An Inconveniant Truth

slickvik69 · Jun 22, 2006

Deckard said:

Go see the flick. I went to see it with my 15 year old son, and one of his friends, and it is truly excellent. Scares the hell out of you, but in an intelligent and even amusing way. You see a side of Gore that would have easily won the 2000 election for him. (I know, he won it and had it taken away, but it wouldn't have been close)

Keep D&D Civil.
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The ending definitely frightened me as well. "Survival."

rimrocker · Jun 22, 2006

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/22/global.warming.ap/index.html

Study: Earth 'likely' hottest in 2,000 years
Panel: 'Warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It has been 2,000 years and possibly much longer since Earth has run such a fever.

The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University who chaired the academy's panel.

The report was requested in November by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New York, to address naysayers who question whether global warming is a major threat.

Last year, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, launched an investigation of three climate scientists, Boehlert said Barton should try to learn from scientists, not intimidate them.

Boehlert said Thursday the report shows the value of having scientists advise Congress.

"There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change," he said.

Other new research Thursday showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities. Their study is being published by the American Geophysical Union.

The Bush administration has maintained that the threat is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs. (Watch as lawmakers argue saving the planet could ruin our economy-- 2:24)

Climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes had concluded the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years. Their research was known as the "hockey-stick" graphic because it compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.

The National Academy scientists concluded that the Mann-Bradley-Hughes research from the late 1990s was "likely" to be true, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member. The conclusions from the '90s research "are very close to being right" and are supported by even more recent data, Wallace said.

The panel looked at how other scientists reconstructed Earth's temperatures going back thousands of years, before there was data from modern scientific instruments.

For all but the most recent 150 years, the academy scientists relied on "proxy" evidence from tree rings, corals, glaciers and ice cores, cave deposits, ocean and lake sediments, boreholes and other sources. They also examined indirect records such as paintings of glaciers in the Alps.

Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the academy said.

Overall, the panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last 1,000 years, though relatively warm conditions persisted around the year 1000, followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.

The scientists said they had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600. But they considered it reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.

Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations were the main causes of changes in greenhouse gas levels. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, it said.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.
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http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/12/polar.bears.ap/index.html

Study: Warming turns bears into cannibals

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.

The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.

Polar bears feed primarily on ringed seals and use sea ice for feeding, mating and giving birth.

Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance, and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food seems to be less common, said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.

"During 24 years of research on polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska and 34 years in northwestern Canada, we have not seen other incidents of polar bears stalking, killing, and eating other polar bears," the scientists said.

Environmentalists contend shrinking polar ice due to global warming may lead to the disappearance of polar bears before the end of the century.

The Center for Biological Diversity of Joshua Tree, California, in February 2005 petitioned the federal government to list polar bears as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Cannibalism demonstrates the effect on bears, said Kassie Siegal, lead author of the petition.

"It's very important new information," she said. "It shows in a really graphic way how severe the problem of global warming is for polar bears."

Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions, a group aimed at pursuing solutions for climate change, said the study represents the "bloody fingerprints" of global warming.

"This is not a Coca-Cola commercial," she said, referring to animated polar bears used in advertising for the soft drink giant. "This represents the brutal downside of global warming."

The predation study was published in an online version of the journal Polar Biology on April 27. Amstrup said print publication will follow.

Researchers in spring 2004 found more bears in the eastern portion of the Alaska Beaufort Sea to be in poorer condition than bears in areas to the west and north.

Researchers discovered the first kill in January 2004. A male bear had pounced on a den, killed a female and dragged it 245 feet (75 meters) away, where it ate part of the carcass. Females are about half the size of males.

"In the face of the den's outer wall were deep impressions of where the predatory bear had pounded its forepaws to collapse the den roof, just as polar bears collapse the snow over ringed seal lairs," the paper said.

"From the tracks, it appeared that the predatory bear broke through the roof of the den, held the female in place while inflicting multiple bites to the head and neck. When the den collapsed, two cubs were buried, and suffocated, in the snow rubble."

In April 2004, while following bear footprints on sea ice near Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, scientists discovered the partially eaten carcass of an adult female. Footprints indicated it had been with a cub.

The male did not follow the cub, indicating it had killed for food instead of breeding.

A few days later, Canadian researchers found the remains of a yearling that had been stalked and killed by a predatory bear, the scientists said.
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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/12/climate.change/index.html?eref=sitesearch

Warming 'threat to Asian security'
Grim scenario of disease and disaster

By Geoff Hiscock, CNN

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Rapid global warming poses a variety of security threats to the Asia Pacific region that have been "seriously underestimated," a new study says.

The report, released Tuesday by a Sydney-based think tank, paints a grim scenario of disease, food and water shortages, natural disasters, territorial tensions and mass population movements threatening political stability in the region.

Rising sea levels, for example, could threaten heavily urbanized parts of Asia, such as China's Yellow and Yangzi River deltas, and heavily populated low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, the report entitled "Heating up the Planet: Climate Change and Security," by the Lowy Institute says.

Warmer temperatures could see the greater spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, while extreme weather events could diminish food and clean water supplies.

And large, unregulated movements of people could put a heavy strain on the capacity of nations to cope, particularly if there are pre-existing ethnic and social tensions.

Besides Bangladesh and China's east coast, other communities at risk from rising sea levels include Manila Bay in the Philippines, the coastal fringes of Indonesia's Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan, and the Mekong, Chao Phraya and Irrawaddy deltas in Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar respectively.

Many small islands in the Pacific would be inundated, while the loss of economic rights associated with atolls and rocky outcrops off the East Asian coast could trigger territorial tensions.

The authors, Australian academics Dr. Alan Dupont and Dr. Graeme Pearman, argue that "there is no longer much doubt that the world is facing a prolonged period of planetary warming," that has been fueled largely by modern lifestyles.
Tipping point

They say that while people have coped with climate change in the past when it has been spread over centuries or longer, it is the potential rapidity of change that makes the threat so significant now.

"Compressed within the space of a single century, global warming will present far more daunting challenges of human and biological adaptation," they say.

Abrupt climate change could push the plant's fragile ecosystem "past an environmental tripping point from which there will be no winners," Dupont and Pearman say.

The most effective way to lessen the security risk of this prospective climate change is to reduce the level of greenhouse gases that are responsible for heating up the planet.

The Lowy Institute report says the impact of climate change will add to destabilizing pressures on the region.

It points to low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, where a one-meter rise in sea-level would flood 17.5 percent of its area and much of its food basket in the Ganges River delta.

"Far from exaggerating the impact of climate change, it is possible that scientists may have underestimated the threat," the study's authors say.

They identify a number of climatic wild cards, which are low-probability events with high impact. They include the collapse of the global Thermohaline (deep-ocean) Circulation, which could trigger a rapid cooling of Europe's climate, a de-oxygenation of the deep ocean, and reduced capacity of the oceans to absorb part of the released carbon dioxide.

They say another wild card may be the way aerosols are masking the real level of global warming, pointing to the Asian "brown haze" that stretches from the northern Indian Ocean to China and Southeast Asia during the northern summer.
Five complications

According to the report, climate change will complicate the regional security environment in several ways:

* Weather extremes and greater fluctuations in rainfall and temperatures could quickly refashion the Asia-Pacific region's productive landscape and exacerbate food, water and energy scarcities. Rising sea levels are of particular concern because of the density of coastal populations and the potential for large-scale displacement of people in Asia.

* Climate change will contribute to destabilizing, unregulated population movements in Asia and the Pacific. While most of these flows are likely to be internal, their ripple effects will be felt beyond the borders of the states most affected, requiring cooperative regional solutions.

* More extreme weather patterns will result in greater death and destruction from natural disasters, adding to the burden on poorer countries and stretching the resources and coping ability of even the most developed nations.

* Extreme weather events and climate-related disasters will not only trigger short-term disease spikes but also have more enduring health security consequences, since some infectious diseases will become more widespread as the planet heats up.

* Even if not catastrophic in themselves, the cumulative impact of rising temperatures, sea levels and more mega droughts on agriculture, fresh water and energy could threaten the security of states in the region by reducing their carrying capacity below a minimum threshold.

The study concludes with a number of recommendations, including a cut in the level of greenhouse gases.

It says this would require a "fundamental transformation" of the world's approach to energy use, with cleaner coal, more fuel-efficient hybrid cars and the increased use of gas, nuclear power and renewable energy sources.

It says relying on fossil fuels inevitably would warm the planet to levels that would put unprecedented stress on its ecosystem, and "challenge the adaptive capacities of future generations."
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Gore for President.

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