Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

According to a recent survey by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), only half of 11- to 17-year-olds claim to be worried about climate change. The age group as a whole said they were less likely than adults to believe they are - or ever would be - affected by it, and only 12% said they were capable of making a positive impact by changing their own lifestyles.

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While the Defra research shows poor awareness of climate change among 11- to 17-year-olds, another survey of 54,000 university and college applicants aged between 17 and 21 found that 91% thought that in 25 years, the effects of climate change would be "hitting the world hard". The Future Leaders' survey, commissioned by sustainable development charity Forum for the Future and the higher-education clearing house UCAS, also found that two-thirds of respondents believed that global oil reserves will have run out within 25 years, and 76% think lifestyles will need to change radically if civilisation is to survive into the next century.

While these results suggest this older age group is open to change, when they were asked what actions they had actually taken to help the environment, the answers were less positive. Only 40% had specifically chosen locally produced food over imports, and just 17% had taken a holiday in the UK instead of overseas. And, in another survey by the Department for Transport, it was those aged 16 to 25 who said they were least likely to pay more for a greener car.

"Our survey is a sign that this group is, in fact, super-engaged on climate change but they may not be thinking about doing something about it for a few years," says James Goodman of Forum for the Future.

Whether this is due to a lack of education and a sense of impotence, or just plain old teenage apathy is unclear. However, the government and environmental groups are hoping their new "cool" approach to engaging young people will start to make a difference, even if initially that "difference" is hundreds of teenagers attending an eco rock concert.

"Many of the solutions already exist, so it is a failure of willpower more than anything," says Verlander. "Of course, there are things young people can't do, but they are going to be the next generation voting and spending money, so it is important that they start thinking about these issues now".

The images in this article have been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast.

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The images in this article have been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast.

So in other words, they don't REALLY look like that? ;p

Recent warm-up 'unprecedented'

By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 3, 2007

The fact that the planet is getting warmer is not much disputed anymore, even by global warming skeptics.

But some suggest it is impossible, given the current evidence, to know whether the warming trend is the result of fossil fuel emissions or simply another cyclical climate shift.

"There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe," Richard Lindzen, an MIT professor of atmospheric science who has been a highly paid consultant for the energy industry, wrote recently in Newsweek. "What most commentators -- and many scientists -- seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling."

Lindzen and other skeptics deride much of the talk about global warming as alarmist, warning that calls for an abrupt switch to alternative fuels would seriously damage the economy and industrial growth.

Most climate and environmental scientists who study natural climate fluctuations, however, say the current warming trend is the result of human activity and that it is behaving differently from past temperature fluctuations.

"The rate of change is so accelerated that what is happening now seems to be unprecedented," said Reed Scherer, an ANDRILL paleontologist who is studying evidence of historic climate change in Antarctica.

In fact, said ANDRILL co-chief scientist Ross Powell, computer models of global climate cycles "say we should be cooling right now, not getting warmer."

The cause of the warmth seems to be the "greenhouse gases" produced by human activity, most notably carbon dioxide emitted when fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas are burned. Those gases rise and settle in the atmosphere, creating a shield that traps the sun's radiated heat as it bounces off the Earth's surface, raising temperatures.

In 1750, when humans began burning exponentially larger amounts of fossil fuels to run the machinery of the industrial revolution, the carbon dioxide count in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million.

The count now is at 387 ppm, more than at any time in 10 million years, and experts expect that at current rates it will rise to 1,000 ppm by the year 2100.

"In the far term, if we don't stop it, we're heading to amounts that we haven't had in tens of millions of years," said Powell.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published by a team led by James Hansen at Nasa, it suggests that the grim reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could be absurdly optimistic.

The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by as much as 59cm this century. Hansen's paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn't fit the data. The geological record suggests that ice at the poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to between two and three degrees above today's level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59cm but by 25 metres.

Al Gore is over here.

Singing the praises of the new Brown govt. And applauding the fact that the conservative oppostition are completely on board when it comes to climate change.

I cant believe there are still so many dinosaurs thumping about on the flat earth in the US.

Steve 41oo wrote:

Al Gore is over here.

Singing the praises of the new Brown govt. And applauding the fact that the conservative oppostition are completely on board when it comes to climate change.

I cant believe there are still so many dinosaurs thumping about on the flat earth in the US.

And I am equally amazed at the soft-headed credulity of the British..

The favourite resource of many here, the highly paid consultant for the energy industry, MIT-professor of atmospheric science, Richard Lindzen is [
"[......................]
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

The favourite resource of many here, the highly paid consultant for the energy industry, MIT-professor of atmospheric science, Richard Lindzen is [
"[......................]
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Nonsense - at best.
Checking a source more reliable than the foregoing:

Quote:

Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/

Interesting article on the folly of most recycling to be found at:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.html

Quote:

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage.

The real news, as reported by Joshua Holland, is that in a biographical note the weekly publication declared that Lindzen "receives no funding from energy companies," although Lindzen has charged oil and gas interests $2,500 a day for consulting, according to Harper's, and wrote a speech on the "alleged consensus on global warming" for no less than OPEC.

Interesting article on the folly of most recycling to be found at:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.html

Quote:

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage.

High Seas wrote:

Interesting article on the folly of most recycling to be found at:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.html

Quote:

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage.

Only if the economic incentive is your primary reason for recycling. The fact is that primary resources (minerals and such in the ground) are effectively limited, whereas secondary ones (recycled and reclaimed materials) have no such limit.

Though with the new technologies coming on board, such as plasma or high-velocity wind tunnel recycling, we can expect to see the benefits of recycling increase tremendously -

http://www.startech.net/

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn

I thought the point of recycling was to produce LESS trash, NOT cheaper items.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

High Seas wrote:

Interesting article on the folly of most recycling to be found at:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.html

Quote:

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage.

Only if the economic incentive is your primary reason for recycling. The fact is that primary resources (minerals and such in the ground) are effectively limited, whereas secondary ones (recycled and reclaimed materials) have no such limit.

Though with the new technologies coming on board, such as plasma or high-velocity wind tunnel recycling, we can expect to see the benefits of recycling increase tremendously -

http://www.startech.net/

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn

What have I tried to tell you repeatedly, cyclops? Here again, you try to reason your way out of it by using the excuse that primary resources are limited. You forgot something. Price always brings in the factor of how limited something is. Scarcity increases the price of the resource, and when compared to the cost of recycling, then we find out which is most efficient. Although some primary resources are very limited, others are not, such as silica. Price reflects this factor, plus all other factors involved in producing a product, and unless one method is artificially manipulated vs another method, price is a pretty good indicator of the most efficient.

You need to read Thomas Sowell's book titled "Basic Economics," where all of this is explained in easy to understand language.

Although some primary resources are very limited, others are not, such as silica.