The State of the World? It Is on the Brink of Disaster

Invisible Fan · Jun 7, 2005

The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment was launched by UN General Kofi Annan in June 2001 and was completed in March 2005. The purpose of the program was to inventory the world's resources with current science and use that information for policy making.

The State of the World? It Is on the Brink of Disaster
The Independent UK
Wednesday 30 March 2005
An authoritative study of the biological relationships vital to maintaining life has found disturbing evidence of man-made degradation. Steve Connor reports.

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two-thirds of the delicately-balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.

The dryland regions of the world, which account for 41 per cent of the earth's land surface, have been particularly badly damaged and yet this is where the human population has grown most rapidly during the 1990s.

Slow degradation is one thing but sudden and irreversible decline is another. The report identifies half a dozen potential "tipping points" that could abruptly change things for the worse, with little hope of recovery on a human timescale.

Even if slow and inexorable degradation does not lead to total environmental collapse, the poorest people of the world are still going to suffer the most, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which drew on 22 national science academies from around the world.

Walt Reid, the leader of the report's core authors, warned that unless the international community took decisive action the future looked bleak for the next generation. "The bottom line of this assessment is that we are spending earth's natural capital, putting such strain on the natural functions of earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," Dr Reid said.

"At the same time, the assessment shows that the future really is in our hands. We can reverse the degradation of many ecosystem services over the next 50 years, but the changes in policy and practice required are substantial and not currently under way," he said.

The assessment was carried out over the past three years and has been likened to the prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - set up to investigate global warming - for its expertise in the many specialisms that make up the broad church of environmental science.

In summary, the scientists concluded that the planet had been substantially "re-engineered" in the latter half of the 20th century because of the pressure placed on the earth's natural resources by the growing demands of a larger human population.

"Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than at any time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber and fibre," the reports says.

The full costs of this are only now becoming apparent. Some 15 of the 24 ecosystems vital for life on earth have been seriously degraded or used unsustainably - an ecosystem being defined as a dynamic complex of plants, animals and micro-organisms that form a functional unit with the non-living environment in which the coexist.

The scale of the changes seen in the past few decades has been unprecedented. Nearly one-third of the land surface is now cultivated, with more land being converted into cropland since 1945 than in the whole of the 18th and 19th centuries combined.

The amount of water withdrawn from rivers and lakes for industry and agriculture has doubled since 1960 and there is now between three and six times as much water held in man-made reservoirs as there is flowing naturally in rivers.

Meanwhile, the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that has been released into the environment as a result of using farm fertilisers has doubled in the same period . More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertiliser ever used on the planet has been used since 1985.

This sudden and unprecedented release of free nitrogen and phosphorus - important mineral nutrients for plant growth - has triggered massive blooms of algae in the freshwater and marine environments. This is identified as a potential "tipping point" that can suddenly destroy entire ecosystems. "The Millennium Assessment finds that excessive nutrient loading is one of the major problems today and will grow significantly worse in the coming decades unless action is taken," Dr Reid said.

"Surprisingly, though, despite a major body of monitoring information and scientific research supporting this finding, the issue of nutrient loading barely appears in policy discussions at global levels and only a few countries place major emphasis on the problem.

"This issue is perhaps the area where we find the biggest 'disconnect' between a major problem related to ecosystem services and the lack of policy action in response," he said.

Abrupt changes are one of the most difficult things to predict yet their impact can be devastating. But is environmental collapse inevitable?

"Clearly, the dual trends of continuing degradation of most ecosystem services and continuing growth in demand for these same services cannot continue," Dr Reid said.

"But the assessment shows that over the next 50 years, the risk is not of some global environmental collapse, but rather a risk of many local and regional collapses in particular ecosystem services. We already see those collapses occurring - fisheries stocks collapsing, dead zones in the sea, land degradation undermining crop production, species extinctions," he said.

Between 1960 and 2000, the world population doubled from three billion to six billion. At the same time, the global economy increased more than six-fold and the production of food and the supply of drinking water more than doubled, with the consumption of timber products increasing by more than half.

Meanwhile, human activity has directly affected the diversity of wild animals and plants. There have been about 100 documented extinctions over the past century but scientists believe that the rate at which animals and plants are dying off is about 1,000 times higher than natural, background levels.

"Humans are fundamentally and to a significant extent irreversibly changing the diversity of life on earth and most of these changes represent a loss of biodiversity," the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment says.

The distribution of species across the world is becoming more homogenous as some unique animals and plants die out and other, alien species are introduced into areas in which they would not normally live, often with devastating impact.

For example, the Baltic Sea contains 100 non-native species, of which about one-third come from the Great Lakes of North America. Meanwhile, a similar proportion of the 170 non-native species found in the Great Lakes come from the Baltic.

"In other words, the species in any one region of the world are becoming more similar to other regions.... Some 10 to 30 per cent of mammals, birds and amphibians are currently threatened with extinction. Genetic diversity has declined globally, particularly among cultivated species," the report says.

Agricultural intensification, which brought about the green revolution that helped to feed the world in the latter part of the 20th century, has increased the tendency towards the loss of genetic diversity. "Currently 80 per cent of wheat area in developing countries and three-quarters of all rice planted in Asia is now planted to modern varieties," the report says. Dr Reid said that the authors of the assessment were most worried about the state of the earth's drylands - an area covering 41 per cent of the land surface and home to a total of two billion people, many of them the poorest in the world.

Drylands are areas where crop production or pasture for livestock is severely limited by rainfall. Some 90 per cent of the world's dryland regions occur in developing countries where the availability of fresh water is a growing problem.

One-third of the world's people live in dryland regions that have access to only 8 per cent of the world's renewable supply of water, the scientists found. "We were particularly alarmed by the evidence of strong linkages between the degradation of ecosystem services in drylands and poverty in those regions," Dr Reid said.

"Moreover, while historically, population growth has been highest in either urban areas or the most productive ecosystems such as cultivated lands, this pattern changed in the 1990s and the highest percentage rate of growth is now in drylands - ecosystems with the lowest potential to support that growth.

"These problems of ecosystem degradation and the harm it causes for human well-being clearly help set the stage for the conflict that we see in many dryland regions including parts of Africa and central Asia," he said.

Poor people living in dryland regions are at the greatest risk of environmental collapse. Many of them already live unsustainably - between 10 and 20 per cent of the soil in the drylands are eroded or degraded.

"Development prospects in dryland regions of developing countries are especially dependent on actions to slow and reverse the degradation of ecosystems," the Millennium Assessment says.

So what can be done in a century when the human population is expected to increase by a further 50 per cent?

The board of directors of the Millennium Assessment said in a statement: "The overriding conclusion of this assessment is that it lies within the power of human societies to ease the strains we are putting on the nature services of the planet, while continuing to use them to bring better living standards to all.

"Achieving this, however, will require radical changes in the way nature is treated at every level of decision-making and new ways of co-operation between government, business and civil society. The warning signs are there for all of us to see. The future now lies in our hands," it said.

Asked what we should do now and what we should plan to do over the next 50 years, Dr Reid replied that there must be a fundamental reappraisal of how we view the world's natural resources. "The heart of the problem is this: protection of nature's services is unlikely to be a priority so long as they are perceived to be free and limitless by those using them," Dr Reid said.

"We simply must establish policies that require natural costs to be taken into account for all economic decisions," he added.

"There is a tremendous amount that can be done in the short term to reduce degradation - for example, the causes of some of the most significant problems such as fisheries collapse, climate change, and excessive nutrient loading are clear - many countries have policies in place that encourage excessive harvest, use of fossil fuels, or excessive fertilisation of crops.

"But as important as these short-term fixes are, over the long term humans must both enhance the production of many services and decrease our consumption of others. That will require significant investments in new technologies and significant changes in behaviour," he explained.

Many environmentalists would agree, and they would like politicians to go much further.

"The Millennium Assessment cuts to the heart of one of the greatest challenges facing humanity," Roger Higman, of Friends of the Earth, said.

"That is, we cannot maintain high standards of living, let alone relieve poverty, if we don't look after the earth's life-support systems," Mr Higman said.

"Yet the assessment hasn't gone far enough in specifying the radical solutions needed. At the end of the day, if we are to respect the limits imposed by nature, and ensure the well-being of all humanity, we must manage the global economy to produce a fairer distribution of the earth's resources," he added.

The Tipping Points to Catastophe
New Diseases

As population densities increase and living space extends into once pristine forests, the chances of an epidemic of a new infectious agent grows. Global travel accentuates the threat, and the emergence of Sars and bird flu are prime examples of diseases moving from animals to humans.

Alien Species

The introduction of an invasive species - whether animal, plant or microbe - can lead to a rapid change in ecosystems. Zebra mussels introduced into North America led to the extinction of native clams and the comb jellyfish caused havoc to 26 major fisheries species in the Black Sea.

Algal Blooms

A build up of man-made nutrients in the environment has already led to the threshold being reached when algae blooms. This can deprive fish and other wildlife of oxygen as well as producing toxic substances that are a danger to drinking water.

Coral Reef Collapse

Reefs that were dominated by corals have suddenly changed to being dominated by algae, which have taken advantage of the increases in nutrient levels running off from terrestrial sources. Many of Jamaica's coral reefs have now become algal dominated.

Fishing Stocks

Overfishing can, and has, led to a collapse in stocks. A threshold is reached when there are too few adults to maintain a viable population. This occurred off the east coast of Newfoundland in 1992 when its stock of Atlantic cod vanished.

Climate Change

In a warmer world, local vegetation or land cover can change, causing warming to become worse. The Sahel region of North Africa depends on rainfall for its vegetation. Small changes in rain can result in loss of vegetation, soil erosion and further decreases in rainfall.

_______________

The general goal of many environmentalists is to sustain human living within our current means. No matter the amount of damage we bring to the earth, earth and life will move on. Whether people are in that picture is another matter.

We're going to need some profound and miraculous inventions if our governments continue to persue a do-nothing policy. More likely is the idea that all cultures will have to change and adapt to what their ancestors forced upon them. Science can't solve human problems.

The Milennium summary and details can be found here.
http://www.greenfacts.org/ecosystems/index.htm

flamingmoe · Jun 8, 2005

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/p...&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

The documents were obtained by The New York Times from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for government whistle-blowers.

The project is representing Rick S. Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research. That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program, issued the documents that Mr. Cooney edited.

A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr. Cooney would not be available to comment. "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record," Ms. St. Martin said. "He's not a cleared spokesman."

In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, "Our Changing Planet," Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word "extremely" to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."

In a section on the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in the margins explained that this was "straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings."

Other White House officials said the changes made by Mr. Cooney were part of the normal interagency review that takes place on all documents related to global environmental change. Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, noted that one of the reports Mr. Cooney worked on, the administration's 10-year plan for climate research, was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. And Myron Ebell, who has long campaigned against limits on greenhouse gases as director of climate policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, said such editing was necessary for "consistency" in meshing programs with policy.

But critics said that while all administrations routinely vetted government reports, scientific content in such reports should be reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.

In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, Mr. Piltz said the White House editing and other actions threatened to taint the government's $1.8 billion-a-year effort to clarify the causes and consequences of climate change.

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Mr. Piltz wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."

A senior Environmental Protection Agency scientist who works on climate questions said the White House environmental council, where Mr. Cooney works, had offered valuable suggestions on reports from time to time. But the scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because all agency employees are forbidden to speak with reporters without clearance, said the kinds of changes made by Mr. Cooney had damaged morale. "I have colleagues in other agencies who express the same view, that it has somewhat of a chilling effect and has created a sense of frustration," he said.

Efforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who met with President Bush at the White House yesterday, has been trying to persuade him to intensify United States efforts to curb greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush has called only for voluntary measures to slow growth in emissions through 2012.

Yesterday, saying their goal was to influence that meeting, the scientific academies of 11 countries, including those of the United States and Britain, released a joint letter saying, "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."

The American Petroleum Institute, where Mr. Cooney worked before going to the White House, has long taken a sharply different view. Starting with the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1997, it has promoted the idea that lingering uncertainties in climate science justify delaying restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases.

On learning of the White House revisions, representatives of some environmental groups said the effort to amplify uncertainties in the science was clearly intended to delay consideration of curbs on the gases, which remain an unavoidable byproduct of burning oil and coal.

"They've got three more years, and the only way to control this issue and do nothing about it is to muddy the science," said Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a private group that has enlisted businesses in programs cutting emissions.

Mr. Cooney's alterations can cause clear shifts in meaning. For example, a sentence in the October 2002 draft of "Our Changing Planet" originally read, "Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change." In a neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, "Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change."

A document showing a similar pattern of changes is the 2003 "Strategic Plan for the United States Climate Change Science Program," a thick report describing the reorganization of government climate research that was requested by Mr. Bush in his first speech on the issue, in June 2001. The document was reviewed by an expert panel assembled in 2003 by the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists largely endorsed the administration's research plan, but they warned that the administration's procedures for vetting reports on climate could result in excessive political interference with science.

Another political appointee who has played an influential role in adjusting language in government reports on climate science is Dr. Harlan L. Watson, the chief climate negotiator for the State Department, who has a doctorate in solid-state physics but has not done climate research.

In an Oct. 4, 2002 memo to James R. Mahoney, the head of the United States Climate Change Science Program and an appointee of Mr. Bush, Mr. Watson "strongly" recommended cutting boxes of text referring to the findings of a National Academy of Sciences panel on climate and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that periodically reviews research on human-caused climate change.

The boxes, he wrote, "do not include an appropriate recognition of the underlying uncertainties and the tentative nature of a number of the assertions."

While those changes were made nearly two years ago, recent statements by Dr. Watson indicate that the admnistration's position has not changed.

"We are still not convinced of the need to move forward quite so quickly," he told the BBC in London last month. "There is general agreement that there is a lot known, but also there is a lot to be known."

MadMax · Jun 8, 2005

yes, it is. this is the end of the world.

bnb · Jun 8, 2005

Originally posted by MadMax
yes, it is. this is the end of the world.
Click to expand...

as we know it....

...and I feel fine.

MadMax · Jun 8, 2005

Originally posted by bnb
as we know it....

...and I feel fine.
Click to expand...

well played!

ima_drummer2k · Jun 8, 2005

The world is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament, real wrath-of-God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!!

MR. MEOWGI · Jun 8, 2005

Nope, just the end of the human race.

"The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas"
~ George Carlin

rhester · Jun 8, 2005

Dear Climate/Environmental Scientists and highly paid Government spokes-people:

I want snow on Christmas in Houston every year.
Larger waves breaking on Surfside Beach (bluegreen water please).
Less humidity
And a little more breeze in Brazoria County

Thanks for taking care of the climate changes.

If the world ends so be it...

wouldabeen23 · Jun 8, 2005

All apologists on deck!! Circle the SUV's!! We have a viable Charlie-Foxtrot vector situation...Attack the Source-Attack the Source-repeat-Attack the source!!

DaDakota · Jun 8, 2005

Henny Penny, Henny Penny, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

MR. MEOWGI · Jun 8, 2005

More than 100 large lakes in an Arctic region of Siberia have vanished. Researchers say warmer temperatures have caused the disappearance.

Newswise — More than 100 lakes in an Arctic region of Siberia disappeared during the last 30 years, and scientists say global climate change is the reason.

In a paper to be published Friday, June 3, in the journal Science, researchers report that 125 lakes categorized as large because they were more than 40 hectares (nearly 100 acres) completely disappeared and are now re-vegetated and considered permanently drained. More than 1,000 other large lakes shrank to a smaller size.

“It’s quite significant,” said Yongwei Sheng, a SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) faculty member who did remote sensing work on the project. “This is the result of warming and changes in the permafrost. We believe it’s due to global climate change.”

Previous studies have shown that Arctic warming has accelerated since the 1980s.

Sheng said the lake data raise questions about how altered ecosystems will affect animal habitat, especially for migrating birds that depend on the lakes for water.

Sheng said the lakes drained, some partially and some completely, because of changes in the permafrost, subsoil which remains frozen throughout the year. “It’s getting warmer there, so some of this material is melting and the lakes are draining,” he said.

The study focused on 624,000 square kilometers (more than 150 million acres). Sheng said researchers have never before studied the extent of lake changes in such a large section of an Arctic region.

Sheng, now an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental Resources and Forest Engineering at SUNY-ESF in Syracuse, N.Y., worked on the project with Larry C. Smith at UCLA. Smith is a co-author of the paper, along with Glen MacDonald of UCLA and Larry D. Hinzman of the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

Satellite images revealed the change in land surface. Sheng compared images obtained in 1973 by the first land resources satellite used to gather information about geographical formations with images collected in 1997 and 1998. By comparing the two generations of satellite images, the researchers determined the changes in the lakes.

http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1334

basso · Jun 8, 2005

The eastern world, it is explodin’.
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

pippendagimp · Jun 8, 2005

From the world's favourite news source ........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5210708-103681,00.html

Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush

White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance
John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday June 8, 2005

President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.

The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.

In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.

Other papers suggest that Ms Dobriansky should sound out Exxon executives and other anti-Kyoto business groups on potential alternatives to Kyoto.

Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government's rejection of Kyoto. But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case.

"Potus [president of the United States] rejected Kyoto in part based on input from you [the Global Climate Coalition]," says one briefing note before Ms Dobriansky's meeting with the GCC, the main anti-Kyoto US industry group, which was dominated by Exxon.

The papers further state that the White House considered Exxon "among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions".

But in evidence to the UK House of Lords science and technology committee in 2003, Exxon's head of public affairs, Nick Thomas, said: "I think we can say categorically we have not campaigned with the United States government or any other government to take any sort of position over Kyoto."

Exxon, officially the US's most valuable company valued at $379bn (£206bn) earlier this year, is seen in the papers to share the White House's unwavering scepticism of international efforts to address climate change.

The documents, which reflect unanimity between the company and the US administration on the need for more global warming science and the unacceptable costs of Kyoto, state that Exxon believes that joining Kyoto "would be unjustifiably drastic and premature".

This line has been taken consistently by President Bush, and was expected to be continued in yesterday's talks with Tony Blair who has said that climate change is "the most pressing issue facing mankind".

"President Bush tells Mr Blair he's concerned about climate change, but these documents reveal the alarming truth, that policy in this White House is being written by the world's most powerful oil company. This administration's climate policy is a menace to humanity," said Stephen Tindale, Greenpeace's executive director in London last night.

"The prime minister needs to tell Mr Bush he's calling in some favours. Only by securing mandatory cuts in US emissions can Blair live up to his rhetoric," said Mr Tindale.

In other meetings documented in the papers, Ms Dobriansky meets Don Pearlman, an international anti-Kyoto lobbyist who has been a paid adviser to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments, both of which have followed the US line against Kyoto.

The purpose of the meeting with Mr Pearlman, who also represents the secretive anti-Kyoto Climate Council, which the administration says "works against most US government efforts to address climate change", is said to be to "solicit [his] views as part of our dialogue with friends and allies".

ExxonMobil, which was yesterday contacted by the Guardian in the US but did not return calls, is spending millions of pounds on an advertising campaign aimed at influencing politicians, opinion formers and business leaders in the UK and other pro-Kyoto countries in the weeks before the G8 meeting at Gleneagles.

mc mark · Jun 8, 2005

Originally posted by pippendagimp
From the world's favourite news source ........

Click to expand...

LET THE SOURCE BASHING BEGIN!!!

Sishir Chang · Jun 9, 2005

At this point I'm convinced there's not going to be any real changes about how we do things until real disaster strikes along par of the "The Day After Tomorrow"

We're pretty much screwed. Either things get bad gradually and no one does anything because it is gradually or it happens suddenly and its too late to do anything about it.

MadMax · Jun 10, 2005

Sishir Chang said:

At this point I'm convinced there's not going to be any real changes about how we do things until real disaster strikes along par of the "The Day After Tomorrow"

We're pretty much screwed. Either things get bad gradually and no one does anything because it is gradually or it happens suddenly and its too late to do anything about it.
Click to expand...

How much are we really in control of all this?? That's always been my question. The reports I read always say, "Well, we're on the brink of disaster..." and then make a logical leap (or a leap over logic) into saying it's all man's fault. Huh?

The most comprehensive study on climate change was done in Europe about 2 years ago. Very interesting. It found that the earth has gone through long periods of climate change, swinging back and forth. It found that the hottest temperatures were in the Middle Age, well before mass consumption and industrialization.

Look...I'm not a right-wing nut on this issue. I think we do a poor job as stewards of this earth. I think we take a ton for granted. So I'm not just a reactionary....but I think many presume we have a lot more control over our environment than I THINK we do.

Sishir Chang · Jun 10, 2005

While its probably true that not all climate and ecological change is due to humanity but that still doesn't mean we should be speeding it up.

If your house is on fire you don't start spraying gasoline around so even if the Earth is on its own entering a warming cycle its not a good idea for us to be accelerating that process.

I'm curious to see that study, not denying that the Earth has gone through climate changes when obviously it has, but that they say the Middle Ages was the warmest period. My understanding of geology was that the Middle Ages was colder than it is now which is why cities like Amsterdam and Venice were able to initially be built because sea levels were lower then and also that Dutch canals used to routinely freeze something that I hear is rare today.

MadMax · Jun 10, 2005

Sishir Chang said:

While its probably true that not all climate and ecological change is due to humanity but that still doesn't mean we should be speeding it up.

If your house is on fire you don't start spraying gasoline around so even if the Earth is on its own entering a warming cycle its not a good idea for us to be accelerating that process.
Click to expand...

Agreed! completely agreed!!!

I just have no clue the degree to which we're contributing to this.

Sishir Chang · Jun 10, 2005

I don't think anyone really knows for sure but at the same time so why continue on with the present practices when what do know shows that things aren't going to be that great.

MadMax · Jun 10, 2005

Sishir Chang said:

I don't think anyone really knows for sure but at the same time so why continue on with the present practices when what do know shows that things aren't going to be that great.
Click to expand...

agreed. but there is a limit to that. there is a reasonable threshhold of doing "too much", to the extent there are great costs, which have to be balanced.

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