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UN Climate Change Panel: It's Happening, and It's Almost Entirely Man's Fault
iONiUM writes The UN released a new climate change report which concludes that it is indeed happening, and it's almost entirely man's fault. From the article: "The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released Sunday caps its latest assessment, a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95-percent certainty that nearly all warming seen since the 1950s is man-made." However, the report isn't entirely dire. It goes on to say: "To get a good chance of staying below 2C, the report's scenarios show that world emissions would have to fall by between 40 and 70 percent by 2050 from current levels and to 'near zero or below in 2100.'" Below zero of course means mining existing CO2 out of the atmopshere somehow.
Whether it's human caused or not. Whether climate change/global warming/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is happening or not. Whether we can actually stop it or not.
Let's just stop pollution for it's own sake!
That's nice, but it's not going to change the stance of any Anthropogenic Climate Change deniers.
I'm pretty sure the reason they're denying that Burning Things Causes Heat and Pollution is not because they're dumb, but because they don't want to pay for the cleanup.
First rule of politics and law: never admit fault.
So everyone's wasting their time trying to convince the deniers of anything. They're never going to take responsibility for cleanup. Just start cleaning up without them.
This political decision from the UN should surprise no one, to be sure. Let me guess - the proposed remedy involves the wealthier nations paying lots of money to the poorer nations? And basically ignores China and India? (Did you know ~30% of San Francisco's air pollution was emitted in China?)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You see, the thing is, that unlike your average slashdot reader the people at the IPCC actually RTFA so are allowed to have an opinion.
Zero emissions isn't going to happen. It's time for the alarmist side to stop pretending there are any policy choices on the table to prevent the warming they are predicting. Change the conversation from "it's real and we're all doomed unless we change energy policy" to "it's real and here are the most cost-effective ways to make sure we're not all doomed".
Stop trying to scare everyone with the apocalypse talk and spend the next hundred years finding solutions to problems. We're not going to undo modern civilization. Let's find a way to live with it and make the best of things.
And who outsources everything to those countries? Hrm....
Once upon a time, long long ago, the news media was objective and reported facts. Think Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkike. These days it's like a page from the 1976 movie "Network" - where news isn't suppose to be informative... it's suppose to be entertainment, the facts be damned. Now we live in a time of "balanced" journalism... which means when two sides of a story are presented the journalist pretends that both are equally valid. Global Warming is just one example of many where this has allowed the public to be mislead. I'm surprised that I haven't yet seen a discussion about whether the earth revolves around the sun, or the sun revolves around the earth... or the earth is flat vs. the earth is round. Perhaps that has already occurred and I have missed it. I wouldn't be surprised. The media needs to pull their collective heads out of their asses and do some actual journalism - however since the media is now controlled by multinational corporations, that probably isn't going to happen. Ratings is the name of the game... so I guess we're the blame also. We need to stop patronizing media outlets that spread bullshit. People need to decide what they want. Do they want to be entertained, or do they want to be informed?
Science is not a "political decision", but you're right that China and India are great contributors toward the problem. Are you implying that we should stop outsourcing everything to China and India? If so, I agree.
What does it matter if it's man's fault? If it turned out that this was all part of a natural cycle that was going to kill us all, then we would have just as much reason to do something about it as if it was our fault.
The real question has always been how much do we spend in order to prevent the damage that is coming. This report seems to be saying "Please turn off everything". So, in order to prevent a large portion of humanity dying, we should stop using the technology that is currently keeping many of them alive. Studies like this are yet another diversion from a real practical discussion of how we make the best of the situation we're in.
The future of humanity will be much better off with China and India bring modern societies of economic freedomm with commensirate contributions to technological advancement, than in a nice green world with them in dirt floor poverty.
I, for one, welcome a doubling of technological advancement rate.
We can less predict the state of life in 2114 than 1914 could predict today.
Screw them in 1914 if they had slammed on the brakes to "help" us in 2014, leaving us with 1970 tech.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Let me guess - the proposed remedy involves the wealthier nations paying lots of money to the poorer nations?
It is nothing of the kind. They want poor individuals to make sacrifices (regress back to donkey carts, work for nothing, and eat bugs) so the delegates and the people they represent can keep their private jets and beluga caviar and still breathe the air and drink the water ,and of course, sell the same to the rest of us... at a very reasonable price, I assure you...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You see, the thing is, that unlike your average slashdot reader the people at the IPCC actually RTFA so are allowed to have an opinion.
"...and non-peer-reviewed sources"
Which could include Slashdot articles, for all you know.
Anyone not woowoo anti-science (usually being the theistic types who worship the Invisible Hand) has already established:
1. Climate change is mostly man-made;
2. This doesn't mean the world's about to end, but we aren't doing enough to prevent significant harm.
I believe that you aren't being fair to the "theistic types" in that you aren't being nearly hard enough on those who are taking advantage of them and those who are similarly gullible. Those cocksuckers are, of course, the energy industry. They have a huge interest in not changing things. Their businesses are hugely profitable. Spending money to avoid the erosion of those profits is part of that business. Spending as little as possible in order to preserve as much profit as possible is just good business, and right now, hoodwinking the gullible has the most ROI. I have seen it before....
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, in a town where every third job was directly related to the forest products industry. All my life, I watched huge swaths of ancient forest fall to clear cutting, knowing that the industry's party line, "Trees are America's Renewable Resource", was just so much cynical corporate bullshit. Planting "four trees for every tree 'harvested'" is not the same thing as growing even one board-foot of timber for every board-foot harvested. But the locals bought it, hook-line-and-sinker, because they wanted to. They needed to believe that their livelihoods were derived from a resource that would always be there. Fast forward forty years, or so. All the old-growth timber is long gone. Countless towns like mine are now ghost towns, "the mill" long closed and most of the forest jobs (fellers, choker setters, etc.) also gone. And the locals are still wondering what happened, while a cynical few, who reaped huge profits from the rape of a resource that can not be replaced in several of our lifetimes, could not give a shit. And the "intellectual elite", those credible experts, including most ironically, a handful of industry foresters, who predicted this can only say, "We told you so."
This same thing is happening now on a global scale WRT climate change. The opinion amongst those most qualified to cast one is overwhelming, dwarfed only by the noise from those whose profit is threatened by that opinion. And those whose livelihood, indeed, those whose very lifestyle depends on the industries that produce those profits, want very badly to believe all the noise. Based on my experience, they will continue to do so until it is far too late to do anything about it.
The planet is going to be just fine for a few more billion of years until the sun expands (barring asteroid collisions). It's just the easy first world standard of living that some of us are used to that is in danger of disappearing.
(Did you know ~30% of San Francisco's air pollution was emitted in China?)
Well... 25% of US coal exports goes to Asia.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...
U.S. coal exports have made steady inroads into the Asian market since 2007. Almost all the U.S. coal exported to Asia went to the world's top four coal importers: China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Asia's share of total U.S. coal exports increased from 2% in 2007 to 25% in 2012. While U.S. coal has also been gaining market share in Asia, it provided less than 4% of Asia's coal imports in 2012, and less than 1% of total coal consumed by the four large Asian importers.
And as natural gas pushes out coal in the US, that only means even more coal gets to be exported to Asia.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Hey, look at it this way.
USA gets cheap labor and ONLY a tiny fraction of pollution from its own coal.
Meanwhile, China pays USA for coal, keeps nearly all of the pollution from said coal, and exports cheap labor to USA.
USA gets cleaner air, cheap products and profit - while China gets cheap energy, much lesser profit and air and other pollution.
It's a win-win.
Mostly for USA, but it's a win-win.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In global thermoclimatic war, the only way to win is not to play. No matter which country did the final pollution/greenhouse emission/etc, what matters is that there is only world for all of us, lose it, and lose all.
Everyone is going to pay one way or another... some just seem to think starting with prevention will be cheaper than dealing with scrambling for a cure later on.
Others, understandably, will just keep chugging along as they're accustomed to. No reason to change your ways if the sky isn't falling. Can't get blamed for anything that happens that you don't see coming. Can't be held accountable for it either. And they probably won't.
Case in point: drought... (whether it's related to Anthropogenic Climate Change or not is irrelevant). As you may recall, farmers in CA had to ration their water rights this year. The government stepped in and enforced a 30% reduction on farms as they have during past droughts.
For the smaller farms that had already invested in more efficient drip irrigation technologies, this pretty much means they suffered a 30% reduction in crop output, since they're already getting the maximum crop output from their water.
For the larger farms that were using inefficient flood irrigation, they got a nice emergency government subsidy to upgrade to drip irrigation. So they had the same crop output as before this year, because the increases in efficiencies more than made up for reduced quota.
So as you see, under the system we have in place now, it absolutely makes sense to be as wasteful as possible from an entirely rational perspective. The early adopters will bear the brunt of the cost of cleaning things up both before and after issues arise. That's logic. That's the way it is.
For my part, I recently moved to a part of the US which is almost all hydro and wind power. Utilities are expensive. I pay more to to the sanitation dept. to clean my water runoff than it costs to deliver.
1/2 of the world's population lives in southeast Asia... including China, India, etc.
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-...
They've been enacting lots of policies to deal with pollution and resources, stuff you'd absolutely hate to have here in the West. The smart and rich ones come here to get away from the pollution and crowding at home. It's nice.
1. Climate change is mostly man-made;
AC claims climate barely changed before man evolved. Who is woowoo anti-science again?
Like green peace is going to support ANY nuclear power options....
The IPCC gains its data from researchers. You're just repeating the tired "scientists are an evil cabal" line that anti science goons have been invoking for over a century when science dares question some sacred belief.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere the more negative effects we see. Therefore reducing greenhouses gasses is a good thing, that will also preserve long chain hydrocarbons for more important uses.
Or do you also believe in magical infinite oil that will continue being brought to the surface like some sort of inverted manna?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We would expect to see a consistent rise, if all the heat was just going in the atmosphere. In reality, most of the heat goes in the oceans, and the distribution between oceans/atmosphere has some variation. The most notable of those variations is caused by the ENSO cycle. During El-Nino years, more of the heat goes into the atmosphere, and during La-Nina years, more heat goes into the ocean. The year 1998 which you mention, had a record El-Nino, so a lot of the heat went into the atmosphere. We haven't had a big El-Nino year since then, so it's been slightly cooler. The satellite records are a bit more sensitive to this effect because they don't really measure the surface temperature very well. Instead, they measure the temperature of the atmosphere a bit higher up.
Breaking through "The tragedy of the commons" requires legislation. Solitary action is pointless.
Did you know China's having a serious economic crisis because the era of outsourcing is dying? You're fighting last century's battles, my friend. Manufacturing capacity in the US never really fell, it just became more automated (so the jobs went away, but not the output). As technological progress makes it cheaper to make things here with robots than in China with sweatshops, the tail end of manufacturing is coming back - and because of technology, you don't see the air anymore in most US cities.
Meanwhile, China and India are countries in their own right with their own economies. They're not some children whose deeds can be attributed to their parents in the US! They're going through the same technological revolution we did in the 1800s, though much faster and at 10x the scale. Their air pollution is about what ours was once - it's just that we've cleaned up our act so very much since then that even across an ocean their pollution is a significant portion of ours.
Over the course of this century, US and Europe and Japan are likely to fade as the leading economies. India, China, and Brazil (and to some extent Korea, but their population likely will stay small in comparison) will be the ones to watch, because as technology evens out it's all about population, and if you're worried about carbon emission or any other byproduct of economies, fix your attention there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You go right ahead and reduce your standard of living all you want, if that's what your religion calls for. Hairshirts and self-flagellation? It's your trip, man. But it's not my trip. I want everyone in the world to bring their standard of living up to mine! Instead of making everyone poor, how about we make everyone rich?
For 150 years now, technological improvement has reduced the pollution associated with a given standard of living, and the labor, energy, and resources needed for that production, because that's what technology is: efficiency of production and delivery.
You're worried about our share now, but that's trivial in the scheme of things. China, India, and Brazil won't always be behind us, and it's only a matter of time before they have the same standard of living we do, with 10x the population. Fix your attention there, if your goal is something other than punishing yourself or your neighbor for imagined sins.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Science is not a "political decision",
But the UN is not a gathering of scientists; it's a gathering of politicians, and as such they make political announcements. As a political body with 1 vote per country, pretty much all they ever do is call for redistribution of wealth, and that directly motivates any muddled reading of science that you'll get from them.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How extremely naive of you.
Yeah. yeah, is all a giant conspiracy involving just about every scientific institution on the planet and at least 195 nations, it stretches back to 1958 when the National Academies of Science told the US government the same thing.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
He's correct in what he said, just not why he said it.
Good science isn't political at all; it merely describes reality. Climatology, as groups like the IPCC present it, isn't good science. It's a bunch of fudge-factor-laced models and ignored observations tightly wound around a political agenda. Basically, ignore what you can't explain, place assumptions anywhere the data is incomplete, draw conclusions that don't match up to reality, and pretend it all makes sense because you have "consensus".
That's not to say there's nothing usable in the whole thing. The problem is that we need better data collection, more data collection, and a lot more work put into understanding the underlying mechanics of the system as a whole before we start drawing wide-reaching conclusions about the drivers of the whole thing. The data needs to be put into real context and that means realizing the limitations and inaccuracies inherent in the proxy measurement techniques we have today and not trying to use some statistical fuzzy math to come up with some make-believe historical record.
But back to what he said, he's right in that the political nature of the "Global Warming/Climate Change" zealotry isn't science. It does, however, bear a striking resemblance to many cults.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Third option: Non-carbon generated electricity that is cheaper than carbon. (That's an economic, as in real, 'cheaper', not tax/subsidy to make it cheaper)
So, modern nuclear power it is. Start mass producing CANDU reactors (CANDU 6es and ACR-1000s) around the world while pushing ahead with research to convert them to using Thorium so we never run dry. Put them everywhere that needs power and that can't use geothermal. Standardize on common-sense, workable regulations (starting with eliminating any stupid anti-reprocessing rules) and plow through any NIMBY BS put up by local ignorant fools. Within 20 years, you'll have replaced all fossil fuel electricity production with something that actually works and provides plenty of power for everyone.
So the cheap electricity option is not even really an option, is it?
Sure it is. It requires a huge up-front cash investment for construction, but running costs are quite low. Complete the work to replace other fuels with Thorium and you've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 years of power for the entire planet at current rates of use. Increase usage by two orders of magnitude and we're down to maybe 1,000 years if we never put another penny into energy R&D.
Oh darn.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
A nation of couch potatoes looks up at you briefly, small strings of spittle pendant from their slack jaws, then turn their blank eyes back to the latest American Idol or Survivor episode. They are Nero. The TV is the fiddle. The government is the very essence of corrupt Rome. Or, if you like, McDonald's is the bread, and TV the circus. The problem is, as it has been for some time, is that modern Americans are absolutely immune to critical thinking, and are in no way concerned about it. This is why our society is crumbling around us with regard to our rights, liberties, property, responsibility and future prospects.
Welcome to the last stage of failure of a constitutional republic: unsustainable grab-it-all oligarchy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Okay, I'll bite. Let's look at a few of what major environmental movements actions were around in the general ballpark of 1914 (let's say, 1910 to 1920) which met controversy from industry. Tell me which of them you think weren't in the right.
Let's first remember that the first real "conservationist president", Theodore Roosevelt, had just served, and taken vast swaths of land away from industrial interests. Lumber interests especially despised him. George Bird Grinnell had just made hunters mad by banning the killing of buffalo and limiting hunting / fur rights in many areas. But let's get to 1910-1920, by the time which a solid "green lobby" had managed become a powerful force in congress. What wins did those eco-nuts manage to pull off?
Establishment of Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Haleakala, Hawaii Volcanoes, Lassen Volcanic, Denali, Acadia, Grand Canyon, and Zion national parks. Most of which met with industry resistance, sometimes major. They'd been trying to make Grand Canyon a national park, for example, since 1882, but it encountered so much resistance that it took 37 years to achieve; its success was considered one of the greatest successes o the conservation movement at the time.
Protection of the most magificent forests of the US. 1914 was the year that famous conservationist John Muir died. It's largely due to his efforts and those who worked with him, for example, that logging of the Giant Sequoias was mostly stopped. The logging industry, one of the biggest in the US at the time, was not amused.
The New York State Audubon Plumage Law banned the sale of plumes of wild birds in the state in 1910 - birds had been widely killed left and right for the fashion industry, and you better believe that the (sizeable) NYC fashion industry fought against that one. But they lost. And by the end of the decade, 12 more states had passed similar laws. Those eco-nuts in the new Audubon Society also got the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 passed, against hunting and fashion interests. It passed a limited but still major earlier victory, the Weeks-McLean Act of 1913.
So, do you think the world would be a better place with the American Buffalo extinct, over half a dozen fewer popular national parks, all of the large sequoias gone, and countless local bird species exinct? Oh, but the economic impact all of those eco-nuts were causing back then, why won't someone please think of the economy...
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
That's why regulation and taxes are legitimate means towards solving the failures of market economics, like pollution.
And yet it consistently fails to accomplish anything other than squeezing the middle class, increasing poverty, and increasing income disparities. It never affects "the rich", it falls predominantly on the middle class, which has already suffered from globalization, job competition with 3rd world wages, and excessive regulation that protects the larger corporations and creates barriers for small businesses and sole proprietorships. Doubling-down on these policies simply ensures a neo-feudalism, a partnership between the corporate executives and the government bureaucracies, swapping positions with the revolving door of regulators and boards of directors of the regulated, and the lawmakers that pass laws that they write.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You don't wait for a doctor to be 99.99% sure about the day you will die before accepting any treatment, you trust that they will make a good guess based on limited observations they have.
I encourage all climate denialists to get at least 4, maybe 5-sigma certainty on any cancer diagnosis before taking any action. Cancer treatments are expensive after all, and you should wait until you're really, really, super duper extra sure you have it!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They probably just had the date a little early, give them at least half a decade, look at all the refugees in the middle east right now. Climate change played a big part in triggering the Syrian civil war.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel