Posted on 12/06/2003 4:05:59 PM PST by 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".
I was going to be kind and not bring that up.
Odly, some scientists believe Ice-Age climactic change happens drasticly overnight, which explains why some Mammoth were discovered with fresh green flowers still in their mouths when they died. (Flash frozen)
There were also indications that one of the causes of this rapid cooling is from huge amounts of moisture in the atmosphere due to the short period (1 or 2 hundred years) of unusually high global temperatures.
These scientists also believe that the cause of these high global temperatures is brought on by periodic Magnetic Shifting of the Earth's poles, which in turn, exerts abnormal stress on the Earth's crust which opens much higher numbers of Subsea volcanos or lava flows. This in turn causes the Oceans to warm up rapidly and unusually, inducing high amounts of moisture into the air which causes heavy cloud cover. Which can trigger a sudden climactic event like an Ice Age. (Nuclear Winter if you will.)
There are several reports out about this but it is getting no press to speak of. Fifty years ago, Subsea Volcanos only numbered in the thousands World wide. They now number in the Millions.
Um, help me out here...ICE displaces water and raises the level. When it melts, the level subsides. What am I missing?
Right, when floating ice melts it does not raise the sea level. However, if glacial ice melted off of the Antarctic continent, it would -- but that would take thousands of years.
The reason that warming is supposed to raise sea levels is because the rise in water temperature causes the sea to expand.
However there is another effect that global warming fear mongers don't consider: When the sea warms, more water evaporates and is precipitated on land causing the sea level to lower (and crops to grow). As a matter of fact I've seen a chart of historical data showing this inverse relationship of temperature and sea level in the last 100 years.
So yeah, it's BS.
Mammoth were adapted to live in an Arctic climate as you pointed out. However, the Mammoth in question were caught out in the open on a nice day, eating green vegetation when a sudden, sustained sub-zero wind came along and they froze to death.
The "secretariat" offers copies of their reports for free.. It would be interesting to see how much it would cost them to send copies to every Freeper in the U.S.A....
You're just plain mean, Drammach!
It is easy to see how they could reach 150K, but are those deaths really attributable to global warming or to negligence.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..don't give us away!
Bush and his rich Republican friends are secretly building space ships to enable them to escape the earth before this catastrope occurs.
Keep it hush hush or the Democrats will use it against him in next year's election.
some scientists believe Ice-Age climactic change happens drastically overnight, which explains why some Mammoth were discovered with fresh green flowers still in their mouths when they died. (Flash frozen)
The best explanation I've heard for that was a huge eruption that spewed dust and gas several hundred miles in the air. The cloud quickly cooled to subfreezing temperatures and then rapidly descended to freeze the Mammoth.
OK, that does it, I'm headin' for the hills.
If the weather person on TV can't predict the weather 5 days from now accurrately, how can these yahoos predict the weather 25 years from now accurately?
Answer: they can't. All they have is a S.W.A.G and a socialistic/communistic agenda.
5.56mm
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