How to survive the coming century
If the planet warms by 4 °C , it will change beyond all recognition. A radical new world order may be our only hope, says Gaia Vince in a review of different studies and projections.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126971.700-how-to-survive-the-coming-century.html?full=true&print=true
Four degrees may not sound like much - after all, it is less than a typical temperature change between night and day. It might sound quite pleasant, like moving to Florida from Boston, say, or retiring from the UK to southern Spain. An average warming of the entire globe by 4 °C is a very different matter, however, and would render the planet unrecognisable from anything humans have ever experienced...
A key factor in how well we deal with a warmer world is how much time we have to adapt. When, and if, we get this hot depends not only on how much greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere and how quickly, but how sensitive the world's climate is to these gases. It also depends whether "tipping points" are reached, in which climate feedback mechanisms rapidly speed warming. According to models, we could cook the planet by 4 °C by 2100. Some scientists fear that we may get there as soon as 2050.
[..if only a fraction of the planet will be habitable, how will our vast population survive? Some, like Lovelock, are less than optimistic. "Humans are in a pretty difficult position and I don't think they are clever enough to handle what's ahead. I think they'll survive as a species all right, but the cull during this century is going to be huge," he says. "The number remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less."
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Comments: 24
All smart-assism aside - I suspect there really IS gonna be major disagreement over who gets to live where before the end of this century. When modern humans have "major disagreements," lotsa people die.
~M
Clark, it is what it is. Great to be 52, I will be dead when shoe #2 drops. Feel sad about my kids though, and grandkids. "if any", as the saying goes.
and since climate change is cumulative, what about the 22nd century? Can't be good, what will be happening then.
Cart before the horse issue. Proof is important. Dont quote IPCC as they "missed" an ice sheet the size of CALIFORNIA due to bad math. I want actual agreeance on this before running out and spending trillions of dollars trying to fix it.
~M
The endorsement of every professional scientific organization in the world of the IPCC Reports doesn't convince you. I doubt you can be convinced.
But if you're concerned about your children and their financial well-being, consider the following:
The Cost of Climate Change
What We'll Pay if Global Warming Continues Unchecked
The WFS is a free association, which has grown to include more than 10,000 scientists drawn from 110 countries.
there. you have a true scientific group of over 10k degreed scientists that disagree with global warming.
~M
As it is the powers-that-be are seeking not stability and right relations but conflict and more chaos to gain power. Most of the world doesn't want wars but are conditioned to fight them by their "leaders." We may destroy most of the world's population before Nature does.
I tend to agree that we will loose population at some point. We are running out of resources to support the current population as is.
Most climatologists support the IPCC Reports. Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
"In general, as the level of active research and specialization in climate science increases, so does agreement with the two primary questions...."
Michael: "A letter signed by over 50 leading members of the American Meteorological Society warned about the policies promoted by environmental pressure groups."
Hmmmm..... Let's see..... What was the position of the American Meteorological Society on global warming?
Michael: "Those who have signed the letter represent the overwhelming majority of climate change scientists in the United States, of whom there are about 60."
Your source, whatever it is, is wrong.
Yep - addressing climate change, if done right, can be profitable. Germany, btw, is one of the leaders in solar energy - yep - sunny Germany. And thanks to folks like Michael, the U.S. will continue to lag behind European nations, Japan, China and Brazil in bringing renewables to scale.
Michael. Do you know what a scientific organization is? Try doing a search on the World Federation of Scientists - or even Antonino Zichichi. Can you identify what - if any - scientific journal is published by the World Federation of Scientists?
Then, Michael, try searching the National Academy of Science, the Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. See the difference?
The denial of climate change reminds me of a similar denial by religious groups of the overwhelming evidence supporting the process of Natural Selection...evolution. They misquote, or quote the lunatic fringe "scientist" to make their case, ignoring the vast majority of scientific opinion.
Michael A is engaging in a common practice by those with agendas that don't agree with facts.
' These individuals, bankers and government and corporate big wigs are acting like people with nothing left to lose; and that's the point. What exactly do they know that almost no one else does?'
On August 17, 1999, the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau published an article by Robert S. Boyd entitled: Comets may have caused Earth's great empires to fall which included the following:
" Recent scientific discoveries are shedding new light on why great empires such as Egypt, Babylon and Rome fell apart, giving way to the periodic "dark ages'' that punctuate human history. At least five times during the last 6,000 years, major environmental calamities undermined civilizations around the world.
Some researchers say these disasters appear to be linked to collisions with comets or fragments of comets such as the one that broke apart and smashed spectacularly into Jupiter five years ago. The impacts, yielding many megatons of explosive energy, produced vast clouds of smoke and dust that circled the globe for years, dimming the sun, driving down temperatures and sowing hunger, disease and death.
The last such global crisis occurred between AD 530 and 540-- at the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe -- when Earth was pummeled by a swarm of cosmic debris.
In a forthcoming book, Catastrophe, the Day the Sun Went Out, British historian David Keys describes a 2-year-long winter that began in AD 535.
Trees from California to Ireland to Siberia stopped growing. Crops failed. Plague and famine decimated Italy, China and the Middle East.
Keys quotes the writings of a 6th-century Syrian bishop, John of Ephesus:
"The sun became dark. ... Each day it shone for about four hours and still this light was only a feeble shadow."
A contemporary Italian historian, Flavius Cassiodorus, wrote:
"We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon. We have summer without heat."
And a contemporary Chinese chronicler reported, "Yellow dust rained like snow."
Dendrochronologist, Mike Baillie, has established that:
"Analysis of tree rings shows that at in 540 AD in different parts of the world the climate changed. Temperatures dropped enough to hinder the growth of trees as widely dispersed as northern Europe, Siberia, western North America, and southern South America."
A search of historical records and mythical stories pointed to a disastrous visitation from the sky during the same period, it is claimed. There was one reference to a "comet in Gaul so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire" in 540-41.
According to legend, King Arthur died around this time, and Celtic myths associated with Arthur hinted at bright sky Gods and bolts of fire. In the 530s, an unusual meteor shower was recorded by both Mediterranean and Chinese observers. Meteors are caused by the fine dust from comets burning up in the atmosphere. Furthermore, a team of astronomers from Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland published research in 1990 which said the Earth would have been at risk from cometary bombardment between the years 400 and 600 AD.
[...] Famine followed the crop failures, and hard on its heels bubonic plague that swept across Europe in the mid-6th century. [...] "
These are not the voices of evangelical, "the end of the world is nigh" types, but rather university professors who have spent many years in scientific research in their chosen fields. The conclusions they have come to are shocking for sure, but it behooves all of us to put aside our sacred cows for a moment and look at the facts. Over the past few years the incidence of meteorite sightings and impacts around the world has gone through the proverbial roof, as have several of the meteorites, although in the opposite direction.
Given the controlled nature of not only the media but also the academic world, if there was a threat to our planet from some sort of cyclical cometary shower as suggested by Ballie, Boyd and others, the chances of such information coming to general public awareness, against the wishes of the ruling elite, would be very slim. The likelihood is that our leaders would do everything within their power to conceal such information and distract those members of the public with a drive to know the Truth. As Astronomer Victor Clube wrote in his paper, The Hazard to Civilization from Fireballs and Comets:
"...the Christian, Islamic and Judaic cultures have all moved since the European Renaissance to adopt an unreasoning anti-apocalyptic stance, apparently unaware of the burgeoning science of catastrophes. History, it now seems, is repeating itself: it has taken the Space Age to revive the Platonist voice of reason but it emerges this time within a modern anti-fundamentalist, anti-apocalyptic tradition over which governments may, as before, be unable to exercise control. ... Cynics (or modern sophists), in other words, would say that we do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!"
The propogation of "end of days" prophecies can serve the same ends as selling the Cold War, War on Terror , Clash of Civilizations etc. Religious texts of all cultures (the Jewish, Christian,and Islamic offer very similar visions which been interpreted literally and taken as "historical" - notably, in regard to events in the Middle East today. There have always been "false prophets." The commercial rewards for providing instant gratification - modern inventions as the "Rapture" as entertainment - are great but do not appeal to reasoning people. But many otherwise intelligent people are susceptible to distorted or diluted interpretations of religious ideas , whether New Age, Hopi, Mayan, Christian, Judaic, Islamic or whatever. There are "true believers" who see "Armageddon" as already determined by their God.
If the people that control the US government know that in the very near future the demographics and power balance on the planet are likely to be radically and unpredictably restructured by meteorite impacts, they would surely seek to prepare for such an event. Having held power for so long, their preparations would most likely center around a strategy to ensure that, when the dust settles and they emerge from their bunkers, they are able to retake control of the planet. Practically, this would involve a process of conquering as much of the planet and its resources as possible, and we note that this is essentially what successive US governments have been doing for the past 50 years. On a more local scale they would also seek to distract, confuse and disinform those people with the drive to seek answers to the most pertinent questions about life on planet earth.
Al Gore has presented the complete opposite of this as factual -- which clearly proves he has no credibility. You can't get a major fact like this wrong, when you're asking for $ 650 billion of our money.
Folks, where is the proof that if we spend the money on this cap and trade scheme (which has failed badly in the EU) that we will make one iota of difference in global temps? We've just had two cold winters, and one more is going to put these warmers on the run, and you're going to see a lot of painful agony in the scientific community.
The reality is these scientists and Al Gore have SET BACK the enviornmental movement by a decade or more, because once the number of Americans (currently 48%) that do not believe in this rises above 60%, there is going to be a major backlash. It could sweep Democrats out of power -- that's how serious this is. If you want to keep your credibility on this issue -- tread lightly and leave room for doubt. The climate is not co-operating with you.