"The future is bleak . . . "
Well... Isn't that pleasant. . .
The AP story gives a recounting of the development process for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which is to be released in four parts over the course of this year.
While there're plenty of incidentals to make GCC nay-sayers snivel about "bureaucratic overkill" and other such "subtle" ghost arguments, the amount of effort, research and rigorous analyses that have gone into this report should finally put to rest any lingering doubts as to the forecast for our planet's near-term future.
And I don't just mean that in a geological sense. If you're under 50, as am I, it's not just your grandchildren's lifetimes which will be buffeted by catastrophic environmental changes. It is our own.
Happy Tuesday . . .
Report has 'smoking gun' on climate
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Mon Jan 22, 10:06 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Human-caused global warming is here, visible in the air, water and melting ice, and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week.
"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling."
The AP story gives a recounting of the development process for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which is to be released in four parts over the course of this year.
While there're plenty of incidentals to make GCC nay-sayers snivel about "bureaucratic overkill" and other such "subtle" ghost arguments, the amount of effort, research and rigorous analyses that have gone into this report should finally put to rest any lingering doubts as to the forecast for our planet's near-term future.
And I don't just mean that in a geological sense. If you're under 50, as am I, it's not just your grandchildren's lifetimes which will be buffeted by catastrophic environmental changes. It is our own.
The February report will have "much stronger evidence now of human actions on the change in climate that's taken place," Rajendra K. Pachauri told the AP in November. Pachauri, an Indian climatologist, is the head of the international climate change panel.The sky may not be falling (at least outside of the many war-zones the world over) but it sure is about to start gettin' medieval on our asses.
An early version of the ever-changing draft report said "observations of coherent warming in the global atmosphere, in the ocean, and in snow and ice now provide stronger joint evidence of warming."
And the early draft adds: "An increasing body of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on other aspects of climate including sea ice, heat waves and other extremes, circulation, storm tracks and precipitation."
The world's global average temperature has risen about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2005. The two warmest years on record for the world were 2005 and 1998. Last year was the hottest year on record for the United States.
The report will draw on already published peer-review science. Some recent scientific studies show that temperatures are the hottest in thousands of years, especially during the last 30 years; ice sheets in Greenland in the past couple years have shown a dramatic melting; and sea levels are rising and doing so at a faster rate in the past decade.
[Ain't no "Chicken Little" baby]
Happy Tuesday . . .
I read that awareness has reached critical mass and the majority of people have a desire for change. Also noted a number of large corporations have banned together to demand change. I don't know what that one is about. I just don't have a lot of trust in the corps.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I "trust" them is that they Are generally run by very smart people. Those folks are generally just focusing their smarts on making a profit.
ReplyDeleteNow, as it becomes near impossible to deny that our efforts are about to make our planet unlivable for huge numbers of their consumers, they've started focusing on what needs to be done to ensure they don't lose their customers to environmental catastrophe's.
The Pew Center has a lot of good info on what Corps are doing so far.
Hope remains unless (or until) we've reached a point of imminent extinction. Despite the very realistic doom and gloom of the IPCC report, I honest don't think we're there yet. Close, to be sure, but not there.
I'm curious as to whether the majority of human-caused global warming is from technology or overpopulation? I know it's both, but which does the most damage? Overpopulation is another one of those inconvenient truths, people are unwilling to stop "multiplying".
ReplyDeleteIt should be interesting tonight when Dum Dum discusses what he plans to do about global warming. You know it will be good from a man who did shit about New Orleans and thinks drilling in Alaska is a good thing. Oh yeah, he's also nice to Canadia because he wants their oil.
ReplyDeleteGet a six pack. The show is going to be good!
That is an interesting distinction, Blueberry. Oddly though, the correlations are kinda doubled up.
ReplyDeleteWealthier, more heavily polluting societies tend to have lower rates of population replacement. So even though we create more of the technological pollutants, we contribute less to population pressures.
And if we're to help raise the living standards of those over-populated regions of the world, even though that will diminish the over-pop problems, they'll become folks who utilize more techno, thus causing more stress on the environment.
It really comes back around to Responsible Use. We want, and IMO Deserve, the benefits of tech, so we'd better make the drawbacks less apocalyptically consequential.
Human bio-cultural evolution is Fun Stuff, eh? {-;
Dig it, AG. Doesn't matter what Shrub says, he'll do Nothing in practice. Nothing, that is, that doesn't funnel $$$ towards those who already have a majority of 'em.
I'll be skippin' the 6 for a single glass o' shiraz-cab though. Just enough to keep my arteries happy and dull the torture of watching our gibbering gibbon of a Chimperor abuse the human language nearly as disengenously as he does the U.S. Constitution.
In Jesusistan, Rapture is imminent. Who cares how hot the Earth gets when we're all about to be Raptured off it anyway?
ReplyDeleteYa know, the way Shrub pays attention, I sometimes can't help but think he knows GCC is heating up. He's actually Rapturously aware of the fact and thinks he's doing Teh Lord's Work by speedin' up the process.
ReplyDeleteFell asleep watchin' NFL Replay (Chi-N.O.) so missed the Chimp's SOTU assessment. Did he ascend into Heaven during it? THAT woulda been cool.
Ah well, guess I'll go check the WaPo, HuffPo and NYTi now for the (predictable) recaps.
L8