50% chance that its too late to save the polar ice caps

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Cypress

Well-known member
50% Chance It's "Too Late To Save Polar Ice Caps"

Climate change: scientists warn it may be too late to save the ice caps

David Adam, environment correspondent
Monday February 19, 2007
The Guardian


A critical meltdown of ice sheets and severe sea level rise could be inevitable because of global warming, the world's scientists are preparing to warn their governments. New studies of Greenland and Antarctica have forced a UN expert panel to conclude there is a 50% chance that widespread ice sheet loss "may no longer be avoided" because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.




http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2016243,00.html
 
Sell your ocean front property now!

At 50 ft above sea level I was destined to have ocean front property in time in Fl.
 
uscitizen said:
Sell your ocean front property now!

At 50 ft above sea level I was destined to have ocean front property in time in Fl.
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LOL

IF this is true, the hardest question a global warming denialist will ever have to answer 40 years from now, is when their grand kid asks them why people didn't try to curb emissions in the 1980s and 1990s, when the evidence for climate change was first mounting.
 
Cypress said:
LOL

IF this is true, the hardest question a global warming denialist will ever have to answer 40 years from now, is when their grand kid asks them why people didn't try to curb emissions in the 1980s and 1990s, when the evidence for climate change was first mounting.
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Very true.
The truthful answers would be.
Poor foresight.
Greed.
laziness.

The national debt will be another catastrophe for this country down the road as well.
Same reasons.
 
uscitizen said:
Very true.
The truthful answers would be.
Poor foresight.
Greed.
laziness.

The national debt will be another catastrophe for this country down the road as well.
Same reasons.
Click to expand...

I think another honest answer would be ideology. Some people can't admit they were wrong. Some denialists have been emotionally invested is saying global warming was a hoax for the past twenty years.

If the scientists are wrong, and nothing happens, fine - they were wrong. Its still better for us to reduce emissions and move to alternative energy anyway.


I never understood how climate change became such a partisan issue, where ego about being possibly being wrong, trumps doing the right thing.
 
My answer will be:

I worked to contain emissions, not because of this newly emerging science but because I believed that breathing such stuff was terrible for a person and the animals to which we have certain responsibility. If I was successful it is likely that the climate shift would have been slower and more orderly, but likely to be inevitable regardless as the world shifted many times before humanity held any sway in it.

Only humanity seems to want to mess in their own food chain in such a way... but I am sure of my belief that humans, when it comes right down to it, will not only find a way to survive, but to thrive.
 
pretty good answer damo.

My only critique is that working as individual to limit emissions is fine. But, to be truly effective there has to be a national and global policy to implement it faster. This can include both market incentives, as well as government policy from the tax, fiscal, and regulatory end of things.
 
Damo is right that a HUGE decline in energy consumption can happen if each of us as individuals work to make it happen on a personal level. I do my part, I have reduced my gasoline consumption to under 5 gal per week in the winter and perhaps 20 gal per week in the summer (tractor and mowers).

Cypress is also right that govt incentives are needed, because most people are to selfish and lazy to do it on their own.
 
Of course our current economy is based on excessive consumerism and waste so it would suffer if people did what they should do.
 
Well, if there is no stoppin anartica from melting then they better get their fat asses there to salvage the fress water from the melt before it just gets spoiled when it enters the sea.

70% of the world's fresh water is on Anartica.
 
Mine's at a mite over 7000 feet, some 2500 miles from the ocean. (Well that would depend on direction...
 
I am 1.7 miles from Penobscot Bay/ 3.5 from the actual atlantic ocean and 98 ft above sea level....

we do have several towns on the water at near sea level, and us1 in several spots that would be under water with just a lttle rise in the ocean....along with a few city halls and post offices that will be in water...our state has done a study on it, an environmental impact of rising sea level, and is discussing the cost of moving gvt infrastucture inland.
 
I think I am about 580 ft and a long ways from the ocean.
You know perhaps Katrina was a wakeup call which not many of us heard.
The people moving out permanently might be the smart ones.
 
Here is a newsflash for pinheads: The Earth has always undergone cyclical changes in climate. Many places, there is ocean where there once was land, and land, where there once was ocean. The current global warming coincides precisely with the pattern of solar activity on the Sun. Go look at the charts and you will see, when the Sun has generated more solar energy, the Earth has always warmed, and when the Sun has generated less solar energy, the Earth always cools. In the past 100 years, the median global atmospheric temps have risen a whopping one degree, and this directly parallels the increase in solar activity, as well as historic trends of previous changes.

Now, perhaps it's like someone with an infection rubbing dirt on it, and we need to really pay attention to what we are dumping into our atmosphere daily? I can go along with Damo's concept of cleaning up the planet on the general principle of living cleanly, but this idea that something man is doing, is going to cause all the ice to melt and oceans to rise, is just plain stupid. Do you even realize how much ice would have to melt, to raise the ocean level? I would say, the cooling effect on the oceans currents and gulf streams would have far more detrimental impact on the inhabitants of the planet, than rising ocean levels. We will be dead long before enough ice melts to raise the ocean even a foot or two!
 
OrnotBitwise said:
Laugh while you can, monkey boy. Wait'll the average annual precipitation throughout the Rockies drops to .01 ft. :p
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Wouldn't be much different than now... Well this year is an odd duck, but if this year is any indication the precipitation here will rise if this goes down.
 
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