Climate change will affect us sooner than we thought.

[Luc-talkclimatechange.com]

A Climate scientist from the MET office said yesterday that the affects of climate change will effect us several decades earlier than previously thought. He specifically mentioned destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture, and warned that the elderly and poor would be worst affected.

Professor Parry, co-chairman of the IPCC working group that wrote the report, said: "We are all used to talking about these impacts coming in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Now we know that it's us."


Parry also stated that governments have wasted too much time trying to cut emmisions and only just started addressing the need to adapt.

Luke
Talk Climate Change: Global Warming News & Discussion Forum

[FabianPattberg]

Thanks for this Luke.

Would you also have the link to the full story by any chance?

Regards,
Fabian

[Luc-talkclimatechange.com]

Certainly.

How climate change will affect the world | Environment | The Guardian

[isenhand]

Apart from rising tides I’m beginning to wonder if climate change will have any significant adverse effects on us. The reason for that is the stone age and iron age sites I have visited. During that period the climate was much warmer than it is today. They grew grapes in Sweden and farmed in Greenland. Neither of which we can do today.


.ui

[Metyu]

Um... climate change is happening today and has been for all history. People seem to forget that nature and indeed the Earth are not benevolent, philanthropic things. The reason we emit so much CO2 is because of the struggle to live - the struggle to not be consumed by nature and the Earth.

I agree with Parry that there is too much focus on emissions. Adaptation is far more important - no-one wants another New Orleans.

The focus on emissions allows government to appear to be doing a lot without actually doing anything. Another apparently forgotten thing: according to Tyndall Centre (2004) research, business (yes: big, bad business) in the UK reduced its emissions from ~90MtC in 1990 to ~68MtC in 2000 (~25%). And this without any government prompt.

What government needs to do is get its act together and respond to e.g. engineers in New Orleans who say the flood defences will breach if a storm comes and can we please have some money to stop it. That will never happen while laymen are being provoked into panic by sensationalising statements such as "climate change is the biggest threat to [insert scary sound-bite here]".

[carbon junkie]

Originally Posted by isenhand

Apart from rising tides I’m beginning to wonder if climate change will have any significant adverse effects on us. The reason for that is the stone age and iron age sites I have visited. During that period the climate was much warmer than it is today. They grew grapes in Sweden and farmed in Greenland. Neither of which we can do today.
.ui

How many people were living on the planet then?

What rate of change in the earths temperature was there?

The world is very different today we are a lot more susceptable

[Metyu]

Originally Posted by carbon junkie

How many people were living on the planet then?

What rate of change in the earths temperature was there?

The world is very different today we are a lot more susceptable

I don't know what the population was, nor indeed the rate of temperature change.

The introduction to this article is worrying, particularly the "half the warming ... in a decade" bit Abrupt Climate Change:

...all this without the significant amounts of carbon dioxide man is currently pumping into the atmosphere. I don't think anyone claims to know what would happen during such an event.

Which leads to your point on susceptibility. Lomborg asked, if you were a policy maker and/or budget holder in New Orleans in 1990, would you use your powers to invest in CO2 reduction schemes, or flood defences and reviewing the systems of governance that denied a significant number of emergency vehicles access to the city?

Which involves making a value judgement over timescale. Do we divide the available funds between the long and the short-term? Or do we focus spending on the immediate threat, and the saving of lives today?

[carbon junkie]

Originally Posted by Metyu

I don't know what the population was, nor indeed the rate of temperature change.

The introduction to this article is worrying, particularly the "half the warming ... in a decade" bit Abrupt Climate Change:

...all this without the significant amounts of carbon dioxide man is currently pumping into the atmosphere. I don't think anyone claims to know what would happen during such an event.

Which leads to your point on susceptibility. Lomborg asked, if you were a policy maker and/or budget holder in New Orleans in 1990, would you use your powers to invest in CO2 reduction schemes, or flood defences and reviewing the systems of governance that denied a significant number of emergency vehicles access to the city?

Which involves making a value judgement over timescale. Do we divide the available funds between the long and the short-term? Or do we focus spending on the immediate threat, and the saving of lives today?

Why is there always a limited amount of funds why was the budget for NASA not cut to finance the Iraq war for example?

Why do we manage to find the money for the Olympics in the UK an event we know is a finacial headache but we cut our budget for flood defences?

The question Lomborg needs to be asking is why economists make the value judgements they do and what s the motivation behind these judgements.

Unfortunately most economists are employed by either large multinationals or large state eneterprises so the saying goes It is impossible to get a person to tell the truth when thier salary depends upon them saying something different.

[Metyu]

Originally Posted by carbon junkie

Unfortunately most economists are employed by either large multinationals or large state eneterprises so the saying goes It is impossible to get a person to tell the truth when thier salary depends upon them saying something different.

I am not sure that is entirely true. A lot of economists that would agree with many of the sentiments of Lomborg are, for example, professors at universities.

This may be of interest:

Inaugural International Forum on World Universities

"The World Universities Forum was created in the belief that academe must better engage today's most crucial questions, and that higher education itself must be included as part of the wider discussion of global change."

And I think this comment by Francois Chesnais (2003) is indicative:

"These friends and colleagues are non neo-classical economists, but with a few notable exceptions, they shy away from head-on encounter with the dominant current. [This] note sets out some of the reasons why they should abandon an erroneous conception of academic "neutrality" and help to develop a critique of liberalisation, deregulation and "globalisation". See www.agp.org | WSF 2004: Globalisation against development : liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation and the contemporary performance of the international economy

M.

[Johnny Electriglide]

Satellite imaging of the summer North Polar Ice cap began in 1979 and through 2000 averaged 2.6 million square miles. In 2005 it had dropped to 2.2 msm or a little over 15% in 5 years. This year it was down to 1.7 msm or 23% less than 2 years ago, and 35% less than 7 years ago.
From a relatively stable average over 31 years to 3% change per year for 5 years average to 11.5% average change over two years. So it is easy to see that these changes are geometric. From the Denver Post Oct 2. P 9A.
It is said that all the summer polar ice will be gone by 2030. Even if the rate stays the same average without more acceleration, the Northern Polar summer ice will be gone in 7 years. I guess it is assumed the acceleration will stop, and the RATE will decelerate.<rockon>:what: