|
|
Post by phil on Nov 7, 2007 8:56:17 GMT -5
Meanwhile, the richest nations on earth continue to pollute like there is no tomorrow ...  It's too late for greenhouse gas cuts, says scientist Ian Sample, science correspondent The Guardian Monday October 29 2007 Cutting greenhouse gases and switching to sustainable development are unlikely to prevent disasters caused by climate change, one of the world's most respected environmentalists warns today. Professor James Lovelock, the leading independent environmental scientist, claims that even the most pessimistic outcomes predicted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fail to recognise the speed with which global warming will progress. In a speech at the Royal Society, Prof Lovelock will describe how he has arrived at an "apocalyptic view" of the future, in which 6 to 8 billion people face diminishing food and water supplies in an increasingly intolerable climate. Earlier this year, the IPCC published its final report on the likely extent of global warming. It concluded that average global temperatures could rise by as much as 6.4C by the end of the century if carbon emissions continue to increase. A rise of 4C was most likely, the panel said. The rising temperatures could force hundreds of species to become extinct and trigger conflicts in countries struck by droughts and severe flooding. But Prof Lovelock will tell the society that while the IPCC report is written in "properly cautious scientific language", it "gives the impression that global heating is serious but the worst consequences are avoidable if we take appropriate action now. Sadly, even the most pessimistic of the climate prophets of the IPCC panel do not appear to have noticed how rapidly the climate is changing." He believes computer models used by IPCC scientists underestimate the magnitude of climate change by failing to consider the world as an entity in which living organisms inextricably feed into the environment, for example by releasing or absorbing greenhouse gases. Instead, scientists treat deforestation, changes in marine populations and ocean acidification separately from other aspects of climate change such as melting ice sheets. Prof Lovelock will refer to a study he published in Nature in 1994 with Lee Kump, a professor of geoscience at Penn State University, which attempted to model a "live Earth", where ocean and land organisms have a strong bearing on climate. The study revealed that if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached 500ppm (parts per million), global temperatures would rise rapidly by 6C. The IPCC calculations suggest around a 2C rise for the same CO2 levels. The atmospheric level of CO2 stands at 380ppm but is rising by 2ppm a year. "We are at war with the Earth and as in a blitzkrieg, events proceed faster than we can respond ... For this reason alone, it is probably too late for sustainable development," he will say. Prof Lovelock is similarly gloomy over cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, claiming that positive feedbacks, which exacerbate warming, suggest that "implementing Kyoto or some super-Kyoto is most unlikely to succeed," referring to the international carbon reduction agreement that expires in 2012. He will call for research aimed at reducing climate change by protecting ecosystems or altering them in ways that help them reflect solar radiation or absorb carbon dioxide. |
|
|
|
Post by luke on Nov 7, 2007 10:38:19 GMT -5
Curious what Phil or Drum think about this. From WSJ:
Global Warming Delusions
By DANIEL B. BOTKIN
October 17, 2007; Page A19
Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.
Kilimanjaro's shrinking ice cap is not directly related to global warming.
Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20%-30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming -- a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age -- saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.
We're also warned that tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics. But scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not.
The key point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall. In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look primarily at temperature alone, or temperature and precipitation only. You might ask, "Isn't this enough to forecast changes in the distribution of species?" Ask a mockingbird. The New York Times recently published an answer to a query about why mockingbirds were becoming common in Manhattan. The expert answer was: food -- an exotic plant species that mockingbirds like to eat had spread to New York City. It was this, not temperature or rainfall, the expert said, that caused the change in mockingbird geography.
You might think I must be one of those know-nothing naysayers who believes global warming is a liberal plot. On the contrary, I am a biologist and ecologist who has worked on global warming, and been concerned about its effects, since 1968. I've developed the computer model of forest growth that has been used widely to forecast possible effects of global warming on life -- I've used the model for that purpose myself, and to forecast likely effects on specific endangered species.
I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.
Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve. "Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?" one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.
The climate modelers who developed the computer programs that are being used to forecast climate change used to readily admit that the models were crude and not very realistic, but were the best that could be done with available computers and programming methods. They said our options were to either believe those crude models or believe the opinions of experienced, data-focused scientists. Having done a great deal of computer modeling myself, I appreciated their acknowledgment of the limits of their methods. But I hear no such statements today. Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality.
A recent article in the well-respected journal American Scientist explained why the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro could not be melting from global warming. Simply from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating -- especially the author's Sherlock Holmes approach to figuring out what was causing the glacier to melt. That it couldn't be global warming directly (i.e., the result of air around the glacier warming) was made clear by the fact that the air temperature at the altitude of the glacier is below freezing. This means that only direct radiant heat from sunlight could be warming and melting the glacier. The author also studied the shape of the glacier and deduced that its melting pattern was consistent with radiant heat but not air temperature. Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming.
We are told that the melting of the arctic ice will be a disaster. But during the famous medieval warming period -- A.D. 750 to 1230 or so -- the Vikings found the warmer northern climate to their advantage. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie addressed this in his book "Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000," perhaps the greatest book about climate change before the onset of modern concerns with global warming. He wrote that Erik the Red "took advantage of a sea relatively free of ice to sail due west from Iceland to reach Greenland. . . . Two and a half centuries later, at the height of the climatic and demographic fortunes of the northern settlers, a bishopric of Greenland was founded at Gardar in 1126."
Ladurie pointed out that "it is reasonable to think of the Vikings as unconsciously taking advantage of this [referring to the warming of the Middle Ages] to colonize the most northern and inclement of their conquests, Iceland and Greenland." Good thing that Erik the Red didn't have Al Gore or his climatologists as his advisers.
Should we therefore dismiss global warming? Of course not. But we should make a realistic assessment, as rationally as possible, about its cultural, economic and environmental effects. As Erik the Red might have told you, not everything due to a climatic warming is bad, nor is everything that is bad due to a climatic warming.
We should approach the problem the way we decide whether to buy insurance and take precautions against other catastrophes -- wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes. And as I have written elsewhere, many of the actions we would take to reduce greenhouse-gas production and mitigate global-warming effects are beneficial anyway, most particularly a movement away from fossil fuels to alternative solar and wind energy.
My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it.
Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves.
For example, right now the clearest threat to many species is habitat destruction. Take the orangutans, for instance, one of those charismatic species that people are often fascinated by and concerned about. They are endangered because of deforestation. In our fear of global warming, it would be sad if we fail to find funds to purchase those forests before they are destroyed, and thus let this species go extinct.
At the heart of the matter is how much faith we decide to put in science -- even how much faith scientists put in science. Our times have benefited from clear-thinking, science-based rationality. I hope this prevails as we try to deal with our changing climate.
Mr. Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of "Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century" (Replica Books, 2001).
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Nov 7, 2007 11:19:34 GMT -5
Oh! Don't worry ... Panic will set in soon enough !
It took more than 30 years for most people
to finaly accept than Global Warming is a reality ...
It will probably take as much time for the same people
to admit that WE are responsable for much of that climate change ...
People will only change their habits when forced to do so ...
As for the guy saying that contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary. ... I will wait to see the majority of the scientific community endorsing him before striking the orangutangs off the endangered species list !
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Nov 7, 2007 12:51:03 GMT -5
HÉ! I wish I could be optimistic but it is not only how much changes the planet ecosystem will endure but how fast it will change. And we are building more coal-fueled powerplants and growing more crops to make ethanol ... It just don't make sense ! But HÉ! The American(and other rich countries)Way of Life is not negotiable ... ! The rest (more than 2/3) of the world can go fuck itself ... |
|
|
|
Post by phil on Nov 7, 2007 14:01:35 GMT -5
See what I mean ... Global-warming gases set to rise by 57% by 2030--IEA Agence France-Presse Last updated 08:42pm (Mla time) 11/07/2007 PARIS -- Emissions of greenhouse gases will rise by 57 percent by 2030 compared to current levels, leading to a rise in Earth's surface temperature of at least three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.In its annual report on global energy needs, the Paris-based agency projected greenhouse-gas pollution would rise by 1.8 percent annually by 2030 on the basis of projected energy use and current efforts to mitigate emissions. The IEA saw scant chance of bringing this pollution down to a stable, safer level any time soon.It poured cold water on a scenario sketched earlier this year by the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN's paramount authority on global warming and its effects. The IPCC said that to limit the average increase in global temperatures to 2.4 C (4.3 F) -- the most optimistic of any of its scenarios -- the concentration of greenhouse gases would have to stabilize at 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.
The IPCC warned that, to achieve this goal, CO2 emissions would have to peak by 2015 at the latest and then fall between 50 and 85 percent by 2050.
But the 2007 edition of the IEA's World Energy Outlook saw no peak in emissions before 2020.Read more ... newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view_article.php?article_id=99485 |
|
|
|
Post by Dr. Drum on Nov 7, 2007 21:13:18 GMT -5
I'm not familiar with Daniel Botkin or his work. I actually would prefer to think that he's a 'naysayer' in good faith, as opposed to another mouthpiece for the denial industry, but reading his article, I have my doubts, and not just because of its appearance in the WSJ. A good part of the article is a mish-mash of red herrings and arguments if the straw man variety: deglaciation on Kilimanjaro (many, if not most climate scientists would acknowledge that global warming is not the direct cause of it's shrinking glaciers, but rather a secondary or tertiary cause). An invasive species in NYC which has nothing to do with climate change. A study on malaria which he cites to demonstrate that "living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall" (Agreed. So?). An assertion that the Vikings did – and that we might – find an Arctic thaw to our advantage (We might. Again, so?) Of course, he's demonstrably wrong right off the bat in his first paragraph, when he says that "contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary." But where I really start to question how straight he's being is when he talks about the possibility of mass extinctions. Why is it that here he limits himself to the past 2½ million years, claiming that it is "a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us"? Not so. The last 2½ million years has been an interval of alternating "glacials" and "interglacials", quite unlike what scientists fear is about to happen to us (and btw, I think a scientists really do fear where we're headed. I don't think any of this is a put-on to scare us into action.) What they're worried we're doing to the planet is something more akin to a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM, a period about 55 million years ago when there was a massive increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations over a relatively short (in geological terms) 10,000 year period, and mass extinctions. As a "biologist and ecologist" who says he's been concerned with global warming for 40 years, I find it hard to believe that Botkin would be unfamiliar with this. |
|
|
|
Post by luke on Nov 8, 2007 10:34:15 GMT -5
Thanks. Sort of echoed my initial thoughts that what he's doing is an advanced form of public relations strategy for the denial set, one a little harder to combat than with "hey, you're delusional."
|
|
|
|
Post by maarts on Nov 8, 2007 17:01:56 GMT -5
Dutch want cannabis registered as regular medicine The Dutch Government said on Wednesday it wants to promote the development of cannabis-based medicine and will extend the drug's availability in pharmacies by five years to allow more scientific research. In 2003, the Netherlands became the world's first country to make cannabis available as a prescription drug in pharmacies to treat chronic pain, nausea and loss of appetite in cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis patients. "Medicinal cannabis must become a regular registered medicine," Health Minister Ab Klink said in a statement, adding he wanted to give the development of a cannabis-based medicine by a Dutch company a serious chance. The Netherlands, where prostitution and the sale of cannabis for recreational use in coffee shops are regulated by the government, has a history of pioneering social reforms. It was also the first country to legalise euthanasia. The Dutch Government regulates the growing of special strains of cannabis in laboratory-style conditions to supply pharmacies. A Dutch company started working on developing a cannabis-based drug last year, the health ministry said. "The development path, that could take several years, can deliver scientific details and insight into the balance between the efficacy and safety of medicinal cannabis," it said. In 2005, Canada became the first country in the world to approve a cannabis-based medicine produced by Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals Plc as a treatment for MS patients. US regulators granted approval last year for a clinical trial for the GW under-the-tongue spray called Sativex, but the company announced in July that European regulators had requested a further clinical study before approval. Cannabis has a long history of medicinal use. It was used as a Chinese herbal remedy around 5000 years ago, while Britain's Queen Victoria is said to have taken cannabis tincture for menstrual pains. But it fell out of favour because of a lack of standardised preparations and the development of more potent synthetic drugs. Critics argue that it has not undergone sufficient scientific scrutiny and some doctors say it increases the risk of depression and schizophrenia.
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Nov 8, 2007 17:22:02 GMT -5
Britain's Queen Victoria is said to have taken cannabis tincture for menstrual pains.
 And a lot of good it seems to have done her ... 
|
|
|
|
Post by maarts on Nov 8, 2007 17:23:17 GMT -5
Phil- that is her happy-face... ;D
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Nov 8, 2007 18:54:48 GMT -5
Maarts - This is her ONLY "face" ...ÔÔ...
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Nov 16, 2007 15:32:00 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Nov 19, 2007 15:26:35 GMT -5
Global consumer movement announces winners of International Bad Products Awards
Publication date: 29 Oct 2007
Coco-cola, Kellogg’s, Mattel and Takeda Pharmaceuticals top the list of international brands guilty of abusing consumer rights.
This year’s winners* are:
Coca-Cola – for continuing the international marketing of its bottled water, Dasani, despite admitting it comes from the same sources as local tap water.
Kellogg’s – for the worldwide use of cartoon-type characters and product tie-ins aimed at children, despite high levels of sugar and salt in their food products.
Mattel – for stonewalling US congressional investigations and avoiding overall responsibility for the global recall of 21 million products.
With the overall prize going to:
Takeda Pharmaceuticals – for taking advantage of poor US regulation and advertising sleeping pills to children, despite health warnings about pediatric use.
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Jan 2, 2008 13:57:37 GMT -5
Somehow I don't think they learned this from us ... Like humans, monkeys also pay for sex21 Dec 2007, 0550 hrs IST,ANI WASHINGTON: Humans aren't the only primates when it comes paying for sexual services, for a new study has found that monkeys too fall in the category. Michael Gumert, a researcher at Division of Psychology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, has shown that male longtailed macaques exchange grooming for the right to mate with females whose fur they cleaned. The study presents the first proof that a "social market" influences sexual interaction in a non-human primate, Gumert said in a telephone interview. ----------- First it was the Bonobos ... Now this ! ...  |
|
|
|
Post by phil on Jan 2, 2008 14:18:13 GMT -5
Jac ... That one is for you ... !  Contagious ... grinApes are good for a giggle APES get the giggles from one another, researchers have found. It is the first time animals have been shown to be prone to contagious laughter – something previously believed to be only a human trait. Dr Marina Davila Ross, who led the University of Portsmouth study, made the discovery by recording the responses of 25 orangutans to their playmates’ moods. The team found that when one displayed a gaping mouth – the ape equivalent of laughter – its pal would often adopt the same expression less than half a second later. Bonding The boffin wrote in journal Biology Letters: “What is clear now is the building blocks of positive emotional contagion and empathy . . . evolved prior to humankind.” Dr Davila Ross added monkeys, like people, seemed to involuntarily share one another’s laughter as a way of bonding. She wrote: “By mimicking emotional expressions of others, individuals are able to experience and understand the emotions of their social partners.” |
|
