Global warming doesn't exist, does it?

[Riverwind]

Therefore, any short term reduction in fossil fuel use will mean either:

SHRINKING the economy

This is academic speak for 'killing off people' - the reality is the we need to the economy to grow to ensure that an ever larger number of people can live on this earth. Even if some fusion breakthrough occurs, reducing population is the only effective way to combat global warming.

[BHS]

Therefore, any short term reduction in fossil fuel use will mean either:

SHRINKING the economy

This is academic speak for 'killing off people' - the reality is the we need to the economy to grow to ensure that an ever larger number of people can live on this earth. Even if some fusion breakthrough occurs, reducing population is the only effective way to combat global warming.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So, are you for or against culling humanity?

[Riverwind]

Therefore, any short term reduction in fossil fuel use will mean either:

SHRINKING the economy

This is academic speak for 'killing off people' - the reality is the we need to the economy to grow to ensure that an ever larger number of people can live on this earth. Even if some fusion breakthrough occurs, reducing population is the only effective way to combat global warming.

So, are you for or against culling humanity?

Obviously there is no ethical way 'cull' humanity so we really have no choice but to wait until Mother Nature gets around to it. If you are looking for a practical suggestion, I think any effort to reduce per capita energy consumption would pay off more in long run than simply changing the way we produce energy. In addition, efforts to increase the amount of natural vegetation covering the surface of the earth would help.

[Nemo]

deleted

[BHS]

"Killing off People"

An unspoken consequence of global warming is the dramatic decrease in Antarctic krill; which is important because it is at the base of the ocean food chain - not to mention a significant harvest as feed for domestic poultry and cattle.  If krill populations continue to decline at the present rates, it is projected to have a profound (and pervasive) effect.  We may be near the top of the food chain; but when the bottom goes, then, as surely as the earth turns, so shall we go as well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ever heard of yeast? A thousand years from now, when our decendants are all living in biodomes, they'll be feasting on cakes made of hearty, nutritious yeast. When they aren't levitating or reading each other's minds. And antarctic krill and their place in the lost food chain outside will be long forgotten.

[mirror]

Global warming: Will you listen now, America?

Two of the leading contenders to contest the next US presidential election have delivered an urgent warning to the United States on global warming, saying the evidence of climate change has become too stark to ignore and human activity is a major cause.

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

Published: 19 August 2005

On a high-profile and bi-partisan fact-finding tour in Alaska and Canada's Yukon territory, Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator for New York, were confronted by melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers and heard from native Inuit that rising sea levels were altering their lives.

"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action," Mr McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary." Mrs Clinton added: "I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science. There are still some holdouts, but they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."

Their findings directly challenge President George Bush's reluctance to legislate to reduce America's carbon emissions. Although both senators havetalked before of the need to tackle global warming, this week's clarion call was perhaps the clearest and most urgent. It also raises the prospect that climate change and other environmental issues could be a factor in the presidential contest in 2008 if Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain enter it. Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, who represents Arizona, are among the leading, and the most popular, likely contenders.

That they chose Alaska as the stage from which to force global warming on to the American political agenda was not a matter of chance. In many ways, this separated US state is the frontline in the global warming debate. Environmentalists say the signs of climate change are more obvious there than perhaps anywhere else in the US.

Dan Lashof, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defence Council, a respected Washington-based group, told The Independent: "People in Alaska are starting to freak out. The retreat of the sea ice allows the oceans to pound the coast more, and villages there are suffering from the effects of that erosion. There is permafrost melting, roads are buckling, there are forests that have been infested with beetles because of a rise in temperatures. I think residents there feel it's visible more and more, more than any other place in the country."

President Bush's administration has repeatedly questioned the evidence of global warming and the contribution of human activity to any shift. Mr Bush, who in 2001 refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty on global warming weeks after he took office, has repeatedly been accused of doing nothing to enforce tighter controls on emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases". But this summer, the US National Academy of Sciences - and the scientific academies of the other G8 nations as well as Brazil, China and India - issued a statement saying there was strong evidence that significant global warming was happening and that "it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities".

They called on world leaders to recognise "that delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur a greater cost". Mrs Clinton, who must first win her re-election to the US senate next year if she is to enter the 2008 White House race, said at the press conference that she had spoken to scientists as well as native Alaskans during the trip.

She said that, flying over the Yukon, she saw forests devastated by spruce bark beetles, believed to be increasing at an unprecedented rate because of warmer weather. She also talked of what a 93-year-old woman at a fish camp at Whitehorse told her. The woman said she had been fishing there all her life but now fish have strange bumps on them.

"It's heartbreaking to see the devastation," Mrs Clinton said. Mr McCain, Mrs Clinton and Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, also went to Barrow, the northernmost city in the US. There, they spoke to scientists and Inupiaq Inuit. They also saw shrinking glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park.

Mr McCain - with Senator Joe Lieberman - is behind proposed legislation that would require power-generating companies to reduce carbon emissions to their 2000 levels. Mr Graham, a Republican, said he had been moved by what he had seen. "Climate change is different when you come here, because you see the faces of people experiencing it. If you go to the people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, you're not listening."

Mrs Collins, a Democrat, was even more convinced. She said the evidence in Alaska represented the "canary in the mine shaft of global warming crying out to us to pay attention".

On a high-profile and bi-partisan fact-finding tour in Alaska and Canada's Yukon territory, Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator for New York, were confronted by melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers and heard from native Inuit that rising sea levels were altering their lives.

"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action," Mr McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary." Mrs Clinton added: "I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science. There are still some holdouts, but they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."

Their findings directly challenge President George Bush's reluctance to legislate to reduce America's carbon emissions. Although both senators havetalked before of the need to tackle global warming, this week's clarion call was perhaps the clearest and most urgent. It also raises the prospect that climate change and other environmental issues could be a factor in the presidential contest in 2008 if Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain enter it. Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, who represents Arizona, are among the leading, and the most popular, likely contenders.

So much for the naysayers about global warming.

Finally some intelligence is being shown by prominent US politicians. Now perhaps we can get on with solving the problems, eh!

[BHS]

Yeah, now we can get on with the business of legislating cooler weather. Whatever.

[PocketRocket]

So, are you for or against culling humanity?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"Culling" would be a drastic solution.

Personally, I have no taste for killing people to make room for other people.

Unfortunately for all, I believe the final solution shall be Malthusian.

Dr Malthus always gets the last laugh, sadly.

[BHS]

If Malthus had been right we'd all be dead by now. Same for Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich predicted we'd just give up and stop shipping food aid to India by 1984, and let the hungry masses starve to death. Today India is a net exporter of wheat.

[Shady]

Here's an interesting article:

Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world

Russian pair challenge UK expert over global warming

David Adam, science correspondent

Friday August 19, 2005

The Guardian

Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.

The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan.

The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures.

Guardian

[mirror]

It is always important to check the background of people to see if and what corporations they are shilling for. Anyway it will be quite awhile before we know who wins the bet.

I am intrigued by this part of the article though:

Dr Annan said bets like the one he made with the Russian sceptics are one way to confront the ideas. He also suggests setting up a financial-style futures market to allow those with critical stakes in the outcome of climate change to gamble on predictions and hedge against future risk.

"Betting on sea level rise would have a very real relevance to Pacific islanders," he said. "By betting on rapid sea-level rise, they would either be able to stay in their homes at the cost of losing the bet if sea level rise was slow, or would win the bet and have money to pay for sea defences or relocation if sea level rise was rapid."

Similar agricultural commodity markets already allow farmers to hedge against bad weather that ruins harvests.

[Rambler Man]

Global warming definately exists. Is it a such a dire threat that it will destroy mankind? I really doubt it.

The earth is a wonderfully resiliant place I think. In my opinion, based on the scientific reasoning I have just made up and my experience in observing human behaviour, once a major coastal city or two have their streets turned into canals, everyone will smarten right up. They'lll say ....Man we really ARE breaking the world. Lets do something. At that point the effort to really solve the green house problem will be urgently dealt with and the world will over a few decades stop the warming in its tracks.

Inevitably, the solution will cause some other unforseen problems that will have future generations all up in arms.

In the meantime, Canada might just come out smelling like guest room soap as the temperature rises. The Northlands will become a little bit more habitable, and the Northwest passage opening up will score us a few points in the international importance field.

Plus, people from all over the world will come for the beautiful warm skies, and sandy beaches of the great North West Territories beach resorts. I can dig that.

[SirSpanky]

Could. Or it could *&$# up our weather to no end. We could have mad crazy rain like we did this year in Mb, every year.

= very little agricultural production.

The earth will survive, we may not at our current capacity, depending on shortages of basic needs caused by weather, wars etc.

But I hate it when people "what if" everything, so I'll stop now.

[cybercoma]

Could. Or it could *&$# up our weather to no end. We could have mad crazy rain like we did this year in Mb, every year.

= very little agricultural production.

The earth will survive, we may not at our current capacity, depending on shortages of basic needs caused by weather, wars etc.

But I hate it when people "what if" everything, so I'll stop now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I suppose it's just opinion, but I really don't think we have as much control over weather as some would like to think.

[mirror]

US states bypass Bush to tackle greenhouse gas emissions

Wow, things have really changed for the US Administration. I guess with Bush being at his all time low in the polls, combined with his escalating loss of credibility over the war in Iraq, he really has become a lame duck president.

[mirror]

Who and what caused Hurricane Katrina?

“For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind”

Katrina Should Be A Lesson To US On Global Warming

Seems like everything is President Bush's fault. One day after Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, German commentators are laying into the US for its stubborn attitude to global warming and Kyoto.

[Montgomery Burns]

Global warming is Junk science