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Global Warming On Pace For 4 Degrees: World Bank Worried
iONiUM writes "From the article: 'Over the years at the U.N. climate talks, the goal has been to keep future global warming below 2C. But as those talks have faltered, emissions have kept rising, and that 2C goal is now looking increasingly out of reach. Lately, the conversation has shifted toward how to deal with 3C of warming. Or 4C. Or potentially more." Overall it seems that poorer, less developed nations will be largely impacted negatively, while some countries (like Canada and Russia) will actually experience benefits. Where does that leave the rest of the 1st world countries?"
1 degree over the next 100 years, 2 degrees over the next fifty years, 4 degrees over the next 25 years. Next year some "scientists" will probably be calling for a 10 degree rise within the next 10 years. Every year, I hear something that sounds less-and-less like hard science coming out of these "scientists" and more-and-more of something that sounds more akin to millennialist religious fanatics proclaiming the end of days.
Posting AC because posting anything that even mildly questions GW will get your karma blown into the shitter.
25 years from now, barring amazing new desalinization technologies, Canada's water rights will be one of the biggest international policy debates in the United States. I really really want to read this post and laugh at what an idiot I was in 2037, but I think water will be a big problem soon. Imagine 2012's Midwestern drought 5 years in a row to get where I'm coming from.
Who gives a crap about whether it is "natural" anymore? The overall effect is quite undesirable, so regardless of whether we're causing it, we damn well ought to be doing something to counteract it, if we care to survive.
Why should I care about bankers. I pay attention to what scientists say.
Look, even the Koch's are giving up the ghost. Time to face reality. The universe doesn't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and doesn't donate money to the Heartland Institute, and it most certainly doesn't give one sweet fuck about you, I, our economic ideologies or political ideologies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Because scientists are ALWAYS correct. Hell we have hard enough time predicting the weather beyond 5 days in the future. What leads me to trust these predictions 50 years from now?
As an analogy, think of a snow globe. Shake it up so all the pieces are swirling around. Can you predict the exact path that will be taken by each of those pieces? Not easily. Can you predict with confidence that after, say, five minutes, they will all be sitting on the bottom of the snow globe? Yes. Your inability to predict phenomenon A at timescale X has nothing to do with your ability to predict phenomenon B at timescale Y. Every time I here such an argument I can't help but think it's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.
Posting AC because posting anything that even mildly questions GW will get your karma blown into the shitter.
I know what you mean. I can't bring up questions about spontaneous generation, Homunculus theory, or creationism without people modding me troll! It's almost as if raising arguments against the scientific consensus, arguments which have specifically been brought up for decades, arguments which no one makes unless they have an agenda which involves denying reality, is looked down on in rational debate!
I mean, Darwinists used to say that evolution was gradual, NOW they say it's punctuated equalibrium, sometimes going thousands of years without change! It's nuts! Clearly god created all life in 6 days!
Sigh.
Okay, let's take a real world example, then: will the average temperature this winter be colder than the average temperature in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere?
Yes. Yes it will.
That is a statement of climate, not of weather. It's also a statement that we can make with fairly strong confidence, despite the many factors involved in modelling the climate. If you want to get more specific, like how much colder one is than the other, you have to improve the models and simulations.
Climate science isn't voodoo. There's data to draw on, models that can be devised, and hypotheses that can be verified. Sometimes the models fail, or the hypotheses are shown to be incorrect, just like in any other field of science.
So if a climate scientist predicts that the temperature will climb over the next 50 years given current trends and lack of action, and the result of this will be certain climactic effects--like more drought or more powerful and less predictable storms (like Sandy)--they're not just pulling this stuff out of thin air.
There is literally no long-term downside to improving our approach to the environment. All the down-sides are short term. Even the economic benefits in the long run (or at least, the lack of economic penalties) are enormous.
You pay attention to what *some* scientists say. Follow the money.
You say that brazenly like someone who never followed the money themselves, and knows nothing about the academic process. Mainstream science has been unequivocal since the late 70s. The well-oiled and well-funded denial machine has been operating in its modern form since the 50s.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right