We're All Doomed

[The PIT]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4888946.stm

Probably wants an increase in grant so he can buy another computer.

[Metomania]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4888946.stm

Probably wants an increase in grant so he can buy another computer.

Is the total lack of interest on NW in this story, which is running as a headline on lots of news channels, because:

- No-one here agrees?

- Most people here don't want to agree?

- Most people do agree, but don't want to think about it?

Or a combination of these, or none?!

[Methuselah]

Is the total lack of interest on NW in this story, which is running as a headline on lots of news channels, because:

- No-one here agrees?

- Most people here don't want to agree?

- Most people do agree, but don't want to think about it?

Or a combination of these, or none?!

Or the fact that we already have more than one GW thread ongoing?

[Devonian]

Is the total lack of interest on NW in this story, which is running as a headline on lots of news channels, because:

- No-one here agrees?

- Most people here don't want to agree?

- Most people do agree, but don't want to think about it?

Or a combination of these, or none?!

Well, I agree with Sir David, and, being optimistic, I'd hope at least some others here do too.

Otoh, the 'have you say comments' about the article on the BBC are a pretty depressing (from my pov) reflection of those who've read it. The 'we know better than the experts' (err, how?) type

[the_white_stuff]

Is the total lack of interest on NW in this story, which is running as a headline on lots of news channels, because:

- No-one here agrees?

- Most people here don't want to agree?

- Most people do agree, but don't want to think about it?

Or a combination of these, or none?!

I personally couldnt give a toss about the story, we hear it every week and frankly the shock or interest in it has been lost for me.

[Thundery wintry showers]

That's the problem- when we are told the same things over and over again, people switch off.

In any case, I think aiming for "stabilising temperature increases below 2C" or "3C" or whatever, is not the right approach, because we don't really know the extent to which human emissions are causing the warming. If we are serious about reducing emissions then surely a better policy is the emissions limits idea referred to in parts of the article itself.

It also looks as if, unless George Bush is elected out of the USA, we're going to have our work cut out to reduce global emissions significantly while the USA is pumping out lots of pollution with factories and a fleet of vehicles that are far less fuel efficient than Britain's.

[Hairy Celt]

People have an inbuilt facility to ignore anything more than a few days ahead. Maybe spending a couple of minutes really trying to imagine what Britain might be like in 50 years time would help. Having kids has helped me do this, but that might not apply to all!

[Stratos Ferric]

Well, I agree with Sir David, and, being optimistic, I'd hope at least some others here do too.

Otoh, the 'have you say comments' about the article on the BBC are a pretty depressing (from my pov) reflection of those who've read it. The 'we know better than the experts' (err, how?) type B)

Devonian, let me say I enjoy your measured contributions on this topic - almost as much as I enjoy Daniel's anything but measured ones: lol!

The sad problem with issues such as these is that the problems in the future can only be allayed by punitive actions taken today: for that reason people tend not to buy-in to the need en-masse. The debate will start to take off only when we start to see drastic consequences, and with the rate of change in human terms being pretty slow (albeit unprecednetedly rapid on geological timescales) it is too easy for sceptics, naysayers and the plain ignorant to pass off that slow change as just "background noise".

It staggers me that there are still many in the debate who don't even accept that the climate has warmed. We should all thank our lucky stars that by and large, I assume, these people do not daily have to make life-or-death decisions, or are not people like, say, airline pilots, into whose hands we occasionally entrust our safety.

That's the problem- when we are told the same things over and over again, people switch off.

...

It also looks as if, unless George Bush is elected out of the USA, we're going to have our work cut out to reduce global emissions significantly while the USA is pumping out lots of pollution with factories and a fleet of vehicles that are far less fuel efficient than Britain's.

Tbh TWS, I don't think it would matter much who's in power. American government is too much in the pocket of big business, which needs cheap fuel more than it needs carbon tax, to ever vote for Kyoto or the like until such time as New York and its boroughs are facing inundation. If there's one thing to be thankful for, it's the fact that much of urban USA is close enough to the coast to have to face up sooner or later to potential consequences.

[pottyprof]

So still no mention of water vapour and an over warm sun for the last 2 decades then??

1.. earth has large oceans

2.. over warm sun creates evaporation of said oceans..

By now we should have seen Doncaster by the sea going on the 80's forcasts for this GW thingy and its still yet to happen..

Yep.. mankind is not helping the situation.. but lets get some better data to work with considering the timescales..

The sun has now entered a cooler phase.. and not just because of fewer sun spots.. the surface temperature of the sun is some 7% cooler than the average for the last decade according to some reports..

If this is true then perhaps the American government see no point in barking up the "want to sell us your carbon emission" tree??

Time will tell ey??

[Guest Mike W]

Apparently, not sure if it's NASA who have said this, I do know it wasn't a wacky site, apparently we are nearing our furthest distance from the sun or we already are, something like that anyway.

[pottyprof]

Mike.. at the end of the day we are all clueless as to what is happening.. scientists are pinning all this GW stuff down to things that we are doing and some of it is probably correct.. some of it is money oriented..

20-30 years of data regarding the earths climate i cannot accept.. ok its getting warmer.. but will it cool down?? is it all a natural cycle?? are we really doomed?? CO2 is not the be all and end all of climate change.. methane and water vapour are the major culprits.. so everyone please do as the queen does.. and dont boil a kettle if its not needed.. B)

[Devonian]

So still no mention of water vapour and an over warm sun for the last 2 decades then??

1.. earth has large oceans

2.. over warm sun creates evaporation of said oceans..

By now we should have seen Doncaster by the sea going on the 80's forcasts for this GW thingy and its still yet to happen..

Yep.. mankind is not helping the situation.. but lets get some better data to work with considering the timescales..

The sun has now entered a cooler phase.. and not just because of fewer sun spots.. the surface temperature of the sun is some 7% cooler than the average for the last decade according to some reports..

If this is true then perhaps the American government see no point in barking up the "want to sell us your carbon emission" tree??

Time will tell ey??

Simply put you Doncaster claim is wrong, since no one has said such a thing might happen.

7% - yikes! If it has cooled that much it would be snowball Earth time I'd guess.

No, I'd say try this for a more realistic assesment. Not much change if any over the last few decades.

Edited April 15, 2006 by Devonian

[Stratos Ferric]

So still no mention of water vapour and an over warm sun for the last 2 decades then??

1.. earth has large oceans

2.. over warm sun creates evaporation of said oceans..

By now we should have seen Doncaster by the sea going on the 80's forcasts for this GW thingy and its still yet to happen..

Yep.. mankind is not helping the situation.. but lets get some better data to work with considering the timescales..

The sun has now entered a cooler phase.. and not just because of fewer sun spots.. the surface temperature of the sun is some 7% cooler than the average for the last decade according to some reports..

If this is true then perhaps the American government see no point in barking up the "want to sell us your carbon emission" tree??

Time will tell ey??

This is reasonable to a point, however, the capacity of the atmosphere to hold water vapour is limited, though increases with temperature (Boyle's law is it?); thenet effect of increasing temperature might be to increase cloudiness, but eventually all that will happen is the rate of circulation through the water cycle increases slightly.

There is limited support for the models having this right, in fact. In the UK increased overnight warmth, particularly in winter when net cooling would otherwise occur more significantly under clear skies, is clearly seen in reduced instances of frost. Although I have no concrete evidence of increased cloudiness, the net effect is as would be expected: similarly, there seems to be some support for increased storminess in our rainfall patterns, which would align with a faster hydrocycle.

Against this there is the inbound albedo effect, and whilst in my uni days twenty years ago the debate was still raging around how to model this, I suspect that those with their hands on the tillers have a better grasp now than they did then. The process of model evolution will have them comparing actual outturns against modelled outturns so that the gap between model performance and reality ever narrows.

I think you point about Doncaster by Sea is rather an overstatement: even back in the 1980s nobdoy was supporting anything that aggressive in such short timescales. I think even in the worst scenario Doncaster, unfortunately, will stay dry.

[Guest Mike W]

I was wondering if things got/got really bad and we have baking hot summers every year like a1995, 76, or 2003 summer every year to two years, and every year having an annual mean of 10 or 11.**, would you if in charge of such thing resort to cooling pollutants like SO2 and soot, and restrictions off emmiting those said pollutants, while still putting restrictions on warming chemicals/gas emmsions. Or would you stand firm as we continue to bake. Controversial to say the least. Thankyou Clean Air Act for the summer of 1990, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2003, and all those years ending in 10.** like 1990,1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005.... To be fair at least acid rain has finished, oh how on, it hasn't, well at least we don't have droughts in Africa, oh actually we still ahve that as well as people with asthma and emphasema. What they should have done is to concentrate on both warming and cooling emmisions, with, new fuel that doesn't emmit any of those like hydrogen fuel or bio-fuel that only emmits active CO2 which would go back down alot quicker.

Edited April 15, 2006 by Mike W

[Guest Daniel]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4888946.stm

Probably wants an increase in grant so he can buy another computer.

I just don understand why people fear warming so much. we need warmth and moisture to grow our food. Today the Global climate is warm enough and just wet enough for us to grow enough food to prevent mass global starvation. Of course there are parts of the world that are starving but thses places are small on a global scale. If the World does warm a little we would simply grow food further north as most of the earths land is located near the poles. What we really need to fear is cooling and the onset of the next iceage. When ever there been periods of cooling in the past like in Europe there been mass starvation and countries became unstable. but in the warmer time when there was good crops Europe was a more stable place. now If say for example there was massive cooling in North america and Europe which caused major crop failers and at the same time a major drought took hold in the tropical food growing areas of south east Asia. the very thing that would occure with the onset of the next ice age. that would cause massive food problems and if these conditions was to last for more than a year this could cause massive starvation and many other problems that would come with it. So what we really sould be worried about is cooling not warming.

[Guest Mike W]

Why would people be worried about a cooling, the last time people worried about a cooling was in the early 80's, when it was already still cool and we know why that was, SO2 and soot emmited enough of to make it like that, as I say the Clean Air Act has however saved lives,but oddly not the problems assosiated with those 2 pollutants, [we still hear about acid rain, droughts etc] even though the amount today is minute compared to even the early 80's, even more so with the mid 70's, the levels in the early 70's is probably the amount necessay for today if we were to, which i agree is not the ideal solution to say the least, for several key reasons, mentioned before. The right thing to do was for new energy and fuel, the ones that we hear about today, hydrogen, bio-fuel mix with conventional, nuclar power, wind, tidal soalr etc, while we still ahd the cooling pollutant that gave us the time we need, the claen air act should only have gone as far to move the emmisons away from built up areas and the tall chim,mney stacks, the reductions in those pollutant and indeed in all colland warm emmisons should come from alternative energy and fuel, perhaps... :blush: One thing I will say is I don't see the point in going back on the Act, I think that would be wrong.

Edited April 17, 2006 by Mike W

[Devonian]

I just don understand why people fear warming so much. we need warmth and moisture to grow our food. Today the Global climate is warm enough and just wet enough for us to grow enough food to prevent mass global starvation. Of course there are parts of the world that are starving but thses places are small on a global scale. If the World does warm a little we would simply grow food further north as most of the earths land is located near the poles. What we really need to fear is cooling and the onset of the next iceage. When ever there been periods of cooling in the past like in Europe there been mass starvation and countries became unstable. but in the warmer time when there was good crops Europe was a more stable place. now If say for example there was massive cooling in North america and Europe which caused major crop failers and at the same time a major drought took hold in the tropical food growing areas of south east Asia. the very thing that would occure with the onset of the next ice age. that would cause massive food problems and if these conditions was to last for more than a year this could cause massive starvation and many other problems that would come with it. So what we really sould be worried about is cooling not warming.

Sure, a little warming is probably good. The more and the faster it is the greater the rapidly of change and problems.

Not sure how good for agriculture the soils under Tagia forests is, or how fertile land permanantly forzen might be if thawed. I do think there probably isn't 'much' soil under icecaps...

[nigelonline]

It seems as an observer, lots of contributors on here can't think past the next cold snap, what hope is there of thinking 100 years hence! I think there is also an increasingly selfish approach that you are a long time dead creeping into our society as a whole.

:blush: