Posted on 09/20/2007 11:48:40 AM PDT by pabianice
SYDNEY (AFP) — Global warming is occurring at a faster rate than the worst-case scenario envisaged by experts just six years ago, Australia's top climate change scientist said Thursday.
Tim Flannery, named the 2007 Australian of the Year for his work in alerting the public to the dangers of global warming, said the issue was the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st century.
Flannery said predictions in a 2001 UN report, warning the atmosphere was likely to warm by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5-10.4 Fahrenheit) from 1990 to 2100 now appeared conservative.
"In the six years since then, we've collected enough data to (check) whether those projections are valid or not," he said.
"It turns out they're not valid, but in the most horrible way -- because for the key performance indicators about climate, change is occurring far in advance of the worst-case scenario," he said.
"Carbon dioxide's increasing more rapidly, sea levels are rising more rapidly (and) the Arctic ice cap is melting away more quickly than were projected in 2001."
Flannery said the world needed an international organisation similar to the United Nations dedicated solely to climate change.
"The 21st century is going to be about environmental limits," he said.
"There's six billion of us on the planet, there will soon be nine billion, the atmosphere is tiny as a pollution receptacle, clearly that's going to be where the action is.
"But we haven't yet built the structures, the new version of the UN that helps us deal with the global pollution crisis as a species."
Flannery said nations needed to "de-carbonise" their economies by 2050, increasing reliance on geo-thermal, nuclear and renewable energy.
That’s a career I have been reaching for all my life!
from Wikipedia:
Sea level has risen about 130 metres (400 feet) since the peak of the last ice age about 18,000 years ago. Most of the rise occurred before 6,000 years ago. From 3,000 years ago to the start of the 19th century sea level was almost constant, rising at 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr. Since 1900 the level has risen at 1 to 2 mm/yr
>>The operative sentence is “since 1900.” As is evident to the naked eyes from the chart at the site, there is no recent acceleration. The trend is a straight line. For at least the past 100 years, the sea level has been rising by a very slow rate.
I suspect that actual measurements would show that this trend began around 1800, since so many other things that are correlated with global warming began rising back then.
Back in 1800, almost of all of mankind was in a primitive state, and only a few million were just starting in the industrial revolution. The potential of steam power was hardly developed, and the idea of an internal combustion engine had not yet been conceived.
Even so, we may be able to effect climate change, whether or not we are a major contirbutor to it. Using nuclear energy is a very good idea. It may be a LOT easier to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by planting trees than to try to cut down on our emissions of cardon dioxide.
Global Warming on FreeRepublic
Here’s the Money Quote. ALL of these ‘Global Doomage’ articles have ‘em:
“But we haven’t yet built the structures, the new version of the UN that helps us deal with the global pollution crisis as a species.”
We just need to throw more money (down a rat hole) at the problem and it will go away! :)
Well, at least he considers nuclear power an alternative.
Yea....but not in his back yard.
We had snow in Wisconsin last week when the average high is still in the mid seventies.
There was an excelent presentation about global warming by Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASEnergy), on C-SPAN last week.
He has a very interesting perspective on causation and what we can do for clean energy. I’m including a link to the program here.
http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=555222792
In a nutshell, he presents a theroy that over the last 1 billion years, the earth has actually been much warmer than it is now, with little ice at the poles. He cites points in history to match it up with warming trends.
I’d recommend it for anyone who is still on the fence about the cause of global warming, or is interested in a fresh take on clean energy.
It was 48 yesterday morning here in SW Virginia, but this morning, it's 63.
OMG! That's a 15 degree increase! In just one day!!!!
He may be on to something....
(Or at the least, on something....)
Forget it , the ice caps of Mars are melting too. We’ve destroyed the entire universe with our big cars ......
The sky is fallingggggggggggggggggggggggg
The high was 69 degrees in Fresno yesterday. They are looking for snow in the Sierras down to 6500 ft this weekend.
I’m sittin here waiting for this rain storm we’re supposed to get today. No sign yet. On Channel 5 this morning they were all ragging on the weather guy, cracking out umbrellas and so on. Kind of funny.
bttt
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