Unexpected Revelation: human activity has to do with climate change!

[Garbarsardar]

An unexpexted revelation is shocking today the scientific world and the Bush administration. Climate change is anthropogenic! Who would of thought such a thing? And what a nice long greek-originated word to express this...

So human activity changes the climate I kid you not fellow mudpiters, and I can already hear the murmurs of disbelief: how is this thing possible?

Well here is the report, and I am myself apoplectic, bedazzled, flabbergasted and anosmotic while reading it:

A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."
The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/sc...rssnyt&emc=rss

How did we come to this? What happened to all the previous evidence? Ping! goes the time machine:

In May 2002, President Bush expressed disdain for a State Department report to the United Nations that pointed to a clear human role in the accumulation of heat-trapping gases and detailed the likely negative consequences of climate change; the president called it “a report put out by the bureaucracy.” In September 2002, the administration removed a section on climate change from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) annual air pollution report, even though the climate issue had been discussed in the report for the preceding five years.

Then, in one well-documented case, the Bush administration blatantly tampered with the integrity of scientific analysis at a federal agency when, in June 2003, the White House tried to make a series of changes to the EPA’s draft Report on the Environment.A front-page article in the New York Times broke the news that White House officials tried to force the EPA to substantially alter the report’s section on climate change. The EPA report, which referenced the NAS review and other studies, stated that human activity is contributing significantly to climate change.

Drafts of the climate section, with changes sought by the White House, were given to The New York Times yesterday by a former E.P.A. official, along with earlier drafts and an internal memorandum in which some officials protested the changes. Two agency officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the documents were authentic.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0619-01.htm

Interviews with current and former EPA staff, as well as an internal EPA memo reviewed for this report reveal that the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget demanded major amendments including:

* The deletion of a temperature record covering 1,000 years in order to, according to the EPA memo, emphasize “a recent, limited analysis which supports the administration’s favored message.”

* The removal of any reference to the NAS review—requested by the White House itself —that confirmed human activity is contributing to climate change.

* The insertion of a reference to a discredited study of temperature records funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute.

* The elimination of the summary statement— noncontroversial within the science community that studies climate change—that “climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.”
http://www.epa.gov/indicators/roe/index.htm

I guess optimism and redrafts will not cut it anymore. Alas!
:wink:

[Erik]

clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

Hmm... doesn't say the human influence was a bad one.
For all we know they ment human influence lowered the effect.
That's what Bush payed them to say, isn't it?
If not I think some heads are going to roll...Bush won't stand for his scientific comission drawing adverse conclusions.

[removeduser_487563287433]

It's useless though. Bush isn't suddenly start acting responsible, join Kyoto etc. All this is good for is oneupmanship with the hillbillies on this board.

[Aristophanes]

I don't see what the big to do is with 'climate change' anyways. This planet has experienced nothing but climate change since day one, and it seems a little naive to think we can suddenly halt everything, or that it would be to our benefit to do so. Here we are 150 000 000 kilometers from a large glowing object throwing high intensity radiation in our direction at a rate that's simply impossible for human beings to match, and all we do is blame ourselves for the disaster? Yeah, sure, human activity probably does have some influence on how deeply we feel the effects of the sun's emissions/ changes in emissions, but we're fooling ourselves if we think we have control.

I'd rather feel the benefits from increased technological change than I would from keeping our planet exactly as it was...if that is even possible. It's just such a reactive[reactionary?] approach...technological change is proactive.[progressive?]

[Tom Paine]

I'd rather feel the benefits from increased technological change than I would from keeping our planet exactly as it was...if that is even possible. It's just such a reactive[reactionary?] approach...technological change is proactive.[progressive?]

I don't suppose you've considered that improved technology and stopping changing the climate in a manner that's predicted to drown large amounts of the world might be compatible?

[Mr.Flint]

I don't suppose you've considered that improved technology and stopping changing the climate in a manner that's predicted to drown large amounts of the world might be compatible?

Prediction of the drowning of the world, fails to take into account the drop of the ocean temperature.

[Tom Paine]

Prediction of the drowning of the world, fails to take into account the drop of the ocean temperature.

Water is an odd liquid; it is of lesser density at cooler temperatures. So that doesn't help much...

[Aristophanes]

I don't suppose you've considered that improved technology and stopping changing the climate in a manner that's predicted to drown large amounts of the world might be compatible?

Yes, but improved technology, as a goal, is unlikely to be compatible with increased restraints on economic activities...which is one of the central tenets of Kyoto.[under the guise of pollution credits and the like]

[Tom Paine]

Yes, but improved technology, as a goal, is unlikely to be compatible with increased restraints on economic activities...which is one of the central tenets of Kyoto.[under the guise of pollution credits and the like]

The guise? The guise? I love this, looking for restraints on economic strength everywhere. Kyoto is an environmental treaty and as such has to limit pollution, and that's the only way it can. Switching to renewables or nuclear isn't that uneconomical really.

[RZZZA]

Yeah, who cares if the east coast of the U.S. gets flooded? Continents have been shapeshiftin forever, as humans its our duty to adapt, not prevent. Adapt.

But seeing how the U.S. government handled Katrina, you can tell that when catastrophes hit, the victim are screwed, the only thing that can possibly help them is good samaritans, there is no plan, there is no preperation on a federal level, no good preperation anyway. The dumb will die, and the smart, who adapt and overcome, shall live. Maybe some or a lot of good, smart peopl will die...and a lot of dumb people will survive, but hey thats the luck of the draw, thats existence for you.

[Hanno the Navigator]

I don't see what the big to do is with 'climate change' anyways. This planet has experienced nothing but climate change since day one

That climate change usually takes long enough for most species to adapt. Usually, that is excepting massive - and I'm talking end-of-mankind-stuff - asteroid or meteor impacts, superscale volcanic acitivity. the works. Ends and probably starts of ice ages too. Human civilization has only existed for some 21-12000 years or so (depending on whether you count as the start of civilization the first intentional growing of corps - not agriculture, just saving a few grass seeds from cooking and throwing them into a place that looks good for grass to grow -, or the first tentative signs of anything higher than hunter/gatherer/scavenger bands of a few dozen people). During the last 12000 years, the global climate has been very stable. In fact, it is more likely than not that climate change in this century, which without human influence would be completely marginal (save some catastrophe of epic proportions happening), maybe some warming, but at any rate so little that with the background level of warming, it won't be noticeable for thousands of years. With human influence as it curerently stands, it is more likely than not that in this century alone, climate change will be on a scale rivaling an ice age/warm age difference. Odds are that by 2050 the major part of Spain and Portugal will be like the Sahel. What that means for the Spanish and Portugese is obvious: they will try to migrate elsewhere, as is the tried-and-true strategy of all non-sessile life since 3.5 billion years: if life is hell where you live, pack your stuff and go where the grass is greener.

Probably the same with large parts of Mexico. Bangladesh, the Gulf states of the US, NW South America, on the other hand, will probably suffer the same degree of becoming barely habitable due to increased storms, rains, flooding, diseases like malaria etc. And I'm even not talking about Africa yet.

Suffice to say, it is rather probable that with the human production of greenhouse gases continuing at the current rate, the late 21st and the 22nd centuries will see the most massive upheaval of the most basic fundaments of human life and livelihood ever since there was something that could be called human civilization by the broadest of definitions. This is as scientifically "proven" as one can prove something for which there is no precendent and which cannot be reproduced empirically: the underlying cause-effect relationshps are rather clear to the point that the turnover of the water budget of Earth will speed up tremendously. If the cloud albedo increase will cancel or exceed the surface albedo loss or whatever, if the Atlantic warm-water conveyor (incorrectly known as the "Gulf Stream") will stand or collapse - these are the particulars currently under research. But what can be said is this: there will be more rain, and especially more massive and more frequent rains, in many places, and there will be more massive hurricanes and typhoons than would be expected by the basic pattern (which itself oscillates - that is to say, the period to 202 will see Gulf hurricanes the likes of which no human eyes have ever witnessed before, and then there will be a brief respite for 30-50 years, after which it will start again even more massively. That is, if the Gulf hurricane-strength oscillation is not markedly coupled to global weather patterns, which may or may not be so, but at the moment there seems no real indication for this). Other places, namely polewards from each hemisphere's desert belts, will turn more arid to some degree. This will affect the SW US, the entire European Mediterranean basin and the Near East, N Iran, SE Siberia and large parts of Australia, plus probably considerable areas in the general area of Paraguay). Overall, the average temperature will become warmer in most places, but tose areas that are today being warmed by ocean currents may cool down considerably depending whether the currents hold or fail.

For Germany, my native country, this means either that large parts of the NE will turn into dry steppe until 2050 (Great Depression "Dust Bowl" style) and the Danube basin especially (the Lower Rhine to a lesser extent) will suffer massive flooding in say 2 of 3 years. Or that we'll have a climate much like S Finland, only with drier summers (This year was a taste of it: in most of C Europe, spring started maybe 3 weeks ago, or about a month behind "schedule". It sucked. Man, did it suck. Still, that we have up to 30 centigrades all of a sudden and the chicks dress accordingly makes up for it a bit)..

At any rate, there will be 2 main consequences globally:

1) the larges mass migration of humans (in absolute numbers) ever, and
2) the failure of large amounts of farmland - it takes only 2 years of misharvests and the sure prospect of more to come to drive farmers from their land, but it takes much longer to turn wildland that suddenly has turned attractive for agriculture into good farmland, especially for large-scale production.

The US is pretty well off, though - it only needs to wage a lebensraum war against Canada. No, seriously: Canada is the only country that is almost certain to benefit from global climate change. N Siberia does not nearly have the fundaments of the infrastructure to exploit a sudden boon in place, and it surely won't have them in 2050 too: who invests in settling Siberia? I mean, it's frigging Siberia...

Incidentially, it may be necessary to produce more CO2 - by burning or otherwise vconverting methane and nitrous oxides. CO2 is pretty lame as a greenhouse gas, on a molecule basis. It's the sheer quantity the does the trick. Water vapor is a very efficient greenhouse gas, too, and we're sure as hell to get considerably more of that. Methane is the big unknown: the permafrost soil will release considerable amounts, and then there's methane hydride, which would readily decompose of the deep-sea waters become less cold at a lode.

No scientist can tell. Maybe we're done fro already - humans will survive, but civilization won't be able to adapt and eventually erode away on a global scale over the next 200-500 years (consider peak or generally scarce oil, and that some 3/4 of the stuff around you at this moment is probably made from oil ultimately. So "technology will save us" won't work if there are insufficient resources to produce those as-yet uninvented gadgets). That will save us as humans who are sapiens, but are still reduced to rub rocks together to get our campfires going while our hunter/gatherer/scavenger bands shelter in the ruins of skyscrapers.

(As a side note, I am not sure about the "hunter" bit. Humans never were very good hunters until they invented firearms or at least learned to ride horses. That humans were able to hunt with some degree of success at all is the consequence of about a million years of technological innovation. It is not certain that a hypothetical de-civilized human population could manage to develop fesible hunting weapons and tools again basically from scratch and memory. On the other hand, humans are very efficient scavengers, and throwing rocks and howling like crazy is able to drive off hyenas with some success so we can eat what they left behind. That, basically, is the worst-case scenario for the year 2600. Maybe inevitable, but there is no way to determine this. So I think it's better to be safe than sorry. And any OECD country that does not invest in massive R&D in
- photovoltaics
- direct use of solar energy
- (possibly) fuel cells, which are however not a very resilient technology (meainng they will fail rather quickly in a global economic crisis) and though very good for some applications (like laptops and mophos) are rather abysmal for others (like road vehicles)
- very important: distributed decentral means of providing energy
- biomass/biogas utilization and
- most important of all: thermal depolymerization, which is the only means we have ATM to at least ameliorate a crippling oil crisis
will end off being the loser in the long run.

You may miss wind energy. But apart from some rather hare-brained megalomaniac convection funnel projects, this market is basically saturated. Development of home-scale wind turbines might be useful still, but larger plants are as SOTA as they can be. Germany is reduced to building offshore wind turbine parks (of which nobody is rally sure whether they will ever work as intended due to the nasty and corrosive saltwater spray) because essentially all good locations for land-based wind power have been exploited.

merged double post-Garb.

[Tom Paine]

RZZZA, I was thinking more like Bangladesh will be near-entirely flooded. There was a flood in 1993 (I think) that covered about 70% of the land in water. Not good for a densely populated nation.

[RZZZA]

Well whats so surprising about that anyway? Land disappears, new land is made, thats how its always been. Just because we build a city on one piece of land doesnt mean itll be there forever. Frankly I think people need to work with nature, we understand enough about it so why not work with it on a national level? Like for instance, maybe New Orleans shouldnt be rebuilt on the very same spot? I dunno, I just think if one area is hazardous, then pack up and move to a safer area, jeez it may be hard in practice but its practical when you think about it logically. What did our pilgrim forefathers do? They traveled from the east coast to the west coast, on horse and buggy for gods sakes. While hillbillies who get hit by ter nade ers cant hitch up the trailer home, jump in their ford bronco's and drive off to another destination? I cant speak for Bangladeshi's but Americans are too used to convenience, comfort and relative ease of their lives.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Somehow I do not think Qatar, a tiny desert nation has a massive population, which is going to make an obvious effect on a graph which is CO2 emmissions per person in a major oil producing land, is producing CO2 emmissions for the same reasons that the US is.

[Erik]

Somehow I do not think Qatar, a tiny desert nation has a massive population, which is going to make an obvious effect on a graph which is CO2 emmissions per person in a major oil producing land, is producing CO2 emmissions for the same reasons that the US is.

I also wouldn't be surprised if their high CO2 emissions were actually caused by the oil industry themselves.
How much energy does it take to pump, transfer and refine oil?

[removeduser_487563287433]

I also wouldn't be surprised if their high CO2 emissions were actually caused by the oil industry themselves.
How much energy does it take to pump, transfer and refine oil?

Oh lots. Consider pumping, refining and all the transport required between and after including flights and shipping and you have a lot of gas being burned.

[Evariste]

It's obvious that Nature is losing the fight versus man. What I find annoying is that, now that she's on her last legs, she's begging us for help! We didn't get any when wolves and elephants were threatening our existence! She still sends hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis in some desperate attempt to force a settlement! I'll help Mother Nature when she asks nicely.

[Tiwaz]

Don't oilfields burn their "excess" gas on the spot? I recall reading that there are small amounts of natural gas in oil deposits but their amounts are too small to make collecting profitable so they burn it on the spot to avoid possible danger from it...

Could be wrong.

[Erik]

Don't oilfields burn their "excess" gas on the spot? I recall reading that there are small amounts of natural gas in oil deposits but their amounts are too small to make collecting profitable so they burn it on the spot to avoid possible danger from it...

Could be wrong.

You are absolutely right.
I remember my cousin (who is an oil-rig designer for Royal Dutch Shell) talk about that once.
You can even see the flame.

[CaptainCernick]

Have you ever heard of Dansgaard-Oeschger events?
What if the global warming is really due to this? Nothing we can do about it then.
Note that this is only a 'what-if', there is no proof whatsoever of the current climate changes being a Dansgaard-Oeschger event.