U.N. Science Panel Sees Faster Warming of Earth

[ProSense]

Climate Connections: Signs

U.N. Science Panel Sees Faster Warming of Earth

by Jerome Socolovsky and Andrea Seabrook

Listen Now <3 min 41 sec>

All Things Considered, November 17, 2007 · Scientists from a Nobel-winning panel on climate change have concluded that the planet is warming at an ever faster pace. The group released its stark findings at a conference in Spain.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in recognition of work done to document and publicize global warming.

The international community meets next month in Bali, Indonesia, to consider how countries should respond to climate change. The IPCC will take its report to the gathering in hopes of spurring action by the world's governments to curb the production of greenhouse houses.

AP News Wire: World News

UN Panel Gives Dire Warming Forecast

from The Associated Press

VALENCIA, Spain November 17, 2007, 7:10 p.m. ET · Global warming is "unequivocal" and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to sea levels rising an average of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.

"Only urgent, global action will do," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, calling on the United States and China — the world's two biggest polluters — to do more to slow global climate change.

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Climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet," he said, and the effects are "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must work together."

According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-thirds of the world's species.

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[Uncle Joe]

1. Stephen King couldn't write a better horror book.

Thanks for the thread, ProSense.

Kicked and recommended.

[dysfunctional press]

2. if human CO2 output went to ZERO today, the earth would still keep warming for four decades...

and we are NOT going to drop to zero- in fact, human CO2 output RISES every day. china is comitted to bringing a new coal-fired electric plant online EVERY WEEK for the forseeable future.

we are SO fucked.

but it's going to be fun to watch for us schadenfreude types

[Uncle Joe]

3. And from what I can tell, this only takes carbon in to account, should the

Siberian Tundra and similar regions thaw, all that frozen methane will be released and from what I understand methane has even greater heat trapping characteristics than carbon dioxide.

[motocicleta]

5. I have long thought:

"Oh this is really messed up, lots of people will die, but life on earth will adapt and survive." I am beginning to think I am some kind of pollyanna. It is happening so quickly, we know so little, and the feedback loops such as tundra methane are real unknowns.

Venus comes to mind.

[Gregorian]

4. Tada! I couldn't have said it better.

I'm just sorry I spent the last thirty years in a state of ____________. I'm not sure what it's called. Sort of a combination of anger, fear, bewilderment, disbelief, rage, constraint, hibernation, denial, and a whole bunch of other stuff, most of which lead me to find forums on the internet. And still, hardly anyone gets it. Although, while trying to find a botanist this week, I found an old retired biologist who spent a bunch of time talking with me about rare and endangered plants that I'm trying to survey, only to have him grab me before hanging up, and lectured me about population. Upon which I immediately surprised him, being that I am also one of the few people who sees what he sees. It wasn't a lecture as much as a breath of fresh air. The consensus is, we aren't going to engineer our way out of this. We aren't going to "Prius" our way out of this. We aren't going to stop living our modern lives. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is based on population.

And then there is our debt. Argh. Secure the hatches!

[Duppers]

6. what have WE done to ourselves and our children?!

I am so depressed that I don't know how to handle this. I've been talking, for the last 40 yrs., about overpopulation, ever since I read Dr. Paul Ehrlich back in '68 (yeah, I'm that old), but no one I knew believed me. I still see families with 2+ children. I cannot even be the least bit articulate about this 'cause I so distraught. How do we prepare? Move to a northern, non-drought region, learn to grow/can food, buy rifles w/plenty of ammo, what? There will be anarchy. It's going to come faster than we thought.

K & R.

[Pachamama]

7. I read the full report off the IPCC site this morning...If any more "Flat Earth Society Members" on

the right want to keep calling Global Climate Change and the work of the IPCC scientists a "hoax" then tell them to read this report and come back with real factual data if they want to refute it. Otherwise tell them to shut the fuck up and despite them being so wrong, we'll still try to save them along with the rest of us and the planet.