Posted on 08/05/2003 7:14:35 PM PDT by Pikamax
The climate must change
And reform must start with America
Leader Wednesday August 6, 2003 The Guardian
There is no doubt that the current spell of hot, humid weather coiled around the northern hemisphere is having devastating consequences for the globe. Whether it is wilting crops in Pakistan or expanding railway tracks in Britain, the deleterious effects are all too apparent. Evidence increasingly points to a weather system shaped more and more not by nature but by humanity. The pattern of industrial development of modern day society appears to be producing too much pollution for the world to cope with. The effects will irrevocably remake the climate for the worse.
Warning voices, carrying the threat of a future dystopia, are becoming clearer and more insistent. In today's paper John Schellnhuber, the head of Britain's foremost climate change thinktank, describes how the "parching heat experienced now could be a standard expression of an extreme overall development".
Two weeks ago Sir John Houghton, the former head of the Met Office, compared climate change to a weapon of mass destruction. "Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries. It can strike anywhere, in any form - a heatwave in one place, a drought or a flood or a storm surge in another."
Respected scientists warn climate change could make the planet too hot for life itself. It may be true that the earth's atmosphere is being altered sluggishly and in an indeterminate manner - but neither of these is a reason for inaction.
Global warming is becoming part of the present. The 1990s was the hottest decade in the millennium - and 1998 was the warmest year. Bizarrely, the weight of the evidence required for policymakers around the world to act decisively is not great enough for the world's greatest polluter, America.
On gaining office, the Bush administration, with its roots in oil and big business, withdrew unilaterally from the biggest international commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions - the Kyoto protocol. To gain some scale of how reckless this act of political vandalism was consider this: if US states were independent nations they would comprise 25 of the top 60 nations that emit greenhouse gases - Texas's emissions alone exceed France's.
Washington has deployed a mixture of indifference to the pressing nature of climate change and incredulity that anybody else was prepared to do anything about it. This was, and is, a dangerous act. Kyoto has still not come into force - Russia has yet to sign up. Even worse is that new data suggests Kyoto, designed when climate change was thought be less destructive, will be out of date by the time it becomes effective.
Changing the way we live and consume the earth's resources will impose economic costs today for environmental returns tomorrow. The future should see industry reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Energy-efficient homes and cleaner transport will help alleviate urban smog. Eventually new technologies will emerge that see green power replace fossil fuels which adversely affect the atmosphere. This tomorrow will only come into existence if governments produce policies that encourage a new form of development. Urgent changes are needed - the billions in India and China cannot live as the world's wealthy do today.
More cash for alternative energy sources, making polluters pay and removing subsidies for dirty fuels, are first steps. Poor countries, which will suffer most from extreme weather conditions, will need cash and help to deal with problems that rich nations, acting irresponsibly, have created for them. America should realise there are many ways to tackle climate change but ignoring it is not one of them.
How can people live like that? No wonder they're always so upset. ;-)
The leftist seems always to depend on threats of future dystopia. It's a pity they need white-knuckled fear to sell their ideas, rather than inherent appeal and logic.
Fear is the leverage they need to perpetrate ideological enslavement.
True, but given that we're within 20-30 years of a new industrial revolution through GNR, (genetic/nano/robotechnology)now is not the time to impose draconian measures that would crush the world economy, and postpone the development/implementation of these new technologies.
Changing the way we live and consume the earth's resources will impose economic costs today for environmental returns tomorrow.
Half right- it will impose horrific costs to the world economy, and IT WILL POSTPONE environmental returns much past tomorrow. (sorry for breaking my own ALL CAPS RULE. felt it was warranted in this case.)
Urgent changes are needed - the billions in India and China cannot live as the world's wealthy do today.
both parts are true- but: The urgent changes are best supplied via a robust, innovative world economy, and "the billions" may or may not be able "to live etc." but they sure as hell will try, regardless of treaties. Best bet is for the developed world to put in place new tech that enables the same lifestyle, with a lower level of consumption- think cell phones replacing landlines, and reducing the need for copper wire, thus reducing mining, smelting, etc.
True, but given that we're within 20-30 years of a new industrial revolution through GNR, (genetic/nano/robotechnology)now is not the time to impose draconian measures that would crush the world economy, and postpone the development/implementation of these new technologies.
Changing the way we live and consume the earth's resources will impose economic costs today for environmental returns tomorrow.
Half right- it will impose horrific costs to the world economy, and IT WILL POSTPONE environmental returns much past tomorrow. (sorry for breaking my own ALL CAPS RULE. felt it was warranted in this case.)
Urgent changes are needed - the billions in India and China cannot live as the world's wealthy do today.
both parts are true- but: The urgent changes are best supplied via a robust, innovative world economy, and "the billions" may or may not be able "to live etc." but they sure as hell will try, regardless of treaties. Best bet is for the developed world to put in place new tech that enables the same lifestyle, with a lower level of consumption- think cell phones replacing landlines, and reducing the need for copper wire, thus reducing mining, smelting, etc.
You may now return to your previously scheduled beer.
Euroweenies, you pandering and pandered to bunch of sheep, you parliament of whores....if I told you France was made of green cheese from the moon, you'd believe me.
Is this unusual, or abnormal?
What does the record say about average global temperatures for the last 50,000 years? Do they fluctuate, or are they static?
The "null hypothesis" of the global warming people is that what is happening A) is abnormal; and B) has a human causation.
Both of these things are false.
"Newsweek -- April 28, 1975
-" The Cooling World
" There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now....(snip)
---" Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality. "
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