Here Today... Gone To Hell!

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising world temperatures could cause a significant increase in disease across Asia and Pacific Island nations, leading to conflict and leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced, a new report said on Thursday.

Global warming by the year 2100 could also lead to more droughts, floods and typhoons, and increase the incidence of malaria, dengue fever and cholera, the report into the health impact of rising temperatures found.
Compiled by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Australian Conservation Foundation, the country's leading medical and environment groups, the study predicts average temperatures will rise by between 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) and 6 degrees by 2100.

"We're not just talking about a longer summer or a shorter ski season," AMA president Mukesh Haikerwal told reporters.
"Climate change will damage our health. People will get sick as a direct result. People will die in larger numbers as our earth, our world, our home, heats up."

In Australia, Haikerwal said up to 15,000 people could die each year due to heat stress by 2100, up from about 1,000 a year at present, while dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases could spread as far south as Sydney.

Dengue fever in Australia is currently confined to the country's tropical and sparsely populated far north. Internationally, higher world temperatures would increase the incidence of violent storms and droughts, and could lead to crop failures which could cause political and social upheaval."As stresses increase there is likely to be a shift toward authoritarian governments," the report said.

"At the worst case, large scale state failure and major conflict may generate hundreds of millions of displaced people in the Asia-Pacific region, a widespread collapse of law, and numerous abuses of human rights." The report said crop yields were likely to increase in parts of Northern Asia, but would decrease in countries in Southern Asia, where the incidence of floods, droughts, forest fires and tropical cyclones would all increase.

The report, titled Climate Change Health Impacts in Australia; Effects of Dramatic CO2 Emission Reductions, calls on governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions to limit the impact of global warming.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.....

I`ll be dead in 2100.

And Axl's grandson will release Chinese Democracy in 2100.

Whenever I hear scientists talking with such certainty about gloabal warming I tend to remember that many of these same scientists were predicting a second ice age in the 80's.  We're not even totally sure if the rise in temperature that we're seeing is being caused by humans or if it's the result of a natural change in the temperature of the planet that happens from time to time. 

Whatever the truth of this, you don't need to believe it to believe that action needs to be taken.  Kyoto was a failure because it only targetted the developed world when a large amount of the pollution that is said to cause climate change is coming from developing countries like india and china.  The developed countries need to work with the developing nations to mutually reduce this pollution in a way that gives no country an unfair advantage in the market and find ways to switch our energy needs away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energy.

I think the next big boom for the US is an alternative energy source.  It's our golden ticket.  Let all the others squabble over oil.

You are pretty optimistic. Personally I feel that is a little early.....

Please show me a link when people predicted an ice age in the 80's? I have never heard that, ever.

I find it hard NOT to believe in global warming.


Most of the oil companies already have their money put into alternative fuels. So when the swtich occurs it will be the same people bending us over the barrel (just not an oil barrel this time).

SLC, he's right. There was alot of talk about an ice age back then. Magazine articles, tv specials,etc. I read a book about it years ago, I think it was called 'The Coming Ice Age' or 'The Next Ice Age'.

I don't remember that at all. What time period were they predicting this would happen? I certainly don't see why another ice age won't happen again...thousands of years from now.

The difference now is that WE SEE the affects of global warming now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

I think that explains it quite nicely...




/jarmo

What we're seeing now is climate change.  Which may be totally the result of human activity or it may be a combination of human activity and the natural changes in the temperature of the planet.

I tend to lean towards hydro carbons myself.

In the book, and in the various articles, scientists acted like it was already starting to happen. This was in the 1980's. Quick question: Has anyone here turned into an ice cube yet? :o :hihi:

I studied environmental awareness in uni one of the most scary things to come up I felt was "water wars". As we get more and more extreme weather and as populations continue to grow, countries will experience periods of drought of a scale that we have never seen before, with so many people using up the limited resource,  this will potentially lead to countries invading other countries for access to simple, plain old water - whilst other parts of the globe are neck deep in a flash flood.

Check out - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/454926.stm

Heh, they already have to expend precious oil to desalinate water in the Middle East.

I didn't see anything about scientists predicting an ice age in the 80's...was that on that link? It is late and maybe I didn't see it.

Please show me links, I can't find any. I'd be interested to read them.

I think it was the 70's that some radicals predicted a forthcoming ice age.
But if that is supposed to pour doubt on current global warming concerns, purr-lease!
Scientific and technological progress is advancing at a rate which is only increasing day by day.
Who would have thought in the 70's that we would all be sitting comfortably in our homes talking to strangers across the globe through our hugely powerful, easily affordable machines, machines that are more powerful than the most advanced from the 70's.
That would have been Buck Rogers stuff to them.

I didn't mean it like that.

But it desribes how ice ages come and go.

If somebody says one is coming, I think that person could be right. ;)




/jarmo

You meant I did all that reading for nothing?  :hihi:

Seriously..OK guys, show me a link were these scientists predicted the new ice age hit by the 80's....

Please.

SLC, I read the book and articles about an 80's Ice Age many years ago. Before the net was available, so I dont have any links. You could look up the book I told you about, or type in '80's Ice Age' into a search engine. There has to be at least a few online articles about it.

I asked because I could not find any.

So I must conclude that it is not fair to compare one book (that I can't find) to the theory of global warming (which many support.)

Published on Sunday, April 15, 2007 by New York Times

Global Warming Called Security Threat
By Andrew C. Revkin / Timothy Williams

WASHINGTON - For the second time in a month, private consultants to the government are warning that human-driven warming of the climate poses risks to the national security of the United States.A report, scheduled to be published on Monday but distributed to some reporters yesterday, said issues usually associated with the environment - like rising ocean levels, droughts and violent weather caused by global warming - were also national security concerns.

?Unlike the problems that we are used to dealing with, these will come upon us extremely slowly, but come they will, and they will be grinding and inexorable,? Richard J. Truly, a retired United States Navy vice admiral and former NASA administrator, said in the report.

The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military.

The report recommends that climate change be integrated into the nation?s security strategies and says the United States ?should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.?

The report, called ?National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,? was commissioned by the Center for Naval Analyses, a government-financed research group, and written by a group of retired generals and admirals called the Military Advisory Board.

In March, a report from the Global Business Network, which advises intelligence agencies and the Pentagon on occasion, concluded, among other things, that rising seas and more powerful storms could eventually generate unrest as crowded regions like Bangladesh?s sinking delta become less habitable,

One of the authors of the report, Peter Schwartz, a consultant who studies climate risks and other trends for the Defense Department and other clients, said the climate system, jogged by a century-long buildup of heat-trapping gases, was likely to rock between extremes that could wreak havoc in poor countries with fragile societies.

?Just look at Somalia in the early 1990s,? Mr. Schwartz said. ?You had disruption driven by drought, leading to the collapse of a society, humanitarian relief efforts, and then disastrous U.S. military intervention. That event is prototypical of the future.?

?Picture that in Central America or the Caribbean, which are just as likely,? he said. ?This is not distant, this is now. And we need to be preparing.?

Other recent studies have shown that drought and scant water have already fueled civil conflicts in global hot spots like Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sudan, according to several recent studies.

This bodes ill, given projections that human-driven warming is likely to make some of the world?s driest, poorest places drier still, experts said.

?The evidence is fairly clear that sharp downward deviations from normal rainfall in fragile societies elevate the risk of major conflict,? said Marc Levy of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which recently published a study on the relationship between climate and civil war.

Given that climate models project drops in rainfall in such places in a warming world, Mr. Levy said, ?It seems irresponsible not to take into account the possibility that a world with climate change will be a more violent world when making judgments about how tolerable such a world might be.?


Link to the article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/15/538/

For more information: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

I dont think it was the 80's, but I have people were trying to cause mass hysteria back in the 60's or 70's about Global Cooling..not sure if thats exactly what they called it then...but that eventually the earth was going to get too cold and we were goin to die..with no evidence whatsover...kind of like Global warming today...NO evidence whatsover...for every scientist that says it exists there is another who says it doesnt....if its such a proven fact how come we are all not agreeing on it?

I dont think it was the 80's, but I have people were trying to cause mass hysteria back in the 60's or 70's about Global Cooling..not sure if thats exactly what they called it then...but that eventually the earth was going to get too cold and we were goin to die..with no evidence whatsover...kind of like Global warming today...NO evidence whatsover...for every scientist that says it exists there is another who says it doesnt....if its such a proven fact how come we are all not agreeing on it?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1306233.htm

Scientists say global warming is undeniable

Scientists in the United States say they have confirmed beyond doubt that climate change is being caused by human activity.

The scientists have presented their findings to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

They say a parcel of studies looking at the oceans and melting Arctic ice leave no room for doubt that it is getting warmer, people are to blame and the weather is going to suffer.

Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told the meeting that new computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well under way.

Mr Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures were weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there.

"The real place to look is in the ocean," Dr Barnett told a news conference.

Debate over

His team used millions of temperature readings made by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate steady ocean warming.

"The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people," he said.

The report was published one day after the United Nations Kyoto Protocol took effect, a 141-nation environmental pact the United States government has spurned for several reasons, including stated doubts about whether global warming is occurring and is caused by people.

Dr Barnett urged US officials to reconsider.

"Could a climate system simply do this on its own? The answer is clearly no," Dr Barnett said.

Dr Barnett's team used US government models of solar warming and volcanic warming, just to see if they could account for the measurements they made.

Dr Barnett says the results were a resounding no, and the effects will be felt far and wide.

"Anywhere that the major water source is fed by snow or glacial melt ... the debate is what are we going to do about it," he said.

Homeless polar bears

Other researchers found clear effects on climate and animals.

Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that melting ice was changing the water cycle, which in turn affects ocean currents and, ultimately, climate.

"As the earth warms, its water cycle is changing, being pushed out of kilter," she said.

"Ice is in decline everywhere on the planet."

She added that a circulation system called the Ocean Conveyer Belt is in danger of shutting down. The last time that happened, northern Europe suffered extremely cold winters.

She said the changes were already causing droughts in the west of the United States, and Greenland's ice cap, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels globally by seven metres, is starting to melt and could collapse suddenly.

Ms Curry said freshwater is already percolating down, lubricating the base and making it more unstable.

Animals left homeless

Sharon Smith of the University of Miami found melting Arctic ice was taking with it algae that formed an important base of the food supply for a range of animals.

And the disappearing ice shelves meant big animals such as walruses, polar bears and seals were losing their homes.

"In 1997 there was a mass die-off of a bird called the short-tailed shearwater in the Bering Sea," Dr Smith told the news conference.

The birds, which migrate from Australia, starved to death for several years running when warmer waters caused a plankton called a coccolithophore to bloom in huge numbers, turning the water an opaque turquoise colour.

"The short-tailed shearwater couldn't see its prey," Dr Smith said.

-Reuters

There is plenty of evidence.

Most scientists do believe now that global warming is created by man.

Yup. And if I manage to live to 107, I'll eat my hat.

most scientists cant get grants unless they go along with global warming..i think it is typical ego of man..that we are so powerful and influential that we can impact our entire exisitence....like we are bigger than God....

If there was a consensus among scientists that global warming is indeed occurring (I should note that Im speaking outside of actuality in order to indulge your viewpoint), would you accept it?

I also wonder if these anti-global warming scientists you refer to (equal in number to those who do accept it, according to you) agree with your "humans arent bigger than God" attitude.  Perhaps you have some new God data youd like to share?

Prove it.

ABC World News Tonight on Climate Change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJM0goE7sr0

Yeah, I say prove it too.

The funny thing about global warming is that it eventually leads to snow.

"Droughts and floods" in the definition of global warming is a simple way of saying "Weather extremes." And the extreme we have to worry about more than anything is snow. The thing that f**ks us is when too much snow covers too much of the land mass in the northern part of the planet in one season. (Because the top of our planet has more land mass distribution than the bottom) This causes too much of the sun's radiation to reflect back into space and sets off a domino effect of snow, snow and more snow. And it all happens in one season, and then all hell breaks loose and we're f***ed from then on.

And did I mention the snow?  :hihi:

This is the reason why some people don't understand why the term "Ice Age" is used in the same conversation as "Global Warming."

My favorite are the ones who say when our winters are warmer than normal that it's global warming, but when they're colder than normal that it's also global warming.  Hey skeezix, pick one and stick to it.

Maybe it's because the media doesn't really WANT anyone to understand global warming. Because the truth is the same story as that wolly mammoth who was found with undigested food in his stomach. It'll start with one snow storm and then it's over for us... and it could happen The Day After Tomorrow  ;D

well they aint that far of the mark - the effect of Global warming on the UK will eventually make the country colder, whereas it will turn Italy into a desert

I'm just glad people are aware of it, that has to be a step towards doing something about it

I hope he can prove it. It would pretty much validate all of that 70s and 80s research, as Global Warming would lead to an ice-age of sorts. Win-win situation for the scientists.

It's sad that politicians decide what and how science is presentated, I hope the world do what can be done

look at europe and look how close it is to the north pole. if europe stopped being warm, it'd need a lot more oil that it consumes now in order to keep their people alive. if they needed so much more oil, they'd have to get em from other nations and other places as well. in order to do that, they'd have to fight off a lot of other hungry customers of this black gold.

the gulf stream is what keeps europe as warm as it is considering how close europe is to the north pole. if anything were to interfere with the gulf stream, europe just might be the first part of the world to go into the next ice age. a few weeks ago, the gulf stream had stopped.  :o

i believe there's nothing we can do to fuck up the earth.. all we can do is kill ourselves off. statistically speaking, the earth has had an ice age at an "average" rate of every 10,000 years.. by that sense, we're 2,000 years overdue for another one.

all the people saying that us burning oil and releasing methane in the air is what's causing the increase in temp. historically speaking, its proven that in the past, when temperatures increased, the levels of methane increased.. not the other way around. its not the methane that's causing the temperature increase, its the temperature increase that's causing the excess amounts of methane because of all the methane gasses trapped in glaciers and polar ice caps that get released once they melt.

so i believe that us humans can kill ourselves off and do whatever the fuck we want but the earth will go through its motions as it always has and the worst we could possibly do to it is nuke its land surface and make it inhabitable for humans and/or mammals at best.

well.. there was a "little ice age" that only ended around 1850 which isn't too long ago considering the earth's age

It's impossible that global warming could spark conflict because everyone on the planet agrees that man is causing global warming.... I mean the earth has never, ever gone through periods of cooling and warming, and cooling and warming...(the safe bet is it's America's fault).

We're in the clear now, and can blame China....



Report: China Will Pass U.S. As Polluter
Apr 24 01:41 AM US/Eastern


SHANGHAI, China (AP) - China will pass the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses this year, an official with the International Energy Agency was quoted as saying.

China had been forecast to surpass the U.S. in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, was quoted as saying in an interview appearing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal newspaper.

"In the past couple of months, economic growth and related coal consumption has grown at such an unexpected rate," Birol was quoted as saying. China's rising emissions will effectively cancel out attempts by other countries to reduce their own, he said.

Those comments follow the weekend release of a Chinese government report detailing the costs of climate change but asserting that the country should focus on development before cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Higher than average temperatures meant spreading deserts, worsening droughts, shrinking glaciers and increased spread of diseases, said the report, compiled by more than a dozen government bodies. It said emission limits were unfair and would constrain China's current energy and manufacturing industries.

China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gasses, but is exempt from its restrictions because it is a developing country.

The Paris-based IEA advises developed country on energy policy.

No surprise there.

Its kind of silly to ask everyone to cut down on their greenhouse gases when China will continue to put whatever it wants into the atmosphere.. :-\

yeah it has.. when it went through the ice ages

^ That was kinda my point. Plus many other times too.

You hit the nail right on the head. The SUN is causing global warming, not us. But the problem even with THAT theory... which disturbs The Powers That Be, is people will still wonder about the coincidence of us being here and fucking up the planet at the same time the planet was gonna go to shit anyways... and THAT points to an intelligent design. THAT'S what they don't want ticking around in people's heads.

The "Gulf Stream failure plunging Europe into artic temperatures" is a seperate issue from the "Ice Age" thing. If the Gulf Stream fails, England and near-by areas get cold like Norway in Manatoba, Canada. The Ice Age thing would cause the entire northern part of the planet (and probably the bottom too) to be covered in Snow and ice... everyewhere from England, to New York, Seattle, Japan, Mongolia, etc., etc., as a result of that domino effect after one really snowy winter.

My favorite planet is the Sun......


(http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/8978/caray2mt0.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

Arctic sea ice melts faster than thought

Associated Press

BOULDER, Colo. - Arctic sea ice is melting three times faster than many scientists project, U.S. researchers reported Monday, just days ahead of the next major international report on climate change.
 
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder concluded that Arctic sea ice has declined at an average rate of about 7.8 percent per decade between 1953 and 2006.

By contrast, 18 computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-sponsored climate research group, estimated an average rate of decline of 2.5 percent per decade over the same period, the researchers said.

International delegates are meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, this week to hammer out the final wording of the third IPCC report.

Both the observations cited in the new study and projections from the IPCC computer models are for September, when Arctic sea ice is typically at its low point for the year.

For March, when the ice is typically at its most extensive, the new study found the rate of decline was 1.8 percent per decade, about three times larger than the mean from the computer models.

The researchers said their observations indicate the retreat of summertime Arctic sea ice is about 30 years ahead of the pace projected by climate models.

"While the ice is disappearing faster than the computer models indicate, both observations and the models point in the same direction: the Arctic is losing ice at an increasingly rapid pace and the impact of greenhouse gases is growing," said NCAR scientist Marika Holland, one of the study's co-authors.

Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the study is "a good reminder that uncertainty in model projections cuts both ways." Critics of some global warming scenarios have said the models exaggerate the potential problems.

"My feeling (along with the authors) is that it is likely that the models are insufficiently sensitive," Schmidt said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. He said the reasons for the lack of sensitivity are unclear.

"Overall, the models have a track record of getting large scale changes right, particularly in temperatures, but at the regional scale (like in the Arctic), there is more variability," he wrote.

The Boulder-based researchers used a combination of early reports from aircraft and ships and more recent satellite measurements to come up with their observations of the ice melt.

They said the discrepancy between their observations and computer projections indicate computer models may have failed to portray the entire impact of increasing levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The computer models indicated that increased greenhouse gases and natural climate variations were about equally responsible for ice loss between 1979 and 2006, the researchers said.

They said their own study indicates greenhouse gases may have a "significantly greater" role than the models suggested.

A number of factors may lead the computer models to underestimate the rate of decline in sea ice, the researchers said. Several models overestimated the thickness of the ice, and the models may have failed to fully account for changes in currents in the atmosphere and oceans that transfer heat to polar regions, they said.

The study, "Arctic Sea Ice Decline: Faster Than Forecast," will appear in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters on Tuesday, three days before the IPCC issues its report.


Link to article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070430/ap_on_sc/climate_melting_arctic;_ylt=AgW0E16KFzMEpXvDX.G4ZofMWM0F

Mon May 21, 5:02 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders are urging
President George W. Bush and Congress to take action against global warming, declaring that the changing climate is a "moral and spiritual issue."

In an open letter to be published on Tuesday, more than 20 religious groups urged U.S. leaders to limit greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy sources.

"Global warming is real, it is human-induced and we have the responsibility to act," says the letter, which will run in Roll Call and the Politico, two Capitol Hill newspapers.

"We are mobilizing a religious force that will persuade our legislators to take immediate action to curb greenhouse gases," it says.

The letter is signed by top officials of the National Council of Churches, the Islamic Society of North America and the political arm of the Reform branch of Judaism.

Top officials from several mainline Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church and Alliance of Baptists also signed the letter, along with leaders of regional organizations and individual churches.

Rev. Joel Hunter, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, also signed the letter, though that group has not officially taken a stance on global warming due to opposition from some of its more conservative members.