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Climate Change Catastrophe

Wow. That's off the hook. The language of the article makes it sound like Weekly Words News stuff.

...Perhaps a Brit could clue us in on how reliable the Guardian is and what its ideological bent is.
 
Although I have only lived here (UK) for a short while, I have been reading the Guardian for a long time and it is a extremely credible newspaper. Which is why I was so shocked when I read that article.

While global warming is nothing new, the implications and the timeframe that were mentioned in the article are alarming.

I hope this gets some attention, as it seems that it's effects will be far reaching.
 
I agree that this report is scary. The main problem if what needs to be done. It should be a bipartisan solution. Republicans have done a poor job with the environment. The only problem is that it has become a thing of the left, the to me is very sad. We are the most powerful nation on Earth, the loss of jobs, increased prices, and increased taxes is not an option. There needs to be more tax deductions or credits for conservation such as solar energy which I'm interested in suing for my house. Lesson our dependence on foreign oil and have alternative uses of energy for heating and our cars.
 
Originally posted by MrMacman
Don't Read it, ITS A LIBERAL MEDIA TRAP!

LIES LIES, ALL LIES!

This article... FULL OF LIES!

All of it, Lies Lies and more LIES!
Click to expand...

I agree with you MrMacman, just didn't want to turn this into a flaming political thread. From what I have read you need to take in to account the history of this planet. There have been numerous climate changes in the past, it is just a normal pattern for our beloved Earth. :)
 
Originally posted by wdlove
I agree with you MrMacman, just didn't want to turn this into a flaming political thread. From what I have read you need to take in to account the history of this planet. There have been numerous climate changes in the past, it is just a normal pattern for our beloved Earth. :)
Click to expand...


Yes, but in the past, with these normal patterns, humans did not number 6 billion. Look up NPP.
 
I think this is just natural climate fluxuation.

Did you know that volcanoes put out more greenhouse gasses than many people in the world? They also repair the atmosphere and cause a drop in the climate.

Global Warming is crap. Wait 200 years
 
Originally posted by MacAztec
I think this is just natural climate fluxuation.

Did you know that volcanoes put out more greenhouse gasses than many people in the world? They also repair the atmosphere and cause a drop in the climate.

Global Warming is crap. Wait 200 years
Click to expand...

Very well said, some people think that they can predict the Earth's climate just after studying it for a few years...what BS!

You could study the earth for 1000's of years and probably still not see all the different cycles.

This is just some enviromentalist junk!
 
oh here we go, it's become so popular to challenge the existance of any environmental effects by humans... i think it lets people consume and pollute guilt-free. People, the scientific jury is still out, but common sense holds that the amazing amounts of pollution we produce, from radio waves to greenhouse gasses to magnetic fields to nuclear waste... it's all been increasing hugely since we became industrial, it's simply too convenient to blame it on the "earth's geological cycles". Especially since geological cycles happen over thousands of years, not dozens... the ice age didn't simply happen one day.

i'll never be able to explain this to people that don't want to hear it. Do some research on the butterfly effect, and the chaos theory.

paul
 
Originally posted by paulwhannel
oh here we go, it's become so popular to challenge the existance of any environmental effects by humans... i think it lets people consume and pollute guilt-free. People, the scientific jury is still out, but common sense holds that the amazing amounts of pollution we produce, from radio waves to greenhouse gasses to magnetic fields to nuclear waste... it's all been increasing hugely since we became industrial, it's simply too convenient to blame it on the "earth's geological cycles". Especially since geological cycles happen over thousands of years, not dozens... the ice age didn't simply happen one day.

i'll never be able to explain this to people that don't want to hear it. Do some research on the butterfly effect, and the chaos theory.

paul
Click to expand...

yeah, i can't understand why people refuse to believe that we actually have an effect on the planet we inhabit. is it just an american thing?
 
I understand that we do contribute to the garbage/wastes on the earth.

I just saw something on Discovery the other night. A bunch of Scientists in like AntArctica found encapsuled air that was like 1000 years old, and more that was 5000 years old. It hadn't been exposed to our air.

They tried to draw conclusions that the human population increased and caused more CO2 in the atmosphere.

I don't believe it one bit.
 
Its one possible outcome, but its not guaranteed to happen that way. The system is too dynamic to totally predict. This does sound a little too much like Chicken Little to me.

But change is going to occur, whether it will go smoothly or not is really anybodies guess.

D
 
I think we are damaging the Earth and environment, and this sort of thing could happen. The Guardian is a very reputable newspaper. However, I think for a British Paper, it is all very American, with no real quotes or evidence.

Also, the dates seem a bit, well, soon....

I live on the South Coast in the UK, and we can slowly see the coast being reclaimed by the sea, right around the country. We realise that one day the town may vanish. But there are lots of places this would happen, not just the UK! Surely the Maldives would go pretty quickly, they are not exactly high above sea level.

I think the article gets a bit off target when it starts talking of nuclear weapons and the like. I am sure there will be a lot of upheaval, but the population will adapt. We do need to do something about it though, maybe the Americans can make a start on it by getting a new President, not one who burries his head in the sand and pretend it's not happening.

Very strange article though. No real evidence, and a lot of scarey stuff that looks like the plot of a sci-fi movie.

Marc
 
Here's a totally different way to think about global warming.

If anthropocentric (human-caused) global warming is just environmentalist hysteria, then we've got another 10-50 years (100 years if you're particularly optimistic) of inexpensive oil sitting under the ground, and nothing worthwile to stop us from using it, so long as the pollution it produces is limited to just CO2, which has no health-related side effects. We'll need another energy source eventually, since no matter how optimistic you are you know fossil fuels are finite, but hey, that's a long time from now.

If global warming is a reality (which is debatable), and on the severe side of what scientists think might happen, then the outcomes described in that report aren't at all out of the realm of belief--the economic and humanitarian costs of major climate change, including food production shifts and unusually severe weather, would be disasterous. War and mass civil unrest aren't at all out of the ordinary.

And the truth is, it's impossible to say for certain which is the case.

What does that mean? Let's say there's just a 10% chance that global warming might actually be severe--I'm sure you can find at least 10% of the respected climatologists in the world who think so. Pretty small chance.

That means that there's a 10% chance, well within the lifetime of most people, of mass-scale disasters, famine, war, and the possible collapse of first world civilization as we've come to know it if we keep doing things the way we are, and a 90% chance everything's ok unless some terrorists loose a biological weapon or something.

Is it really worth that 10% risk to keep up business as usual, espeically when you consider that the supply of fossil fuels will run out eventually anyway?

I know if you told me that driving my car would give me a 10% chance of developing cancer in the next 30 years I'd find another way to get around, just in case.

And personally, based on a whole lot of real science, I'd say the chance is a lot higher than 10%. So is it really worth the risk, even if it might just be paranoia? I'd rather just be on the safe side.
 
Originally posted by marccarter
However, I think for a British Paper, it is all very American, with no real quotes or evidence. Marc
Click to expand...

I read the article, and there are quotes from:

The Pentagon

Jeremy Symons (Formerly of the EPA)

Professor John Schellnhuber ( Former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research)

Sir John Houghton (former chief executive of the Meteorological Office)

Bob Watson (chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)

Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

And on....

Not to mention the larger body of evidence already in place that supports global warming.

As far as the earth's ability to sustain the human population, look at it this way:

NPP (Net Primary Production) is all the resources that the earth produces in a year, minus what it takes to produce those resources. Basically, the earth's "profit".

Currently, humans are using roughly 40% of the NPP. Extrapolating the current data, in 40 years, that figure will quadruple to an impossible 160%.

For more on this I would recommend reading "The Ecology of Commerce" by Paul Hawken.
 
Originally posted by Ambrose Chapel
yeah, i can't understand why people refuse to believe that we actually have an effect on the planet we inhabit. is it just an american thing?
Click to expand...

Sure we have an effect, but making up baseless assumptions about how we affect the world to further their political objectives is junk science.

I am all for decreasing the use of fossil fuels and for a clean enviroment, but we don't need to make up lies to accomplish this.

edited spelling
 
Originally posted by paulwhannel
oh here we go, it's become so popular to challenge the existance of any environmental effects by humans... i think it lets people consume and pollute guilt-free. People, the scientific jury is still out, but common sense holds that the amazing amounts of pollution we produce, from radio waves to greenhouse gasses to magnetic fields to nuclear waste... it's all been increasing hugely since we became industrial, it's simply too convenient to blame it on the "earth's geological cycles". Especially since geological cycles happen over thousands of years, not dozens... the ice age didn't simply happen one day.
Click to expand...

Historical records suggest a mini-ice age onsets over 2-3 bad years consecutive. A full blown one over half a century.

Remember though that all the coal and oil we dig out of the ground started in the atmosphere and then was deposited by plants. At worst we will take the world back to carboniferous period where there were 30' ferns growing at incredible rates.

i'll never be able to explain this to people that don't want to hear it. Do some research on the butterfly effect, and the chaos theory.
Click to expand...

While your at it take a look at the Navier-Stokes equation. Its a nonlinear 3d PDE which only applies in the simple cases where there is no state change. Chaos theory is why the models are crap were crap and will be crap.

The first thing you do with a model is tweak it until it gives you the answers you want.

That being said, I don't like pollution. I recycle. I keep my thermostat turned low in the winter.

I don't think that there is a seriously harmful effect of the extra carbon in the atmosphere. If there is we can take it out. Whenever people talk of climate change they look at it wrong. You have to take a look at the longer view. You also have to make conscious decisions about what climate you want. Like any good specifications the same is not a valid answer...
 
Leaving politics out of this, I can say from first hand experience that the possibility of sudden catastrophic climate change is NOT crazy. It has happened many times in the past.
I earned a MS in Geochemistry and spent three summers at the Summit of the Greenland Ice sheet studying Climate Change. See This

In particular, we found that rapid climate changes were frequent during the end of the last Ice Age. In many instances, global temperatures changed as much as 7 degrees C in LESS THAN A DECADE.

Humans are doing things to the atmosphere that have not happened since Dinosaurs roamed. How the atmosphere and planet decide to respond to these changes is not known. That is the simple fact. WE DON'T KNOW. The system IS too complicated to model accurately.

Others have said that even if there are no environmental consequences, we only have a few decades of oil left. What will your children use to fuel their cars and heat their homes??
 
Closing the eyes will not help guys. These are very serious changes that currently going on. Even people living in the US can't close there eyes forever and just keep in going an behaving like there are no generations to come.
 
Originally posted by MrMacman
Don't Read it, ITS A LIBERAL MEDIA TRAP!

LIES LIES, ALL LIES!

This article... FULL OF LIES!

All of it, Lies Lies and more LIES!
Click to expand...
EXACTLY!

Probably written by the same folks trying to convince persuade us with "The Earth is Round" BS.

Or that the SUN is the center of our universe.

Heretics, all of them!
 
Originally posted by rt_brained
EXACTLY!

Probably written by the same folks trying to convince persuade us with "The Earth is Round" BS.

Or that the SUN is the center of our universe.

Heretics, all of them!
Click to expand...

Are there still people around that believes that ? Everyone knows we are living on a huge football field.
 
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