"Too late to avoid global warming" say scientists (The Independent)

[arenean]

A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures – the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change which will expose millions to drought, hunger and flooding – is now "very unlikely" to be avoided, the world's leading climate scientists said yesterday.

<snip>
Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, said that 2015 was the last year in which the world could afford a net rise in greenhouse gas emissions, after which "very sharp reductions" are required.
<snip>

"Too late to avoid global warming" say scientists

[rawtribe]

1. Maybe

it's because I now live in the middle of a pine beetle infestation. Maybe it's because the tide pools I remember from my boyhood are gone?
I think the time to act is over.

My message to the youth, if you love your children, you won't have them.

Please, prove me wrong!

[Raincloud_2008]

2. environmental issues

this is probably an unpopular stance but has anyone considered
that maybe we are being told all this stuff to keep us scared
and conditioned? Other scientists are apparently saying this
isn't so and the leader of the IPCC is not as experienced as
some of these other blokes.
Some of the scientist who first promoted this concept are now
backing away from them.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

Respectfully I think we are all being conditioned into small
think boxes. Folks on the "right political mind set"
conditioned to fear terrorists and embrace micro chip
technology.
Those on the left or middle of the road who may not be buying
into terrorism etc are being herded along by environmental
nazi types.
I'm not saying that we don't need to keep the planet cleaner
or moderate the waste that we are putting out but i am
saying...
can we consider that this may be a scare tactic and nothing
more?

[Nihil]

3. Respectfully ...

... no, you are 100% wrong on this and can prove it for yourself
if you were the slightest bit interested in the words you've chosen
for your post title.

To say more would get my post deleted.

[lapfog_1]

5. Uhh... the fabled (and fantasy) Northwest passage

is now (today) a reality. Not fantasy anymore.

Right now, there are species of flora and fauna in my back yard (I'm in Arizona) that have only existed in Mexico before. There are armadillos in Missouri (and have been for 4 or 5 years). I grew up in Kansas and Missouri some 40 years ago, and I can tell you that there weren't armadillos around then.

Not to mention that I worked for NASA for over 10 years and, specifically, worked on the EOSDIS project (all those ocean temperature animations and other remote sensing data)... and EVERY scientist I worked with had the uniform opinion that the climate is changing and that mankind is the cause. Every one of them. And that was back in the 1990s. There is a *lot* more confirming evidence since then.

Repeat... the northwest passage is now OPEN (ice free). If that doesn't scare you to your core, nothing else will.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Which part of the science don't you buy? That burning fossil fuels produces CO2?

That CO2 levels have increased dramatically in a very short time- the time since the start of the industrial revolution?

That CO2 lets sunlight in but traps heat? (Here's a tip. Try vacationing on Venus)

Bullshit. The science is THERE. It is simple, straightforward, and when the mountains of evidence are analyzed, the truth is undeniable. Like Evolution, Global Warming- driven by human activities- is a FACT.

The only so-called "scientists" who don't agree are the ones who are PAID to create a "controversy" where there is none.

Again, just like evolution.

What, precisely, would be the point of "environmental nazi types" using "scare tactics" on this? To get people to stop using an environmentally damaging, non-sustainable fuel source that we happen to need to import from countries run by extremist whackjobs? Oh, yeah- those environmental nazi types, what are they trying to pull on us now? I'm sure Al Gore is gonna get rich from this Global Warming "hoax"...


...right?

Give me a break. Even IF Global Warming weren't happening- and it is- figuring out a better way to power our shit would make sense anyway, because in addition to everything I listed above, oil is a resource that we have to pump out of the ground, and being that the Earth is a round* sphere of finite volume, even if the Earth were made entirely of oil (it's not) eventually it would run out anyway. So what's the harm in trying to find other ways to meet our power needs?

None, I guess, unless you're the CEO of Chevron.

*The Earth is Round: You do accept THAT science, right?

[lapfog_1]

9. Wacthed Countdown tonight

and they had the tape of "The View" with some idiot that not only didn't believe in evolution at all, she also wasn't sure that the earth is a globe... my jaw dropped. I think even Baba Wawa's jaw dropped... on camera. I'm thinking that the new "conservative" (to replace the other idiot conservative???) isn't going to last long.

[Warren DeMontague]

28. I know. Every time I think I'm satirizing the fundy nutjobs, they go and beat me to it.

"Yeah, well, you crazy fundy fucks want to put gays to death and throw women in jail for fucking before marriage"

"...so?"

[sam sarrha]

8. be VERY scared and dont have any children... there are all sorts of coincidental problems attached

to global warming we didn't know before... like the set back due to global cooling..the pollution we now produce.. even contrails of aircraft are a dam holding back several degrees of warming..if we clean up the air we could produce a terrible catastrophe, and the methane released by warming can exponentially increase previous calculations.. we are fucked..and our children willl pay the real price

[Delphinus]

17. I'm reading the book

With Speed & Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change and the scientist who wrote the book, Fred Pearce, talks about this very thing! The last chapter I just read talked about if we repair the ozone layer, it reduces a chemical needed to clean up the very air we breathe!

[bananas]

16. It's always important to consider those things

so consider these statements:

"Waxman: I hear people worry about destroying the economy. That sounds like fear. I also hear an almost theological support for nuclear. I agree with your view -- let's unleash the ingenuity of the marketplace. But we have to insist on those reductions."
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/21/64353/7250

"Consider the reaction of his old colleagues at The Economist, which only a few short years ago was underwriting his Copenhagen Consensus work. "Just as mankind caused the problem," the editors said, "so mankind can stop it -- and at a reasonable cost." The 0.12 percent a year drag on GDP? "The world would barely notice such figures," said the magazine, hardly noted for its casual attitude about economic growth."
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/17/21135/7701

"State renewable electricity standards create jobs while cutting pollution"
http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/18/renewable-electricity-standards-jobs-pollution/

[hatrack]

18. The National Post? "Environmental Nazi types"? Yeah, you go have a SUPER day now, OK?

:eyes:

[lapfog_1]

4. Yup...

The processes that the climatologists thought were slow and gradual are turning out to be (relatively) rapid. Positive feedback loops abound in the area of climate change. If the oceans warm enough to let the hydrates unfreeze, it won't matter a whit if we quit driving and burning coal tomorrow...

The new planet that will result will not feed 7 billion people... forget about it supporting them in air conditioned comfort.

We will be lucky to have even 1 billion left in 100 years. That's if the jihadists and fundies don't decide to hurry up the final destruction of our civilization and nuke us all.

Sounds harsh, but we haven't shown that we are willing to solve our collective resource issues and limit (voluntarily) the number of people we try to cram into our petri dish called earth... and nature cares not if its mold spores or people that consume too much, it has a uniformly harsh way of dealing with the problem.

well, that is enough gloom and doom for one night.

[sam sarrha]

10. archeologist's have proven catastrophic weather changes happen in as little as 3 years after the

Arctic thermo-cline stops..

[Kiouni]

7. This situation sums up humanity perfectly:

We're smart enought to fix the problem but we're too dumb to do it.

Light your fires little monkeys.

[razzleberry]

11. who decided that 2.000000000 C degrees rise, is the threshold?

I don't remember voting for these people

[GliderGuider]

12. Did you vote for Mother Nature to be in charge of everything?

The IPCC assessment states that up to two billion people worldwide will face water shortages and up to 30 per cent of plant and animal species would be put at risk of extinction if the average rise in temperature stabilises at 1.5C to 2.5C.

Nobody said anything about 2.000000000, they typically say 2. Or in the case above, give a range around 2. Perhaps you missed the class on significant digits?

The Two Greatest Sins Regarding Significant Digits

1. Writing more digits in an answer (intermediate or final) than justified by the number of digits in the data.
2. Rounding-off, say, to two digits in an intermediate answer, and then writing three digits in the final answer.

[razzleberry]

13. in one 'political cycle', the Earth willl be lost, because of ...

whatever


we need to act now, because in

current year plus 8,

the world ends

(or the 2012 harmonic convergence, whichever comes first)

[GliderGuider]

14. What on Earth are you going on about?

"The world ends"? "2012 harmonic convergence"? Didn't you leave out the Rapture?

What unadulterated crap.

[razzleberry]

15. the numbers are cooked, so the disaster happens in five years

nobody in 1970 was saying that the
Earth would freeze in 1998......

the freeze year would be 1975 - 1980

[hatrack]

19. Don't forget the Popul Vuh!!

:evilgrin:

[Raincloud_2008]

20. well gee

why don't you all just back down for one bleeding second. I asked a perfectly legitimate question. I also happen to know that Alex Jones (a hero to a number of you) has done a lot of research into this as well and he is saying the same thing. WE ARE BEING CONDITIONED into being scared of one more thing. One more way that we follow along and mind our p's and q's. One bloody volcano steaming away in the pacific puts out enough crud for hundreds of years of cars.
I want the earth to be healthier too and i don't drive a car..i ride my mountain bike to and from work and have been doing that for a number of years. I am also a architectural engineer working for a British firm in Canada. Not some bumpkin from the backwoods.

There is a truth here and that truth is: people are being conditioned to being scared...into going along like nice little people. If the problem was carbon monoxide and all the rest of it then why haven't automobiles been banned plain and simple? The same people warning about this crap are the same people abusing all the various pollutants...with airplanes (john travolta) and great big cars.
If you people cannot discuss a possible set up then you are as bad as those who are pulling the strings.

[hatrack]

21. Don't post phrases like "Environmental Nazi Types" and expect to be taken seriously.

Do you understand?

On edit: corrected quotation from your first post on this thread.

[kestrel91316]

22. There's no "set up". Global warming is real. Our actions over the past

200 years of burning fossil fuels have REAL LIFE CONSEQUENCES. Humans and entire ecosystems are in grave danger because of OUR GREEDY, SELF-CENTERED LIFESTYLE.

Besides, we need to find a way to NOT need the Middle East anymore, and that's ending our dependence on oil.

[hatrack]

23. "If you people cannot discuss a possible set up then you are as bad as those (pulling) the strings"

In other words, if we don't agree with your non-reality-based conspiracy theory, we're part of the conspiracy.

Whatfuckingever.

[XemaSab]

24. It's good to be skeptical and ask questions.

We're environmentalists because at some point each of us said "Holy cow! That ain't right!"

It's pretty much a given that everyone in this forum believes the earth is changing and we're changing it. Some people here are a little more wound up than others, and that's okay.

I think it's the nature of the media to try to foment hysteria, and there's been a lot of hysteria fomented around environmental issues in general. Which isn't to say that this isn't a potentially freaky scenario.

You're welcome to your own beliefs, and your own levels of hysteria (or non-hysteria, whichever), but the word "nazis" is a little extreme.

(ps the problem isn't carbon monoxide, it's carbon dioxide. :P )

[LSK]

25. YES!!! Global Warming is a conspiracy that lets Scientists keep their $45k jobs

Nevermind the $billions that the automakers and oil companies think they will lose.

You ever heard of following the money??? Well the money is on the side of global warming deniers.

[tom_paine]

26. And yet, the idea that a scientist making $45K is more likely than one protecting billions of $$$

to lie about the facts out of self-interest, comes easily to the compatrmentalized and guilt-free part of the Bushie Mind.

But upside-down thinking and being able to believe the most transparent Orwellian Lies is a characteristic of Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers, whether they be following Buhs, Pinochet, or Hitler.

The obvious "smell tests" don't apply any more than non-Party (Bushie, Nazi, whichever totalitarianism we are speaking of on this particular day) facts do.

[razzleberry]

29. he wants to make more than that

he needs a disease, or something otherwise bad,
to talk about

follow the money

[LSK]

34. ok, they are going for those cushy $60k jobs

Yes follow the money.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1841989

[amitten]

27. I'm not being conditioned. I was privy to this info many many

years before it became mainstream.

20 years before any MSM was even mentioning global warming, I learned about it in school from some trusted and reliable scientific sources with zero agenda.

This media attention of global warming is actually too little too late. Sometimes there are real reasons to fear something. Not everything is a conspriacy.

And while it's true there are natural sources of CO2, those have always been there. Human activity has thrown the balance past the brink, though.

[arenean]

31. Sorry, volcanoes do NOT emit more than cars!

"One bloody volcano steaming away in the pacific puts out enough crud for hundreds of years of cars."

Sigh...this is probably what gets me going more than anything with the skeptics...If they keep repeating the same lies year upon year they hope it'll seep into peoples subconscious, and be accepted as fact. And what we object to is having to point the truth out to people on the internet year upon year!

Well, here's the FACT:

Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from all subaerial and submarine volcanoes estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times.

It would be great if people could just research this stuff, and not assume that volcanoes (being big and photogenic) automatically MUST release more CO2 than us puny little humans!!

(sorry...bad mood today!)

[losthills]

32. Damn that John Travolta!

I've suspected he was behind this for a long time....

[LSK]

35. what the hell is crud????

Do you even know what they hell you are talking about???

You are not going to win a scientific debate using words like "crud".

[NNadir]

30. Wow. You're kidding? Who knew?

I was absolutely sure that we had until 2050, when 50% of our electricity will come from renewable sources.

I read it on the Greenpeace website. It has to be true.

[leebert]

33. More fatalism, totally unnecessary

Soot mitigation could easily curb a quarter, if not a third, of the predicted temperature increases - AND it's relatively easy to scrub soot, even retrofit scrubbers.

The IPCC should know this by now, the news has been out since last month about soot trapping more heat than expected.

Look at this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x112970

IMO, Kyoto may have served to increase emissions rather than mitigate them.

[Javaman]

36. Headline 5 years from now...

"Too late to avoid global warming" say scientists

A rise of three degrees centigrade in global temperatures