Climate Change - Is it too late to avert disaster?

[spacemonkey]

Nahh, bigfish would have started screaming hysterically about conspiracies and accusing us of being agents of the illuminati (or other spooky group) by now.

True, god he was a nutter.

 

[david dissadent]

The G8 has given the greenlight for a two degree increase in temperatures being acceptable.

even a “moderate” warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture. Given the drought that already afflicts Australia, the crumbling of the sea ice in the Arctic, and the increasing storm damage after only 0.8°C of warming so far, a target of 2°C seems almost cavalier.

Nevertheless, we view today’s development as a constructive step.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/two-degrees/

 

[Mab]

I give up and believe the earth will eventually join the other lifeless planets out there. However, if man was obliterated nature and animals would thrive.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The G8 has given the greenlight for a two degree increase in temperatures being acceptable.



http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/two-degrees/

The best part of this announcement is how these world leaders think they can just decide how much warmer the earth is going to get, as if they're setting a maximum level of inflation or a budget cap for a quango. One can't help but bring to mind a certain King Canute...

 

[david dissadent]

The best part of this announcement is how these world leaders think they can just decide how much warmer the earth is going to get, as if they're setting a maximum level of inflation or a budget cap for a quango. One can't help but bring to mind a certain King Canute...

Well we dont really know how much thermal inertia from the oceans is helping to cool things, dimming from industrial waste, what will happen if we do lose the summer ice cap, what methane feed backs will kick in and how fast, how much will changes to cloud cover affect temperatures including night temps....

We are poking a metaphorical bear with a big stick on and assuming as the last one did not wake him neither will the next one.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The best part of this announcement is how these world leaders think they can just decide how much warmer the earth is going to get, as if they're setting a maximum level of inflation or a budget cap for a quango. One can't help but bring to mind a certain King Canute...

Spot on. Fucking hubris ...

 

[david dissadent]

Interesting study.

Link

The new record reveals a systematic equilibrium relationship between global temperature and CO2 concentrations and sea-level changes over the last five glacial cycles. Projection of this relationship to today's CO2 concentrations results in a sea-level at 25 (±5) metres above the present. This is in close agreement with independent sea-level data from the Middle Pliocene epoch, 3-3.5 million years ago, when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were similar to the present-day value. This suggests that the identified relationship accurately records the fundamental long-term equilibrium behaviour of the climate system over the last 3.5 Million years.

Like everything its not set in stone but it is very suggestive of what we have to achieve in order to save major cities. We seriously need to begin power down our civilisation to live on a lower power consumption model. Change our economic system to one is not predicated about endless growth but rewards efficiency savings.

If CO2 is geniuinly a greenhouse gas, if we really are heating up the earth then the hour is very very late indeed. Scope for the 'yes its warming because of us but its not a big problem' types is squeezing samller and smaller every other month.

Act or consaquencies.

 

[Nikolai]

The only way we can stop global warming in the very short time we have is to dramatically cut population levels:

ENVIRONMENTAL FASCISM - Birth rates needs to crash to a minimum. If only a few people had kids - by the next generation the Earth would have a human population that it would be able to cope with and our future would be secured. How such a drastic measure can be out in place is a stumper.

STOP PROCREATING NOW!!!!
PROCREATE TO YOUR PERIL!

Who's in?!

 

[kyser_soze]

Nahh, bigfish would have started screaming hysterically about conspiracies and accusing us of being agents of the illuminati (or other spooky group) by now.

And banging on about Sol being made of iron, not gas.

I still smile every time I think about that thread.

 

[Nikolai]

Human over-population is the central environmental and socio-political problem we have today. Some ideas to reduce population:



End tax deductions for kids. Replace deductions with birth taxes.

Encourage birth control of all kinds, including abortion, freely available to all. Genetic identity is the only thing that begins at conception. Consciousness grows continuously, hopefully throughout life.

Develop new contraception methods.

Change attitudes about sex. Support "Make love not babies". Recognise that "make love" does not mean the same as "have sex". Encourage many forms of non-reproductive sex as expressions of love. Stop making sexuality the one big area that we are afraid to, or have to be very cautious about, teaching our children.

 

[kyser_soze]

All you do there is create a massively top heavy population that are actually more energy intensive to look after and less able to provide all care for themselves by dropping the birth rate. in 50-70 years time you end up with a population that's 70% old and unproductive, 30% young and productive...which is happening now in most of the Western economies (most notably Japan and Germany).

So no, your idea is shite, quite frankly. All we need to do is stabilise the population by averaging breeding at replacement rate, not growth rate.

 

[Random]

This is also a ludicrous idea because the areas where people are having the most children are the ones where fewest resources are consumed - and which have the highest infant mortality rates. So applying this idea would essentially be to condemn millions of the poorest in the world to greater poverty, in order to offset rich world emissions..

 

[elbows]

When it comes to the rather sensitive issues of population, it does seem that this issue may have have driven some policies in the 1970's, possibly no coincidence that some powers that be sstarted fretting about that issue in the decade where environmental & resource overstretch started to loom large on the radar.

Still when looking at the concerns that some powers had about birth rate and demographics, their interest could have been more to do with lots of young people causing trouble in countries whose resources we wanted to exploit.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

There's a spot-on quote from Murray Bookchin someplace in one of his articles savaging the deep ecology types and the malthusians, saying in effect ...

'While we still have grow-or-die capitalism, anything you have to say about limiting population is basically meaningless."

Of course if you don't think there is any imaginable alternative to grow-or-die capitalism, then obviously you need to start thinking about killing off some poor/brown people in the name of preserving prosperity ...

 

[elbows]

Even leaving aside the population issue, I do sense that some would rather have decline, just so they can create room for giddy growth again later, than stability.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Even leaving aside the population issue, I do sense that some would rather have decline, just so they can create room for giddy growth again later, than stability.

From what I've seen, say in the advice part of the Stern Report, the ruling class strategy for dealing with climate change is basically to use it to screw those worse off than themselves. Domestically via 'Green Taxation' and overseas by forcing the countries worst affected to go further into debt to buy 'climate change insurance' via the IMF/World Bank and then to force further rounds of structural adjustment on them to pay off the companies from the developing world who will be involved in lucrative contracts to build dykes, desalination plants and the industrial agribiz conglomerates who will move in to reclaimed land at the expense of the former indigenous inhabitants.

It'll be pink fucking gins all round in the City.

 

[Nikolai]

Socialist sci-fi authors' field day

 

[Dr Jon]

I just spotted this article by Jim Hansen, in which he attacks recent proposals as deckchair-shuffling:

Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I'm naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let's pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.

The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

This is a sign that things are starting to get real ugly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/12/india-water-supply-bhopal

 

[elbows]

This is a sign that things are starting to get real ugly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/12/india-water-supply-bhopal

Oh dear. Even more worrying is that situations like this may be coming to fruition even without climate change, rising populations in the wrong place and droughts due to the occasional random seasonal variation that seems to always be a feature of weather. Add climate change and its even worse.

 

[ericjarvis]

From what I've seen, say in the advice part of the Stern Report, the ruling class strategy for dealing with climate change is basically to use it to screw those worse off than themselves.

They do it with everything else, why should climate change be any different?

 

[goebfwai]

The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'
Authoritative new study sets out a grim vision of shortages and violence – but amid all the gloom, there is some hope too
By Jonathan Owen
Independent on Sunday
12 July 2009

"An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse".

Article continues below:
http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...l-cause-civilisation-to-collapse-1742759.html

 

[kyser_soze]

The Independent is basically the Daily Mail for liberals - it's agenda is fear, it just has a different set of basic stories it uses.

 

[elbows]

The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'
Article continues below:
http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...l-cause-civilisation-to-collapse-1742759.html

These sorts of articles are what make me think that climate change is being used as a euphemism for other big problems such as peak oil.

 

[goebfwai]

Boiling the Frog - Creeping Disaster for the Economy and the Planet
by Paul Krugman
New York Times
12 July 2009

"Now that the free fall is over, all sense of urgency seems to have vanished. This will probably change once the reality of the jobless recovery becomes all too apparent. But by then it will be too late to avoid a slow-motion human and social disaster. Still, the boiled-frog problem on the economy is nothing compared with the problem of getting action on climate change. Put it this way: if the consensus of the economic experts is grim, the consensus of the climate experts is utterly terrifying. At this point, the central forecast of leading climate models — not the worst-case scenario but the most likely outcome — is utter catastrophe, a rise in temperatures that will totally disrupt life as we know it, if we continue along our present path. How to head off that catastrophe should be the dominant policy issue of our time."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/opinion/13krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

 

[Dr Jon]

... James Hansen and his peers around the world at leading research centers such as the UK's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, urge more significant and immediate cuts than the finance-sector friendly cap-and-trade system can deliver

link

... and instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

link

Looks like the money juggling twats are doing everything they can to ensure they get one more (final?) attempt on the twin peaks of greed and stupidity.