disaster is going to serve as the trigger point at which the denier population capitulates to reality and assents to urgent, sweeping federal action. Because that level of ecological disaster both exists and will be realized sooner or later.

But that point is in no way causally related to that other point in time, the point of no return, where given our then-current or achievable level of technology, we'll still be able to limit the effects of global warming in order to preserve the habitability of the planet.

There's nothing to say that deniers won't come around too late. There's no guarantee that the level of ecological disaster sufficient to finally get through to deniers will appear on a schedule sufficient for us to solve the problem.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=349

To think vague things like- eventually everyone will come around and then the political process will kick in in time for us to save ourselves- is magical thinking. The forces controlling the pace of, and political resistance to, global warming are unrelated with respect to the time frame needed to act.

The original question is rhetorical but only in the way opposite to that asserted by the deniers here. It IS a fact that the threat posed by global warming falls under the purview of the executive branch who WILL be empowered and in fact have a duty to act unilaterally, without Congressional oversight or approval, in order to preserve the national security of the United States. The only question is when will that time come and how will we know it? Is it now? A little while from now? When it's too late to do any good?

We just squeaked by an election in which one of the parties' candidates was threatening to pipeline in tar sands from Canada and light them on fire. We already know that, if we light on fire all the oil we current have already drilled and sitting waiting to be sold, it's game over for the environment and ourselves. Drilling for more, spending money to obtain yet more and dirtier oil and th

Re:no spin zone

[swillden]

the absolute certain fact that global warming will, if left unchecked for too long, deconstruct civilization

Global warming may be a fact but asserting that it will "deconstruct civilization" and that if we don't do something Earth will become uninhabitable is pretty strong spin for a "no spin zone".

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't do anything, just suggesting that your over-the-top rhetoric is self-defeating.

Re:no spin zone

[A bsd fool]

"the absolute certain fact that global warming will, if left unchecked for too long, deconstruct civilization"

You do realize that we are currently living in a very cool period, geologically speaking, right? Also that on geologic time scales, there is no correlation (and thus no possible causation) between CO2 and temperature? The temperature is going to spike, and probably sooner than most expect, and there is nothing at all we can do about it.

What we *should* be doing is preparing for it, because it's going to happen, even if we execute every human being on the planet right now after turning every switch on the planet to "Off."

Temperature fluctuations over the past 570 million years.

Re:no spin zone

[Attila Dimedici]

So, what have you done to show that you truly believe what you just spouted? Do you drive a car? Is it electric? Or at least the most fuel efficient that you can find? Do you grow your own crops? Using human or animal muscle to cultivate them?
Do you live like you believe what you have written above? Because everyone I know personally who spouts the sort of thing you just wrote certainly doesn't. I have a brother who will sermonize on the subject very similar to what you just wrote. Yet, he spends half the year based in Arizona and the other half based in Pennsylvania, flying back and forth. In addition, he regularly flies to many other areas on business (and for pleasure). In other words, his lifestyle does not indicate that he believes it. Does yours?

Re:no spin zone

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Global warming may be a fact but asserting that it will "deconstruct civilization" and that if we don't do something Earth will become uninhabitable is pretty strong spin for a "no spin zone".

First,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/23/scienceandnature.climatechange and then read

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-ritz/james-hansens-new-climate_b_67357.html This is congruent with the reports coming out of the CIA and other models. It's worse than we thought , and the feedback mechanisms that we know of- and there are others that we will discover- are more ferocious than we thought .

Remember, - and this is the point of the intelligence analysis, before we actually reach the ecological point of literal uninhabitability as detailed by Lynas above, we will reach the certainty of reaching that point. You know this from the stock market. A company doesn't have to fail outright before the market starts to act as if it had; it only needs to be very likely to fail. Atr that distinguished point, the market collectively acts as if it had failed.

This is even truer for things like food and fresh water shortages , failed governments uncontrolled and uncontrollable immigration, break down and loss of civil order. All that has to happen is a loss of faith in the face of facts . In fact, all that has to happen to trigger cascading consequences throughout society is consecutive-year crop failures with a long-term prediction for more.

No one actually has to worry about wandering MadMax style though a barren world if, say, the food chain begins to collapse from the bottom up because of the acidification and heating of the oceans. They won't live to see it., their fellow human will make sure of that.

Why are we risking this? Why aren't we doing absolutely everything, all together now, to prevent this from happening? Fear of Big Government? Who thinks like that? People who live outside of reality- who believe , for instance, that the world's scientists are in a conspiracy of some description.

Those people are out there. Is that the demographic I'm supposed to cede the fate of all human society to? The Sara Palins , the Sharron Angles, the Richard Mourdochs? Because you know what? Right now, they're clearly winning.

Re:no spin zone

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Do you drive a car? Is it electric? Or at least the most fuel efficient that you can find?

Yes. But the point is that individual action, if not a part of a coordinated national and global effort, is necessary but sadly not sufficient to save us.

So *what I do* is spend the precious time given to me in my life educating myself and then persuading my fellow citizen, using the devices of culture I have at hand. I participate in my democracy rather than just give up.

Glad to hear about your brother . Tell him I said "hi" , that refusing to stay silent is our greatest weapon, and "semper fi".

Re:no spin zone

[riverat1]

Over 100s of millions of years changes such as the layout of the land masses, the location of large mountain ranges and I'm sure a number of other things has a significant effect on climate. You have to take those into account over the long run. Within the last 5 million years the rise of the Isthmus of Panama cutting off currents between the Atlantic and Pacific was a factor in the cycle of ice ages we've been having since then. Coincidentally another thing that arose within the last 5 million years is the genus Homo.

Re:no spin zone

[khallow]

The people equating statistically improbable disasters - asteroids, aliens all that- to the absolute certain fact that global warming will, if left unchecked for too long, deconstruct civilization

Please add me to the list of people who think you're spinning hard here. There is no "absolute, certain fact" that global warming will destroy civilization or even that it'll inconvenience civilization enough to be noticed.

Re:no spin zone

[swillden]

Ah, I see. You actually BELIEVE your rhetoric. Well then, by all means carry on.

Re:no spin zone

[Zontar The Mindless]

This is original? You're good. I would probably enjoy being your editor.

Nitpick: The singular of "phenomena" is phenomenon. :)

lets try something completely different...

[Genda]

This is a ruse. As was terrorism. The executive branch is now pretty much a complete second government, answerable to nobody save the president, and nowadays, I'm not at all certain the President isn't given his morning orders just like everyone else. Which begs the question, who's actually calling the shots, but I'll leave that to brighter minds than mine.

Those in charge are tightening a noose, and make no mistake our collective necks are just now feeling the pinch. Our Constitution hangs in tatter, and the Bill of Rights might as well be printed on toilet paper for all they're now worth. We can stand here, watching them building the wall brick by brick or we can all stand up and shout "Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!!!"

From The Department Of WAG

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to know where you got your numbers from. In fact, I'd rather know where your source got its numbers from.

Who measures bird deaths, let alone records them with cause of death and everything?

I saw a bird die after crashing into a window pain last week. I'm 100% sure it wasn't recorded. Neither were the 72 doves I personally shot in the past few weeks. I suspect your numbers came from the Department of Wild Ass Guesses(WAG).

Cue some Statistics 101 class skipper telling me about how it's easily done by extrapolating anecdotal local observations.

Re:From The Department Of WAG

[riverat1]

Try this. It's a graph of different causes of bird mortality with some references.

Re:*Rolls eyes*

[Genda]

Indeed, those silly liberals and their global warming and evolution... why are we even talking about that when real issues, conservative issues, like protecting sperm cells from morning after pills and preparing for the Rapture demand all of our immediate attention!!!

Sorry if that stings... point I'm trying to make is that the blind adherence to ideology based less on information, and more on protecting some beloved epistemology, is not logic, is not rational, and it doesn't mean just because you kowtow to the Laffer Curve every morning that you are somehow better informed or less superstitious than a whole bunch of other people.

The worlds a big place, there's plenty of room for points of view, in fact if you consider each point of view lives inside a perfectly valid perspective, just not necessarily yours, you can discover a great deal. You can see some things very well from some perspectives, and other things not so much. That's why its good to listen to a lot of people from different points of view and hear what they have to say. Many views are richer and clearer than just one, that's logic. If all you have to say is I'm right and you're wrong, then thank you, you make it abundantly clear and obvious that your point of view is noise and not signal. Try letting a little fresh air into that head, let some of that funk out.

By the way, this goes equally to liberal zealots, religious zealots, pretty much zealots as a whole. The whole us vs them mentality, is stupid arguing for its own existence, and the tool that has been used to manipulate the American public with great efficiency for the last 30 years. You would think people would begin to notice getting their chains yanked that way, but no, the unwashed masses just keep knee-jerking. It would be entertaining if it wasn't so pitiful.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so paranoid. These people have protected us from piracy, kiddy porn, child abuse, terrorism, communism, global cooling, the ozone layer, youth gangs, the French ... hundreds of things, and always successfully and with regard for our rights and livelihood. Give them a break.

why?

[lkcl]

why is it that:

* the country which uses 50% of the world's resources yet has only 12% of the world's population

* that has not signed the Kyoto Accord and has China being forced into a position of making a "big fuss" so that the USA can "save face" (China's next 10 year plan involves carbon emissions reductions far in excess of the Kyoto Accord)

* that has created more wars and destabilised more countries, broken more international laws and blatantly disregarded sovereignty more than any other country in the history of mankind in the name of "oil" and "profit"

why is that this country, rather than take responsibility for its over-use of resources, comes up with yet *MORE* ways to justify continuing down the path of take, take take.

surely they can see that it's not going end, here, right? surely they can see that even if they subjugated or bombed every other country in the world into submission or non-existence, the resource over-utilisation would, like cancer, just continue to consume more and more and ultimately end up consuming itself.

*surely* they can see that, right? so the question is: what do we - the rest of the world - actually do about this?

Re:why?

[jdschulteis]

why is it that:

* the country which uses 50% of the world's resources yet has only 12% of the world's population

"Resources" is pretty general--the U.S. uses about 20% of the world's energy.
We also produce "approximately a fifth of global GDP at purchasing power parity."
We are less than 5% of the world's population, not 12%, where'd you get that number from?

So: 5% of the world's population produces 20% of the world's economic output, using about 20% of the world's energy. The only thing we are guilty of is being highly productive.

Surely you can see that, right?

Short amswer: yes

[kawabago]

Long answer: yes

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, more like mandating that oil refineries include a certain amount of cellulosic ethanol (ethanol made from cellulose) in the gasoline they distribute and fining them for failing to do so, even though that quantity of cellulosic ethanol is not currently available.

Worse than useless

[Tenebrousedge]

Your graph sucks. Hard.

For one, that graph has no scale on the vertical axis. That alone makes it completely worthless. For two, that's delta-T, not absolute temperature. Why not compare delta-T to delta-CO2? For three, those curves are far too smooth. As you can see in the above chart, actual data is pretty damn noisy.

Honestly, you're right that there are long-term trends that we can't do shit about. We really don't give a shit about the climate over a period of hundreds of millions of years. The Earth will adjust, humanity and co. will literally evolve over those time scales. It's the current rate of change that has everyone worried, because CO2 has spiked on a scale normally associated with the larger volcanic eruptions the planet has seen. These volcanic events have also been associated with mass extinction events with a high degree of correlation.[pdf, highly interesting]

Troll with data next time. Or at least a graph that has both axes labeled.

Re:Worse than useless

[A bsd fool]

I didn't create the graph, it's not "mine", but if you take the time to look at it, you'll see that all the major changes to CO2 levels are noted, e.g. ~2200 ppm in the Ordovician, 210 in the triassic, 340 in the cretaceous. It's also painfully obvious that if you look at the overall trends and history that:

1. We are in an unusually cool period that has persisted for around 5 million years.

2. We are in a below-average, but not unusually so, period of low CO2 concentrations.

3. There is no direct correlation between CO2 and temperature.

From those three points, the currently proposed course of action (lowering CO2 emissions) and the reasons for doing so (stave off global warming) are both fundamentally flawed. I don't dispute that man is increasing CO2 levels. I don't even claim that man is not affecting climate, through CO2 and other mechanisms. I'm pointing out that spending resources trying to stop an inevitable fact of our future (global temperature will rise, far more than the amounts people are considering in the context of AGW) is a waste of time, money, and attention vs. ensuring we survive it when it does happen. We're talking 6-8C here, not 0.5-1.5.

Also, your graph sucks harder, as does your reading comprehension. Of course the data is noisy at timescales so short. Of course you can sample a window juuuuuust big enough to demonstrate a presumed correlation, and exclude the rest which conflicts with the presumption. I'll read the PDF, though high levels of atmospheric particulates immediately jump to mind as a more reasonable (and provable) explanation for temperature changes and extinction events than CO2 does.

Try again with an actual argument.

[Tenebrousedge]

I know a locust that grows its own food. It doesn't even own a car. It doesn't matter that the other locusts do because this one is doing the Right Thing.

If he does do all that shit, you'll be pissed that he's trying to inflict his morality on you. If he doesn't, he's a hypocrite.

We have a term for posts like yours. "Ad hominem." Closely related is "tu quoque," and in this instance you may actually qualify for both. Troll harder.

Re:Try again with an actual argument.

[Attila Dimedici]

If you do not live as if you believe what you say, why would you expect anyone else to believe what you say?
If people like the OP were trying to convince people to change their lifestyles voluntarily it would be one thing, but they are trying to convince people to force others to change their lifestyles. Yet the people who are trying to convince us of this haven't even changed their lifestyles according to what they are claiming others should be forced to live.

intentional versus insentient

[khallow]

One thing that is ignored here is that intentionally harmful activities have a tendency to balloon out of control while non-human, insentient sources of disasters, particularly climate doesn't quickly get worse when you don't do anything about it.

For example, in the mid 19th century, the Comanche Indians of the central US (who lived in the area of currently day northern Texas and Oklahoma) made a habit of raiding their neighbors, particularly Texas and Mexico (oddly enough, New Mexico was off limits to raids due to some deals that an old governor of the territory had made with the Comanche).

Well, it turns out that the northern part of the Mexico just south of the Rio Grande (abutting Texas) was very vulnerable to such raids and a vast amount of cattle and horses were stolen year after year. The Comanche would steal them, ride them up through Texas into Oklahom and then sell their loot to the Comancheros, traders from New Mexico.

This activity was of such a vast scale that some parts of the trail were over a mile wide, and still visible today.

If Mexico and Texas had gotten together when it first happened (for example, just paying a few hundred "Texas rangers" to go harass the Comanche), then this could have been nipped in the bud and a hell of a lot of suffering prevented. Similar widespread violence happened on the Scottish/English borders before the unification of the two crowns.

This is why intentional actions are dealt with more harshly and vigorously than accidental. You don't wait till a hostile power is committing a 9/11 every month or even every week, before you decide to act. You don't wait till they figure out how to make a profit on the activity or put a system in place for doing it cheaply and frequently.

In comparison, climate change, here, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not going to get dramatically worse, if we don't do anything about it. For example, they generally forecast the loss of about as much land over the next century from rising water levels (assuming a one meter rise) as are lost each year from desertification due mostly to bad agricultural practices.

(I've just spent about half an hour fruitlessly trying to find some old posts on the matter. I recall there was a slashdot story estimating how much arable land would be lost from a one meter rise in sea level (which was the research's "worst case" by 2100). That was comparable to the amount of arable land lost each year from desertification.)

So in summary, there is more value to nipping in the bud deliberately harmful human actions than there is with a slow moving human-induced natural change that just isn't that significant in the first place.

Re:intentional versus insentient

[WOOFYGOOFY]

In comparison, climate change, here, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not going to get dramatically worse, if we don't do anything about it. For example, they generally forecast the loss of about as much land over the next century from rising water levels (assuming a one meter rise) as are lost each year from desertification due mostly to bad agricultural practices.

This is a joke. This is the exact opposite of what every scientific report says.

Your post is a classic example of someone holding forth in an authoritative tone who knows exactly zero about the subject he's pontificating on.

Global Warming Threatens Our National Security IISS: âoeA Global Catastropheâ For International Security

A recent study done by the International Institute for Strategic Studies has likened the international security effects of global warming to those caused by nuclear war. [On Deadline]

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/09/climate-change-.html

U.N.: As Dangerous As War United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said this year that global warming poses as much of a threat to the world as war. [BBC]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6410305.stm

Center for Naval Analyses: National Security Threat In April, a report completed by the Center for Naval Analyses predicted that global warming would cause âoelarge-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water.â [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/320929_secured.html

Genocide in Sudan
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon charges, âoeAmid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.â [Washington Post]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061501857.html

War in Somalia
In April, a group of 11 former U.S. military leaders released a report charging that the war in Somalia during the 1990s stemmed in part from national resource shortages caused by global warming. [Washington Post]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/14/AR2007041401209.html

Starvation
A study by IISS found that reduced water supplies and hotter temperatures mean âoe65 countries were likely to lose over 15 percent of their agricultural output by 2100.â [Yahoo]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070912/ts_nm/climate_security_dc

Large-Scale Migrations
Global warming will turn already-dry environments into deserts, causing the people who live there to migrate in massive numbers to more livable places. [MSNBC]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19479607/

More Refugees
A study by the relief group Christian Aid estimates the number of refugees around the world will top a billion by 2050, thanks in large part to global warming. [Telegraph]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/14/nclimate14.xml

Increased Border Tensions
A report called âoeNational Security and the Threat of Climate Change,â written by a group of retired generals and admirals, specifically linked global warming to increased border tensions. âoeIf, as some project, sea levels rise, human migrations may occur, likely both within and across bo

Re:intentional versus insentient

[Xyrus]

In comparison, climate change, here, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not going to get dramatically worse, if we don't do anything about it. For example, they generally forecast the loss of about as much land over the next century from rising water levels (assuming a one meter rise) as are lost each year from desertification due mostly to bad agricultural practices.

You're not thinking this through very well. Sea level rise magnifies events (storms, hurricanes, etc.) by increasing the surge dramatically. Imagine another 3 feet of water hitting NY on top of something like Sandy.

Also, sea level rise is only one factor. A larger issue is the rapid change in weather patterns. We're already seeing an increase in extreme events, including some we haven't seen before in particular areas, such as the arctic. This results in other changes like melting permafrost and severe coastal erosion.

And an even larger issue is climatic changes. For example, current projections show a marked decrease in precipitation over the grain belt. That is projected to happen within this century. That will have some significant consequences by itself, let alone other changes across the rest of the world.

You're also forgetting that according to paleoclimate studies, the rate of change we're seeing is happening incredibly fast. Changes even over the last century typically take hundreds to thousands of years. Other than super-volcano eruptions and asteroid impacts, we don't have a proxy to compare against to see how bad things could get (one of the reasons why scientists are running projections).

Climate change and it's impacts covers a very broad range of consequences. A fair number of those consequences we will be seeing before the end of our lifetimes.

So in summary, there is more value to nipping in the bud deliberately harmful human actions than there is with a slow moving human-induced natural change that just isn't that significant in the first place.

You are sadly misinformed. Read the IPCC or report or wait for the AR5 report. Or you can ignore the results and recommendations by the scientists and find out the hard way.

Re:intentional versus insentient

[khallow]

You have anything better to do than drop a bunch of crap links? Here's a clue. Everything is getting blamed on AGW and there are a number of groups whose highly profitable business model is stoking hysteria about global warming. From the numbers I'm seeing on government spending, there's at least as much public funding per year in AGW and related technologies such as renewable energy as there is in fossil fuels production.

And I'll point out that desertification is going to make most of those claimed problems worse far faster than AGW will.

Unless you have to have some physical evidence backing up those opinions, there's nothing to talk about.

Re:intentional versus insentient

[khallow]

You're not thinking this through very well. Sea level rise magnifies events (storms, hurricanes, etc.) by increasing the surge dramatically. Imagine another 3 feet of water hitting NY on top of something like Sandy.

In oh 90 years? Anyone who doesn't like that has plenty of time to move. It wouldn't even be a significant cost, just move out of NYC proper at some point when they were going to move anyway.

Also, sea level rise is only one factor. A larger issue is the rapid change in weather patterns. We're already seeing an increase in extreme events, including some we haven't seen before in particular areas, such as the arctic. This results in other changes like melting permafrost and severe coastal erosion.

I disagree here. I don't think we are seeing any unusual weather patterns at all (or rather I should say that unusual weather patterns are happening at the usual rate). I think the extreme weather thing is just a bad case of confirmation bias.

And an even larger issue is climatic changes. For example, current projections show a marked decrease in precipitation over the grain belt. That is projected to happen within this century. That will have some significant consequences by itself, let alone other changes across the rest of the world.

You're also forgetting that according to paleoclimate studies, the rate of change we're seeing is happening incredibly fast. Changes even over the last century typically take hundreds to thousands of years. Other than super-volcano eruptions and asteroid impacts, we don't have a proxy to compare against to see how bad things could get (one of the reasons why scientists are running projections).

So you're saying that the current changes are only somewhat faster than the end of the last ice age? Maybe? (Since we still don't have good climate data from before the 19th century, we may well be very wrong about how fast climate changes normally happen.)

And we'll have plenty of time to see if those projections are valid or not. One of the many things that gets forgotten in this saga is that we have very little direct measures of climate and a hell of a lot of iffy proxy data.

It's also worth noting that a few deeply political organizations control most aggregation and interpretation of paleoclimate data. They still don't know whether or not there were periods in human history where global climate was as warm as it is today.

Climate change and it's impacts covers a very broad range of consequences. A fair number of those consequences we will be seeing before the end of our lifetimes.

Maybe. Hence, why I'm willing to wait to see if these come to pass.

You are sadly misinformed. Read the IPCC or report or wait for the AR5 report. Or you can ignore the results and recommendations by the scientists and find out the hard way.

Finding out the "hard way" looks to me to be the only way. I don't trust the IPCC. I don't trust their claims. Historically, they've already been on record as exaggerating claims in their own reports (eg, when "executive summaries" didn't match the actual reports).

Re:intentional versus insentient

[Stuarticus]

WOOFYGOOFY you are on fire in this thread, I wish I had your energy! Bravo.

Re:intentional versus insentient

[Stuarticus]

On the internet is there anything else but links? What do you want?

Re:intentional versus insentient

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Uh, desertification is a well known effect of global warming, idiot ,. All you're doing is finding a new way to deny even as the predictions unfold before all our eyes.

"yes, all these bad things are happening, but none of it is the caused by global warming and the models and scientific establishment which have been predicting exactly these events are all wrong, even though what they predicted is coming true in just the way they predicted because.. because.. because I want that to be reality and I can speak empty words with absolutely nothing behind them!!

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[riverat1]

But what if it's all true and we don't do anything about it? Most of the evidence keeps pointing in one direction.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[sumdumass]

Someone mod this up.

It so true it seems more than true.

Re:dangerous Nazis

[riverat1]

Even if CAGW were real, the current "climate scientists" not only have not proven it, they are actually doing pretty good job of discrediting it both behaviorly and with poor quality papers. This a much bigger scam than Piltdown Man.

There's a lot of bluster about that in the climate contrarian sound machine but little evidence of it in the scientific realm.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[khallow]

We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up.

Why? It makes sense to switch then, when supply goes down and the appropriate fossil fuel price (not energy!) goes up. Due to time value of money, procrastination here can be quite beneficial.

Also, keep in mind that fossil fuels vary greatly in amount and accessibility. Oil and natural gas will run low before coal does. So a program that switches over completely now does so in the face of high availability of coal.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[tolkienfan]

...and results in a lot more CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

Simple solution

[detritus.]

Declare war against the sun. We must stop this evil threat because it hates our freedom and our way of life.

Re:Perfect

[sumdumass]

I'm sure Germans will be completely ecstatic subsidizing the power the US uses. Or did you not read enough of the article to see where the green power was subsidized?

Re:So

[sumdumass]

When? Are you sure it isn't already happening?

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81960109/

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[khallow]

So? The mitigation is costly. The problem isn't so much.

Global warming, terrorism

[kipsate]

threats of GW are 'similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks.'

I get it. In the name of fighting terrorism and now GW, the people are stripped from their civil rights, liberties reduced and taxes increased.

Just as with religion, GW and terrorism are represented as a great threat and oppressive measures follow soon after.

This is a time in history to start paying attention.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[Zumbs]

We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up.

Why? It makes sense to switch then, when supply goes down and the appropriate fossil fuel price (not energy!) goes up. Due to time value of money, procrastination here can be quite beneficial.

The longer we wait to develop alternative sources of energy, the more immature will alternative sources of energy be when energy prices of fossil fuels start to rise. If the rising prices happen as scarcity of fossil fuels becomes wide spread, we may run into issues of energy scarcity which could present a serious problem to the stability of modern civilization. On a side note, developing alternatives to fossil fuels would have the added advantages of making the world less dependent on the whims of a number of nasty dictators and may make our environments a lot less poisonous.

Also, keep in mind that fossil fuels vary greatly in amount and accessibility. Oil and natural gas will run low before coal does. So a program that switches over completely now does so in the face of high availability of coal.

Coal has a number of drawbacks, compared to oil and natural gas. Notably, coal usually contains a lot of toxic components that are emitted when it is burned. It is also difficult to pack and transport. These issues are the main reasons that many nations have been moving away from coal as a source of energy.

I sense high emissions. Are you smoking something?

[Tenebrousedge]

See, there's that funny thing. All of the graphs that I've found had CO2 and Temp correlating extremely well; the one I linked had a longer timescale than most. What would cause CO2 and temperature to be correlated at the kiloannum level but not gigannum? You know, besides a lack of data points. What use is it to compare delta-T to constant CO2 levels? Your graph is an embarrassment to those that made it.

And again, why do we care about temperature/CO2 changes on the scale of millions years?

The idea that we've been in an "unusually cool period" for the last five million years is horseshit. The earth has gone through dozens of ice ages and interglacials in that period. If you zoom out to millions-of-years, you get a nice smooth line that hides changes that humans would consider to be pretty damn drastic.

More to the point, and the reason for the comparison with volcanism, is that humans are currently emitting CO2 at a level that is between 80 and 270 times larger than normal volcanic activity. The largest eruption in recent history (Pinatubo, 1991) released an enormous amount of CO2 -- .05 gigatons, or about half a day's worth of the 30 gigatons that we do each year. Restated: we are doing two Pinatubos per day! That's not the most violent outgassing that the planet has seen; which as the previously linked PDF mentions, exceed our emissions by possibly three orders of magnitude, but it does break the top ten list, and is well into the range of 'global extinction event'. The Yellowstone supervolcano would be hard put to match what we're emitting every year.

But hey, from the timescale of tens of millions of years, the Yellowstone supervolcano doesn't even spike the curve. No problem right? You are planning on living that long, right?

Postscript:
The aforementioned PDF does talk about particulate matter vs CO2, and while it's difficult to make absolute statements, superlarge volcanic events are more often correlated with warming periods than cooling, suggesting that the CO2 issues persist longer than the particulate matter. These are all also associated with severe global extinction events, particularly in primary producers (photosynthetic life). Since these are the largest carbon sinks, it makes intuitive sense that the elevated levels of CO2 would persist long after the particulate matter.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[khallow]

The longer we wait to develop alternative sources of energy, the more immature will alternative sources of energy be when energy prices of fossil fuels start to rise.

That's not how it's working in practice. There's a lot of work in renewables and petroleum alternatives, for example, and the state of those is much better than they were even ten years ago.

Coal has a number of drawbacks, compared to oil and natural gas. Notably, coal usually contains a lot of toxic components that are emitted when it is burned. It is also difficult to pack and transport. These issues are the main reasons that many nations have been moving away from coal as a source of energy.

While you are right about toxicity, you are wrong about the difficulty of coal to pack and transport. Once you've broken it up (most of that work is done just in the mining), it's easy to transport by rail. It's not quite as nice as shipping by pipeline, but it's easy enough.

Globalism Dead Man's Noose

[ElitistWhiner]

Big Oil is the original Global business, wealthiest enterprise on the planet, ground zero for climate change and responsible for worldwide oil conflicts. Peak oil didn't effect any interest in changing the planet's global business practices, its petro-economy or climate impacts but did result in the death for thousands who paid the ultimate price. Big Oil tied a rope around everyone's collective wrists, hostage to a way of life, making a living and lifestyle for which we duly owe rents paid by the tankful.

Big Oil are slipping the noose around our necks, while we continue to buy-in to hybrid petro-vehicles, unemployment and dream of a 1% lifestyle.

Sandy pulled the chair out from under NY'ers...those who paid the ultimate price can't tell you what they think of climate change but surely Big Oil is not oblivious to the greatest after-effect of the storm was lack of fuel, long lines, rationing and shortage driven high prices.

The world are all standing on a three legged global chair, more will be next to suffer...everyone definitely wears the Dead Man's Noose.

Free the bonds that tie your wrists people

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[tolkienfan]

But you have no grounds on which to compare them. You're making a claim, but you haven't been doing the studies and figuring out the cost/benefit.
YOU have been listening to the propaganda paid for by big oil.

Re:I sense high emissions. Are you smoking somethi

[A bsd fool]

See, there's that funny thing. All of the graphs that I've found had CO2 and Temp correlating extremely well;

Only over short timescales, geologically speaking.

the one I linked had a longer timescale than most. What would cause CO2 and temperature to be correlated at the kiloannum level but not gigannum? You know, besides a lack of data points.

I don't know, but it does seem to be a fact.

What use is it to compare delta-T to constant CO2 levels? Your graph is an embarrassment to those that made it.

It's a missing axis label, nothing more. There is an embarassment here, but it's not the graph or the data that created it. You're essentially trying to discount the data because there is an irrelevant typo in the presentation.

And again, why do we care about temperature/CO2 changes on the scale of millions years?

Two reasons. First, the changes on these timescales reveal plainly that overall there is no correlation between the two. You can have either one (higher CO2, higher temperatures) without the other. Second, the geologic record indicates that temperatures are likely to get much MUCH warmer than they are now, regardless of CO2 concentration, and there is no telling WHEN.

It's kind of like asking why we care about asteroid impacts over millions of years. The next one might not be for 5 million years, or it might be tomorrow. We should do all we can to prepare.

The idea that we've been in an "unusually cool period" for the last five million years is horseshit. The earth has gone through dozens of ice ages and interglacials in that period. If you zoom out to millions-of-years, you get a nice smooth line that hides changes that humans would consider to be pretty damn drastic.

For certain values of "horeshit." Particularly values where horeshit = "This conflicts with my limited and entirely spoon-fed understanding of historic temperature fluctuations." Which is the point. All the hoopla over AGW and even periodic ice ages is entirely lost in the noise. Insignificant. REAL warming well beyond what those models predict is going to occur, and it's going to happen no matter the CO2 levels.

Maybe another 6C upward swing won't happen for another 10 million years. Maybe it's starting right now and will be done within 1000. You don't know, and you don't care, simply because you can't pin it on mankind.

Newsflash...

[hsthompson69]

...climate *always* changes.

The thought that any government, or collection of governments, with all the military might of the planet unified, could *stop* climate from changing, is ludicrous beyond belief.

Re:Newsflash...

[Stuarticus]

Buildings always fall down, the idea of governments trying to prevent this by making it harder for people to fly into them with planes is patently absurd.

Re:Newsflash...

[hsthompson69]

Ah, the precautionary principle :)

Islamic terrorists *always* attack innocent civilians, the idea of governments trying to prevent this by eliminating all Muslims is patently absurd. :)

You can use the precautionary principle to justify *anything*.

Climate change!

[Third Position]

Is there anything it can't do?

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[huckamania]

None of the things you mention are allowed in the USA. Regulations and oversight are already in place. We go out of our way to clean up sites that are overly poluted. We plant more trees than we harvest and natural forests are at record levels.

Actualy, I expect the world to look almost exactly like it does now, except with even fewer jobs and fewer people who can support themselves and their families. I also expect that CO2 is going to be found to be a very weak signal in the whole climate debate. The science in the last few years has found that there are solar forcings, orbital dynamics, planetary tidal effects and a lot of other things in play. Some denialists are only so in respect to man made global warming or that warming, of the non-runaway type like we currently are seeing, is bad.

It's a WAR! Everybody knows it has to be a war...

[Mattsson]

I think it is time for the US to declare a state of war against climate change. That's the only way.
If there can be armed military conflicts going on against other incorporeal foes like crime, drugs and terrorism, why not climate change... =-P

Re:Perfect

[sumdumass]

I'm not sure what the subsidizes a country spends on its own energy has to do with a foreign country subsidizing another country's energy.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[Stuarticus]

I keep hearing how prone to breaking down solar panels and wind farms are from your ilk, that would imply a lot more jobs in power generation, wouldn't it?

Re:dangerous Nazis

[Stuarticus]

Could you honestly re-read that bollocks with a straight face after hitting "Preview"?