Text 11693, 110 rader
Skriven 2007-02-06 15:08:32 av Richard Fallstrom (15132.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Global warming, among other things
==============================================
In article <1170722337.074008.212870@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>,
Shabaz <shabaz.x@gmail.com> wrote:

> Please, please, please people, take the trouble to read through the
> IPCC SPM I linked. And maybe some of their other reports, if you have
> time. So we at least have a base line from actual science that you can
> talk from. Instead of just making arguments based on "facts" without
> sources, in areas that are actually clearly addressed in the actual
> science. They're not super readable prose, but it still should be
> understandable for most of us, I think.
> 
> On Feb 5, 3:55 pm, Methuselah Jones <methuse...@altgeek.org> wrote:
> > I'd say we understand enough to say that we potentially have a serious
> > problem.
> 
> Not potentially. We know global warming is happening. We know with 95%
> certainty that there will be even larger climate changes in the 21st
> century than in the 20th century at current or higher emission rates.
> We know that frequency and intensity of certain extreme weather events
> will likely to very likely increase. See the IPCC AR4 SPM. And again,
> there is a danger here, which is not change in itself, but large and
> rapid change. The larger and more rapid the changes the harder it
> becomes to adapt, and the more the negative effects start to dominate.
> To quote from the IPCC TAR Synthesis Report SPM:
> 
> >>Projected climate change will have beneficial and adverse effects on both
> >>environmental and socio-economic systems, but the larger the changes and
> >>rate of change in climate, the more the adverse effects predominate.<<
> 
> >When we can't consistently predict whether it's going to rain
> > tomorrow, I don't know how we can say anything with any certainty about
> > the next decade or the next century.
> 
> Weather prediction and climate change prediction are two fundamentally
> different things. While it may seem counter intuitive, predictions in
> the larger context of climate can actually be accurate, even if it
> still is hard to predict next week's weather. That you have trouble
> understanding how this is doesn't make it any less so, and at this
> point the certainty levels are fairly high. Again, just read through
> the IPCC AR4 SPM: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf
> 
> You also may find the write up on this topic at RealClimate.org an
> illuminating read: http://tinyurl.com/oet3t
> 
> >Yes, the climate is warming[1]. Yes,
> > curbing greenhouse gasses is a good idea. Alarmism, however, is not.
> > Whatever's going to happen is going to happen.
> 
> Emission cuts can have a significant impact. To quote again from the
> IPCC TAR Synthesis Report SPM, from the answers to Q6:
> 
> >>The greater the reductions in emissions and the earlier they are
> >>introduced, the smaller and slower the projected warming and the rise in
> >>sea levels. Future climate change is determined by historic, current, and
> >>future emissions. Differences in projected temperature changes between
> >>scenarios that include greenhouse gas emission reductions and those that do
> >>not tend to be small for the first few decades but grow with time if the
> >>reductions are sustained.<<
> 
> We can lower the projected global mean temperature rise by several
> full degrees by 2100, making a huge difference. See the full Q6
> answers, which you might find interesting. http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/
> syreng/spm.pdf
> 
> > Humans do make an impact
> > on the environment, obviously, but I think the overall impact on the
> > macrocosm is less significant than many think it is.
> 
> Since those "many" includes the opinion that can be derived from the
> peer reviewed science out there, you're plain wrong here. The warming
> trend *can not* be explained with any confidence without anthropogenic
> green house gasses, and anyone who tells you it can is either
> misunderstanding the current scientific understanding, or wilfully
> misrepresenting it. And to again quote the AR4 SPM: "Most of the
> observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th
> century is very likely [< 90%] due to the observed increase in
> anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."
> 
> > As Ray Bradbury
> > said, "The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can
> > produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its
> > entire history."
> 
> That's a pretty impressive factoid... but I'm pretty sure it is wrong.
> With CO2 for instance, volcanoes on average release about 0.15 Gt/year
> of carbon into the atmosphere, compared to about 7 Gt/year of human
> related sources. They're negligible to what we're doing. For some more
> fun reading on this, I'll recommend another RealClimate.org article
> (from which I got these numbers): http://tinyurl.com/3483wu
> 
> 

Ok, I downloaded the article and am in the process of reading it. One
thing I can categorically state is given the contrariness of the human
race, there's no way in Hell you are going to get everyone in lockstep
with your goals. It would take a dictator for the entire world with
worse morals than Stalin, Hitler and Mussellini combined to pull it off
and even then I would not offer a high probability of success. You
would need a world-wide religious awakening to pull off a more positive
job and even then, not everyone will follow.

Given the current political climate, the only way to get people off the
dime would be a carbon emissions tax based on combined gasoline,
electric power and food usage. Even that has about the same chance as a
snowball at the Sun's surface of happening.

Rick (sometimes is a GentleRF and sometimes is not)
.
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