Climate Change

[mac]

[swchandler]

"The pyramids were built in the rainforest thousands of years ago."


Can you imagine the difficulty in navigating regimens of horses and chariots in the jungle rainforest?

[LHDR]

GT, of course you are right about China and other things. Most people who understand global warming as a real and serious problem are aware that finding the right policies to best limit global warming is difficult; and I think this includes most of the demonstrating kids. Carbon taxes are an obvious policy based on the judgement of reasonable people, but again it’s not easy to do it right, like the French example shows.

Unfortunately, in this country, we still have to deal with people like nw30, MalibuG, techno and the entire Republican party, who don't even acknowledge that there is a big problem. And when you muse about your Russian magic wand or how back in the days, before the dinosaurs roamed or so, we had even higher CO2 levels and things were just swell, join that group on occasion. (I don't think that you don’t care, and apologize if I imply that.)

It seems unavoidable to move on without those people since they are not amenable to reason. I mean they still make these arguments that Al Gore promoted global warming therefore it must be wrong, that some scientists decades ago wrongly predicted cooling therefore today's global warming projections must be wrong, that the climate has changed independently of humans in Earth's history therefore today's climate change must also occur independently of humans, that models of global warming do not take "global wobbling" into account and therefore must be wrong. (The very special arguments that the pyramids were built in rainforests illustrates the not amenable to reason problem; it gets repeated even after some here tried to explain that that was not the case.)

[mac]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/03/19/satellite-images-show-devastating-floods-midwest/?utm_term=.eca4ecf43f62&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

More evidence for Bard to ignore. The poor boy suspects this is all a plot to get him to pay more taxes. What a snowflake. So to speak.

[nw30]

Caution, very important warning, must heed!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
PETER JAMES SPIELMANN
June 29, 1989

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.

″Ecological refugees will become a major concern, and what’s worse is you may find that people can move to drier ground, but the soils and the natural resources may not support life. Africa doesn’t have to worry about land, but would you want to live in the Sahara?″ he said.

UNEP estimates it would cost the United States at least $100 billion to protect its east coast alone.

Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheatlands, while the Soviet Union could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time, according to a study by UNEP and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Excess carbon dioxide is pouring into the atmosphere because of humanity’s use of fossil fuels and burning of rain forests, the study says. The atmosphere is retaining more heat than it radiates, much like a greenhouse.

The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.

The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.

The difference may seem slight, he said, but the planet is only 9 degrees warmer now than during the 8,000-year Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago.

Brown said if the warming trend continues, ″the question is will we be able to reverse the process in time? We say that within the next 10 years, given the present loads that the atmosphere has to bear, we have an opportunity to start the stabilizing process.″

He said even the most conservative scientists ″already tell us there’s nothing we can do now to stop a ... change″ of about 3 degrees.

″Anything beyond that, and we have to start thinking about the significant rise of the sea levels ... we can expect more ferocious storms, hurricanes, wind shear, dust erosion.″

He said there is time to act, but there is no time to waste.

UNEP is working toward forming a scientific plan of action by the end of 1990, and the adoption of a global climate treaty by 1992. In May, delegates from 103 nations met in Nairobi, Kenya - where UNEP is based - and decided to open negotiations on the treaty next year.

Nations will be asked to reduce the use of fossil fuels, cut the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane and fluorocarbons, and preserve the rain forests.

″We have no clear idea about the ecological minimum of green space that the planet needs to function effectively. What we do know is that we are destroying the tropical rain forest at the rate of 50 acres a minute, about one football field per second,″ said Brown.

Each acre of rain forest can store 100 tons of carbon dioxide and reprocess it into oxygen.

Brown suggested that compensating Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya for preserving rain forests may be necessary.

The European Community istalking about a half-cent levy on each kilowatt- hour of fossil fuels to raise $55 million a year to protect the rain forests, and other direct subsidies may be possible, he said.

The treaty could also call for improved energy efficiency, increasing conservation, and for developed nations to transfer technology to Third World nations to help them save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions, said Brown.

https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0?fbclid=IwAR2RGAP5f1zXLFF80GoM0FroPVXQcqmZKXrM2zsKzqqX_ua-jZJidD0p5NY

Now what was it that mac always like to say about forgetting history?

[mac]

The report was correct. The timeline was wrong.

[LHDR]

[mac]

Have you read “Collapse” by Jared Diamond?. Author of ‘Guns, Germs and Steel”?

[GURGLETROUSERS]

LHDR. Sorry if I sounded off. I keep saying I don't want to get 'het up', but our self serving arrogant political class have landed our country in a constitutional crisis, which millions of us who care find hard to take!

Of course I don't believe in magic wands, but I admit to scouring the theories, and clinging to hope that there could be a self correcting (predicted) cooling period ahead. I don't see anything irrational in that hope - I didn't do the study, and those who did are hardly charlatans or crackpots! If they believe, who am I to argue?

What I will say is that whatever remedial action the world could agree on would inevitably reverse decades of economic progress UNLESS there is discovered a reliable and equivalently massive enough clean alternative to equal the current output from fossil sources. (Oil, coal,gas nuclear.) Without that there will certainly be a cap on, and probable reversal of the world economy.

Incidentally, a new study claims that the human brain does not fully develop ( which can affect decision making) until at least the age of 30 (ish). Might I therefore suggest that we ban all those in their mere twenties from the arena of political decision making?
And I'm not at all sure I'm actually just joking!!!

[mrgybe]