Earth's natural defences against climate change 'beginning to fail'

[RestoreGore]

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2556466.ece

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 18 May 2007

The earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback," new research reveals today.

Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal "sinks" absorbing carbon dioxide - the Southern Ocean around Antarctica - a new study has found.

As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilising the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it.

snip

"The shift that has been detected in a four-year study by researchers from the University of East Anglia, the British Antarctic Survey and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, published in the journal Science, is one of the most ominous in the development of climate change. It implies a breach in the planet's own defences against global warming.

snip

"This is the first unequivocal detection of a carbon sink weakening because of recent climate change," said the lead author of the study, Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia. "This is serious. Whenever the world has greatly warmed in the past, the weakening of CO2 sinks has contributed to it."

End of excerpt.

In other words, we are smothering our planet. It is like seeing someone gasping for air and instead of giving them more oxygen you stand on the hose without moving your foot even though you know doing so is suffocating them. I really am trying to have hope that the moral fiber of the human race will catch up to this in time, but I have to admit the more I read the more I begin to wonder just what the hell it is going to take to really wake people up.

This isn't just an issue to now be used as a campaign platform with all the candidates hawking their own little plans to see who is better. We should all be uniting NOW to slow this down! Yet, I don't see any less cars on the road and air travel is actually increasing. And no matter how expensive gas gets people will have no choice but to pay for it because it is the only way they can get to their jobs.

We have to break the chokehold corporations and their government pimps have on controlling what goes to market and when. It must be the people who make these decisions by DEMANDING it and by DRIVING LESS and making lifestyle changes that are sustained enough to make a difference, but when is that going to happen? It just proves to me more and more that politics is not the way, and that through all of these years the people of this country have been brainwashed. Now the boom is being lowered and we are not ready for the fall out. No one president is going to stop this. Only we can. Some days I wonder why I even bother.

[phantom power]

1. Unity is a funny thing.

You could unite with me in advocating nuclear power as the single most powerful tool we have to combat climate change.

[RestoreGore]

2. But it isn't so that is a false argument

And I think you know exactly what I meant by this post.

[phantom power]

3. Well, you seem to be frustrated by the lack of action.

I was just illustrating that people have deep disagreements about what can and/or should be done about this problem.

Additionally, your news post regarding the loss of our GHG buffer systems has some implications about the limits of conservation. In particular: it's now pretty well established that even if we achieved zero GHG emissions tomorrow, the warming will continue, due to both hysteresis and (worse) positive feedbacks that we've kicked off.

So, it begs the question: when we're finished conserving as much as we can, what then? Because that alone won't stop what's happening. I have a proposal about how we might scrub CO2 from the atmosphere. You consider it unacceptable.

The human condition, yes?

[NJCher]

5. while we're conserving

We get more ideas to cut back, change, etc.

The journey starts with a single step. Our so-called leaders have yet to take that step.

The answer is to get started. The path doesn't have to be clear; that will come as we move forward.

Meanwhile, the good news is that without leadership, many are taking steps on their own.



Cher

[Dogmudgeon]

7. I propose world peace

But we must do it through my Plan and ONLY my Plan:

• Immediate abolition of the Decimal system ("Base 10") and adoption of Hexadecimal ("Base 16");
  
• The elimination of dinner plates with loud or saturated colors, or gaudy patterns;
  
• Compact Disks to be renamed "Zactoweejanskooie";
  
• Compulsory public nudism for all politicians and attorneys (but ties must still be worn);
  
• Instruction in Esperanto, at least 5 years, in all schools;
  
• Construction of Space Colonies made entirely of Hemp;
  
• All FOX News stations to be replaced with spanking porn and/or vintage soda pop commercials;
  
• A 10-year moratorium on the Star Trek franchise on TV;
  
• All computer monitors to have round or hexagonal screens;
  
• A publically-funded universal dating and "adult play" system;
  
• Single-payer universal subsidized orthotic shoe inserts for everybody;
  
• Legalization of Potrzebie.
  

Any deviation from my Plan is unacceptable. Those who don't agree with it are bad people. Only brainwashed corporate dupes would want anything else.

--p!

[Systematic Chaos]

9. You fucking nutball.

I laughed so loud at this my wife came over to ask me what was wrong.

Sign me up for that hexagonal monitor, and spanking pr0n FTW!!!

[eppur_se_muova]

10. The Star Trek moratorium kills the whole thing. nt

[kestrel91316]

4. Earth has a fever. We are the pathogen. This isn't going to end well

for us, I'm afraid. Humans appear to be completely unable or unwilling to change their ways on their path to suicide.

[pscot]

6. We are well and truly fucked

We need immediate, significant cuts in carbon emissions. We need to quit driving and quit cutting trees. There is no sign that either of those is going to happen anytime soon. In fact, quite the opposite. Americans increased their driving last year by over two percent. China is beginning construction of an 80,000 kilometer freeway system. We're like the coyote in the roadrunner cartoons. We've run out over the edge of the cliff. As soon as we look down, gravity will take effect. It is not going to end well.

[ramapo]

8. The China Syndrome

Personally I find the experience of watching the developing countries, especially China and India, rush to duplicate our automobile-based infrastructure to be most depressing. In my fantasy world, I imagined that others would see the folly of what we've done over the past decades and try to do better. I guess nothing beats the thrill and freedom of pissing away gasoline while polluting the air.

The immense ecological changes reported in this forum go on in the background. Few are cognizant of what is happening. Fewer still have any intention or ability to do anything significant about it.

I get sick when I think back over the past three decades at the huge and seemingly unalterable mistakes that have been made. Our leaders have failed us but only because we allowed them to while we celebrated with the ever-destructive lifestyles of the past quarter century.

Or as another poster put it, we're fucked and just don't know it yet.