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Climate Change must be tackled NOW

 
 
Craven de Kere
 
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Reply Sat 9 Aug, 2003 07:10 pm
CDs are cheaper.
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blatham
 
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Reply Sat 9 Aug, 2003 08:10 pm
Scrat

High school students from Delaware DO know better than the settlers of the Easter Islands what good environmental practices ought to have been.
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wolf
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 03:12 am
Quote:
CDs are cheaper.


Hence, you need political initiatives to make hydrogen cheaper. You need to get rid of oil executives ruling the planet. In thirty years, southern Europe will look like the Sahara if we don't act now.
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Craven de Kere
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 03:18 am
Check, 30 years Sahara. Check, must exterminate magalomaniacal oil tycoons. I'll try to fit it in after brunch.
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Butrflynet
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 03:40 am
I wonder if the fact that Earth and Mars are coming closer together then ever before in recorded history might be having an effect on our atmosphere and climate much like the moon effects our tides. It would make an interesting study. I hope some of the scientists are doing so.
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wolf
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 04:22 am
Craven, apparently everything -- even the livability of the Earth in the near future -- is a joke to you. Your responses are always cynical, conceited, and egocentric. Can't you see the trend here? Can't you see how summers and winters are extrapolating to sharper temperatures? Don't you understand that you have at least a responsibility as a citizen of the United States to voice or organize some protest, because your leaders are assuring the dramatic continuing of the greenhouse effect through their direct policy? Maybe you're just to ignorant to understand how climate change will directly affect your life?
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Vivien
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 05:30 am
It is certainly affecting ours in England - day after day close to 100deg - the ozone level is horrendously high and us asthma sufferers are suffering Sad cough wheeze cough

winters have been so mild that i have tender geraniums and trailing geraniums that have been outside for 3 winters and were flowering at Christmas - a bit battered but alive and flowering
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Vivien
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 05:35 am
Piffka wrote:
At a get-together last night a couple of men were talking about how global warming could quickly initiate an ice age. It was something about an increase in sea water destabilizing a warming current in the Atlantic. Can anyone explain that or why it's wrong?



Yep the Gulf stream - which is responsible for Britains more temperate climate - at our latitude we would normally be much colder.

I'm not a scientist so can't explain it well but the melting of the ice in Canada/North pole and global warming combine could shut of the gulf stream totally in quite a dramatic time scale, throwing our climate haywire and sending us into a very very cold climate zone very very quickly.

The gulf stream comes across the Atlantic from America and up an around Britain bringing warm water.
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Walter Hinteler
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 06:38 am
Some Scottish beaches looked like the Riviera (when I watched BBC and ITN news). :wink:

And I now can imagine, how travelling in India is alike, having been on the British railways and the London tube last week Shocked
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Piffka
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 08:45 am
This article considers the effects of all the rain that has washed into the Atlantic on the east coast. I suppose the Europeans would like to have some of that rain right now to fill up the reservoirs & rivers.

from the Philadelphia Inquirer

Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2003

Ocean chill at Shore points to coming change
Experts say the melting of Arctic ice is freshening the Atlantic. Decades of cold weather could result.
By Faye Flam
Inquirer Staff Writer

Low ocean temperatures are putting a chill into Shore vacations this year, chasing swimmers ashore and sending surfers back into their wet suits.

Some scientists warn that we had better get used to it. Global changes in Arctic Ocean currents could make this year's unseasonable chill a harbinger of things to come....
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wolf
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 09:03 am
Quote:
he figured that it would be at least another 30 years even IF a major effort would be started RIGHT NOW to replace conventional engines


That's not correct. Hydrogen cars are already available in national markets. What lacks is the American will (well, except for the exemplary state of California) to build hydrogen pumps. With new markets opening up, based on improved environmental performance, it is no longer a question of "if" but "when" and the answer is often "sooner than you think".

* Toyota announced it would start selling its fuel cell car in Japan
* Honda is producing hydrogen fuel-cell cars as we speak
* DaimlerChrysler said it plans to begin limited production of a hydrogen-fuelled vehicle based on the Mercedes A-Class compact car in 2004

Early vehicles will initially be subsidised by manufacturers to attract customers. Furthermore the energy industry is also getting serious about hydrogen and experts expect a fundamental change in the world's economies based on the reduced demand for oil. Some countries are not reluctant to aim towards hydrogen as their prime source of energy.
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Vivien
 
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Reply Sun 10 Aug, 2003 09:43 am
Walter Hinteler wrote:
Some Scottish beaches looked like the Riviera (when I watched BBC and ITN news). :wink:
quote]

and when i lived there schools didn't even have a 'summer uniform' because in the north you so so rarely had a day when you didn't need a jumper or cardigan or even jacket. Shocked
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Thomas
 
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Reply Mon 11 Aug, 2003 02:54 am
I'm not sure if anyone has read this New York Times story in the Dining and Wine section. Turns out that European wineries actually like global warming because it improves the quality and quantity of their wine. Do you believe now that global warming is a boon to agriculture? You shouldn't, because anectdotal evidence like this doesn't prove anything. But what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the ganter: the anectdotal evidence of people harmed by warm temperatures doesn't prove global warming is a curse on agriculture either. Here's an excerpt of the article.

The New York Times wrote:
GLOBAL warming is a fearsome proposition, dredging up visions of rising tides engulfing shoreline cities, and other cataclysms. For winemakers, especially those in historically cool grape-growing regions, the changing climate has already markedly affected their lives and wines.

"This has been great, no doubt," said Johannes Selbach, speaking by telephone last week from Zeltingen, Germany, where his family has grown grapes along the Mosel River since the 17th century. "Just look at the row of fine vintages we've had. From 1988 through this year it has been strikingly warmer than any time I can remember. Everybody talks about it here."

In Germany, the run of good and great vintages since 1988 has been, as Mr. Selbach said, unprecedented. Piedmont in northwest Italy had a great vintage every year from 1995 to 2001. In Oregon, the run of excellent vintages began in 1998. In Champagne, where single-vintage bottlings were once the exception, done only in the best years, vintages were declared nine times in the decade from 1990 to 1999, as against six in the 1980's and four in the 1970's. That increase may in part be because of the higher prices the Champagne producers can demand for vintage bottles; greed may have been inflamed by the bigger, riper grape harvests.

Full article
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Walter Hinteler
 
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Reply Mon 11 Aug, 2003 05:58 am
Heat wave has Europe hoping for a vintage year for wine
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wolf
 
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Reply Mon 11 Aug, 2003 07:15 am
http://www.leparisien.com/home/info/faitjour/index.htm

In France, global warming is already causing near-apocalyptic situations. Hospitals are filled with elderly people, and doctors mention higher death- rates among them. The nocturnal temperature record for the metropole has been broken: 77.9 °F at night.
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wolf
 
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Reply Mon 11 Aug, 2003 07:15 am
First of all, Thomas, I don't know where you got that fancy new spelling for anecdotal. Second, I would find it ludicrous -- if it wasn't so painful -- that you post anecdotal trivia about a global threat. Of course, on the way to international drought, heat waves, and lack of water, you can always find a funny headline. But what could be the use of posting them? What do the journalists hope to achieve with this? They do NOT help us -- while we need everyone to help as much as possible. Global warming is no laughing matter. Next year the trend we now see will grow, will get exponentially worse, and the consecutive years seasonal extremes will make life much less pleasing than we were once accustomed to.

Climate change is our greatest test in responsibility ever. Drinking more wine won't help a bit.
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wolf
 
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Reply Mon 11 Aug, 2003 10:38 am
Quote:
apparently it must be a well-kept secret that large-scale solar energy utilization is possible today and that it is affordable and competitive


The Solar Chimney (pdf)- great sustainable energy source. When will they be built in the West coast desert plains?
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wolf
 
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Reply Wed 13 Aug, 2003 12:21 pm
Exclamation
Quote:
We live in a dreamworld. With a small, rational part of the brain, we recognise that our existence is governed by material realities, and that, as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this awareness is the deep semi-consciousness which absorbs the moment in which we live then generalises it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of the present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true reality. All that separates us from the indigenous people of Australia is that they recognise this and we do not.

Our dreaming will, as it has begun to do already, destroy the conditions necessary for human life on earth. Were we governed by reason, we would be on the barricades today, dragging the drivers of Range Rovers and Nissan Patrols out of their seats, occupying and shutting down the coal-burning power stations, bursting in upon the Blairs' retreat from reality in Barbados and demanding a reversal of economic life as dramatic as the one we bore when we went to war with Hitler. Instead, we whinge about the heat and thumb through the brochures for holidays in Iceland. The future has been laid out before us, but the deep eye with which we place ourselves on earth will not see it.

Of course, we cannot say that the remarkable temperatures in Europe this week are the result of global warming. What we can say is that they correspond to the predictions made by climate scientists. As the Met Office reported on Sunday, "all our models have suggested that this type of event will happen more frequently."1 In December it predicted that, as a result of climate change, 2003 would be the warmest year on record.2 Two weeks ago its research centre reported that the temperature rises on every continent matched the predicted effects of climate change caused by human activities, and showed that natural impacts, such as sunspots or volcanic activity, could not account for them.3 Last month the World Meteorological Organisation announced that "the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1000 years", while " the trend for the period since 1976 is roughly three times that for the past 100 years as a whole."4 Climate change, the WMO suggests, provides an explanation not only for record temperatures in Europe and India but also for the frequency of tornadoes in the United States and the severity of the recent floods in Sri Lanka.5

There are, of course, still those who deny that any warming is taking place, or who maintain that it can be explained by natural phenomena. But few of them are climatologists, fewer still are climatologists who do not receive funding from the fossil fuel industry. Their credibility among professionals is now little higher than that of the people who claim that there is no link between smoking and cancer. Yet the prominence the media gives them reflects not only the demands of the car advertisers. We want to believe them, because we wish to reconcile our reason with our dreaming.

The extreme events to which climate change appears to have contributed reflect an average rise in global temperatures of 0.6C.6 The consensus among climatologists is that temperatures will rise in the 21st century by between 1.4 and 5.8C: by up to ten times, in other words, the increase we have suffered so far.7 Some climate scientists, recognising that global warming has been retarded by industrial soot, whose levels are now declining, suggest that the maximum should instead be placed between 7 and 10C.8 We are not contemplating the end of holidays in Seville. We are contemplating the end of the circumstances which permit most human beings to remain on earth.

Climate change of this magnitude will devastate the earth's productivity. New research in Australia suggests that the amount of water reaching the rivers will decline by up to four times as fast as the percentage reduction of rainfall in dry areas.9 This, alongside the disappearance of the glaciers, spells the end of irrigated agriculture. Winter flooding and the evaporation of soil moisture in the summer will exert similar effects on rainfed farming. Like crops, humans will simply wilt in some of the hotter parts of the world: the 1500 deaths in India through heat exhaustion this summer may prefigure the necessary evacuation, as temperatures rise, of many of the places currently considered habitable. There is no chance of continuity here; somehow we must persuade our dreamselves to confront the end of life as we know it.

Paradoxically, the approach of this crisis corresponds with the approach of another. The global demand for oil is likely to outstrip supply within the next 10 or 20 years. Some geologists believe it may have started already.10 It is tempting to knock the two impending crises together, and to conclude that the second will solve the first. But this is wishful thinking. There is enough oil under the surface of the earth to cook the planet and, as the price rises, the incentive to extract it will increase. Business will turn to even more polluting means of obtaining energy, such as the use of tar sand and oil shale, or "underground coal gasification" (setting fire to coal seams). But because oil in the early stages of extraction is the cheapest and most efficient fuel, the costs of energy will soar, ensuring that we can no longer buy our way out of trouble with air conditioning, water pumping and fuel-intensive farming.

So instead we place our faith in technology. In an age in which science is as authoritative but, to most, as inscrutable as God once was, we look to its products much as the people of the Middle Ages looked to divine providence. Somehow "they" will produce and install the devices - the wind turbines or solar panels or tidal barrages - which will solve both problems while ensuring that we need make no change to way we live.

But the widespread deployment of these technologies will not happen until rising prices ensure that it becomes a commercial imperative, and by then it is too late. Even so, we could not meet our current levels of consumption without covering almost every yard of land and shallow sea with generating devices. In other words, if we leave the market to govern our politics, we are finished. Only if we take control of our economic lives, and demand and create the means by which we may cut our energy use to 10 or 20% of current levels will we prevent the catastrophe which our rational selves can comprehend. This requires draconian regulation, rationing and prohibition: all the measures which our existing politics, informed by our dreaming, forbid.

So we slumber through the crisis. Waking up demands that we upset the seat of our consciousness, that we dethrone our deep unreason and usurp it with our rational and predictive minds. Are we capable of this, or are we destined to sleepwalk to extinction?


George Monbiot, the Guardian
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wolf
 
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Reply Fri 15 Aug, 2003 03:47 pm
Monbiot's warnings can be watched here.
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wolf
 
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Reply Sun 17 Aug, 2003 08:24 pm
Dangerous corrosion discovered at Ohio nuclear plant
That was close.
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