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Rising Temperatures Could Melt Most Himalayan Glaciers By 2100 (nationalgeographic.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Rising temperatures in the Himalayas, home to most of the world's tallest mountains, will melt at least one-third of the region's glaciers by the end of the century (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) even if the world's most ambitious climate change targets are met, according to a report released Monday. If those goals are not achieved, and global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the Himalayas could lose two-thirds of its glaciers by 2100, according to the report, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Under those more dire circumstances, the Himalayas could heat up by 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius) by century's end, bringing radical disruptions to food and water supplies, and mass population displacement. Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region, which spans over 2,000 miles of Asia, provide water resources to around a quarter of the world's population. One of the most complete studies on mountain warming, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment was put together over five years by 210 authors. The report includes input from more than 350 researchers and policymakers from 22 countries.
Even the IPCC is targeting a 1.5C rise... Not 4C.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region, which spans over 2,000 miles of Asia, provide water resources to around a quarter of the world's population.
A lot of Westerners wonder why India and China have such large populations. It's because of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayas. Moist air flowing off the Indian Ocean gets pushed up into the atmosphere by the mountains, condenses, falls as snow, then melts as runoff to feed the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in China, and the Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra Rivers of the Indian subcontinent. These river valleys produce the agriculture that feeds and sustains those populations. If the Himalayas suffer, so do they.
But, you'll still need to convince both governments that it's a problem.
Either good science or huge conspiracy...
Given how difficult it is to sustain a huge conspiracy, what does Occam's Razor tell you?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
... but they won't do nuclear power.
I find it difficult to believe that global warming is any real threat if the governments of the world cannot open a book just once and do some basic research on the solutions.
What is the lowest CO2 energy source available today? Nuclear power.
What is the safest energy source available today? Nuclear power.
What energy source requires the least materials for the most energy produced? Nuclear power.
So... Where's all the nuclear power plants being built to stop global warming?
Any complaints on the cost of nuclear power is nonsense. If global warming is the threat they claim it to be then the governments of the world should not find the expense of nuclear power as any kind of hurdle. I've seen nuclear engineers talk on the costs of building a nuclear power plant any where in the world and the major cost that they run into is regulatory. So, fix the regulations. Do something like France did and decide on one design and spread out the regulatory costs among many of the same design.
The global warming alarmists scream at everyone about how "the science is settled". Yep, I'll go with that, so long as they agree that the science is settled on nuclear power being part of the solution. If these people conclude that nuclear power is a greater threat to humanity than global warming then I conclude that global warming is such a minor threat that I have no reason to believe that I or anyone else need to change anything to avoid it. If there is no nuclear power in our future then I must conclude that there will be no global warming.
Which is it? Do we get nuclear power? Or, is global warming just a hoax? If we can't have nuclear power then I call global warming all a big fat lie. It's just a means to an end to get people to do things that they normally would not agree to do. Well, people would not normally agree to nuclear power. We get nuclear power then the threat goes away and it cannot ever be used as a threat again. I guess they will just have to create another false threat to push people to agreeing to the disagreeable.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You make many good points. But my one quibble with your post is that you use a false-choice fallacy.
Yes, nuclear power is a compelling option for low-CO2 sources of energy. But there are others. Solar, wind, geothermal, tides, and so on. Long-term storage of nuclear waste is a problem that other technologies do not face.
Let's keep an open mind. But open to other alternatives besides nuclear energy.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
We've already had a 0.8-1.2 C rise since the industrial revolution. 1.5 will happen within the next decade or two.
I don't respond to AC's.
Either good science or huge conspiracy...
Linear extrapolations 80 years into the future are never good science.
Either good science or huge conspiracy...
Linear extrapolations 80 years into the future are never good science.
Good predictive science is about making the best extrapolations you can with the data and theory you have. Yes, you can be wrong, and you always need to be prepared for that. But that doesn't mean it isn't important to try to predict.
Science tries to explain and predict the behaviour of our universe, but it also has a duty to do the best it can to inform public policy.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Long-term storage of nuclear waste is a problem that other technologies do not face.
No, long term storage is not a problem. That is a problem that has been solved. What we have are people that fear the non-problem of nuclear waste over that of global warming. If it's the waste problem holding it up then they aren't trying hard enough.
Let's keep an open mind. But open to other alternatives besides nuclear energy.
Why? We have a long history of nuclear being inexpensive, reliable, safe, low carbon, and plentiful. Nearly a century of a history to prove this.
You speak of needing an open mind but you've closed your mind to nuclear power. Hypocrite.
Oh, and I made no call to abandon all but nuclear, only that nuclear must be part of the solution or we may be doomed to fail.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Solar, wind, geothermal, tides, and so on. Long-term storage of nuclear waste is a problem that other technologies do not face.
Heard all this before. The former are not end-all be-all solutions, they're more supplemental, and producing the hardware for them is not carbon-neutral or carbon-negative, either; the latter does not have to be a deal-breaker, we can I'm sure come up with ways to deal with waste products that does not pose a risk. Hell, drop it into the Marianas Trench and allow the Earth to reabsorb the stuff via subduction. Or maybe we find a way to recycle nuclear waste back into useful fuel -- or even a way to neutralize it entirely. I flatly reject anyone who puts forth the notion that physics has 'discovered all there is to discover' (and yes someone has said that in the past, and they weren't kidding). Sticking our heads in the sand over nuclear just isn't going to cut it anymore though.
The 'huge conspiracy' is the Dominionist types that poo-poo science, climate science in general, because it does not suit their agenda.
Except that is not what they did. Taking a ruler and drawing a tangent to a curve is drafting not science.
You're taking a second (or third, or worse) hand lay summary of what they did and using that to assume the original science was simply linear extrapolation. That seems pretty unlikely.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
but it also has a duty to do the best it can to inform public policy.
Science is a tool to help find the truth. As soon as you talk about "duty to inform" then you are in the realm of politics, not science. (It can still be a good thing, but it's not science).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, long term storage is not a problem. That is a problem that has been solved.
If you had solved it, why did you not publish it?
You would have farmed in several Nobel prices and would be on top of that: the richest man on the planet. Perhaps the richest and most important man in history for the next few hundred years.
Sorry, you are an idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Not to mention even trying to guess what is gonna happen 2 decades from now based on the tech of today? Is as much bullshit as the "flying cars and everyone having their own reactors" predictions of the 1950s!
Lets just look at the way things were when I was a kid...cars ran on leaded gas, acid rain was a serious issue, "home computers" ran on DIP switches and blinking lights, the oil crisis was a thing, and scientists back then were predicting another ice age. If you looked at what things were like then and tried to predict 50 years into the future? The world would have been a frozen cross between Mad Max and Logan's Run, with LED displays, landscape trashed by acid rain and freezing temps while scientists worked at banks of tape drives to try to solve the problems.
The problem with looking forward is we have NO clue what kind of tech is gonna show up in 5 years, much less in 50. Nobody in the 70s saw computers more powerful than a mainframe that could fit in your shirt pocket, that could connect to any other computer on the planet without wires, electric cars with built in radar, having access to any movie or TV show that ever existed on demand, being able to just push a button and hop into a realistic 3d world with players from several different continents, hell back then a Mb of RAM would have taken a serious bite out of your wallet and CPUs that could do thousands of Mhz and render 3d worlds that could fit on a desk, much less in your pocket? You must be high to think that would ever be possible!
So yeah...complete and total bullshit because these things always assume the world is gonna remain static, no new tech is gonna be invented, and everything will stay exactly the same...that hasn't been true for nearly 2 centuries now and I seriously doubt as we discover more about how the quantum world works, new smart materials and innovations in everything from robotics to manufacturing that our world 50 years from now is gonna resemble anything like what we have now, hell if anything I wouldn't be surprised if the big issue of the time is how to grow humans in vats as the whole population has holo-addiction and is too busy being their own gods in their own virtual worlds to give a shit about actually interacting with each other.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This is nonsense and Slashdot should get its act together.
Why are they publishing a public relations piece? I believe in global warming. It has affected glaciers and will continue to do so, with consequences that are both good and bad. But this supposed scientific report... let's start with "Who are they and where is this published?"
Who are they? We don't know. All we have is the following: "the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment was put together over five years by 210 authors. The report includes input from more than 350 researchers and policymakers from 22 countries. " This appears to be the usual self-appointed group of experts. Again, they may be right or wrong- or more likely giving us the "This is horrible" bad news without the offsetting good news (more arable land, etc). Further tracking reveals all the four named authors are all from something called the "International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) Kathmandu Nepal" And who funds this? Good luck...
Where was it published? You follow the links in the article and they all lead to springer.com which says they are "Providing researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings."
NO! I WANT TO KNOW WHERE IT WAS PUBLISHED. IS THIS A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLE OR NOT? The answer appears to be "not" . At https://link.springer.com/book... we finally get the following: "This open access volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region...". This is the usual non-profit funded PR piece trying to affect public opinion and through it public policy. I may agree with the conclusions or I may not but don't kid yourself, this is propaganda by one side of a policy debate and nothing more.
So thirty minutes of digging on my part yields "This is not science it is partisan BS"
Now back to the original question; Why is Slashdot publishing this? Are the Slashdot moderators and editors who select what appears here incompetent or are they so wound up in the left/liberal, phony moral outrage worldview that all an article has to do is agree with their moral posture to get into Slashdot?
Want to stop global warming? Well first stop flying around the world in jet planes, the biggest per-mile contributor to upper atmosphere pollution. Come on outraged snowflakes, forget the snowboarding trip to Colorado and do your part to save the planet. You are, after all, among the world's biggest polluters of the upper atmosphere. As for me, even knowing, I'll still head for Europe this summer. Dear snowflakes let me make it clear; I'm not claiming to be more moral, more pure than you, just less twitishly pompous.
And dear Slashdot moderators and editors; now could we get back to real news about technology for a change?
So your argument is that it will get fixed by Fucking Magic, so no need to worry. If the world continues to be run by ignorant gits by the likes of Trump, Putin, and Jinping, then only the latter has a vested interest in the environment, mainly because China's becoming too polluted to support people. People like Trump will never believe in human caused global warming because it interferes with his pile of loot. Putin would like a warmer Siberia and because he thinks it will screw the U.S. harder than Russia.
"Wind and solar passed coal in cost effectiveness" Why do I hear this being said all the time, all those studies showing current wind/solar $/kWh as being the cheapest form available, yet this clearly does not align with reality? We do not live in a dictatorship, if it was possible to build a solar farm and erect a bunch of windmills and undercut the local electric utility, you'd see this wholesale and fast across North America.
No, not the case at all.. in every jurisdiction planning a move to greater renewables, the focus is on trying to get the populace to accept greater electricity costs. This is also why it's so hard, especially in a democracy. Sick of hearing this "wind/solar are most cost effective" anyway - if it's better overall make that argument, but don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
Would the Gulf of Tonkin Incident be counted as a conspiracy theory? I mean it took 30 years for the truth to come out.