World to warm by 8C, says thinktank

[dArKeR]

Latest predictions show that climate change is going to be far worse than earlier forecasts and that Labour's drastic aim of a 60% cut in carbon dioxide emissions for the UK may not be enough, says the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).

The leading left-wing thinktank examines the next steps beyond the Kyoto agreement under which the UK has agreed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 12,5% and the EU by 8%. But runaway global warming is likely unless the US, the world's biggest polluter can be persuaded to take the issue seriously, the report says.

Geoff Jenkins, the head of the climate prediction programme at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, says that when soil inevitably starts to break down, it releases the carbon stored in the last 150 years -- thus increasing the rate of global warming.

Scientists predict temperatures to rise 5C in the northern hemisphere by 2100. The new calculations show it could be 8C. Scientists believe this would be disastrous, and to prevent even higher rises developed countries must cut emissions by 80%.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=18433

I don't believe reporters should write, 'left' or 'right'. The sucking lazy bastard reporters should do their jobs and find out who's telling the truth before they publish a story. But that's what the whole U.S. has turned into by the GOP undercover agents in the media. The citizens are spoon fed by the GOP Whore Media.

I would have no objection if the journalist referred to them as:
The GOP liars and the Democratic moral people.

http://darker0darker.tripod.com/

[GAspnes]

1. I'm okay with it

It's nice to know the agenda of whomever is publishing scientific reports. I'd prefer that the report didn't *have* a political bias, but many of these issues are so socially, emotionally and politically loaded that it's nice to be able to calibrate the results.

[htuttle]

2. With an 8C rise worldwide

...we can scratch much of Florida and the Gulf Coast off the map. They'll be under 10 feet of water.

Not to mention several island chains, millions of square miles of coastline, the entire country of Bangladesh, and so on.

[Chico Man]

3. Melting glaciers creates global cooling

These articles are definetly "politically charged". Again, I'm not discounting global warming, but these scientists are taking advantage of some summer heat to brainwash and scare the public into believing the message. This is no better than Bush's SOTU address. It falls into the same exact category: propaganda. What if it is not hotter in 100 years? Will we be asking "where's the heat?"

[rman]

4. what causes glaciers to melt?

not global cooling, is it?

And it's definately not just about the current heat spell, there's clearly a long-term trend of warming.

World Meteorological Organisation recently issued an alert, based amongst others, on these facts:

"The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001.
It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded."

[Chico Man]

5. You are right

But there seems to also be a trend of "leading scientists" who like to release creepy predictions about global meltdown because of human produced global warming just as we are experiencing a significant heat wave in the middle of the summer.

Opportunistic? Definitely. It actually reminds me of Bush's obnoxious use of 9/11.

[treepig]

8. i found the atlantic article i wanted to post on the other thread

yesterday (btw, why are there so many threads about global warming in lbn?)

"One of the most shocking scientific realizations of all time has slowly been dawning on us: the earth's climate does great flip-flops every few thousand years, and with breathtaking speed. We could go back to ice-age temperatures within a decade -- and judging from recent discoveries, an abrupt cooling could be triggered by our current global-warming trend. Europe's climate could become more like Siberia's. Because such a cooling would occur too quickly for us to make readjustments in agricultural productivity and supply, it would be a potentially civilization-shattering affair, likely to cause an unprecedented population crash. What paleoclimate and oceanography researchers know of the mechanisms underlying such a climate flip suggests that global warming could start one in several different ways."

the whole article is longish - but thoughtprovoking and worth a look:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jan/climate.htm

[Chico Man]

9. Why so much gw news? Because it is hot in Europe

This is what I keep saying - people are trying to capitialize on the heat wave by blaming it on freaking global warming.

The media sucks!

[hatrack]

11. No, these kind of reports come out throughout the year

I know because I have loose-leaf notebooks at home filled with literally hundreds of articles from scientific journals, NGO press releases, university publications and government agency reports - everything from NCAR to NSIDC to NOAA and IPCC.

During the northern winter, they report heavily on Antarctic and austral summer climate and weather, and shift their focus to the northern hemisphere when things get warm up here. Some topics, like climate modelling studies or political/diplomatic activity, come out in a pretty steady stream, regardless of whether it's warm or cold.

People may be paying more attention now, with Europe as hot as it is, but there is nothing even resembling the seasonal burst of climate speculation you're attributing to the mass media. These kinds articles are coming out continually.

[damnraddem]

17. And does emphasize the need to forget GW and think ...

'global climate change.' Climate is so complex that we aren't sure what we might trigger, but we have become aware that our finger is inside the trigger guard.

[damnraddem]

16. Let's see your model.

Are you sure such effects haven't already been accounted for.

Or what if you're right, and melting glaciers mean that it's only 7 degrees warmer than now up there in the air above the water covering NYC, Miami, and New Orleans?

[Chico Man]

18. Read this article

It talks about "abrupt cooling" as a result of fresh water being introduced into the atlantic ocean.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jan/climate.htm

[sujan]

6. hmm....I wonder

what the global warming - a myth crowd have to say about this.

[Chico Man]

7. Global warming is not a myth

But this article does not do any justice for the cause.

This is a politically motivated opportunitic highly subjective press release.

[Atlant]

10. About fucking time, don't you think?

> This is a politically motivated opportunitic highly subjective press release.

About fucking time, don't you think? That is, after all, what
the other side SPECIALIZES in and why they eat our lunch
day after day after day.

If we happened to sieze an opportune moment, good for us!

Atlant

[booksenkatz]

12. Didn't they hear?

They must not have gotten the memo from the neo-cons, what was it, last week? "Mother Nature is the cause of global warming. So we all need to just continue driving our SUVs and go shopping, because there's nothing we can do about it."

God, I am sooooo embarrassed to be an American when I read stories like this. If Gore had taken his rightful place as president, then AT LEAST we would have had someone working on the problem. Every minute that the neo-cons are in charge is a minute too long! The planet can't afford to wait much longer.

[Boreas]

13. WAIT, WAIT!

"The leading left-wing think tank," IPPR, did not issue the report. They are commenting on future possibilities using a report done by The Hadley Centre for Climate Change which has no political axe to grind, and which issues reports continually. The IPPR conclusions are not beyond the possible; sorry about that, but someone has to say it and keep saying it.

http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/index.html

http://www.climatehotmap.org/

[Feanorcurufinwe]

14. Anybody will be labelled left-wing who says global warming exists, or

Anybody will be labelled left-wing who says global warming exists, or that logged forests have more fire start in them than unlogged forests, or that lowering taxes means the government has less money to spend, or that bombing people doesn not make them love you or... you get the idea.

[Emillereid]

15. A friend of mine from Iceland

said the place is going to have to be renamed some time soon. There been significant warming and melting of the glacial ice. I've read that too much fresh water in the north Atlantic could effectively turn on the ocean's warm water conveyor belts that keep England and Northern Europe and North American out of the ice age. Apparently studies indicate the switch can be quite rapid and initiate extreme climate change in less than a decade. See an article in Discover: http://www.discover.com/recent_issue/index.html






DISCOVER Vol. 23 No. 9 (September 2002)
Table of Contents



The New Ice Age
Worried about global warming? Talk to a few scientists at Woods Hole. Oceanographers there are seeing big trouble with the Gulf Stream, which warms both North America and Europe
By Brad Lemley







Chemical analysis of fossilized foraminifera, shell-building one-celled creatures, helps climate researchers determine oceanic temperatures during a mini- ice age hundreds of years ago. G. sacculifera (top left) and G. ruber (bottom right) are planktonic organisms that spend their lives floating near the surface but fall like sand grains to the bottom of the ocean when they die. U. peregrina (top right) and C. wuellerstorfi (bottom left) are benthonic organisms that live and die on or in sediments on the seafloor.
Photographs courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

William Curry is a serious, sober climate scientist, not an art critic. But he has spent a lot of time perusing Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's famous painting "George Washington Crossing the Delaware," which depicts a boatload of colonial American soldiers making their way to attack English and Hessian troops the day after Christmas in 1776. "Most people think these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they are actually pushing the ice away," says Curry, tapping his finger on a reproduction of the painting. Sure enough, the lead oarsman is bashing the frozen river with his boot. "I grew up in Philadelphia. The place in this painting is 30 minutes away by car. I can tell you, this kind of thing just doesn't happen anymore."
    But it may again. Soon. And ice-choked scenes, similar to those immortalized by the 16th-century Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder, may also return to Europe. His works, including the 1565 masterpiece "Hunters in the Snow," make the now-temperate European landscapes look more like Lapland.
 <snip>
   
    Having given up its heat to the air, the now-cooler water becomes denser and sinks into the North Atlantic by a mile or more in a process oceanographers call thermohaline circulation. This massive column of cascading cold is the main engine powering a deepwater current called the Great Ocean Conveyor that snakes through all the world's oceans. But as the North Atlantic fills with freshwater, it grows less dense, making the waters carried northward by the Gulf Stream less able to sink. The new mass of relatively fresh water sits on top of the ocean like a big thermal blanket, threatening the thermohaline circulation. That in turn could make the Gulf Stream slow or veer southward. At some point, the whole system could simply shut down, and do so quickly. "There is increasing evidence that we are getting closer to a transition point, from which we can jump to a new state. Small changes, such as a couple of years of heavy precipitation or melting ice at high latitudes, could yield a big response," says Joyce. ....more...
   
For the life of me I can't figure the repukes on this one -- their attitude seems antagonistic to nature and science itself -- their response to global warming and environmental issues in general have the quality of a child's temper tantrum that expresses anger at reality itself -- they appear to say: I want to do X (make profit) and I don't care why you say I can't do it, I'm going to anyway, no matter who or what it hurts!

[Atlant]

19. Maybe they'll care when "The Hamptons" are washed away.

> For the life of me I can't figure the repukes on this one -- their
> attitude seems antagonistic to nature and science itself -- their
> response to global warming and environmental issues in general have
> the quality of a child's temper tantrum that expresses anger at
> reality itself -- they appear to say: I want to do X (make profit)
> and I don't care why you say I can't do it, I'm going to anyway, no
> matter who or what it hurts!

There are various reasons why the Republicans don't care.

Some of them honestly believe the end times are here and they're
going to get raptured off this mortal coil, so it doesn't matter
that the place is going to hell; they believe anybody not raptured
along with them belongs in Hell.

Some of them express exactly the sentiment you cited: "I want to do X
(make profit, drive SUVs, generally flaunt my wealth) and I don't care
why you say I can't do it, I'm going to anyway, no matter who or what
it hurts!"

Some of them are ignorant (I mean that in the technical sense of the
word) so they have no clue of what's already known and to what degree
of certainty (or not). They get their information from liars and
cheats.

Some of them are stupid and can't be edumacated.

All in all, if we're dependent on human nature to save us, I'd have
to say we're probably toast.

Atlant