<![CDATA[Grist - Comment Feed for Which way do you want emissions to go?]]> Grist Comment Feed en Comment #1 by Biodiversivist http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Sat, 03 Mar 2007 04:31:50 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/1 A tidbit from the article

"Animal and plant species face risks as climate zones shift but urbanized regions prevent ecosystems from shifting as well, according to the draft report."

This is the main reason global warming will devastate biodiversity. There is no place to migrate to as in the past during climate shifts (the non-man made variety).

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world


]]> A tidbit from the article

"Animal and plant species face risks as climate zones shift but urbanized regions prevent ecosystems from shifting as well, according to the draft report."

This is the main reason global warming will devastate biodiversity. There is no place to migrate to as in the past during climate shifts (the non-man made variety).

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world


]]> Comment #2 by Erik Hoffner http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Sat, 03 Mar 2007 05:47:57 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/2 Pictures say it all

Yes, the info graphics tell the whole story. Boxer/Sanders is based on what McKibben is calling for, if memory serves, 80% cut by 2050. It's probably the best beginning we could make in averting climate crisis, legislatively speaking.

The Orion Grassroots Network is a meeting place for 1000+ great grassroots organizations working for conservation and more: http://www.orionsociety.org/ogn

]]> Pictures say it all

Yes, the info graphics tell the whole story. Boxer/Sanders is based on what McKibben is calling for, if memory serves, 80% cut by 2050. It's probably the best beginning we could make in averting climate crisis, legislatively speaking.

The Orion Grassroots Network is a meeting place for 1000+ great grassroots organizations working for conservation and more: http://www.orionsociety.org/ogn

]]> Comment #3 by caniscandida http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Sat, 03 Mar 2007 06:45:25 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/3 "urbanized regions"?

Right, BioD, that is an extremely important detail.  But I think if I were the author of this document, I would not have  written "urbanized regions"; I would have written something more along the lines of "development for the purpose of accommodating human habitation and transportation."  And that is not because I prefer to write at least two lines worth of words when one or two words might do -- yes, I know what you are thinking : ) -- , but rather because I suspect "urbanized regions" may in fact be misleading.  I.e., this is not just a question of growing cities, or new cities, it is a question of wherever human beings are present.

Also, there are by now numerous examples of ecosystems in mountains being greatly stressed, and the cause is not directly related to "urbanization."  In Arctic regions, the much-commented-on peril of polar bears is not directly related to "urbanization," nor is the rather less well-known competition between the highly adaptive red foxes, whose range is shifting northward, and the rather more delicate and specialized Arctic foxes, whose range is basically up against a wall.

As for this, at the very end:
<<
"Because changes in the climate system are likely to persist into the future regardless of emissions mitigation, adaptation is an essential response for future protection of climate-sensitive ecosystems," it said.
>>
"Changes persisting into the future, regardless," is another important concept, which we all need to pay attention to.  But I wonder what the authors have in mind, regarding adaptive protection of ecosystems.  It sounds great; but thus far, I have read of "adaptation" only with regard to human population centers, never with regard to "ecosystems."  Perhaps, though, I have not been reading carefully enough ...

Anyway, this is a fascinating, disturbing piece of journalism.  I was especially struck by that bit about the anonymous officials who are angry that this report is only now going to be released, after a delay of over a year.

Best wishes to you all at Orion, Erik.  I agree, very often the power of a story is delivered especially by the images that accompany it.  In this case, though, I think the quality of the writing is unusually interesting.

Not as though no one had ever thought this before, but surely W.'s presidency is going to be remembered as the most disastrous presidency in history.

"History": Will there be anyone to write history, in a few years?  Will there be any way to record it?  Will there be anyone to read it?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!





]]> "urbanized regions"?

Right, BioD, that is an extremely important detail.  But I think if I were the author of this document, I would not have  written "urbanized regions"; I would have written something more along the lines of "development for the purpose of accommodating human habitation and transportation."  And that is not because I prefer to write at least two lines worth of words when one or two words might do -- yes, I know what you are thinking : ) -- , but rather because I suspect "urbanized regions" may in fact be misleading.  I.e., this is not just a question of growing cities, or new cities, it is a question of wherever human beings are present.

Also, there are by now numerous examples of ecosystems in mountains being greatly stressed, and the cause is not directly related to "urbanization."  In Arctic regions, the much-commented-on peril of polar bears is not directly related to "urbanization," nor is the rather less well-known competition between the highly adaptive red foxes, whose range is shifting northward, and the rather more delicate and specialized Arctic foxes, whose range is basically up against a wall.

As for this, at the very end:
<<
"Because changes in the climate system are likely to persist into the future regardless of emissions mitigation, adaptation is an essential response for future protection of climate-sensitive ecosystems," it said.
>>
"Changes persisting into the future, regardless," is another important concept, which we all need to pay attention to.  But I wonder what the authors have in mind, regarding adaptive protection of ecosystems.  It sounds great; but thus far, I have read of "adaptation" only with regard to human population centers, never with regard to "ecosystems."  Perhaps, though, I have not been reading carefully enough ...

Anyway, this is a fascinating, disturbing piece of journalism.  I was especially struck by that bit about the anonymous officials who are angry that this report is only now going to be released, after a delay of over a year.

Best wishes to you all at Orion, Erik.  I agree, very often the power of a story is delivered especially by the images that accompany it.  In this case, though, I think the quality of the writing is unusually interesting.

Not as though no one had ever thought this before, but surely W.'s presidency is going to be remembered as the most disastrous presidency in history.

"History": Will there be anyone to write history, in a few years?  Will there be any way to record it?  Will there be anyone to read it?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!





]]> Comment #4 by caniscandida http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Sat, 03 Mar 2007 08:57:35 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/4 oops, forgot ...

... to thank DR earlier for the Tolkien reference.  Not that the analogy was altogether necessary -- the moral of the post is clear enough, so that even an energy-and-emissions idiot such as myself pretty much gets the picture first time around.  Still, the effort is appreciated.

On the other hand, regarding Wikipedia, it just goes to show, it can indeed use some tweaking from time to time, and we see here a fine example.  The main heading, in any reasonable encyclopedia, would not be "Grima," it would be "Wormtongue."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

]]> oops, forgot ...

... to thank DR earlier for the Tolkien reference.  Not that the analogy was altogether necessary -- the moral of the post is clear enough, so that even an energy-and-emissions idiot such as myself pretty much gets the picture first time around.  Still, the effort is appreciated.

On the other hand, regarding Wikipedia, it just goes to show, it can indeed use some tweaking from time to time, and we see here a fine example.  The main heading, in any reasonable encyclopedia, would not be "Grima," it would be "Wormtongue."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

]]> Comment #5 by JMG http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Sat, 03 Mar 2007 10:15:14 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/5 Reduced GHG "intensity"

The message below is also the message of a powerful and important new book on climate disruption/global heating called "With Speed and Violence" by noted science writer Fred Pearce (Beacon Press).   As he notes, the usual trick of economists/denialists is to assume that all the uncertainty in the effects of disrupting the climate will break in our favor, leading to milder consequences (and, thus, strengthening the arguments for inaction).  There is no actual evidence that uncertainty is in our favor.

======

The Climate-Change Precipice

By David Ignatius
Washington Post
Friday, March 2, 2007; A13

The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over. A leading international group of climate scientists reported last month that the evidence for global warming is "unequivocal" and that the likelihood it is caused by humans is more than 90 percent. Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, but this isn't a "call both sides for comment" issue anymore. For mainstream science, it's settled.

The question now is what to do about global warming. This is a political problem more than a scientific one. The solutions (if we can agree on any) will require political will and imagination -- and also pain. That was my only reservation about the Oscar night celebration of Al Gore's leadership on this issue. The gowns and black ties and the celebrity back-slapping made it look like dealing with global warming will be fun, a walk down the red carpet. But it's more likely to be about catastrophe and how to share the pain.

These issues come into focus in a startling new report by futurist Peter Schwartz. He turns the usual discussions upside down: Rather than starting with detailed estimates of climate change (how much temperatures will increase; how much sea levels will rise; what new diseases will be spawned), he looks instead at systems that already are vulnerable to such stresses.

What Schwartz discovers with his stress-testing makes climate change even scarier: The world already is precarious; the networks that maintain political and social order already are fragile, especially in urban areas; the dividing line between civilized life and anarchy is frighteningly easy to breach, as the daily news from Iraq reminds us. We look at the behaviors of butterflies and migratory birds as harbingers of climate change. But what about early effects on human beings? "The steady escalation of climate pressure will stretch the resiliency of natural and human systems," writes Schwartz. "In short, climate change pushes systems everywhere toward their tipping point."

Schwartz's report, "Impacts of Climate Change," was prepared by his consulting group, Global Business Network, for a U.S. government intelligence agency he doesn't identify. The text of the report is available at the online discussion forum PostGlobal ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/postglobal). Here's a brief trek through the ravaged landscape Schwartz describes.

A first set of disasters waiting to happen involves stressed ecosystems. Human actions -- deforestation, overfarming, rapid urbanization -- have created special vulnerabilities to catastrophic natural events that are likely as the climate changes globally. In an interview, Schwartz cited the example of Haiti, which because of deforestation and loss of topsoil is "an ecosystem at the edge." A prolonged drought or a devastating hurricane could tip Haiti over that threshold -- and produce a refugee crisis of tens of thousands of boat people fleeing a devastated country.

Or take the problem of rising sea levels: Climate scientists are uncertain how fast the icecaps will melt and the seas will rise. But in Bangladesh, where millions of people live at or near sea level, even a small increase could produce a catastrophe. In a severe monsoon, 60 million to 100 million people could be forced to flee inundated areas, Schwartz warns, producing "the single greatest humanitarian crisis we have ever seen."

Lack of water may be as big a problem as flooding. Schwartz notes that more than 700 million people now live in arid or semi-arid areas. Climate change could tip this balance, too, producing severe water shortages and even "water wars." Tens of millions of people may become water migrants. The world's feeble political systems can't cope with existing migration patterns, let alone this human tide.

And finally, there is the problem of maintaining social order in a stressed world. You don't have to go to Baghdad to see how quickly the social fabric can be shredded; just look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The stresses come in part from rapid urbanization. Schwartz notes that in 1900, one in 20 people lived in cities; today it's about half, and the percentage is rising fast. Without strong and supple governments, this could become a world of vigilantes and militias, desperate to control scarce resources.

The big problems in life aren't the ones that hit you by surprise but the ones you can see coming. That's surely the case with climate change: We can measure it, we can imagine its catastrophic effects. But can we do anything to stop it? If we let ourselves visualize how bad it could get, as Schwartz does in this report, will we make changes that might reduce the disaster? That's the real stress test: It's coming at us. What are we doing about it?

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) //= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') output += "&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"; else output += unescape(l[i]); } document.getElementById('eeEncEmail_i1kJDhUxPW').innerHTML = output; //]]> .



]]> Reduced GHG "intensity"

The message below is also the message of a powerful and important new book on climate disruption/global heating called "With Speed and Violence" by noted science writer Fred Pearce (Beacon Press).   As he notes, the usual trick of economists/denialists is to assume that all the uncertainty in the effects of disrupting the climate will break in our favor, leading to milder consequences (and, thus, strengthening the arguments for inaction).  There is no actual evidence that uncertainty is in our favor.

======

The Climate-Change Precipice

By David Ignatius
Washington Post
Friday, March 2, 2007; A13

The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over. A leading international group of climate scientists reported last month that the evidence for global warming is "unequivocal" and that the likelihood it is caused by humans is more than 90 percent. Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, but this isn't a "call both sides for comment" issue anymore. For mainstream science, it's settled.

The question now is what to do about global warming. This is a political problem more than a scientific one. The solutions (if we can agree on any) will require political will and imagination -- and also pain. That was my only reservation about the Oscar night celebration of Al Gore's leadership on this issue. The gowns and black ties and the celebrity back-slapping made it look like dealing with global warming will be fun, a walk down the red carpet. But it's more likely to be about catastrophe and how to share the pain.

These issues come into focus in a startling new report by futurist Peter Schwartz. He turns the usual discussions upside down: Rather than starting with detailed estimates of climate change (how much temperatures will increase; how much sea levels will rise; what new diseases will be spawned), he looks instead at systems that already are vulnerable to such stresses.

What Schwartz discovers with his stress-testing makes climate change even scarier: The world already is precarious; the networks that maintain political and social order already are fragile, especially in urban areas; the dividing line between civilized life and anarchy is frighteningly easy to breach, as the daily news from Iraq reminds us. We look at the behaviors of butterflies and migratory birds as harbingers of climate change. But what about early effects on human beings? "The steady escalation of climate pressure will stretch the resiliency of natural and human systems," writes Schwartz. "In short, climate change pushes systems everywhere toward their tipping point."

Schwartz's report, "Impacts of Climate Change," was prepared by his consulting group, Global Business Network, for a U.S. government intelligence agency he doesn't identify. The text of the report is available at the online discussion forum PostGlobal ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/postglobal). Here's a brief trek through the ravaged landscape Schwartz describes.

A first set of disasters waiting to happen involves stressed ecosystems. Human actions -- deforestation, overfarming, rapid urbanization -- have created special vulnerabilities to catastrophic natural events that are likely as the climate changes globally. In an interview, Schwartz cited the example of Haiti, which because of deforestation and loss of topsoil is "an ecosystem at the edge." A prolonged drought or a devastating hurricane could tip Haiti over that threshold -- and produce a refugee crisis of tens of thousands of boat people fleeing a devastated country.

Or take the problem of rising sea levels: Climate scientists are uncertain how fast the icecaps will melt and the seas will rise. But in Bangladesh, where millions of people live at or near sea level, even a small increase could produce a catastrophe. In a severe monsoon, 60 million to 100 million people could be forced to flee inundated areas, Schwartz warns, producing "the single greatest humanitarian crisis we have ever seen."

Lack of water may be as big a problem as flooding. Schwartz notes that more than 700 million people now live in arid or semi-arid areas. Climate change could tip this balance, too, producing severe water shortages and even "water wars." Tens of millions of people may become water migrants. The world's feeble political systems can't cope with existing migration patterns, let alone this human tide.

And finally, there is the problem of maintaining social order in a stressed world. You don't have to go to Baghdad to see how quickly the social fabric can be shredded; just look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The stresses come in part from rapid urbanization. Schwartz notes that in 1900, one in 20 people lived in cities; today it's about half, and the percentage is rising fast. Without strong and supple governments, this could become a world of vigilantes and militias, desperate to control scarce resources.

The big problems in life aren't the ones that hit you by surprise but the ones you can see coming. That's surely the case with climate change: We can measure it, we can imagine its catastrophic effects. But can we do anything to stop it? If we let ourselves visualize how bad it could get, as Schwartz does in this report, will we make changes that might reduce the disaster? That's the real stress test: It's coming at us. What are we doing about it?

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) //= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') output += "&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"; else output += unescape(l[i]); } document.getElementById('eeEncEmail_i1kJDhUxPW').innerHTML = output; //]]> .



]]> Comment #6 by JMG http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Sat, 03 Mar 2007 10:24:55 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/6 Revkin

I think Revkin reads Grist.  If you are reading this, I'm curious why you didn't plot the Leahy bill?  If I recall right, it's the most aggressive of the bills on CO2 reduction.

]]> Revkin

I think Revkin reads Grist.  If you are reading this, I'm curious why you didn't plot the Leahy bill?  If I recall right, it's the most aggressive of the bills on CO2 reduction.

]]> Comment #7 by Delay And Deny http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:34:45 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/7 Did Someone Drop His Stick?

Wait a minute...

When Al Gore showed all those charts with the CO2 going up, up, up and had to get in the E-Z-Lift to be tall enough to show us how big it is.

Well, how come none of these charts do that?   I mean, did that already happen...or, what that like 2004, or what?

The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.

]]> Did Someone Drop His Stick?

Wait a minute...

When Al Gore showed all those charts with the CO2 going up, up, up and had to get in the E-Z-Lift to be tall enough to show us how big it is.

Well, how come none of these charts do that?   I mean, did that already happen...or, what that like 2004, or what?

The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.

]]> Comment #8 by cieldumort http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:11:57 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/8 clue

Well, jabailo, it has to do with compounding. One year's annual GHG emissions rate does not look that daunting, until added to the prior years, and so on, and so forth.

And then there's the very real risk of releasing trapped mass stores of C02 and even methane, which these charts don't even acknowledge.

]]> clue

Well, jabailo, it has to do with compounding. One year's annual GHG emissions rate does not look that daunting, until added to the prior years, and so on, and so forth.

And then there's the very real risk of releasing trapped mass stores of C02 and even methane, which these charts don't even acknowledge.

]]> Comment #9 by Delay And Deny http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:03:04 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/9 Shockumentary Calls Global Warming A 'HOAX' !!

Set your TiVO Gristers!

'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary

Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary.

'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.

The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.

]]> Shockumentary Calls Global Warming A 'HOAX' !!

Set your TiVO Gristers!

'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary

Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary.

'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.

The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.

]]> Comment #10 by Delay And Deny http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/ Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:08:32 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/up-or-down/10 But we heard all that before...


Yes, but the raison d'etre of anthropogenic global warmers is that manmade CO2 is in some kind of linear relationship to global mean temperature.

First of all, Al Gore actually disproved that because at the point the CO2 started to skyrocket, temperature did not.

If anything it looks like some kind of exponential relationship, however with CO2 being the dependent variable on small changes in global temperature!

Second, looking at these projections, even the worse of them (Bush's) shows only an 8% increase.   The "enviro-friendly" version has a 4% increase.   Again, I wish someone would offer some model here at grist that estimates what AGWers think will happen to temperature if the CO2 goes up by so much.

I already bet the guy who does the "Skeptics' Guide" a beer on that.

The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.


]]> But we heard all that before...


Yes, but the raison d'etre of anthropogenic global warmers is that manmade CO2 is in some kind of linear relationship to global mean temperature.

First of all, Al Gore actually disproved that because at the point the CO2 started to skyrocket, temperature did not.

If anything it looks like some kind of exponential relationship, however with CO2 being the dependent variable on small changes in global temperature!

Second, looking at these projections, even the worse of them (Bush's) shows only an 8% increase.   The "enviro-friendly" version has a 4% increase.   Again, I wish someone would offer some model here at grist that estimates what AGWers think will happen to temperature if the CO2 goes up by so much.

I already bet the guy who does the "Skeptics' Guide" a beer on that.

The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.


]]>