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Science News

More Bad News About Global Warming 852

IZ Reloaded writes "A UK govt report says that greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts that previously thought. Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. From BBC: The European Union has adopted a target of preventing a rise in global average temperature of more than two Celsius. That, according to the report, might be too high, with two degrees being enough to trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet.... A rise of two Celsius, researchers conclude, will be enough to cause: * Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world * Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia * Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification * Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage * 97% loss of coral reefs * Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus * Spread of malaria in Africa and north America"
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More Bad News About Global Warming

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:18AM (#14597315)
    La La La La LA!!!!

    Can't hear you! Not happening! No consensus!

    Love,
    George

    [George W. Bush appears by kind co-operation of Exxon, Inc]
  • "Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world * Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia * Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification * Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage * 97% loss of coral reefs * Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus * Spread of malaria in Africa and north America"

    Eh. Worse things could happen. I'm only half-joking. If they had to resort to "extinction of the polar bear and wal

    • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:22AM (#14597333) Homepage
      "If they had to resort to "extinction of the polar bear and walrus" for a seven-item list of "what could happen if there's global warming," we're not in such bad shape"

      You moron. The extinction of large mammals is a pretty damn serious effect. Go off and play with your toys and leave the talking to the adults.
      • by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:29AM (#14597362) Homepage Journal

        Yet around here people are glad of the "nice weather." This time of year there should be some serious snow on the ground around here, not partially green grass. Sooner or later, we're all going to pay for the "nice weather."

      • by sehryan ( 412731 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:38AM (#14597401)
        No doubt. The penguin population would explode in such a situation. And believe me, the last thing this world needs is more penguins!
      • Re:I've heard worse (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You moron. The extinction of large mammals is a pretty damn serious effect. Go off and play with your toys and leave the talking to the adults.

        Presumably, wooly mammoths and mastodons were victims of global warming. Please explain the "damn seriousness" of their extinction, and its long-term effects on whatever the fuck you were trying to talk about.
        • Without Woolly Mammoths to keep them in check the population of sabre-tooth arctic tigers will sky rocket! We won't be able to move without tripping over hungry, carnivorous, tundral mammals. Unless we act now to save the mammoths we're doomed! Doomed I tell you!
    • yes, and if the sea level rises we'll just have a situation like the floods in New Orleans, and that mustn't have been so bad anyway since people were complaining about looting even though people steal from shops in normal times.
    • by sleekus_geekus ( 578751 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:30AM (#14597367)
      Perhaps the loss of Krill [wikipedia.org] is far more worrying, close to the bottom rung on many food chains (phytoplankton an algae are below them) many species rely directally and indirectally upon these tiny crustaceans. The lost of such an important species would be far reaching, and its effects would be felt in all the worlds oceans.
    • Ever heard of an ecosystem?
  • Yes Yes (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:19AM (#14597319) Homepage Journal
    All those problems, but whats on the mind of most people here is - will it affect my WoW ping times?
  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:19AM (#14597321) Homepage
    Even with the best will in the world (and that is sorely lacking
    from certain countries - and thats not just a pop at the US, I'm
    talking china, australia, india etc) we can't suddenly all switch
    to nuclear and wind/solar/wave power overnight. CO2 will continue
    to be released and the temperature is likely to go over the 2C
    rise this century. I suspect the writing is on the wall for a
    large part of the next generation of people on this planet , and
    possibly us too if we live long enough.
    • Well there you go (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Unski ( 821437 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:24AM (#14597344) Journal
      It's inevitable, just what we were wanting to hear. Now we don't have to bother changing our ways, we can just sit back and wait for it, with a newly-invigorated sense of nihilism. If you were hesitating to buy that SUV you wanted, well, now, you may as well get it.

      For a while I thought there would be the danger that we would have to do something....phew!
      • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:28AM (#14597358) Homepage
        I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything about it. But theres a
        large percentage of both the general population and governments
        who either don't get it or don't care and they won't change their
        ways in time for it to make a difference. IMO. Perhaps I'm just
        being pessimistic. I certainly hope I'm wrong.
        • by VdG ( 633317 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:51AM (#14598216)
          Lovelock was on "Start the Week" this morning, (BBC Radio 4), plugging his latest book.

          What he said was that global warming is unstoppable, as far as the UK is concerned: we don't contribute enough to the problem to make a difference by reducing our own carbon emissionis. Therefore what the UK Government should be doing is taking steps to alleviate the inevitable effects of climate change. e.g. Improving flood defences, moving populations out of low-lying areas such as London, moving away from reliance on imports.

          There is still some dispute over whether human activity is contributing significantly to global warming but surely there cannot be much doubt that it is taking place. And whatever the reasons the effects will be the same and we should be prepared to deal with them.
    • by VolciMaster ( 821873 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:38AM (#14598102) Homepage
      Nuclear power is cheap, safe, and efficient. Pebble bed reactors, which the Chinese have been playing with for a few years now, are especially safe. So long as a viable method of transporting and storing the waste material is found (many options for which exist now), it's the easiest way of moving away from coal and oil dependency for electrical energy generation on the grid. Admittedly, disposing of the waste from the plant is an issue, but most of the UN's IPCC contributors are big proponents of using nuclear power.

      Solar and wind power is great, but you need a lot of space, and continuous wind and sunlight for them to be worthwhile. Wind power gets maligned for the damage it causes to birds, but I'm not really worried about the sparrow, pigeon, and crow populations. There is some interesting wind research being done on Canada's Prince Edward Island, with vertical, horizontal, and variable-incidence and -wind-speed devices.

      Hydro power is clean, endlessly renewable, and well understood, but gets bad-mouthed for the impact it has on migrating fish populations. Wave power is an interesting possibility, but more research needs to be done on it.

      At the personal - ie non-grid - level, installing better insulation, efficient HVAC systems, and switching to fuel cells for home power supplementation/generation are all things many homeowners can do to improve their personal costs, and reduce their draw from the grid.

      Since the world's population is likely to only expand for a while yet, it would be good for the countries that can afford it to move to better sources of power generation to start to clean the air of particulate matter over themselves. It's really a political decision, though, now, and not an economic one. For several years it has been more economically viable (mid- to long-term) to use non-fossil fuel generation, but the political will to do so hasn't been there. Maybe with current oil prices it will begin to appear.

      • Pretty much all nuclear plants are economically unviable. The French goverment, the greatest proponent of nuclear power in the Western World, pretty much is broken due to subsidies given to the nuclear industry.

        The same goes for the nuclear industry in the US, UK, Japan and let not mention China, they still use socialism and communism in many instances, power supply is one of them (i.e. entirley subsidized by the state).

        Our only salvation lies in changing our attitue towards energy:

        -We have to save energy:
      • do you back the right of Iran to build nuclear power stations then? ditto north korea, Iraq and Syria?
        Nuclear has many problems. Wind Wave, Solar, tidal, and energy conservation have much less.
    • by ajs ( 35943 )
      Of course, a global temperature drop of 5 degrees C could cause the Greenland ice sheets to melt (since global temperatures do not have the same first derivative at all locations -- far from it).

      That said, we're at the top of a massive rise in temperatures that goes back over 100,000 years, and while we have no concrete idea what triggers those changes, we're CERTAIN that a global rise of 2 degrees celcius is right around the corner.

      Still, no one has answered my question that I've asked here on Slashdot man
  • act now (Score:2, Insightful)

    by matrem ( 806375 )
    Global warming is happening right now [bbc.co.uk]. Purely from an economic point of view, it would be both wiser and less costly if we apprehend the problem in the present and not postpone.
  • so, (Score:2, Funny)

    by scenestar ( 828656 )
    How much more proof do we need before those that believe in "intelligent design" finally accpet the affects of global warming.
  • by wing03 ( 654457 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:22AM (#14597334)
    So, I hear republicans and big oil business folks still call this a theory.

    We, north of that country, just barely (and fortunately) elected a government who feels the same way.

    We're having a winter heat wave here in Southern Ontario while our summers have been bloody unbearable with bad air days...weeks, high humidity and high temperatures while massive flooding and totally untypical weather hits different parts of the world.

    Exactly, what are these folks not seeing when it comes to denying global warming?
    • Exactly, what are these folks not seeing when it comes to denying global warming?

      Dollar signs.

      Well, the type of $ that keeps them supplied with power and influence. Once they figure out how to stay in power without the rest of us being dependant on fossil fuels, greenhouse gases will begin to not be a problem.

      Soko
    • by Shivetya ( 243324 )
      that you have to hold the whole world liable for the fix. Kyoto did not do this and that invalidates it. The Western world countries have gone to great extents to clean up their environments, the US is nearly a whole different country in regards to the environment since the 70s. Places where pollution was obvious but ignored are now safe.

      Blaming the issue of non-compliance on oil and republicans is just playing stupid politics. If anything it is the standard lame attempt to make it appear one has a vali
      • by barawn ( 25691 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:14AM (#14598384) Homepage
        We have NASA ice cores that show more wild swings in our temperatures and more extremes than we see now.

        Well, when we're at the extreme for a temperature swing, that's a little too late to act.

        We're already off the charts for something else - carbon dioxide. We know that CO2 plays a huge role when it comes to temperature, life, and oh, a half dozen other things.

        Why isn't it enough that CO2 is off the charts (and accelerating off the charts) for the current geologic epoch? We know it's anthropogenic. It's not sustainable to have the rate of CO2 emissions that we have. Why isn't that enough?
      • by caudron ( 466327 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:44AM (#14598632) Homepage
        We have NASA ice cores that show more wild swings in our temperatures and more extremes than we see now. [...] We constantly get contradicting reports about [...] the cause of Global Warming [...] What sinks the Global Warming cause more than anything is that even the GW side cannot agree on all the causes

        So what? We can't figure out what's causing it so we are gonna ignore it? Stop throwing this "we don't even know what causes it" smokescreen around and spend some time thinking about what we do agree on. It is happening and no matter what else, that is NOT a good thing!

        Perhaps a report claiming even more dire issues or a faster occurence of them?

        Don't even start with that "we don't agree on the effects" bullshit either. We all agree that it ain't good for us. The specifics of our troubles are not important. This is a boondoggle that does nothing but obscure the real point. We are in trouble and we need to start fixing it.

        China is coming up like the old Eastern Soviet states did, ramping up without regard for the environment or people around them.

        China has just recently begun correcting many of their environmental policies. They spent the better part of 3 decades ramping up industry without concern for the environment, but the government is trying to fix the problem. The people are even rioting over the pollution issue now. They are trying, which is more than I can say for us in the U.S.

        Kyoto did not do this and that invalidates it.

        I agree, but it's retarded to walk away from the table as Bush did over the problems with Kyoto. It suggests that he doesn't want to see the problem addressed. If you have a problem with a treaty, you don't say "Fuck it, that sucks so I'm outta here". You say "That sucks. Let's try this instead." You negotiate a better treaty. The fact that he walked away without so much as trying that speaks volumes about his underlying intent and motives.

        Blaming the issue of non-compliance on oil and republicans is just playing stupid politics.

        No one is playing politics here but you. I voted for Bush in 2000. I have no agenda against him or his party. But he has screwed up and he is playing fast-and-loose with our environment in a dangerous way. It's just "playing politics" to ignore that and throw up obfusticating arguments to the contrary.

        FYI, I did not vote for him in 2004. I don't like being lied to and I don't hold any allegiance to any political party.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Back in the 70's it was a definite scientific fact that we were suffering from Global Cooling. We were going to lose all those species from loss of habitat, loss of crops due to lack of heat, blah, blah, blah.

      My, how short-sighted we get when the natural climatological changes of the planet fit in with our political goals.
    • Do yourself a favor and go read some studies on the history of climate change over the last 100,000 years (taken from ice samples). I don't argue that dumping stuff into the atmosphere is bad, but fluctuations in global climate is rather common. There have been times in the planet's past (within the last 100,000) years where the climate was MUCH warmer with much higher concentrations of C02.

      It's laudable and and a worthy goal to reduce the crap being put into the atmosphere, but to attribute current climate
    • "Exactly, what are these folks not seeing when it comes to denying global warming?"

      Well, my guess is they're not seeing an apocalyptic trend when they look at a single data point.

      Which is what you just did, by the way, use a very small set of data to imply that there is a trend.

      More importantly, there aren't a whole lot of credible people denying global warming, they just seem to be bickering about the consequences and sources of it.

      And frankly, I think that's a valuable debate (until it gets reduced to "do
    • Exactly, what are these folks not seeing when it comes to denying global warming?

      One thing I'm see right now is the eagerness to believe in global warming. You're so eager in fact, that you're claiming one year's weather in your local area as evidence of it. One year's weather isn't the "climate", and Southern Ontario isn't "global".

      Maybe if the global warming proponents would try to be scientists rather than advocates, more people would take them seriously. Stop pimping it so much.

      That goes for science
  • by TFGeditor ( 737839 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:25AM (#14597348) Homepage
    No, Chicken Little, the sky is not falling. That's just rain falling on your head. Acid rain, maybe, but rain just the same.

  • Collate = hand pick (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RacerZero ( 848545 )
    "...collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference..." In other words Hand Picked without controlling for bias. Where is the link to the actual studies that were used? What was rejected? Looks like more media based science.
  • by Woldry ( 928749 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:39AM (#14597403) Journal
    Er ... if you read TFA closely, the report doesn't actually say what the headline seems to imply -- i.e., that greenhouse gases have been demonstrated to be more effective in causing global warming than previously thought. It says that the effects of global warming have been modeled to be more drastic than previously thought.

    This is a subtle but vitally important distinction that the writers of the article themselves don't seem to grasp. To quote from TFA:

    But Miles Allen, a lecturer on atmospheric physics at Oxford University, said assessing a "safe level" of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was "a bit like asking a doctor what's a safe number of cigarettes to smoke per day".

    "There isn't one but at the same time people do smoke and live until they're 90," he told Today.

    "It's one of those difficult areas where we're talking about changing degrees of risk rather than a very definite number after which we can say with absolute certainty that certain things will happen."


    Given that CO2 is naturally found in the atmosphere, and was so long before humanity came on the scene, and is essential for the continuation of plant life on this planet, Allen's comparison of it to an external disease-causing agent is a very odd statement.

    I'm waiting to see a study on global warming that actually takes into account the fact that we are still coming out of the last ice age (or out of the Little Ice Age); that the planet (and our species) has survived far more drastic climate change in the past; and that such climate change had nothing to do with human action. When those facts (and they are facts) are taken into account, how much actual evidence is there that the current climate change is due to human causes? Is there any at all?

    I don't intend this as a troll. Seriously, if anyone can link to studies that take those facts into account, I'd very much like to read them.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:10AM (#14597565)
      try RealClimate.org [realclimate.org] and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [www.ipcc.ch] (IPCC).

      I've read all the papers (a few in summary form only) from the conference on which this report is based. The BBC report accurately reflects what I have read.
       
    • by Koiu Lpoi ( 632570 ) <koiulpoi@gma i l .com> on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:20AM (#14597608)
      The question is not whether or not the Earth will survive. It is whether or not my future grandchildren will survive. It is not whether or not life will continue, it is whether or not our lives will continue. It's not a question of whether or not global warming causes are natural or not. It's whether we can do anything about it.
    • Once again various aspect of a huge and diverse issue are conflated...

      Many studies (including anylising ice cores which contain atmospheric records going back millenia) have shown that CO2 has risien since the industrial revolution and temperatures have risen too. The evidence it there go and read the papers.

      It's not just about survival of the species, if we as a species just wanted to survive we would still be living in caves. We are intelligent, which means that we are aware of others, society and some ki
      • Many studies (including anylising ice cores which contain atmospheric records going back millenia) have shown that CO2 has risien since the industrial revolution and temperatures have risen too. The evidence it there go and read the papers.

        First off, I have read the papers.

        Second, as you may have heard elsewhere, correlation is not causation.

        Third, while the CO2 rises from those studies are large, they are not accompanied by a correspondingly large rise in global temperatures. In fact, I recall a
  • We need to act now (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sheepcentral ( 914661 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:40AM (#14597410) Homepage
    This is why we need to act now. Even if we don't do much and we only reduce the our CO2 emissions by an extra 1% (for illustrative purposes not actual figure) by doing easy things like turning our TVs off at the wall rather than putting them on standby, walking to places near our houses, not leaving our computers on all day while we are not at home etc. Then at least we will be giving our selves more of a chance to sort out this mess.

    I am angry that countries like America, Austraila and China will not sign up to the Kyoto treaty as they are some of the largest contributers to CO2 emissions, and the other parts of the world that are doing thier bit to reduce emissions are then getting short changed because the good that they are doing is being made almost pointless because places like America are still polluting lots and the whole world will suffer not just America. The world is a "team game" we need to work together on this one. America (and the others) should stop thinking about thier oil centric economies and think about the future of our planet.

    I am also irritated and scared that the American electorate keeps voting Bush in, he really is a moron, how can the American people trust such an idiot to run thier country. It would be much better to bring Clinton back in my view.
    • easy things like turning our TVs off at the wall rather than putting them on standby

      I'll start doing this when I am able to buy an affordable model that doesn't require me to reprogram all the bloody channels and settings every time the thing gets unpowered.
    • Badly known facts (Score:3, Informative)

      by matrem ( 806375 )
      China signed AND ratified the Kyoto protocol.
      The US signed the Kyoto protocol, but did not ratify it.
      Australia signed nor ratified the Kyoto protocol.
    • by Dausha ( 546002 )
      ". . . China will not sign up to the Kyoto treaty . . ."

      China *did* sign the treaty, as another. fellow posted. But, what's more important, because China is a 'developing' country, it is not bound by Kyoto. So, they can pollute to their heart's content, as can any other 'developing' nation. This, to me, shows the hypocracy of Kyoto. The US is already more efficient than China in dealing with its pollution (though it may produce more), but people complain when we don't sign the treaty. Other nations are alre
  • by WetCat ( 558132 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:41AM (#14597415)
    In Russia we are having one of the COLDEST winters in history!
    It looks here that not a global warming, but a global permafrost is coming!
    we experienced -15 F here! and some experienced -20!
    • First of all it is not even close to being as cold as 1978. It was -47 in Moscow on New Years eve that winter.

      Second, the last several summers have been the hottest on record as well with record numbers of forest fires, etc.

      If the current model for global warming is to be believed the gulfstream should weaken which will lead to continentalisation of the climate in Europe. Colder winters and hotter summers. So far it more or less matches the picture. In fact it is expected to get worse. In the worst case sce
    • by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:53AM (#14598718)
      >> In Russia we are having one of the COLDEST winters in history!

      It's only the planetary average temperature that will increase with global warming, and not by a lot.

      In contrast, local temperatures will both increase and decrease in a far more complicated pattern across the world, and by comparatively large amounts. Although simulations vary quite a lot in their predictions, the areas of major change are quite clear.

      Northern Europe seems quite likely to suffer the largest downward changes, because an early consequence of the melting of the Greenland glaciers and surrounding ice shelves will be that the "Atlantic Conveyor" (a closed circuit of ocean currents) will grind to a halt. The Gulf Stream is already slowing, and there is absolutely no way to reverse this trend. The inevitable result will be that the quite warm climate in the coastal European countries up at around 50-60 degrees North will plunge towards the deep continental average ... the balmy UK winters will start to look more like those of Siberia.

      Likewise, the equatorial hot spots are expected to rise in temperature by a lot more than the planetary average, with quite appalling consequences for their populations. Anyone who thinks that "2 degrees of global warming" will be barely noticeable in Africa is confusing "global" with "local".
  • by Woldry ( 928749 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @07:41AM (#14597416) Journal
    What exactly is "tripling of poor harvests"?

    We'll have poor harvests that are three times as big as previous poor harvests? We'll have poor harvests three times as often as we do now? We'll have harvests that yield only one-third as much as we do now? Or something else?

    And how is "poor harvests" defined?
  • Is it even possible to reverse global warming? If every bad emission was to stop today all of a sudden, would it take hundreds of years to start having an effect?

    Hopefully, something can be done to slow or stop its progress. I don't see the world stopping all its emissions suddenly, maybe people will have to directly see its negative impact for them to start caring/thinking about this problem.
  • I'm in the very small minority who believe that global cooling is the more likely possibility in the near future; warming won't continue much longer.

    So relax and enjoy the warmth while it lasts ...

    I know I will be today with temperatures over 20F above normal with the high temp expected to be around 60F in the Reading, Pennsylvania area :)

    Ron
  • by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:02AM (#14597517)
    I really wish that we would search for solutions outside of prevention. Breaks are nice, but if they fail, I would like a seatbelt, an air bag, a crumple zone, and a roll cage. The simple fact of the matter is that I honestly don't think that the world has the will to slow its green house gas output.

    The US is not going to relocate its populace into central locations and build a massive public transport project. China (or any other developing nation for the matter) is not going to tell 1.3 billion people that are always on the verge of a violent revolution to come out of poverty slowly so that they don't dump green house gases with their inefficient industries. Hell, even the modest targets set up by Kyoto are going to be a struggle for most nations to reach. Simply put, the world is addicted and the addiction isn't going to stop. If the threat truly is sever and looming, hitting the breaks as hard as we can muster is a nice first step, but it sure as hell shouldn't be the last.

    Billions of people are coming out of poverty and starting to really consume for the first time. These people simply well not accept being told they can't live like the people in first world nations do. Older first world nations like the US are already built on an infrastructure that is both physical and political that precludes massive societal alterations to truly reduce green house gas output. Even the EU has limits as to how far they can cut back. Combine these factors and it is pretty clear we can't back peddle. We can slow and delay which are good first steps, but with 3-4 billion or so people coming out of poverty, that is about all we can do.

    I think we need a three fold strategy.

    First, we need to delay. Reducing output and gathering climate data is something that has already been initiated. This is a trend that needs to continue in so much as far is possible, but it can't be the only thing that is done.

    Second, we need alternative technologies to that can maintain our standard of living while reducing emissions. Perhaps more importantly, we need to have these technologies in place such that they can be transferred to rising third world nations. 1.3 billion Chinese can not live like Europeans, much less Americans, and have the same inefficiency that they suffer with now. Fusion, fissions, clean coal technology, hybrids, all of these things are steps in the right direction.

    Third, we should seriously consider the possibility that the first two steps are not going to work and seriously consider methods to terraform Earth to maintain the status quo, or at least to blunt serious and dramatic changes. If we can say with some level of certainty that our climate models are good enough to link humans to global warming and foresee serious consequences in the future, we need to take those same models and predict ways to offset those changes. I find it hard to believe that we have enough power to warm the planet, yet lack the power to cool it. If this really is a grave concern, money should start being funneled into global climate control now. An international treaty organization should begin hammering out the framework for altering the global weather in a manner that is agreeable to as many as possible.

    In my opinion, it isn't enough to simply demand the insane and expect 3-4 billion poor to rise out of poverty, but do it such that they do it without creating a global impact. The wave is coming. If we truly have convinced ourselves that it is upon us, we need to recognize the fact that 3-4 billion people going through an industrial revolution is messy at best, and prepare in ways that recognize that environmentalism alone isn't enough to stop what is coming.
    • First, we need to delay

      Many of the climate models you put so much stock in say that it's a runaway reaction once started. If you truly believe the models you refer to in step 3 of your plan, you should throw away step 1.

      Regarding your second step, and alternative energies, absolutely. Fission Fission Fission. Ironically, and very sadly, environmentalists, with their short sighted and uninformed no-nucleaer agenda, may have done more to harm the environment than the oil industry.

      If we can say with some l
  • by oldCoder ( 172195 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:09AM (#14597554)
    People care more about these long term issues when they're young. And they care more about them if they have lots of kids. I'm well into middle age without kids and find that these sorts of issues just don't move me the way they did when I was 20.

    The US population is aging and having fewer kids. The European population is aging even faster and having even fewer kids. Except that the European Arabs are young and having lots of kids. Mix it all together and let me know if you figure it out...

  • Reply (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:11AM (#14597571) Journal
    "Theres lots of studies and they all say different things, so we're going to listen to the one which makes us the most profit".

    I'm not sure if I feel sorry for these people or myself. These people will be dead in 30-40 years so not see the worse of it, I on the other hand have another 50-60 if I keep myself in a good condition. If the current models are correct I should exprience quite extreme weather by the time I get old enough for a brisk cold to be quite risky for my heatlh..

    Profit comes before damage if you're not going to live to see the damage it's self.
  • by Dekortage ( 697532 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:20AM (#14597605) Homepage

    Here in New York (USA), the energy sector has been decentralized, so we can choose our suppliers for electricity. I've chosen one that is entirely based on wind and hydro power. Sure, it costs me an extra $10-$20/month, but it is one small thing that _I_ can do.

    We keep looking to governments to impose a change on us, but what are we doing about it for ourselves?

    • > Here in New York (USA), the energy sector has been decentralized, so we can choose our suppliers for electricity. I've chosen one that is entirely based on wind and hydro power. Sure, it costs me an extra $10-$20/month, but it is one small thing that _I_ can do.

      Unfortunately I don't remember the details, I saw a news story a few weeks back that said that people who made that choice in whatever region they were talking about finally started coming out ahead money-wise, and they were having a lottery for
  • by denis-The-menace ( 471988 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:47AM (#14598181)
    I remember watching documentary called Phenomenon: The Lost Archives [imdb.com] about how from Florida to south of texas would be underwater, california gone too. And yes, a huge world population drop between now and 2050. At the time it seemed like the ramblings of a crack head but to day it is very plausible.

    Therefore forget the instant freeze of "The day after tomorrow" and prepare for the instant flood.

    Companies have only one goal:get rich quick.
    Nobody would build a hybrid with a 120V socket capable to drive power tools and a microwave. That's because it would kill some of the same company's other business: Portable generators, regular cars, trucks and SUVs. (Not to mention the housing business since you could live in your car in style!)
    You won't see a solar rechargeable Cell phone/MP3/Flashlight/am~fm radio/garage door openner/Car key for at least 40 years. Why? because it would kill the disposable battery business. (BTW: did you know that a AA has more juice than a C or D cell! look at the specs on the rechargeables.)

    It's all about creating waste to for us to consume more to drive profits.
    Were all gonna drown for these assholes' profits.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

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