Global Warming Debate

[rohirrim TR]

Wow I leave for a week and you guys add 5 pages plus links. All the threads I was keeping track of have left me in the dust like a jeep running over a gila monster in arkansas.

So? cigarretes and tobbaco are responsible for global warming now ?

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

All the threads I was keeping track of have left me in the dust like a jeep running over a gila monster in arkansas.

Gila monsters in Arkansas?

Or should I say were there , before you got there.

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Gila monsters in Arkansas?

Or should I say were there , before you got there.

At least you appreciate the irony.

[Lief Erikson]

This article is an interesting new addition to the Global Warming debate, in my view. The UN apparently has taken a pretty firm stance on the scientific elements of the issue.

[Jonathan]

From the article to which Lief linked:

Key findings of the report include:

* 75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020

* Crop yields increase could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia

* Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020

* 20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise between 1.5-2.5C

* Glaciers and snow cover expected to decline, reducing water availability in countries supplied by melt water

Obviously, if global warming is a reality (and the article clearly states it is), it will result in enormous costs. Hopefully this new IPCC report will convince the policymakers that the warming to a great extent is man-made and also make them realize that investments to reduce these man-made factors today might save huge sums of money in the future.

[Lief Erikson]

I very much approve of the efforts to find and bring into common use alternate fuels. There are multiple reasons for doing that. There's Global Warming, the shrinking of world oil reserves, and the new flare ups in the Middle East that all make good reasons for doing that.

I researched the expenses necessary to stop Global Warming pretty extensively though, and they are ENORMOUS. I don't think that the Kyoto Protocols is an effective solution, because it wouldn't do anywhere near enough, even if the US, China and India all joined it, because the problem has expanded so.

[Jonathan]

The costs for countering climate change are indeed enormous. However, as was concluded in the Stern Review (summary found here), the earlier we take action is taken, the less costly the effects will be.

Right now the cost of a few percent of GDP to counter global warming would be very expensive, but still manageable. And it would be an investment for the future. If we don't take action however, the effects of global warming would later cost us maybe 20 percent of GDP a year, which is compareable to financial disasters such as World War II or the Great Depression.

edit: It is also important to note that since global warming is already a reality, not only must we reduce the speed at which it progresses but also see to it that we adapt to the most imminent climate changes. The Stern Review deals with this aspect as well.

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Hector, just to let you know, though I disagree with you about Global Warming, I find it very cool that you've got the guts to take on everybody in this debate .

Agreed. But don't forget Rohirrim TR and The Telcontorian.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Agreed. But don't forget Rohirrim TR and The Telcontorian.

I didn't see their posts when I was scanning .

Originally Posted by Jonathan

The costs for countering climate change are indeed enormous. However, as was concluded in the Stern Review (summary found here), the earlier we take action is taken, the less costly the effects will be.

Huh. When I was researching this, I learned that there was a "point of no return," after which human intervention wouldn't stop Global Warming at all, for it would become essentially a self-fueled force. After a certain point, its own impact would produce the conditions that would enable it to continue, so it would spiral out of control and become unstoppable. Pretty much a doomsday estimate, but the sources for that point of no return looked pretty good. Some of groups argued that we'd already crossed that threshhold, while others put the maximum time we have left at about twenty to thirty years. I'd heard estimates that give us far less time, though.

I should probably dig these data up again.

[The Gaffer]

Is 3% of GDP a price worth paying to prevent the worst effects of climate change?

(BBC news item on the latest IPCC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6620909.stm)

[Butterbeer]

it's your round mate ...

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Is 3% of GDP a price worth paying to prevent the worst effects of climate change?

(BBC news item on the latest IPCC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6620909.stm)

*Reads it.*

Interesting article. I was under the impression that the cost would be far higher than that, but that's certainly very interesting.

I really should dig up and post my research, here. I engaged in a debate on this subject for a class in college, so I've got a lot of sources and evidence about this on my computer. I think quite a bit of what I have directly contradicts the UN experts BBC cites, but my sources might be wrong and they might be right.

I'll see what I've got and post it here, when I have time .

[The Telcontarion]

This is what the whole global warming is really about:

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/may...population.htm

C02 is not a bad gas. It has been shown, the more co2 the more plant life there would be which would result in more o2; more o2 means longer healthier life, for all wild life on the planet.

A rise in co2 always follows a rise in temperatue, not the other way around.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by The Telcontarion

This is what the whole global warming is really about:

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/may...population.htm

C02 is not a bad gas. It has been shown, the more co2 the more plant life there would be which would result in more o2; more o2 means longer healthier life, for all wild life on the planet.

A rise in co2 always follows a rise in temperatue, not the other way around.

Interesting theory, and I've certainly seen Malthusian elements as part of this debate.

I have to take issue with the "co2 good gas" theory, though. As a mammal, rather than an Aspen, I'm in favor of oxygen over co2. As a member of the species that does the most playing around with my environment, I'm constrained to acknowledge that we've paved, logged and generally spoken for a lot of the area that might ordinarily have gone into restoring a balance between the two. This presents real challenges, particularly when we start discussing where we would like the oxygen to come from and it revives a lot of issues around colonialism. Many countries with rain forest, for example, want to know why they should remain without development opportunities so that people in the US can eat beef and run their air-conditioning all the time. I think that's a fair question. Henry George, an American economist who devoted most of his work to a theory of how land use policies could more equitably reflect social justice, talked about this as "the disappearance of the frontier". Everyone had big fun as long as the population could push out and start in on new land, but what happens when the land is all accounted for? How do you credit the work of people who didn't happen to grab some first? Have we, as a species currently confined to one planet, just about reached our "frontier"?

My suspicion is, based on what I know of history, that poor and disadvantaged people will wind up bearing the brunt of either global warming OR efforts to slow it down. People do not have trouble getting the new Lexus through emissions testing, I notice. They even have special dispensations for rich people cars. So the solutions are still in flux.

But what is the downside to carrying reusable grocery bags and using lower wattage bulbs? Even professional environmentalists get snarky about corporate "greenwashing" (I could link you, to hear them whine ) but surely discussion of our impact is good by any standard. It's the "examined life", kwim?

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

But what is the downside to carrying reusable grocery bags and using lower wattage bulbs?

This is a key point. Even if global warming was all hogwash, we live on a planet of limited resources. Things which we can't simply create out of thin air. It is also doubtful that technology will advance anywhere near enough in the next few hundred years to be able to reasonable gather these things from off-planet.

Basically, we are ultimately screwed no matter what we do, but some conservation now will extend the lifespan of our current race dramatically.

[The Telcontarion]

By ANDREW SWALLOW - The Timaru Herald | Saturday, 19 May 2007

Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.

Man's contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried, he maintained.

"We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said.

A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin had created the current hysteria and it was time to put a stop to it.

"It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said.

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

"If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time."

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

"That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said.

"We couldn't do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates."

Yet the Greens continued to use phrases such as "The planet is groaning under the weight of CO2" and Government policies were about to hit industries such as farming, he warned.

"The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is?

"It's become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt," he said.

The original link is here

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Interesting theory, and I've certainly seen Malthusian elements as part of this debate.

I have to take issue with the "co2 good gas" theory, though. As a mammal, rather than an Aspen, I'm in favor of oxygen over co2.

*applause*

[The Gaffer]

One nutcase rehashing already-dismissed arguments based on half-truths versus thousands of scientists. Hmmm.

[Earniel]

You know, for a few minutes I was nigh convinced that that prisonplanet article was an article out of the Onion...

[The Gaffer]

Might as well be.