Billions Face Risks From Climate Change 659
gollum123 writes with a link to a kind of grim BBC story. According to a report drawn up by 'hundreds of international environmental experts', billions of people face drought and famine, as well as an increase in natural disasters, as a result of climate change. Individuals in the poorest countries face the most danger, due to a lack of infrastructure and geographic location. "The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world. Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft."
And the upsides? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And the upsides? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And the upsides? (Score:4, Informative)
Who modded this offtopic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Canada is also a happening place. And they take in almost anybody. And I believe and they have a homesteading program where you can get your own large tract of land for free or nearly free. If I weren't already an American, I'd go for it even if I had to steal, jump fences, work aboard a cargo ship, swim and take assumed names along the way.
People forget that never in the history of Man has the climate not been changing. We survivors are the ones that went from where conditions were not survivable to where they were better. The ones who stayed behind are history. (Note to people in southern Florida: if your children can't breathe seawater, now would be a good time to find some land that won't be under water when they're grown.)
As a Canadian I have to DISAGREE (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets start with the great lakes...polluted mess. They are full of non-native species that are killing off all those beautiful fish that used to be there, not that it matters with all the toxic runnoff from factories and pulp and paper mills.
Speaking of pulp and paper mills, have you ever taken a plane trip over the coast of British Columbia? Its a mighty depressing sight to see the checkered landscape from all the clear cutting. Where do you think all that wood comes from that gets dumped on the US market? Sure...some is being replanted. Just come back in a century or two when it grows back ;(
What about Alberta...yikes they are strip mining the whole province as fast as they can to get at all that oil. DO I even dare mention the ENORMOUS quantities of water they are using in the process? It might just make you sick. (I grew up in Alberta)
I'll tell ya something else about Canada...we are getting pretty damn selective about who can emigrate. Not that I agree with it mind you. But Unless you are educated and have a good amount of money, chances are you will have difficulty in getting into the country...let alone getting a job or buying land. Ha! Homesteading? What is this the 19th century? There are no small time farmers left in the prairies --- they have all gone corporate long ago. Planting vast tracts of genetically altered sunflower seeds and other USELESS products so we can eat our fast food and become even more obese.
I'll tell ya though, I lived in the northwest territories (north of 60) for several years and THAT my friend is what I call untouched wilderness, complete with killer bears, herds of buffalo, and northern lights so close to the ground that you can almost touch them. But its damn cold.
Anyway, in summary,
Canada has a poor environmental record. Its just that we are such a FREAKIN huge country that most people don't notice. But trust me, our giga corps are doing their best to rape our land as they are yours.
Re:As a Canadian I have to DISAGREE (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just the coast, it's all over the interior too. And you don't need a plane ride to see it - check out google maps satellite view:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=vancouver&ie=UTF8&z
Just unbelievable. Every single little "patch" you see there is a half kilometer long by half to full kilometer wide. I wonder how many citizens and politicians have seen just exactly how extensive it is.
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You do realize we're talking about a foot or so over the next fifty years, right? Some estimates are for up to a meter by 2100, but it is seriously back loaded.
The elevation of Florida (Score:3, Interesting)
The highest point in Florida according to this page [netstate.com] is Britton Hill, at 345 Ft. According to this page [maps-n-stats.com] the highest city is 500 feet. The average elevation of the entire state is 100 feet.
From the Army Corps of Engineers: hot topic [army.mil]
Re:It is almost completely natural phenomena (Score:5, Insightful)
Vegetative decay is a yearly cycle and not a net producer of CO2, unless the vegetation doesn't grow back next year. Clear cutting forrests being a prime example, and an effect of industrialization.
Volcanoes are not a larger source of CO2 than industrial output, and i'd be interested to know your theory of how volcanic activity has dramatically increased in the last 100 years compared to the previous 600,000. That doesn't correlate at all with the ice core data, much less loosely.
The planet is warming up a bit because of increased solar flux, and not man-made CO2. That's what the data says.
Solar flux means the net transfer of solar energy at the earth, and is affected by both the amount of energy received at earth and the amount of energy retained. Increase in solar output by itself can only account for 30% of the measured temperature increase, ergo the remainder is an effect of increased solar energy retention, exactly how the CO2 greenhouse model predicts. That is what the data says.
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Defrosting Siberia is the last thing you want to do.
Some estimates say that 70 billion metric tons of methane will be released into the atmosphere when/if the siberian permafrost melts. This equals approx. 1500 billion tons of CO2, or 55 years of emissions at current rate.
Google for "global warming feedback loops" for more info.
HAND
Boa
There was an article in the Oregonian about this (Score:3, Informative)
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If the resource changes, we may well end up adding more infrastructure to use it more efficiently. Also, census data show several eastern (desert) counties losing population, while Willamette Valley populations are growing rapidly.
*Nothing* Marxist Hacker 42 posted was trol
Geographic Location (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, whodathunkit? (Score:5, Insightful)
in communist china (Score:5, Funny)
Bitch slap (Score:4, Insightful)
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-Aaron
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Skirting the issue (Score:2)
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What's the realistic likelihood we will ever see carbon emissions mitigation?
There are too many moneyed interests who would be hurt by mitigation measures; they'll make sure we can't take any action.
There are also plenty of people convinced we'll ruin the economy by mitigating, despite the report from a former head of the World Bank (hardly a bastion of "liberal" ideology) showing the costs to the economy of global warming will be much greater than the costs of mitigation plus the costs of mitigated glo
Certainty (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with that. We can't be certain. We've only got a few decades of really good data, and a few hundred years of approximate data prior to that. That's not enough to be certain to any degree about events that will play out over hundreds of years.
But that doesn't matter. We need to act on this whether (no pun intended) we're certain or not. The very fact we're not sure means we have no choice *in case we're right*. Not being certain works both ways. We're not certain it's a bit disaster, but neither are we certain it isn't. If we don't start taking action now then in 50 years time it may be too late. If we do take action then it might mean we all end up less wealthy, maybe even out of work if we work in a polluting industry, but is that really so bad if the cost of doing nothing is potentially the end of the human race, or even the sum of life on Earth? Sure, I'm a bit of a tree-hugging hippy liberal (lower case 'l') at heart, but I care that my children and children's children don't end up starving to death in a desert wasteland. With no trees. To hug.
bull.. we have millions of years of ice cores.. (Score:4, Informative)
here is a sample of that data charted [daviesand.com]
It all balances out. (Score:3, Funny)
Billions (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/Message.htm [thegeorgia...stones.com]
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
no surprise its them. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee what a surpise that those countries are objecting, given that those are mostly the worst polluters and also the worst countries for politically spinning and socially engineering information.
I f real or not (Score:5, Insightful)
So the real debate ought to be... (Score:2)
let's get all talking points out of the way (Score:5, Insightful)
and for all deniers I provide this practical list, pick your poison:
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Billions face risks - only...? (Score:2)
Fine, but you know what...in terms of problems and people, those billions of po' folk are not just going to hang out and wait for the vultures. They are going to m
Wow - the yanks are vocal today (Score:5, Insightful)
To all those that don't believe man is impacting the climate, I call BS. People said the same thing about the hole in the Ozone Layer (caused by CFC's prevelant at the time). People said the same thing about Acid Rain (caused by VERY bad emission controls on Auto's).
Let me bottom line this, read up on the melting at the poles, and at Greenland. Take a look at the average temperature per season per year for the last 20 years. Take a look at the number of Islands that have *disappeared* due to rising water levels. Lastly - consider that more people are alive today then have existed for our ENTIRE history.
The UN doesn't exist to "spread America's wealth", countries like Canada and NZ contribute the same or more PER PERSON than the US (when it pays - which is increasingly rare). The UN exists so that all the people of the World have a place and forum to voice their concerns on GLOBAL issues. I would argue that the changes we are making to our climate are perhaps the most important such issue to ever be discussed at the UN.
If after all the evidence you don't believe we're impacting the Climate, then be prepared to kiss your ass goodbye - if war and famine don't get ya, the drought will.
Killer
Slashdot?? (Score:5, Insightful)
And for the others who point to past predictions of environmental degradation that never materialized (global cooling, for instance) as reason to ignore the current forecast -- I beg of you, please stop. We obviously still don't know exactly how everything works but when the current body of knowledge and the majority of the scientific community is predicting something severe, we would be stubborn to the point of idiocy to do anything but plan accordingly.
Personally, I don't need any government study to convince me that global warming is happening. Look at a satellite map of the Arctic thirty years ago and compare it to one today. Thirty years is to the planet the time equivalent of an afternoon to us. Ever get that depleted hot flush a day before the flu kicks in?
The Scientific Method (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a whole mess of data, and we have a few hypothesis. The next step is to make a prediction based on a hypothesis and observe. We can't create an experiment for obvious reasons, but we can still observe. Last year there was a prediction. I don't know if it was a scientific prediction, or merely the collection fear mongering of the mainstream media (it's becoming increasingly hard to tell the difference). The prediction was that this year's hurricane season would be much much worse than last. What did we observe? A rather mild hurricane season. The prediction failed and the hypothesis has been proven false. In fact, nearly all climate predictions over the past fifty years have failed.
There are two major problems with the current climate scare. One of them I alluded to above: the media-zation of science. We are basing public policy not on science, but on what the media filters, edits and digests for public consumption. We aren't seeing the data, but are only being told "scientists say...". When you look at the actual data, you'll find that scientists aren't necessarily saying what the media says "scientists say...". A few might be, but not all. It's most definitely not consensus. The consensus is only that the climate is changing and that human beings probably have some level of affect. How much the climate is changing, what level of affect humans have on it, and what are the consequences, are NOT agreed upon in the scientific community.
The second major problem is that this is a very complex area of study. VERY complex. The models used for prediction are EXTREMELY complex. They've been doing modeling on supercomputers since the first supercomputer. Oak Ridge NL announced a new record breaking supercomputer today, and it will be used for... climate modeling. There are simply too many variables and too sensitive to initial conditions. If a butterfly can flap its wings in China and affect the weather in Canada, then we're going to need lots and lots of supercomputers to model all the butterflys.
Are these the models that predicts history's worst hurricane season? If so, they need to be seriously reworked.
Embracing the worst fears again I see (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, I'm sure the ancestors of the present day people thought that as they watched the Earth begin to thaw from the last ice age, and the oceans rose to cover the continental shelves and give rise to the planet-wide myths about a globe covering flood. Except, they didn't have scientific evidence in huge piles of books showing that this sort of thing happens all the time regardless of what the bipedal monkeys are up to.
It has been warmer than this in the past. Much warmer. It has been colder than this in the past. Much colder. We know this for a fact. We know that this happens with or without our activities. And we know that there is NOTHING we can do at our present technological level about it. So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it when for over half a million years it happened several times and we've only had this supposedly evil technology for only less than
Because the global warming is real and there are people in this world and always have been who want the masses to hand over power over their lives to them. And so they trot out to us a false premise, that we are totally responsible for an actually natural occurence in the long span of planetary history, and another one that they can save us from ourselves if only we give them the reigns of power. Seems like the phoney-baloney oil crisis that never happened in the 70s, the phoney-baloney global starvation crisis that never happened in the 60s, the phoney-baloney Communist scare of the 50s that was horsehockey, and ten million other crises.
It seems on the surface that we are supremely full of ourselves and yet in truth we are terribly dubious, completely without hope, and utterly given to embracing our own fallibility. There is no faith in ourselves in this idea that we caused global warming and still none in the idea that we can stop it. Only false hollow beliefs put forth to enrich the power of others.
Have faith in our progress and our natures that we are not so bad as we would think and as others would posit. We have greatness unknown and unmatched simply waiting to be explored. Once we dreamed of exploring the universe and doing so in style and comfort where now we dream simply of returning to primitive conditions lest Mother Earth shrug us off in anger over our insolence. Mother Earth is a nonentity and the physics of the world merely uncaring and indifferent to us. We cannot make the world stay in steady state, we can only live around it, and we are supremely capable of doing it. It was never of question if we can, but if we will.
There are problems with how we treat the environment, but growing the power of the state over the power of the individual, regressing to dreary primitive states, embracing inanities like hemp and bio diesel, and forgetting all the wonderous things we've thought up in the past to overcome each problem in turn, is to turn our back on being human, and all the best things about that. We can solve the problems and there need be no doom and gloom, and the solutions need not involve handing more power over to those who have far too much already and not nearly the wisdom to know what to properly do with it.
The world will shrug. We will move with it.
no offence but get a fucking clue (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider, over 80% of fish in the oceans are under threat from extinction due to over fishing.
Consider, there is currently a honey bee plague that is killing up to 90% of hive populations in N. America. How fucked up is that?
Ground water is being used up at unsustainable rates in China and India. --- as well as in all developed countries
See, most people in the west don't hear about these disasters that are *happening* right now because they don't effect most of us... yet.
But everything is connected and eventually the shit is really going to hit the fan.
I live and work in Kenya and experienced the drought last here personally. Picture every day thousands of people carrying a small 5 gallon pail on their head, leaving slums in search of a little bit of water. Picture starving cattle --- so thin you can count their ribs, being driven into the city center to graze upon grass in the ditches and in parks. That is if they don't just drop dead on the side of the highway. (during the drought I saw...and smelled dozens of rotting carcases littering along the highway).
I"m an optimist at heart. Human can solve their problems, but MOST people have no FUCKING clue of what is happening and how it will get MUCH worse.
I'll tell you what though, democracy as we know will change. Governments WILL ration what we eat, drink, and manage the energy we consume. In developing countries this is the NORM. Soon it will be the norm everywhere. Doom and gloom??? No, just REALITY.
The simple truth is that most people are greedy bastards and will do all they can to enrich themselves and damn everyone else. I mean WTF, we are only on this earth for 60 odd years, so who cares right?
This is the world we have made for ourselves, we all have to educate ourselves and everyone needs to make better choices. However, I think increasingly we will need to rely on our governments to carry out responsible mandates if FREEDOM as well as EQUITY are to survive what is coming.
Re:no offence but get a fucking clue (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, that's one thing that probably doesn't belong in the list. It's a disaster for beekeepers, and a major problem for some commercial crops that depend on honeybees. But the actual scientists (i.e., biologists) studying the phenomenon haven't generally considered it a disaster at all.
Honeybees are a domesticated species that is not native to North America. Like some of the other critters we introduced (English sparrows, starlings, carp, etc.), they partly escaped and went wild, and took over the niches that had belonged to hundreds of native species. They might not have done so well in the wild, except that humans maintained a large population that could replentish the supply as the natives evolved ways to fight them. But generally, honeybees have been a disaster for most native species of small pollinators.
Now that there are almost no wild honeybees left, the native bees and other small pollinators (that survived) have been expanding their populations. Biologists studying the phenomenon have generally treated this as a recovery of the original diversity that had been suppressed by the human-supported invader. The resulting diversity makes for a more stable ecosystem in general. And many of the native pollinators are doing a fairly good job of pollinating most of the crops. The main problem is that we can't control them as easily as we controlled honeybees. And most of them don't form huge colonies, so harvesting what honey they have isn't very practical.
The main "disaster" is the human one: We've lost much of our honey crop. But this isn't really a disaster for the ecosystem; it's just a minor local agricultural problem in one crop. And much of that problem can be attributed to something that biologists have generally warned about: It was a monoculture, depending totally on a single domesticated insect. Monocultures are inherently unstable, susceptible to crashes whenever a single parasite or disease shows up. It's not the first time we've seen crashes in a single monoculture crop, and it won't be the last.
If we want a reliable honey crop, we can't do it like we have been. We need a variety of bees, preferably of several species, so that a single disease or parasite can't wipe out the entire crop, and so that populations can be kept somewhat separate to impair the disease/parasite's rapid spread. But there's no sign that our agricultural system is learning that lesson.
There's no obvious tie-in of this with the climate change phenomenon. Nobody is suggesting that the honeybee die-off has anything to do with the warmer weather.
But the warming will allow the Africanized "killer" bees to expand farther into North America. They are good honey producers; maybe we need to learn to cultivate them. That's why people were experimenting with them South America, after all, when the big "Oops!!" happened and a bunch of them escaped.
NASA Climate Model on your Laptop (Score:3, Informative)
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
None of that is absolutely conclusive, and could well be misleading or wrong, but when it comes to making policy it would be nice to have a more constructive argument than "I just don't buy it."
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BTW, when did genuine skepticism turn into trolling?? I wasn't expecting some kind of eco-inquisition.
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So what? Whether the standard model predicts that it is quadratic, linear, exponential, or logarithmic doesn't matter. In essence, what you're saying is "I don't believe the data generated by the accepted model," and then turning around and saying, "I don't believe the data because the model predicts that temperature is logarithmic with CO2 levels." I believe that's called having your cake and eating it too.
By the way, when a
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Cardinal Gore: Nobody expects the eco-inquisition!
rlp: Hey, what are you doing? thug: It doesn't seen to be hurting him, Lord. Cardinal Gore: Have you got all the stuffing up one end? He must be made of stronger stuff. . . get . . . the Comfy Chair!
Re:Good job (Score:4, Insightful)
Looking back up through the discussion the majority of posts have been from skeptics, and none of them have given particular reasons why the IPCC's report is wrong. We have
I've never heard of a massive conspiracy between the loosely knit scientific community before, but this is basically what skeptics are saying. Our kids might look back at discussions like this and wonder what the hell skeptics were thinking and why they couldn't accept that they had to make small lifestyle changes.
Re:I don't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
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The "Club of Rome" models were available, too. Yet their predictions of global disaster from overpopulation and pollution didn't come to pass.
At the time it took a mainframe surrounded by "priests in white coats" to run the models. With the advent of personal computers and broad programming education the models were run by people not part of the "club": They tracked the historical record up to the release date then diverged drastically.
So their guts were exam
Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
50 years ago, people were building the first DEDICATED WEATHER SATELLITES ! (Launched 47 years ago...)
You don't think people could measure atmospheric temperatures accurately enough to feed into a climate model a whole 50 years ago??? Get a clue, you're just ignorant of scientific history. Accurate temperature measurement for meteorological purposes was one of the first things developed in the history of science-as-we-know-it, given its obvious utility, especially at the height of the maritime era.
Hell, during the British Empire, weather stations were dotted around the globe recording temperatures to within a fraction of a degree almost 2 CENTURIES AGO.
Just how long do you think 50 years is? My mum is over 50 years old! Maybe you meant 50 jovian years, eh?
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Care to back that up? I've actually worked with the models. While every model makes assumptions, even quite simplistic models can give you useful information about the functioning of a complicated system. And believe it or not, our current climate models have made verifiable predictions, which makes it a little easier to think we must be doing something right with them. There are a few la
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Global warming is a very interesting ploy because they tell you how it works and show you models of it but the proof is very hazy. If you look deeper into the research you find more research, however at the base level a lot of research has very iffy numbers and methods. Looking at Santer's early work on global warming and the findings are iffy.
A Canadian businessman (already science types are saying "biased") named
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If you must build a giant mirror, a ribbon in any orbit small enough not to be rapidly perturbed by the moon would be more than sufficient, and much smaller in total surface area than a giant L1 disk.
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Re:Big mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big mirror (Score:5, Funny)
That is why the melting of the artic/antartic would be a big problem - that white ice/snow reflects energy back to space, when it gets smaller, it effectively increases the amount of energy we recieve (I guess the oceans get warmer) and makes the whole warming process go that much faster.
Anyway, a few trillion gallons of white paint would be easier to procure and distribute than sending mega mirrors up to space -- even if they are made of mylar or something similiar.
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Out of curiosity, where do you find tar that isn't black?
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Re:Big mirror (Score:4, Interesting)
The department of transportation started coating the freeways in the Phoenix metropolitan area with Rubberized Asphalt [azdot.gov] a few years back. At first I was like, "brilliant, dudes, brilliant", as the rubberized freeways are much blacker than they were before, and I assumed that this would increase the urban heat island effect.
Then I read about a group who actually had some numbers. They had an infrared satellite picture of the Valley of the Sun pre- and post-rubberization. In the before photo, you could clearly see where the freeways ran, as they were glowing bright orange. But in the after photo, the freeways were all black. The rubberized asphalt does not conduct heat very well, and while it does get hotter during the day (140+ deg. F, iirc), it cools down much quicker at night.
Rubberized asphalt is only good for freeways, where there won't be any pedestrians...
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Uhh.. no. You might be somewhat right for a typical bathroom silver-on-glass mirror due to the absorption in the glass substrate, but for use in space you would use aluminum-coated mylar film (think potato chips bags: lightweight and cheap). Aluminum reflects >90% all the way from deep IR to UV. With silver, the reflectivity would be a bit higher, 95%, but it would rea
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Instead of creating a workaround solution up there, we'd be better off taking those hundreds of billions of dollars, and creating solutions down here, at less risk.
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But why on Earth quote wikipedia? It proves nothing, and it's just as bad for science.
yes it is relevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
repeated findings which show bias, lack repeatability, and/or are not coherent with the full range of evidence erodes reputation.
for example.. the ID assertions of a "great flood welling up from the ocean bottom" causing the continents to drift is a big fat steaming load which is not consistent with inch per year movement measured between
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it's like debating weather an oncomming driver is drunk or not.. he's still gonna hit you and you should take precautions.
additionally, if implemented properly reduced emissions means more inputs are producing energy instead of being wasted out some exhaust system, we should welcome this from an economic standpoint.
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example: katrina. (the city still hasn't recovered).
i honestly dont believe any actions on emissions now will show results for the next 50+ years, but in the mean time things will continue getting worse, and we should be allocating more funds to disaster relief and trying to preven
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Since we've had people live in cities on earth, they've lived primarily along coastal areas, including seas, lakes, and rivers.
II'd say the biggest difference now is that we subsidize people to live on shorelines and flood plains. Before we go crazy on carbon emissions, we should dump federal flood insurance and stop incentivizing people to live in stupid places.
I assume you're talking about the US here, as per your federal comme
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Just an interesting little aside... If you took everyone in the world - all 6.5 billion of us, and put us on the land in Texas, we'd be less dense than New York City.
There really IS a lot of land out there...
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For food, well, the Vegans (not that I am one - I believe in being an omnivore!) say you can feed a person with 700 square meters of farmland [vegansociety.com]. So that means that 1 square kilometer will feed 1400 people.
Now, the US has approximately 950 million square acres of farmland [nationsencyclopedia.com], which is around 3.9 million square kilometers. That would support 5.4 billion people. Add in a bit more farmland from northern Mexico or
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The federal flood insurance idea -- I agree its a good idea not to pay people to rebuild in flood plains over and over again.. But piss poor Bangladeshi subsistence farmers don't live the flood plain because they get insurance. They live in the flood plain because there's no other land they can farm, and if the
Re:When has the climate not changed? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a ridiculous argument. The climate is always changing, the fear is that it's going to change very fast, and that it's the result of our actions.
And people living on shorelines has nothing to do with subsidies. Population centers have always formed on shorelines for as long as human civilization has existed. Hint: fishing and shipping. Moving everyone away from shores would be ludicrously more expensive than any emmissions control.
mod parent up! (Score:2)
the point though is it takes a while for the pollutants to fully affect the atmosphere, so we need to make practical preparations in terms of securing greater disaster relief budgets, preparing for possible widespread destruction and rebuilding of coastal cities, and possible drastic changes to the geography and needs of many regions over the next century.
hop
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WRONG. The warming will be more severe if we continue to emit CO2, and less severe if we stop.
So what exactly do they expect people to do?
Stop emitting CO2. e.g. build and buy cleaner cars, stricter emission controls on power plants, use less energy, etc.
Re:One problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please propose a scientifically reasonable solution as to what is causing global warming if it's not human based, and one that's consistent with 100,000+ years of earth temperature variations along with CO2 levels and solar activity, data of which we do have.
Even if the human race were to cease all industrial and agricultural output of greenhouse gas NOW (this very second), it wouldn't make a bit of difference in the warming trend. The material we've put in the atmosphere will continue this trend for at least the next century. So what exactly do they expect people to do?
You are correct that we cannot just limit everything, even the most conservative models that assume we all buy hybrids, cut down on driving, and stop increasing global population, still lead to runaway levels of CO2 in a century or so.
I attended a physics colloquium by a government scientist, the guy who actually got Bush to include the bit about alternative energy and 'switchgrass' in last years State of the Union address. So this guy answers to Bush, convinced Bush to mention this, and even this guy himself,who you might assume would thus be an oil-lobby crony, says we have to have an action plan ready within a century or so.
So seriously, show me a single professional scientist who says we don't need to do anything to stop global warming, or has a reasonable explanation as to why CO2 levels are HUGELY above anywhere they've been over the past severla hundred thousand years, and is fully consistent with CO2, solar, and temperature data over this time span.
Now anyway, what this government scientist proposed to do is immediately work on alternative energy programs and get ourselves off of carbon-based sources. One plan is do nothing, as you are implying we do, which could be an acceptable solution if you're statistically certain we're not the cause of warming and that nothing disastrous will happen. Are you statistically certain, other than your contrarian desire to say you don't buy the global warming theories?
What this guy did do is propose energy plans for all energies, from coal, to nuclear, to wind, to solar, and showed that NONE except solar are able to satisfy our expanding energy needs and to fully power the country renewably while reducing carbon footprint.
It makes perfect sense thermodynamically too, as ALL power (except geothermal) is solar energy anyway, so you get the highest efficieny if you go straight to the energy source itself. There are great improvements in solar heating techniques (ie, use mirrors to heat liquid in a pipe to turn turbines), and that is where he thought the future is.
Doing that in the next few years will allow us to reduce the carbon footprint and not get stuck in this level.
Another thing to consider are that the ocean has been absorbing CO2 for the past 100 years anyway, and when that saturates, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will skyrocket.
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I won't keep clapping to keep the lions away if you don't pay my salary.
See any lions? Nope? Pay up!
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A classic ad hominem attack and it gets modded 'Insightful? Come on Slashdot.
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Or you can buy credits from me. I'm still working out a pricing schedule, and I won't actually do anything, but if you pay me enough money, I'll take responsibility for your carbon sinning. If everyone does that, then the world will be nearly pollution free, except for me, the most polluting person of all time, of course!
Re:Billions hate it when things change, news at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
One example is the gulf stream that is the only thing keeing Northern England and Scotland from being under metres of ice is already starting to change direction as a result of global warming.
>> Does anyone else see there's more going on here than environmental alarmists would have you believe?
Yes, that its largely the American population (also conicidentally per capita the worst polluters by far) who are in denial and are grapsing at any available feeble excuse to avoid having to change their behviour.
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There are six and a half billion people on the Earth now in vast settled communities. We're not a few thousand nomads who can just up sticks and hike across the hills to somewhere nicer. We're an entire global civilisation existing three meals from disaster. When Bangla
Black body temp stupid question. (Score:2)
Stupid question on my part: How do places on earth regularly get below this temperature with an atmosphere?
Solar wind chill? (I joke).
In all seriousness, if that temperature is a correct fact, and the atmosphere is our blanket to keep us warmer than -18C/0F, how do we radiate more heat to get below that background temperature?
Re:More Hysteria (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, a small number of cranks were pushing the global cooling story, while the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists was that it was not going to happen.
Now they're tending upwards, so we're all going to die.
See above, but vice-versa.
Oh, and there was an Ozone Hole, so we're all going to die.
Remember how we all stopped using chlorofluorocarbons?
The ice age ended and the climate changed. Guess what -- animals and people moved along with it.
OK, that works for a few thousand cavemen. Now do it with a billion.
If you were able to watch UK Channel 4's "The Great Global Warming Swindle", it's been pulled from YouTube for copyright issues. Pity. It was spot on.
Not according to Carl Wunsch [mit.edu], the oceanographer featured prominently in that show, who says it misrepresented him completely.
I love it when it comes down to (Score:4, Insightful)
Another favorite:
Ok, fine we have global warming, but it's not going to effect anybody.
the chart (Score:3, Insightful)
remember temperature is related to atmospheric co2 in the same way economic growth is related to money supply.
MOd this person down (Score:2)
Troll
Flamebait
Stupid Fuck.
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You seem fairly certain that we can't affect the climate. Why? Because we never did it before? True, but then there were never 6 billion of us before, and we never pumped millenia worth of carbon out of the ground every year before.
You ought to rethink your position, and make sure it isn't just a self-serving delusion whose sole purpose is to ma
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Re:No disagreement about a scientific issue? (Score:5, Informative)
Watched that? Good.
Now remember that MIT oceanographer? The one they've got on there to say that CO2 doesn't matter because it all comes out of the oceans really anyway?
He was substantially misrepresented, and he's not happy at all [mit.edu] about it. I'm especially amused by the manner in which the film maker responds to criticism: 'Go and fuck yourself.'
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Talk about 100 trillion dollar project!
It would be better to start shutting down coal plants and put that money into developing an infrastructur for charging electric cars.
Stop selling combustion engine vehicals.
Exeptions:
Tractor Trailor trucks, emergency vehicals, cargo planes, planes for overseas travel.
This needs to be done globally.
Does it suck? yes it does. For the record I Love combustion cars. I love the power the speed, driving long distance
Re:Is Global Warming Really Happening? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Remember how we had that big hole in the Ozone that kept growing when we were using Freon and CFCs? And then we stopped using them and the ozone hole got smaller?
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid
Yah...
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Some of the things you name are great ideas. Decentralization, efficiency, self-sufficiency are all great goal