Posted on 11/17/2007 7:19:26 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
• Global warming is "unequivocal." Temperatures have risen 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last 12 years are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.
• About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, between 40 to 70 percent of species could disappear.
• Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than the natural range over the last 650,000 years.
• Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.
• Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding and salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.
• Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring "abrupt and irreversible" changes, such as the loss of ice sheets in the poles, and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.
_A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt to climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price on carbon emissions.
• By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual global economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is delayed, the more it will cost.
Reminds me of a small prank I played in college. Our Nuclear Engineering Department’s sign was mysteriously changed to the “Unclear Engineering Dept. It took them forever to discover the first time the sign was changed, but after that, they were on the lookout for further tampering and restored it right away.
“Global Warming” is as truthfully related to never ending, and quite cyclical, climate change as “Peak Oil” is related to the price of hydrocarbon-based fuels. Both are specious handwringing that is a very convenient excuse to increase government and decrease liberty.
Absolutely !
Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers" (a series of articles on the view of scientists who have been labelled "Global Warming Deniers"):
Other References:
That's very true. And that's why the Democrats and the liberal media keep trying to sell us the big lie of global warming, because these liberals/communists including Hillary Clinton are for bigger government and for less liberty (actually no liberty and totalitarian government).
Hyper-bloviation about GW ping
Highter temps should mean fewer storms as temps equalize around the world. But hey, what are a few details when there’s money to be extorted?
Further evidence that the whole thing is a scam. The whole claim of dire consequences if people don’t follow the orders of the UN is a common political ploy.
How do they know?
Thanks sourcery for that post, and Ernest for the ping.
Since the end of the last big ice age, about 11500 years ago, the sea has risen 400 feet or so. So why wouldn’t you expect the sea to be rising if the temperature has been rising since the last little ice age?
It’s called common sense, something the UN and their programs don’t have. Anyone remember how it went with the UN’s Oil for WMDs during the Iraq sanctions? How many UN members got rich? How many took bribes? And how well Saddam Hussein had stocked up for the day the inspectors left. What did that FBI guy say — Something like Saddam had what he needed to build a nuke warhead within a year after the inspectors were gone.
CO2 just makes more and bigger plants and lots more animals. Why is that bad?
Anytime someone says UN, it causes me to get all giggly.
Okay, lets use their numbers: If sea levels have gone up .07 of an inch in 46 years, during which time the temp has supposedly gone up maybe 1 degree F, even if we have a 5 degree rise, that would add another 1/3 of an inch to sea levels?
Well yes, but use their numbers accurately...:^)
0.07 inch per year for 46 years is 3.22 inches
But I thought this sea level rise measurement was even more “nebulous” and under debate than the temperature numbers.
Yeah...I thought 4 of the warmest years were in the 30’s? I guess the NASA corrections got left off the report because they did not fit the template. I wonder if they resurrected Mann;s hockey stick graph as well?
“We have already committed the world to sea level rise,” the panel’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities......................................
“Quantified conservatively, the study indicates a net loss of roughly 51 cubic kilometers of ice per year from the entirety of the Greenland ice sheet. That’s enough to raise the average sea level worldwide about .13 millimeters per year. While that might not sound like much, consider that in the space of only a single lifetime, it’s nearly 1 centimeter of rise, and that’s only if we assume the rate of increase remains the same.”
Something does not copute here folks.......One global warming alarmist, the IPCC says coastal cities will be flooded, and http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/greenland/ another global warming alramist says it will rise 1 cm in our lifetime, certainly not enough to flodd a damn thing.
Greenland’s ice cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, a team of scientists said on Thursday.
The 9,842-feet thick ice cap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about 7 meters. And a runaway thaw might slow the Gulf Stream that keeps the North Atlantic region warm.
But satellite measurements showed that more snowfall was falling and thickening the ice cap, especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science.
Glaciers at sea level have been retreating fast because of a warming climate, making many other scientists believe the entire ice cap was thinning.
“The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 1.9 inches a year or 21.26 inches over 11 years,” according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway.
Melting at the edges, thickening in the higher altitudes.....See folks, the edges give the great photo op ICEBERG calving and lonley polar bear pictures....The center, higher altitude, snowy stuff is boring and goes unnoticed, but it seem the result is the same, ice leaving along the edges, piling up in the center, but net net a wash....Another inconvenient truth they will hide from you. Greenland is losing 4/1000’s of it;s mass of ice each year, but the alarmists would tell you the pace of melting is quickening. Just another tactic designed to keep people from focusing on the overall picture.
The ice cap became so large over time (about 600,000 cubic miles (mi3) or 2.5 million cubic kilometers (km3)) because more snow fell than melted. .............this is Greenland folks, 2.5 million cubic kilometers of ice cap, of which the IPCC claims is melting at rate of 250 cubic kilometers prt year. At this rate the ice cap will be gone in 10,000 YEARS. Not in the next century as the Goracle would have us believe. This is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the human race, and the populus is getting wise to the huckster, that is why they their predictions are getting louder and more dire. They know if they do not take charge soon, even the dim witted amonst us will realize the fraud.
Meanwhile Argentina is being rocked by record cold...
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