Climate Crisis Equal To Nuclear Arms Threat

The Independent:

Climate change poses as great a threat to the world as the nuclear arms race, scientists warned yesterday as they called on leaders to take urgent action to tackle the problem.

Read the whole story: The Independent

Comments

[RomeoMD25]

Proposed global warming “solutions” will not make a difference and will have tremendous costs, especially on the poor.
There is no scientific proof that proposed global warming “solutions” will have any impact upon the climate. These proposed “solutions” rely upon extremely intrusive government controls designed to reduce our energy consumption, thereby significantly increasing the cost of energy and the price of nearly all goods and services produced within our economy, as businesses pass these costs onto consumers. The poor would be the hardest hit by increases in gas, utilities, food and other essentials.

[research]

green is cheaper,

[research]

No.

Climate change is not nearly as bad a global thermonuclear war.

Why do I bring this up?

This statement will be used by pro nuke folks to counter the fact the nuclear power tech is the same tech as nuke bombs.

700B$ can buy 100 nukes, 100GW, if you believe the most optimistic biased estimates.

that same 700B$ can buy rooftop solar about equal to all those nukes, average 100GW, with a decreased risk for world wars and fuel free forever.

No grid upgrades needed, just a standardized low cost grid connect, and at least net metering.
Solar powered should at least get paid at the rate of the utilities most expensive electricity: peak solar air conditioning gas turbines.

For liquid and gas fuels, Waste can be converted into fuel, energy and carbon negative BioCharchol.
The rooftop solar prices are for for already state of the market, 2$/peak watt installed in the most appropriate sunny sites. see my profile for more.

We don't need to risk Nuclear War to stop climate change, or supply our energy needs.

[AngieMom57]

We encourage all communities to promote a weekly "veggie day"!

"In May, the Belgian city of Ghent has become the world's first to promote a weekly "veggie day." Drawing upon the 2006 United Nations report "Livestock's Long Shadow," which showed that nearly one-fifth of greenhouse gasses derive from livestock, especially cows (more than all transportation combined), the city is urging all citizens to eat vegetarian on Thursdays. City officials will act first, setting an example, and veggie school lunches will come next. At a send-off party, lists of vegetarian restaurants were handed out, and recipes were distributed. Other restaurants are encouraged to emphasize veggie offerings on that day (with the usual offerings as an alternative if desired). A Ghent city councilor pointed out that staying clear of meat is good for the planet, for health, and for taste buds. He might have added that the suffering of farmed animals is also reduced.

"...And there are reasons that apply everywhere: it is urgent that we do all we can to help spare our planet; we need to cut the risk of cancers, coronary heart trouble, and other degenerative diseases linked to animal product consumption. Huge amounts of grain that could go to feed hungry peoples in developing countries are instead being fed to animals intended for our tables. And most people are decent, caring folk who don't want to cause suffering to anyone, human or beast, but have inherited a very harmful food-production system.

[mergina]

A nuclear holocaust would seem merciful compared to what is in store for humanity this century.

[plantguy]

If you people are really worried about global warming then get rid of your computer and turn out the lights. Yeah right blah,blah,blah

[alvdh1]

More insight from burn coal or America is finished for good. Thanks for putting so much effort into your comment.

[traveler501]

with some of these comments I can only assume that most home schools now have computers. anyone who doesn't realize global warming is real, is determined not to know.

[topgunna]

Oh, I believe the world is warmer today than in 1900. I just believe that attributing all of the warming to greenhouse gasses is a classic omitted variable problem.

You can approach the issue two ways. If you look at human activity as your starting point, and you attempt to quantify all direct and indirect impacts, it's easy to imagine that the modest temperature forcing of extra CO2 resonates PROFOUNDLY in the climate system.

If, on the other hand, you start from the point of "the world is slightly warmer today than in 1900, what might have caused it?" - a rise in the level of a weak GHG (from .03% concentrations to .04% concentrations) is not the first place I'd look. To get the math to work, you have to assume a huge POSITIVE feedback (to the tune of 67-83%) to amplify the effect. Positive feedbacks are quite rare in the natural world.

Any random climate forcing (and there are countless) could be "proven" responsible for all 20th century warming in a climate model. All you would need to do is plug the appropriate coefficient in front of that forcing. So no, I don't find the CO2-driven warming argument terribly compelling.

[RTIII]

Top gun? Not.

Positive feedback loops are far from uncommon in the natural world - every living organism has many, as but one area chock full of them.

More importantly, you're no earth scientist. And how cavalierly you discard the work of the earth science community is hallmark of a person with foregone conclusions in mind.

Give actual rebuttal to published work and then you'll be worth listening to.
.

[HeevenSteven]

"Positive feedbacks are quite rare in the natural world. "

ROTFLMAO!

[guinganbresil]

Drink the KoolAid? Or critical thought? Most home schoolers I know research both sides of an issue - critical thinking is encouraged! I have seen Gore's "Inconvienient Truth" shown in public school science classes as gospel... If something cannot be questioned or debated it has become doctrine, and anyone deviating heretics to be destroyed...

[fumes]

are those climate change sirens i hear? quick get under your desks!!! lol..

say.. sootn't we be paying more attention to the real culprit? SOOT!!!

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LT461035.htm

[elmerfude]

Soot er I mean fumes, do you think we should bring back the cold war atomic drills from the 50s? I really enjoyed some of my time under a desk.

[topgunna]

Don't be silly, fumes. There's MUCH more money to be made taxing carbon.

[WillWilson]

For those who want to see some background reality, I've posted a graph of our energy use from various sources over the last two centuries (from the US DOE's 2006 Annual Energy Review) online at:

http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=116

I've also posted information showing the reality of global warming, and some consequences measured in other organisms:

http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=95

Plots showing increasing sea levels, too:

http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=125

If you simply want to deny reality, well, certainly it makes getting things done just that much harder for the rest of us, but it's a right that represents one of the great things about our country!

Will Wilson

[guinganbresil]

I don't buy it. A quick look at the Science Time shows glaring problems.
1 - Correlation does not imply causation. The plot showing CO2 emissions vs. temperature does not prove they caused the increase (this is a logical fallacy).
2 - The plot showing historical relationship between temperature and CO2 shows CO2 FOLLOWING temperature changes (I have seen a lot of data indicating this and a mechanism - CO@ in solution in deep water).
3 - The plot of radiative forcing shows CO2 as the major forcing factor. The IPCC for some (unknown, likely political) reason chooses to ignor water which is a much stronger greenhouse gas (more absorption bands) and a is VASTLY greater component of the atmosphere.
If I can see these problems in a five minute read, the matter is NOT settled, and we should NOT precipitously enact policy changes that will destroy our economy and lower our standard of living.

[hark]

You armchair scientists need to present your "findings" to the IPCC, not to a crowd of laymen on a blog. This isn't politics. It's about science. It's just amazing how you deniers sit around by the millions, each with his pet refutation of the science, and do nothing but post this stuff over the Internet. I challenge you to offer your theory to a group of climatologists, and have them evaluate it. Are you a climatologist? Didn't think so. Don't you think it a bit presumptuous to claim that you have refuted a firmly established scientific theory in five minutes of looking at data you didn't put together, which the scientists who are far better educated and have vastly more experience than you, and who did put together the data with thousands of hours of painstaking research, didn't notice?

Please. present your findings to the scientists. Or haven't you the guts?

[HeevenSteven]

"1 - Correlation does not imply causation. The plot showing CO2 emissions vs. temperature does not prove they caused the increase (this is a logical fallacy).

This is not a "um hoc, propter hoc" conclusion. CO2 forcing theory is solid. You can read about this on RealClimate.org if you want to take some time away from your denial studies, and read what actual climate scientists say about it.

[traveler501]

thanks to hark and HeevenSteven...I was just building up a head of steam over this idiotic post and see that you got it covered. IMO we are sooo past needing science to unveil this issue, anyway...and we are amassing extraordinary levels of all kind of toxins and just general chemical and thermal imbalances all over the earth. this is so much more than just climate change...but climate change it is. I may sound a little shrill...but I spent 15 years at Dupont dealing with emergencies and I have seen first hand the releases and cheats and even well-intentioned (well-rationalized?) "storages" of horrendously bad things. and they talk like our friend above...it almost sounds rational.

[FormerReaganite]

guinganbresil

I fail to see how green policies are going to "destroy our economy and lower our standard of living." You start your post with logical reasoning, than you end your post with some wild conjecture on which you have absolutely zero proof.

[ohiomark]

Thank God we had global warming over the last few thousand years, otherwise we would still be in an ice age and the heating bills would be through the roof.

Get over yourselves Libs, you can't change or control the climate, just adapt.

[elmerfude]

What does the science of climate change have to do with "Libs?" Most of the scientists I know are conservative folks and some are even religious. There is a difference between natural climate change and human forced climate change. Do you real think the climate scientists have not sorted these out in their models and conclusions? Most scientists are far more careful and disciplined with their data and conclusions than you armchair pundits.

[cyclobenzaprine9]

Awesome comment!

[RTIII]

_Nobody_ seriously in the mix says anything about "control" of the climate - and you damned well know it, if only because I've told you a half dozen times already.

_Everybody_ can _change_ the climate, and anyone who thinks they can pollute any resource forever without consequence is a first rate idiot.
.

[guinganbresil]

Weapons grade baloneyum... Climate change is a fact of life - we have seen ice ages and warm periods over and over and over again. The earth has handled far worse environmental disasters than man (asteroid impacts, supervolcanoes, etc.) This 'point-of-no-return' rhetoric is clearly fear mongering trying to induce precipitous political/economic action before the science is resolved. Unvalidated climate models with dodgey assumptions showing disaster do not consitute sound science - we need cause & effect back up by empirical data. The data I have seen does not support significant CO2 greenhouse warming from manmade sources (the upper atmosphere is where the greenhouse effect would be seen, and it is not the source of warming - it appears to be surface temperatures - invalidating AGW)

[alvdh1]

I didn't realize that climate change deniers got up this early. For your information fella, global warming's effect is felt in the ocean and not in the upper atmosphere.

[topgunna]

Really, so it's not caused by that vicious greenhouse gas we emit into the atmosphere?

[guinganbresil]

"global warming's effect is felt in the ocean and not in the upper atmosphere"
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
It is absorption and re-radiation of long wavelength IR by greenhouse GASES in the atmosphere that would otherwise be headed back out toward space. The concentration of the greenhouse gases are irrelevant in the lower atmosphere because they absorb just about all they can. In the upper atmosphere the concentration of the GH gases will affect the amount of energy absorbed - therefore the warming should originate there - radiosonde and satellite temperature data do not show the warming in the upper regions of the atmosphere that is prediced by the AGW models - this is a major problem indicating AGW is likely not the cause of climate changes.
BTW I am not a 'climate change denier' - I agree that the climate has changed in the past and will change in the future. I do question whether it is caused by human CO2 emissions, and whether we should bleed our economy based on fear mongering...
It was fun! Thanks!

[quillsinister]

The Pentagon issued a report in 2003 essentially saying the same thing. The geopolitical aspects alone are blood chilling. Climate refugees destabilizing governments and all of that good stuff. Eight critical years that we REALLY needed to be moving on this issue have been utterly wasted.

Here's to making twice as much progress with the next eight. We don't have much of a choice in the matter, when you get right down to it. This issue is more important than anything going on in the Sandbox.

[Kula]

When should I get my radiation suit.

Seems damn cold in The Great White North these days. I think 16 degrees below normal in most of the country.

How long does the temperature have to dip before the warmers will catch on to the the myth of global warming? It's now been 10 years with no rise in climatic temperature.

[ohiomark]

As soon as people understand that this whole hoax has NOTHING to do with climate and more to do with more government control.

[hark]

I think you missed your anti-paranoia medication this morning

[AtheistUS]

An image of nuclear explosion has more simple and direct effect on a typical TV-watching couch potato.

Threat of an asteroid hitting Earth and the threat of climate change seem too remote.

To invest more into asteroids watch/prevention programs we will need to take a hit, hopefully it will be not fatal one.

To take seriously the climate change we will need to feel serious damaging consequences - again, I hope not fatal ones.

[StopGlobalWarmingBeVegan]

The clock is ticking, another 4 yrs to save the planet before hitting the point-of-no-return.

[Tim303]

More than this: global warming is like living through a slow motion nuclear explosion.