Melting Ice 'Will Swamp Capitals' (Global Warming)

Independent (UK) ^ | 12-7-2003 | Geoffrey Lean

[blam]

Melting ice 'will swamp capitals'

By Geoffrey Lean Environment Editor
07 December 2003

Measures to fight global warming will have to be at least four times stronger than the Kyoto Protocol if they are to avoid the melting of the polar ice caps, inundating central London and many of the world's biggest cities, concludes a new official report.

The report, by a German government body, says that even if it is fully implemented, the protocol will only have a "marginal attenuating effect" on the climate change. But last week even this was thrown into doubt amid contradictory signals from the Russian government as to whether it will allow the treaty to come into effect.

Global warming already kills 150,000 people a year worldwide and the rate of climate change is soon likely to exceed anything the planet has seen "in the last million years" says the report, produced by the German Advisory Council on Global Change for a meeting of the world's environment ministers to consider the future of the treaty in Milan this week.

It concludes that the protocol must urgently be brought into force, but only as a first step, insisting that "catastrophic" climate change "can now only be prevented if climate protection targets are set at substantially higher levels than those agreed internationally until now".

The report, written by eight leading German professors, says that "dangerous climatic changes" will become "highly probable" if the world's average temperature is allowed to increase to more than 2 degrees centigrade above what it was before the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Beyond that level the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice cap would begin gradually to melt away, eventually raising sea levels world wide by up to 30 feet, submerging vast areas of land and key cities worldwide. London, New York, Miami, Bombay, Calcutta, Sydney, Shanghai, Lagos and Tokyo would be among those largely submerged by such a rise.

Above this mark too, other "devastating" and "irreversible" changes would be likely to take place. These include a cessation of the Indian monsoon and the ending of the Gulf Stream, which would dramatically worsen the climate in Britain and western Europe, even as the world warms. Another risk is the so-called "runaway greenhouse" where rising temperatures lead to the release of huge reservoirs methane stored in permafrost and the oceans, adding to global warming and starting a self-reinforcing cycle that would eventually make the earth uninhabitable.

To avoid such catastrophe, the report says that industrialised countries will have to cut emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide by at least 20 per cent by 2020, and by up to 60 per cent by 2050. The Kyoto Protocol would at best cut them by 5 per cent by 2012, and probably less, even if it were brought into force and fully implemented.

In the meantime the world looks as if it will greatly exceed the targets. Writing in The Independent on Sunday today, Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, calculates that global emissions of greenhouse gases could increase by 75 per cent by 2020, "putting the world well on the way to doomsday".

[U S Army EOD]

Nobody respects their opinon anyway, especially the Chinese.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Wonder Warthog]

"If you are looking at the literal definition of thermodynamics you could not possibly understand how it relates to cell structure and the very basis of life itself."

Yeah, right. The Second Law simply states that the entropy of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE tends to a maximum. Systems exhibiting increased order on a local level (i.e. evolution) are NOT "prohibited" by the Second Law.

But you keep reading that "biblical Creationist" tripe, I'm SURE it is really relevant to today's science.

"The study of Thermodynamics is deeply rooted in Physics at a PHD level and my use of it's example is as well."

And it's even more deeply rooted in CHEMISTRY at the PhD level (which, after all, all life processes are). J. Willard Gibbs was a chemist, not a physisicist.

[LRS]

These scientists also believe that the cause of these high global temperatures is brought on by periodic Magnetic Shifting of the Earth's poles...

Those geomagnetic jerks!!!!!!

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The North Magnetic Pole has moved 1,300 kilometers northwest since James Clark Ross first reached the pole in 1831. At its current trajectory and newly calculated speed of 40 kilometers per year, the North Magnetic Pole will reach Siberia by the year 2050...

http://www.geotimes.org/may02/NN_pole.html

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[LRS]

Global warming already kills 150,000 people a year

Not this garbage again! This was released as "fact" a few weeks ago (160,000 Said Dying Yearly from Global Warming), and now it is regarded as being a factual statement for use in these articles.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/992525/posts

I would like to see someone respond to this, with figures on how many people die yearly from:

Communism

Liberalism

Statism

Islamic fascism

Enviromentalism

Junk science

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I would like to see someone respond to this, with figures on how many people die yearly from: Junk science

Just one piece of junk science (the DDT ban) kills between one to two million people every year.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Yep. It won't happen fast enough to prevent the bureauracrats and politicians and lobbyists from escaping. They will just end up where we are.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

Prove it!

And since when is your opinion about theoretical science any more potent or correct than mine?

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

The information you refer to is precicely where I am coming from. These drastic polar shifts are evident throughout the Earth's history. It may also be one of the reasons for so many drastic weather changes. (i.e. unusual warm winter temperatures in Alaska in such a sudden fashion.)

[VOA]

Yep, global warming surely accounts for the need to dig out the "Glacier Girl"
P-38 aircraft from under lots of snow/ice in Greenland.

With all the fuel burned since WWII and the suppossed global warming, you'd think
the planes of "The Lost Squadron" would have been sitting in the middle of
a palm-lined lake in Greenland!

[RightWhale]

Germany used to have a very strong math community, that is, professional mathematicians in industry and universities that formed a functional society among the best in the world. The NAZIs destroyed that community in the 30s, and it still hasn't rebuilt. I assume the same happened in the sciences. If whatever is left is publishing pseudo-science, they have a ways to go to regain their former glory.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Prove it!"

"I" don't need to "prove" it. It is accepted science. I drive the "Abrams tank" of accepted science---you and your "biblical Creationist" so-called "scientists" are the ones toodling around in the Toyota pickup of pseudo-science. The "burden of proof" is YOURS.

But just in case your are ignorant rather than stupid, here is a good Internet reference site on the Second Law of Thermodynamics that is scientifically sound.

"And since when is your opinion about theoretical science any more potent or correct than mine?"

Maybe because I have a PhD in chemistry and forty years practicing hard science???

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

I understand your egocentric views and how people like yourself rudely pounce on those who do not agree with you!

Here again is another close-minded review of approaches to science that do not agree with you.

My approach is no less correct and yours as I said earlier. And the only fact involved here is that science has not proven evolution nor can it. Your arrogant rants give it even less credibility.

[Wonder Warthog]

"I understand your egocentric views and how people like yourself rudely pounce on those who do not agree with you! Here again is another close-minded review of approaches to science that do not agree with you."

No, I only "pounce" on those who make gross mistakes in science. Your original posting was invalid at the most basic level, as based on EXPERIMENTAL (not theoretical) science.

"My approach is no less correct and yours as I said earlier."

Sorry, not true. Your "facts" are simply and grossly wrong according to real, accepted science. According to the "biblical creationist" notion of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, life itself is impossible, not to mention evolution (and a few other things like crystal growth). That mis-statement of the Second Law is simply scientifically wrong, but it is the entire underpinning of your "position".

"And the only fact involved here is that science has not proven evolution nor can it. Your arrogant rants give it even less credibility."

Again, fundamental mis-understanding of science, what it is and how it works. Evolution is currently the best explanation of how the biological world works, on the micro and macro level. If sufficient REAL, HARD, SCIENTIFIC FACTS (not creationist pseudoscience) is discovered, evolution will be either modified or abandoned. Of course, evolution is not supported by evidence as hard as thermodynamics, which is why it is a "theory" rather than a "law". But the "biblical creationist" point of view isn't even worthy of the category of "hypothesis", as it is supported by NO scientific evidence.

But you keep living in your "dream world" of pseudo-science. As the proverb says "the dog barks, but the caravan passes".

Science (and scientists) will continue to ignore the ignorant rantings of the biblical creationists until they actually have SOME evidence to support their contentions. At this point, they have none.

[Michael81Dus]

Great job!!

[dalereed]

"Just one piece of junk science (the DDT ban) kills between one to two million people every year"

That's why they banned it, it was too cheap and too effective.

I think it was a personal vendetta against me, I used to spray it in the patio every day in the summer and loved the smell of it.