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Posted on 04/07/2007 11:27:17 AM PDT by Graybeard58
As the world gets hotter by degrees, millions of poor people will suffer from hunger, thirst, floods and disease unless drastic action is taken, scientists and diplomats warned Friday in their bleakest report ever on global warming.
All regions of the world will change, with the risk that nearly a third of the Earth's species will vanish if global temperatures rise just 3.6 degrees above the average temperature in the 1980s-90s, the new climate report says. Areas that now have too little rain will become drier.
Yet that grim and still preventable future is a toned-down prediction, a compromise brokered in a fierce, around-the-clock debate among scientists and bureaucrats. Officials from some governments, including China and Saudi Arabia, managed to win some weakened wording.
Even so, the final report "will send a very, very clear signal" to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the top climate official for the United Nations, which in 1988 created the authoritative climate change panel that issued the starkly worded document.
And while some scientists were angered at losing some ground, many praised the report as the strongest warning ever that nations must cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.
The report is the second of four coming this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists. The new document tries to explain how global warming is changing life on Earth; the panel's report in February focused on the cause of global warming and said scientists are highly confident most of it is due to human activity.
All four reports must be unanimously approved by the 120-plus governments that participate, and all changes must be approved by the scientists.
That edict made for a deadline-busting contentious final editing session that was closed to the public.
However, The Associated Press witnessed the hectic final 3½ hours of objections and conflict.
At one point, Chinese and Saudi Arabian delegates tried to reduce the scientific confidence level about already noticeable effects of global warming.
They lower the confidence level from 90 percent to 80 percent. Scientists objected, and one lead author from the United States, NASA's Cynthia Rosenzweig, left the building after filing an official protest.
"There is a discernible human influence on these changes" that are already occurring through flooding, heat waves, hurricanes and threats to species, she said.
Under a U.S.-proposed compromise, the final report deleted any mention of the level of confidence about global warming's current effects.
And that may have saved the day, according to some scientists who said the report had appeared doomed over that issue.
There were other disputes where scientists lost out:
n Instead of saying "hundreds of millions" would be vulnerable to flooding under certain scenarios, the final document says "many millions."
n Instead of suggesting up to 120 million people are at risk of hunger because of global warming, the revised report refers to negative effects on subsidence farmers and fishers.
Often it was the U.S. delegation who stood with scientists and helped reach compromise, said Stanford University scientist Stephen Schneider, a frequent critic of the Bush administration's global warming policies.
British scientist Neil Adger said he and others were disappointed that government officials deleted parts of a chart that highlights the devastating effects of climate change with every rise of 1.8 degrees in temperature.
Some scientists bitterly vowed never to take part in the process again.
Still, Adger and other scientists and even environmental groups hailed the final report as the strongest ever.
"This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future," the Greenpeace environmental group said of the final report.
The tone of the report is urgent, noting those who can afford the least get hit the most by global warming.
"Don't be poor in a hot country, don't live in hurricane alley, watch out about being on the coasts or in the Arctic, and it's a bad idea to be on high mountains with glaciers melting," said Schneider, the Stanford scientist who was one of the study author's.
Africa by 2020 is looking at an additional 75 million to 250 million people going thirsty because of climate change, the report said. Deadly diarrheal diseases associated with floods and droughts will increase in Asia because of global warming, the report said.
The first few degrees increase in global temperature will actually raise global food supply, but then it will plummet, according to the report.
"The poorest of the poor in the world -- and this includes poor people in prosperous societies -- are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "People who are poor are least able to adapt to climate change."
But even rich countries, such as the United States say that the report tells them what to watch for.
James Connaughton, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality noted that food production in North America would rise initially, but so will increased coastal flooding.
The head of the U.S. delegation, White House associate science adviser Sharon Hays, said a key message she's taking home to Washington is "that these projected impacts are expected to get more pronounced at higher temperatures," she said in a conference call from Brussels. "Not all projected impacts are negative."
Schneider said a main message isn't just what will happen, but what already has started: melting glaciers, stronger hurricanes, deadlier heat waves, and disappearing or moving species.
It all can be traced directly to greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, according to the report.
Martin Parry, who conducted the tough closed-door negotiations, said that with 29,000 sets of data from every continent include Antarctica, the report firmly and finally established "a man-made climate signal coming through on plants, water and ice."
"For the first time, we are not just arm-waving with models," he said.
But many of the worst effects aren't locked into the future, the report said in its final pages. People can build better structures, adapt to future warming threats and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said.
"There are things that can be done now, but it's much better if it can be done now rather than later," said David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma, one of the report authors.
"We can fix this," Schneider said.
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On the Net:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch/
The summary of the report: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf
It's hard to make living farming subsidence.
Yeah, then why are there supposed to be flurries on Easter Sunday?
Isn't this the third time today that I've heard this horse-puckey?
Kittens and puppies will be the first to die.
LOL! Its 34 degs here in STL today. And we are in the third day of frost warnings..
Please view this and get as many people as you can to view it
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4340135300469846467&q=great+global+warming&hl=en
This crowds ancestors also thought the earth was flat at one time.
Basic earth science still evades this faux argument. In the history of the USA, has there ever been such a monstrous creation of emotion and opinion, as opposed to scientific proven fact. At the same time , the liberal leftist proponents of making GW something unique, that has never happened on earth before, they continue their chicken-little emotional scam upon those easily fooled....
Just watch the money. That is what this is all about. The aquisition of the public’s wealth for their own purposes is at the root of it all. The mere fact that there is argument about the premise of this liberal scam, is BLATANT PROOF there is no basis in credible science — but that never has bothered money-grubbing liberals...
"We can fix this," Schneider said.
To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.
--- Steven Schneider, Quoted in Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989; and American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996.
"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are."
-- Petr Chylek, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, commenting on reports that Greenland's glaciers are melting. Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001
"Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as "synfuels," shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration."
-- James Hansen, stated in presentation to Council on Environmental Quality, June 12, 2003
"The data don't matter. We're not basing our recommendations [for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions] upon the data. We're basing them upon the climate models"
(Chris Folland, UK Meteorological Office)
Yeah, before we know it, the whole world will be like North Korea, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Cuba, and Philiadelphia.
Mark Twain provided a classic example of "damned lies" using statistics. He noted that "the number of murderers and the number of Methodists in the Nebraska Territory were rising at the same rate." This conclusively proved that Methodists were murderers. Of course, as he noted, this was a false equation.
My columns both this week and next will deal with global warming. See below.
Congressman Billybob
If we canmake it happen fast enough most will drown and not suffer too much. ANd the beaches will not be very far for me to drive to any longer, 3 hours now, could cut over an hour off that trip.
Also, all of those condo’s on the beach will be a greaqt reef for little fishes, which will make it so more guys go to the beach to fish.
Also will provide for more food, and with less people to buy the food, food prices will drop. Heck also oil cunsumption will decrease and so the cost of oil will go down.
With Washington DC under two hundred feet of water, it will make it hard for the House and Senate to meet and pass new taxes.
YOu know the more I look at this Golbal Warming stuff the more I am hoping it is really true.
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It should read “according to Albert Marx Goreon”
Not kittens and puppies?
That is, if any are left after the pet food fiasco.
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Anyone who wonders what the UN/IPCC Anthropogenic Global Warming hype is actually about need only look no further than Europe to note the real agenda behind the AGW push, and it ain't science:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/04/news/climate.php
France and 45 other countries call for world environmental monitor
International Herald Tribune: Europe
The Associated Press Published: February 4, 2007
- PARIS: Forty-five nations joined France in calling for a new environmental body to slow global warming and protect the planet, a body that potentially could have policing powers to punish violators.
- "It is our responsibility," Chirac said. "The future of humanity demands it."
- "Without naming the United States, the producer of about one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, Chirac expressed frustration that "some large, rich countries still must be convinced" and were "refusing to accept the consequences of their acts."
- "So far, it is mostly European nations that have agreed to pursue plans for the new organization and hold their first meeting in Morocco this spring."
- "We are at a tipping point," Gore said to the conference by videophone. "We must act, and act swiftly." He added: "Such action requires international cooperation."
- "It is time now to hear from the world's policy makers," Tim Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, said Friday. "The so-called and long-overstated 'debate' about global warming is now over."
- "The United Nations also is considering a summit meeting of world leaders to tackle global warming, and de Boer said he would expect the United States to send high-ranking officials to to participate."
Time for a ‘Bleakest climate report’ thread chain
Linking up
Bleakest climate report approved
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1813461/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1813675/posts
—
keyword Gorebalism -— on the rise?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=gorebalism
Help fight hypocrisy and a leftist “consensus-based” ‘scientific’ movement.
They were thinking we might get 2 inches today. I don’t remember Michigan being this cold this late but then I’ve only been here since ‘85.
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