Ban Ki-moon At UN: Urgent Action Needed On Climate Change

BBC NEWS :

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for urgent action on climate change, saying negotiations on reducing emissions were proceeding too slowly.

Read the whole story: BBC NEWS

Comments

[realpolitic]

07:26 PM on 10/04/2009

According to the report released last month by the United Nations Environmental Porgram, there is accelerating evidence of anthropogencic warming!

-Sea ice loss: "Accelerated shrinking of mountain glaciers on every continent, rapid reduction of Arctic sea ice, disintegration of floating ice shelves, and increased melt rates of Earth's three Ice Sheets-Greenland, West Antarctic, and East Antarctic-provide compelling evidence of our changing climate."

Higher ocean temperatures, acidification, coral bleaching: "Climate change further threatens oceans with higher temperatures, increased acidification, and altered circulation and nutrient supplies."

Ecosystem shifts: "Since the compilation of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, serious and irreversible changes in Earth's Ecosystems due to anthropogenic activities are increasingly recognized with greater confidence and better quantification of the proces

http://mediamatters.org/research/200910010030

[Richard2]

09:27 AM on 10/04/2009

What in the world does a "dignity tax" on Americans have to do with the study of climate? The Copenhagen conference is focusing on raising taxes on Americans, including a "dignity tax." The Copenhagen conference has little to do with climate change. The tide station at Copenhagen indicates the long term sea level trend is an upward 2 inch per century trend. This trend has not changed over the period when supposidly "global warming" has been impacting the world.

What elected officials in the United States support a "dignity tax" on Americans?

When do the American people, get the opportunity to vote on whether or not to impose a dignity tax on themselves?

[realpolitic]

08:39 PM on 10/05/2009

Dignity tax? Where does that come from? How about we put a "rationality tax" on deniers? But them we would not raise any revenues!

[WillWilson]

04:37 PM on 09/30/2009

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

the reality of global warming and ecological consequences:

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

and increasing sea levels:

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

We use lots of energy, with too many emissions of greenhouse gases, and still have about 300 years worth of coal. Our concern is surviving a changing climate. We depend on the present climate for growing crops right where farms just happen to be. With climate change comes not just warming, but broader variations in things like last frost date, first frost date, and rainfall patterns. Food production depends on these climate measures. As the climate changes, insect pests and plant pathogens find new habitable areas of the globe, perhaps in these agricultural areas. Nobody can predict whether such things will happen, but if they do, and food production fails, I would call that a problem. So, what is an acceptable risk? How confident are you that no problems will arise? Humans experienced potato famines, changed eastern forests through release of the chestnut blight, and so on. Climate change brings on new risks. Are you comfortable with a 10% risk of agricultural collapse? 1%? 50%?

The sooner we find new, clean sources, the better.

Will Wilson

[Richard2]

09:35 AM on 10/04/2009

As Andrew Revkin has noted, the earth's temperature has been stable for the last ten years. So how are we going to get along in a world with a stable temperature, as opposed to one where there is the modest warming of the last part of the 20th Century? So far issues of food production have not been a problem in our 21st Century world. Also, the extra CO2 seems to help the crops grow more vigorously.

If, as Dr. Latif suggests, we may be facing a decade or two of global cooling, then perhaps we had just better buy some warmer clothes, and get used to the colder weather. What we don't seem to have to worry about is "accelerated warming, rapidly rising sea levels, and terrible draughts. Assuming the climate moves back toward the climate of the first half of the 20th Century, we will have more floods.

[WillWilson]

11:54 AM on 10/04/2009

It's why the term is "climate change" not "global warming". Climate change involves many things beyond a globally averaged temperature. In the 1950s and 1960s we saw a reduction in global temperatures, but a continued upward trend in the 1970s. Don't bet Earth's climate on unclear short-term trends, fooling us into continuing use of cheap fossil fuels with carbon emissions, while risking expensive long-term climate consequences.

Human caused climate change is a reality. Accept it and start helping us deal with it by developing carbon-free energy sources.

Will Wilson