Impact of climate change may be underestimated - Article worth reading
by cantleave 90 Replies latest social current
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mP
The earth's climate has always been changing. Every day and night the earth changes, the seasons are also change. Look at the temperatures for the last thousand years on wiki and you willl see they have been raising for a few hundred years. There is no spike since the industrial revolution. Its just another bullshit reason to tax. If there really was a problem then it stands to reason the gov should spend some of the $ on fixing the pollution problems, but they dont change a single thing.
Apparently Greenland was warmer a thousand years ago, it even let regular vikings live there albet it was still cold. They then disappeared when the earth experienced a mini ice age, and drop in temps. Dont believe everything you see.
Suposedly the red lines are temps from newer sources, its amazing how things jump not only after the industrial revolution but immediately before that aswell. Of course we affect the earth, but we are nothing cmpared to nature itself, things like volcanos spew out enormous amounts of bad gasses that must be several magnitudes more than the entire mankind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
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SweetBabyCheezits
MP: Dont believe everything you see.
You wrote this for the sake of irony, I presume.
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glenster
Fundamental Steps Needed Now in Global Redesign of Earth System Governance,
Experts Say ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2012)Some 32 social scientists and researchers from around the world, including a
Senior Sustainability Scholar at Arizona State University, have concluded that
fundamental reforms of global environmental governance are needed to avoid
dangerous changes in the Earth system. The scientists argued in the March 16
edition of the journal Science that the time is now for a "constitutional
moment" in world politics.
Research now indicates that the world is nearing critical tipping points in the
Earth system, including on climate and biodiversity, which if not addressed
through a new framework of governance could lead to rapid and irreversible
change."Science assessments indicate that human activities are moving several of
Earth's sub-systems outside the range of natural variability typical for the
previous 500,000 years," wrote the authors in the opening of "Navigating the
Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance."Reducing the risk of potential global environmental disaster requires the
development of "a clear and ambitious roadmap for institutional change and
effective sustainability governance within the next decade," comparable in
scale and importance to the reform of international governance that followed
World War II, they wrote.In particular, the group argued for the creation of a Sustainable Development
Council that would better integrate sustainability concerns across the United
Nations system. Giving a leading role to the 20 largest economies (G20) would
help the council act effectively. The authors also suggested an upgrade of the
UN Environment Program to a full-fledged international organization, a move
that would give it greater authority and more secure fundingTo keep these institutions accountable to the public, the scientists called for
stronger consultative rights for representatives of civil society, including
representatives from developing countries, NGOs, consumers and indigenous
peoples."We should seek input from people closest to the ground, not just from the
elites, not just at the 30,000-feet level," noted Kenneth W. Abbott, a professor
of international relations in ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
"Consultations should not take place only at the global scale, where the
broadest policies are created, but also at local scales, smaller scales, all
scales," he said.To improve the speed of decision-making in international negotiations, the
authors called for stronger reliance on qualified majority voting. "There has
to be a change in international negotiating procedures from the current
situation, in which no action can be taken unless consensus is reached among
all participating governments," Abbott said.The authors also called for governments "to close remaining regulatory gaps at
the global level," including the treatment of emerging technologies."A great deal of attention has been given to issues such as climate change, yet
nanotechnology and other emerging technologies, which may bring significant
benefits, also carry potential risks for sustainable development," Abbott said.Relying on research by Abbott and his colleagues at ASU's College of Law, the
authors wrote that emerging technologies "need an international institutional
arrangement-such as one or several multilateral framework conventions" to
support forecasting and transparency, and to ensure that environmental risks
are taken into account."Working to make the world economy more green and to create an effective
institutional framework for sustainable development will be the two main focal
points at this summer's United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in
Rio de Janeiro," Abbott said. "This article was written to bring urgency to
those discussions and to outline specific 'building blocks' for a more
effective and sustainable Earth system governance system."The authors also argued for increased financial support for poorer nations.
"More substantial financial resources could be made available through novel
financial mechanisms, such as global emissions markets or air transportation
levies for sustainability purposes," they wrote.Lead author Frank Biermann, of Free University Amsterdam and Lund University,
Sweden, said, "Societies must change course to steer away from critical tipping
points in the Earth system that could lead to rapid and irreversible change.
Incremental change is no longer sufficient to bring about societal change at
the level and with the speed needed to stop Earth system transformation."Structural change in global governance is needed, both inside and outside the
UN system and involving both public and private actors," said Biermann, who
also is chair of the scientific steering committee of the Earth System
Governance Project.All 32 authors of the Science article are affiliated with the Earth System
Governance Project, a global alliance of researchers and leading research
institutions, specializing in the scientific study of international and
national environmental governance. ASU's Abbott is one of some 50 lead faculty
of the Earth System Governance Project. Lead faculty are scientists of high
international reputation who share responsibility for research on earth system
governance.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120316195338.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120325173206.htm -
SweetBabyCheezits
MP: If there really was a problem then it stands to reason the gov should spend some of the $ on fixing the pollution problems, but they dont change a single thing.
Not true.
I work for an industrial control systems engineering & construction firm and in the last five years we have landed a number of projects designing/installing powdered activated carbon (PAC) injection systems PRECISELY because the gov't implemented regulations to reduce pollutants in the air. Otherwise, these plants wouldn't be spending that money on PAC injection systems since there's no ROI in it.
That's just one example I'm familiar with personally.
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designs
SBC
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SweetBabyCheezits
MP: Of course we affect the earth, but we are nothing cmpared to nature itself, things like volcanos spew out enormous amounts of bad gasses that must be several magnitudes more than the entire mankind.
Also not true. Why are you spreading counter-knowledge and misinformation? It's not hard to get the facts.
Volcanic versus anthropogenic CO 2 emissions
Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO 2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO 2 emissions in 2010 (Friedlingstein et al., 2010), release an amount of CO 2 that dwarfs the annual CO 2 emissions of all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2011).
The published estimates of the global CO 2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial (on land) and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 0.13 gigaton to 0.44 gigaton per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998). The preferred global estimates of the authors of these studies range from about 0.15 to 0.26 gigaton per year. The 35-gigaton projected anthropogenic CO 2 emission for 2010 is about 80 to 270 times larger than the respective maximum and minimum annual global volcanic CO 2 emission estimates. It is 135 times larger than the highest preferred global volcanic CO 2 estimate of 0.26 gigaton per year (Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998).
In recent times, about 70 volcanoes are normally active each year on the Earth’s subaerial terrain. One of these is Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, which has an annual baseline CO 2 output of about 0.0031 gigatons per year [Gerlach et al., 2002]. It would take a huge addition of volcanoes to the subaerial landscape—the equivalent of an extra 11,200 Kilauea volcanoes—to scale up the global volcanic CO 2 emission rate to the anthropogenic CO 2 emission rate. Similarly, scaling up the volcanic rate to the current anthropogenic rate by adding more submarine volcanoes would require an addition of about 360 more mid-ocean ridge systems to the sea floor, based on mid-ocean ridge CO 2 estimates of Marty and Tolstikhin (1998).
There continues to be efforts to reduce uncertainties and improve estimates of present-day global volcanic CO 2 emissions, but there is little doubt among volcanic gas scientists that the anthropogenic CO 2 emissions dwarf global volcanic CO 2 emissions.
For additional information about this subject, please read the American Geophysical Union's Eos article "Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide" written by USGS scientist Terrence M. Gerlach.
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talesin
glenster & SBC
We need to wake up, and stop the denial. I read an interesting article this morning about our limitless sustainable energy resource -- the sun. The use of fossil fuels is really doing a number on the planet.
For anyone who would like to read the article, here's the link.
t
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tootired2care
While we're on the subject I just saw this article this morning on the dailymail.uk. Also why did they stop calling it global warming and start calling it "climate change"? isn't the climate and universe in general always changing? Seems like circular reasoning. Wake up people this whole thing is a liberal democRAT scam to steal money for more silly liberal pet projects and make us all slaves just like in the USSR see http://prisonplanet.tv.
Evidence that the Earth heated up over a 1,000 years ago was found in a rare mineral called ikaite
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2120512/Global-warming-Earth-heated-medieval-times-human-CO2-emissions.html#ixzz1qF886nHn -
talesin
What do you think of this comment after the article, tt2c?
So, the Earth cooled *coincidentally* as up to 50% of the human population was wiped out by plague over several centuries, which reduced the output of CO2 that had been steadily increasing over thousands of years. The CO2 would have been rapidly assimilated by seawater, causing temperatures to plummet, until the human population would again grow to it's pre-plague levels, releasing more and more CO2, bringing the warming effect of CO2 back to, and far past where it was. ...Which perfectly would prove a HUMAN cause to global warming.
t
