Posted on 02/27/2007 8:41:06 PM PST by NormsRevenge
UNITED NATIONS -- An international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan on Tuesday to combat climate change -- a challenge, it said, "to which civilization must rise."
Failure would produce a turbulent 21st century of weather extremes, spreading drought and disease, expanding oceans and displaced coastal populations, it said.
"The increasing numbers of environmental refugees as sea levels rise and storm surges increase will be in the tens of millions," panel co-chair Rosina Bierbaum, a University of Michigan ecologist, told reporters.
After a two-year study, the 18-member group, representing 11 nations, offered scores of recommendations: from pouring billions more dollars into research and development of cleaner energy sources, to mobilizing U.N. and other agencies to help affected people, to winning political agreement on a global temperature "ceiling."
Their 166-page report, produced at U.N. request and sponsored by the private United Nations Foundation and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, was issued just three weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, made headlines with its latest assessment of climate science.
The IPCC expressed its greatest confidence yet that global warming is being caused largely by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from man's burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. If nothing's done, it said, global temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
Temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Tuesday's report said the world's nations should agree to limit further rises this century to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Beyond that, "we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on human well-being would rise very rapidly," said panel member John P. Holdren, director of Massachusetts' Woods Hole Research Center.
The experts panel said global carbon dioxide emissions should be leveled off by 2015-2020, and then cut back to less than one-third that level by 2100, via a vast transformation of global energy systems -- toward greater efficiency, away from fossil fuels, and toward biofuels, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
That changeover would be spurred by heavy "carbon taxes" or "cap-and-trade" systems, whereby industries' emissions are capped by governments, and more efficient companies can sell unused allowances to less efficient ones.
Such schemes -- already in use in Europe under the Kyoto Protocol climate pact -- have been proposed in the U.S. Congress, but are opposed by the Bush administration, which rejects Kyoto.
The White House points to what it says is spending of almost $3 billion a year on energy-technology research and development as its major contribution to combatting climate change. But Holdren said other calculations put spending at under $2 billion, and it's "far from proportionate to either the size of the challenge or the size of the opportunities."
Tuesday's report said such research budgets worldwide are badly underfunded, and require a tripling or quadrupling, to $45 billion or $60 billion a year.
Billions more should go toward work on cellulose as a biofuel, overcoming the problems of nuclear energy, reducing solar electricity's cost, and developing other cleaner energy sources, Holdren said. He said intensified research is particularly needed for carbon capture and sequestration -- technology to capture carbon dioxide in power-plant emissions and store it underground.
In fact, the experts panel urged governments to immediately ban all new coal-fired power plants except those designed for eventual retrofitting of sequestration technology.
The panel's other co-chair is biodiversity expert Peter H. Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden director and past president of Sigma Xi.
They'd better act quickly if they want to take over Americas industries. The global cycle is starting to go into it's cooling off curve.
IDIOTS, the lot of them.
What fools these mortals be.
Nice try, UN Dudes. Nice "Cart", but where the hell are the horses? When you've calmed down and you're a little less hysterical, show me your assumptions, show me your data, and show me your projections. THEN, we'll talk about what to do next.... IF it all holds up.
Until then, please stand over there with the Swine Flu guys, the Y2K guys, the Ice Age guys, the Alar guys, the Bird Flu guys, the assorted Doomsday Cult members and Al ... and don't bother me.
Thank you.
Set a "ceiling" on temperatures? Heck, I want a "basement" on temperature! -63 over the weekend did not bring about visions of global freepin' warming. ;)
If only ... (sigh)
Hey buddy, can you spare a Carbon Credit? I really need a smoke, ya know?
"increasing numbers of environmental refugees"
TRANSLATION:
" REPENT, Ye sinners!! The Atheist Rapture is upon ye, and we shall all surely die, if you don't purchase a Carbon Credit from our website, TODAY!!"
"The Goracle has spoken, and none may question the word of a Socialist Messiah!"
Hey UN do you really want to cut down on global pollution? CLOSE THE DOORS OF THE UN, meet over the internet.
This will save all those flights from all over the world, people needing two houses, limos, etc....
Or better yet do not even waste the band with - Just close the UN down -- think of all the hot air that will not be produced!!!!
It is also said that livestock are great contributors to global warming..just think what the dinosaurs must have done.
Notice that the Sun has nothing to do with these rising temperatures.
"refugees"?
More illegal immigrants?
I saw this coming a mile away.
Hand over your wallet and we'll let you live.
Here is the article referenced by the author.
http://www.unfoundation.org/staging/seg/
Here is the un-filtered UN Executive summary PDF
http://www.unfoundation.org/files/pdf/2007/SEG_ExecSumm.pdf
the experts panel urged governments to immediately ban all new coal-fired power plants except those designed for eventual retrofitting of sequestration technology
Hmmm....China? Eventual? This is BS.
Here's a proposal that the anit-globalist would like: put a carbon import tax on everything coming into the US, based on the additional transport carbon costs over the transport carbon used by shipping within the US. Shipping wine from France, say: Wine is favored water in a glass bottle - and think of the carbon used by getting it shipped from Bordeaux to Kansas City! Much less carbon in California wine! Carbon tax imported wines!
And Italian pasta and olive oil - good Lord the carbon burned just to have a fancy label! Eat Domestic pasta and splash domestic olive oil for the good of the planet!
And cheese - every bite of imported brie and sip of Finnish vodka, every sniff of cognac, every drop of Highland single malt scotches - think of the carbon footprints just getting those savory foreign delights!
Buy American to fight climate change!
Now that's funny!
;-)
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