Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[hippifried]

Why has the name changed from global warming to climate change or has the problem changed

"Global warming" rolls off the tongue easier, so thetalking heads glomed onto the one major aspect of what's happening right now as their pet catvh phrase. They need one to talk about almost anything. It just took this long to get them to shut up long enough to pay attention.

[Stavros]

Climate change is a relative term, measured in blocks of years: 50, 100, 500, 1,000 a million and so on. The climate is never really in stasis, so it is always changing, but the politics of the current debate has given the measurement gravitas because the figures are used to compute effects, such as the effects of global warming, based on the belief that we are living through a change which has already seen the mean temperature rise over the last 50-odd years. Global warming will have different effects in the planet's micro-climates, and much of the argument that is raging among politicians and scientists, is either on the macro-historical view that the global warming caused by climate change caused by humans is a myth, or that it is not -if you take the latter position then all of the policy initiatives that have emerged become controversial, because they all cost, and because they are long term measures which, if they work and indeed are based on sound science, will not be confirmed for another 50-100 years or more. You also have the radicals for whom instant action has always been their rallying cry, because if we dont act now, we are all doomed.

I don't have an argument with the general argument that we are living through a warming period, and that it is the generation of carbon emissions since the onset of the industrial revolution that has played a key role. My problem is really with the way that an industry in itself has been created which costs/generates millions, if not billions of $$ a year on non-practical processes such as conferences: similar to the explosion of journals, conferences, and pressure groups that followed the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s. It bothers me because I can't see the point of academics and policy makers burning carbon on flights across the world to attend meetings and conferences they could conduct on the internet.

Crucially, if you take an holistic view of planet earth, and even if you are a climate change sceptic, the real issue that should be engaging everyone is resource management, with water at the top of the list, followed by forests: to give just a few examples: Lima, in Peru, is running out of water, partly due to the increase in population, partly due to the Conquistadores establishing a settlement where there were but meagre sources of water, but far enough from the Inca and other tribes to be safe. The Yemen is another place where water will run out in 10-15 years time. The world is losing forests at an alarming rate, in the northern hemisphere in Siberia, to some extent in Canada although they seem to have a more sensible attitude to it there; it is critical in central Africa where forest clearance for agriculture doesn't make sense because the soil is inadequate, or where human settlement will finally obliterate primates and other species. Indonesia and the Amazon basin are hugely important as the lungs of planet earth, but are being decimated for profit.

The urgency of the challenge to deal sensibly with water is actually of greater practical importance than the short to medium effects of climate change, with the possible exception of low-lying islands; if we cannot manage something so basic, the future looks bleak.

Finally, the major oil companies actually have reduced carbon emissions more than most industries, because they had the capital to do it; coal-fired power stations are far worse. There are solutions to all these problems, they will cost money, but it will be worth it if they can be made to work; and I don't think it needs five years of conferences to agree to it.

[hippifried]

Climate is always in flux. What has people worried these days is the speed & intensity of the change. The northwest passage is open. Sea levels are rising measurably. The LA smog is visible from the Colorado River. We're dumping more & more crap into our oceans, which actually provide us with most of our oxygen.

Meanwhile we continue to burn everything we can find as fast as we can. It's a mindset that says short term (single generation) gains & comforts are top of the priority list. I don't see much happening unless we can culturally start evolving past this primitive fire culture we've been stuck in since prehistory. Change the mindset, change the world.

[russtafa]

I personally don't give a fuck about climate change because i am very selfish and i don't want to live in a cave because my government say's i should

[Ben]

I personally don't give a fuck about climate change because i am very selfish and i don't want to live in a cave because my government say's i should

That's your choice to be selfish. And I don't think anyone is suggesting we all become troglodytes. Are they??? ha! ha!
It's unrealistic to think we can give up, say, all our technology, our modern lifestyle. It's absurd... for anyone to suggest that.
The likes of Bill McKibben are simply suggesting switching to alternative forms of energy. And, too, it'd bring about competition for the heavily subsidized... and I mean, heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry. We need competition in our markets, as it were. Bringing about more wind, more solar etc... would hopefully bring about that competition.
And, too, the concentration of corporate power -- whether it's Microsoft or Exxon -- isn't healthy for a capitalist society. Capitalism is supposed to be about competition.
What we have is the oil industry being, again, heavily subsidized by the U.S. taxpayers. This isn't capitalism. It's corporatism.
Ron Paul has said we should STOP subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. I agree.
Let's have some competition. Let's stop giving the oil industry an unfair advantage by SUBSIDIZING them.

[Stavros]

Ben, I agree that competition is healthy and that it is unfair when one or two firms dominate a amarket, but that would also mean that they contribute a lot of tax revenue to the state and employ a lot of people, even when, as is the case with oil companies who pay billions of $$ into the treasury every year, they employ an army of tax lawyers to reduce it, and have offshore funds as well.

The key point about renewables is that the technology so far, cannot match the scale of oil, gas and coal: you can power a house with solar panels and have so much extra energy you can sell it to the local electricity supplier and make a profit: but you can't power Los Angeles, the same is true with wind power. Until that threshold has been breached, renewables will remain on the fringe, although motor vehicles are probably going to be the first mass-produced commodities using alternative fuels to gasoline. So here's your chance, Ben, to go into engineering or marketing, and be a pioneer in the American tradition...opening up new frontiers...

[Ben]

The thing about fossil fuels is they're cheap. But what happens when, say, oil goes up to $150 a barrel or $200 a barrel or $250 a barrel. (Plus there's a term in economics called externalities. Which is the effect on others in a market transaction.
There are positive externalities. Like, as Milton Friedman pointed out, if you plant, say, a flower garden. (The very rational Milton Friedman did acknowledge that externalities are a serious problem.)
But there are negative ones, too. Like when someone buys a car. The dealer and the buyer are looking for the best deal possible. What they don't take into account is the cost/impact on others. The impact on others is, of course, pollution. Also: gridlock... which leads to more fuel use and thus higher gas prices -- ) There are also fundamental problems with markets. Markets need to keep growing. Well, economics is the only science that believes in perpetual motion. That we can keep growing and growing. Ya know, pollution isn't a problem. Population isn't a problem. Ya know, we can have 10 billion people on the planet. No probs.
Even Bill Clinton, when he left office, said the oil companies have a lock on energy in the United States. There isn't a free market, as it were. And, yes, it's unfair for the government to subsidize a specific industry. I mean, that's not how the market should work. It's corruption -- to the core. (Oh, and I should add: bailing out the banks is not capitalism -- )
We can -- and should -- have homes that are energy efficient. Okay, I think we all agree that we should reduce our energy consumption. I mean, that has huge pluses: less pollution, reduced energy costs, reduced gas prices --

[Stavros]

In the short term, OPEC is committed to raising production to reduce the price of oil, although its members benefit from a staggering inflow of cash when the price goes up, OPEC knows it cannot use oil markets as a hostage -in fact, the emergence of the spot market in the 1970s has given hedge funds/speculators the ability to buy oil futures and inflate the price of oil, as they are doing with food stuffs. The paradox of the 'free market' is that if a player with enough cash wants to, they can buy everything: however even in the temple of capitalism known as the USA, monopolies have been broken: Rockefeller's empire in 1911 being the most famous: should anti-trust legislation break up Wal-Mart? Why are those famous Korean groceries in New York in decline?

In the literal sense of the phrase, the world will never run out of oil and gas, but over the next 50 years the volume of petroleum commercially available at current rates of usage, will decline. There will be no energy revolution, but there will be an evolution -which is why technological advances in renewables is so urgent -moving to biofuels may be part of the answer, but is having a deleterious effect on traditional agriculture and crops. The oil industry did not emerge to dominate energy until the 1960s, even though it began in Pennsylvania in 1859. Between 1859-1969 coal, wood and water were dominant -from 1959-to roughly the 1930s, horses were critical, esp for the military: the Russian front collapsed in 1917 in part because they ran out of horses.

Yes, as individuals we can play our part, but what sounds so simple is so difficult to manage globally; would you really flush your loo just once a day to conserve water? If you have the opportunity to visit Europe, are you going to fly or take the boat? (I am not even sure which of the two is more energy efficient). And so on. The point is not to despair, humans have always had the ability to self-destruct, as well as to innovate our way out of a crisis.

[w1s2x3]

Where are the 50 million global climate change refugees predicted 10 years ago?
The sun is leaving it's peak activity and starting to quiet. We will be burning more oil, coal and natural gas to stay warm.

[w1s2x3]

Climate is always in flux. What has people worried these days is the speed & intensity of the change. The northwest passage is open. Sea levels are rising measurably. The LA smog is visible from the Colorado River. We're dumping more & more crap into our oceans, which actually provide us with most of our oxygen.

Meanwhile we continue to burn everything we can find as fast as we can. It's a mindset that says short term (single generation) gains & comforts are top of the priority list. I don't see much happening unless we can culturally start evolving past this primitive fire culture we've been stuck in since prehistory. Change the mindset, change the world.

Can we make these changes in a way that the "ruling class" represented by lefty politicians and their lap dog media have to have the same shortages of resources they want to foist on everyone else - usually through some panel of "experts" at some idiotic international level who are not elected and not accountable to the people they are screwing? They will continue to fly their 757s, ride in limos and drive SUVs.

President Obama's EPA is about to make coal created electricity go up 50% in price. This will make the electric car owners happy.

What we need is innovation. A leap in energy technology would solve about 80% of the world's problems. Cheap energy would make cheap drinking water directly from the oceans. Engineers are the ultimate conservationists. They want to drive to work in a 100 MPG car because they learn more by building such a car.

We are not stuck in a fire culture. We are in a cheap culture where we want stuff cheap. Cheap crap from China screwed many Americans out of a job. Screwing people at tax time to subsidize an energy solution that is more expensive than oil doesn't work. Changing the culture through conservation arguments is a logical approach and preferred over the "back room of experts"
approach taken with scaremongering on the environment.