Bush Science Advisor - Earth May Become "Unliveable" W/O GHG Cuts, But Targets Would Be "Arbitrary"

The US chief scientist has told the BBC that climate change is now a fact. Professor John Marburger, who advises President Bush, said it was more than 90% certain that greenhouse gas emissions from mankind are to blame.

The Earth may become "unliveable" without cuts in CO2 output, he said, but he labelled targets for curbing temperature rise as "arbitrary".

His comments come shortly before major meetings on climate change at the UN and the Washington White House.

There may still be some members of the White House team who are not completely convinced about climate change - but it is clear that the science advisor to the President and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is not one of them. In the starkest warning from the White House so far about the dangers ahead, Professor Marburger told the BBC that climate change was unequivocal, with mankind more than 90% likely to blame.

EDIT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6994760.stm

Time to look all concerned before the Big Climate Meeting? Looks that way. But let's not get all "arbitrary", eh Professor?

Fuck you, Marburger.

us all anyway. Just ask James Watt.

Will he be banished to a 'free speech zone' for his candor?

that man has solely created, and our planet will be well on its way to extinction by the end of this century.

Year Population
(in billions)
2010 6.8
2020 7.6
2030 8.3
2040 8.9
2050 9.4

sustain those population numbers.

Unfortunately, I think that the death rate will overtake the birth rate in many areas of the world before then, no matter how many births each woman has. n

Some experts are suggesting now that we're going to peak around 7 billion.

Actually, the only people I've read who think that we will see a peak of 7 billion are those who also think that the peak will be rapidly followed by a fairly precipitous decline (like me, f'rinstance). The "peak and hold" crow seems to be fixated on 9 billion.

Since the odds are that doing so would not prevent damage to their vehicle. Instead, they'd check to make sure their seat belt was off, then stomp on the gas...

Without GHG cuts, we lose a lot of low-lying land, including a bunch of cities. We don't lose the planet, though the temperate belt would probably move northward. Sure, that's a bad thing, which is why we should be cutting GHGs. But it's not the end of the world.

The current models aren't calling for some kind of gentle, benign, even rise in temperature.

As energy is fed into the global climate system all kinds of different mechanisms will be affected. Each of these has its own mode of action, region of influence, threshold effects, interactions with other such mechanisms and rate of change. Examples include the THC, El Nino, monsoon rains, Arctic and Antarctic ice, mountain glaciers, arctic tundra (with its metric shitload of frozen methane) and jet streams. Some changes will be gradual while others will turn on and off like light switches.

Probable effects from the increased energy flows in this complex system include intensifications and shifts in droughts and flooding, regionally varying changes in temperature and rainfall patterns and changes in river flows, all driven by a further acceleration of energy from trapped heat as CO2 and methane continue to rise. The most important effect from humanity's point of view will not be coastal flooding but a world-wide disruption of agriculture.

These changes balance out to a gradual rise in global temperature only in the way that plunging one arm into a bucket of boiling water and another into a bucket of crushed ice leaves your body at an acceptable average temperature. This is why I'm promoting the use of the term "Climate Chaos" in preference to "Global Warming" or even "Climate Change".

"Under A Green Sky" by Peter Ward - if you're interested in learning more about ELEs, it's worth it just for the bibliography alone.