Global warming predictions are underestimated say scientists

Thanks to truthout for the link.

Underestimated?! Holy Crap. The estimates out now scare me enough. Underestimated. Man, it is hard to wrap my mind around that one.



While you are worrying, Check out the cool flash that expalains the effect of the the slowing down of the Gulf Stream (30% already - jeepers). Pretty pictures that predict a radically different world for my children, than the one I grew up in.

... we're all coming with you...

going down together on this one :-( thanks to types like chimp who say it's not for real. Yhey know it's real but they don't care cause having their 'lifestyle' and money is more important than actually living to enjoy those things. :eyes:

it will kill off a bunch of us peasants, but they have so much $ they can find some nice little spot somewhere, and spend their time shooting the evacuee's who trespass on their land while looking for food to put on their families.

:mad:

I am afraid there's no turning back, no halting the wheels we've set in motion. Will people change the way they live to save the planet? Will they start NOW?

Of course they won't. If anything, with the expanding industrialization of China and India, the destruction will only be accelerated.

IF the US leaders take the lead then MAYBE the rest of the world would follow.

What the Supremes did in 2000 was to help murder millions of people -- they help unleash the evil forces -- or the dark side.

Bushie is hardly conscious -- and is so oblivious to reality he seems to be sleep walking. A sleep walking 10 year old in an old man's body.

we will likely destroy most of the biodiversity, and dramatically change the human species, if not eliminate it, but this planet and life on it will go on without us. We can most effectively destroy the parts of life that we love the most, especially ourselves and the picturesque megafauna, but life is way bigger than our abilities to destroy. It is some comfort.

maybe a few microbes, like Mars or Venus. Such a shame, but meaning nothing in the larger picture.

God only created dinosaur bones when He created the Earth 6000 years ago to confuse the evil evolutionists.

or in other words, that the consequences will in fact be WORSE than anyone was thinking. (I'm not quite sure what you're on about with this 'creationism' nonsense...maybe you didn't understand the original post?)

Are they screaming at the top of their lungs for other countries, ahem, to change their behavior?

:loveya:

is going to lead to some particularly nasty COLD weather for the north Atlantic region, northeast US and northern Europe. It's pretty scary stuff.

With all the cold water emptying into the gulf stream from the melting ice in the north the Gulf Stream is becoming less and less efficient. If it completely stops then all hell will break lose on Northern Europe in particular. England may cease to be much of a country it will be so cold.

It is obvious that at the very least, in order to communicate to the world via the corporate media the usually cautious scientists must further downplay dramatic, panic causing conclusions. One part scientific caution, one part intimidation(sometimes ruthless trashing and horrendous quack lying that always takes them by surprise), one part simply not knowing enough of the unique complexities means most communication from the community will be underplayed. An impatient minority might want to break through the ineffectual, fatal torpor and weighted lies with spectacular warnings. In the past some have done so and the cost to credibility is high if they overreach. The patient construction of the feeble Kyoto accord is still threatened thanks to a total lack of reasoned reticence by the "other side".

Beaten away from the warnings that created Kyoto, we have now entered the crisis time of "unpleasant surprises" anyway when catastrophes will consume public attention and resources MORE than real global vision and remedies. Rebuild NOLA! Where? In the same area that the next freight train will hit head on? Will people in Florida get used to being the American Bangladesh, taking down all the national emergency and insurance resources- such as they are? And those are the barest tips of the vanishing icebergs to which people are forced to journey in the police state Titanic of corporate madness.

Screwed. They probably are wishing they had gotten more involved in media reform and politics which of course would also take away from their special talents and mission. Like computer experts and fraud, e-voting, the perils of science outside the ivory tower lies in ignorance of the social construct they live in. A club win to which all belong who are not part of a senseless, suicidal wealth and power creation machine.

that climate change is a SLOW process. It was simply assumed that since ice ages and warm periods last hundreds to thousands of years (and longer) that the climate slowly slipped over a long time from one extreme to another. However, ice cores and fossil records and tree rings (dendroclimatology) tell a different story. Climatic changes are often fast and furious (in geological time scales), occurring in only a matter of decades or maybe a few hundred years.

The rate of glacial retreat currently happening (as well as coral die offs and alpine habitat destruction) is one of the fastest climate changes that we have any data on. Much faster than scientists even 10 years ago were suggesting.

Talk about a tipping point.

in the book "The Weathermakers", it is pointed out that
the various delays in the climate system mean that a
change today (as in right now, this very afternoon)
won't take effect for 20 years. We are already
committed to climate change, no matter what we
do - though we might be able to mitigate the changes
taking place 20 years hence.

Consider U.S energy use, Chinese and Indian growth
and energy use, and massive use of coal, and I'd
say we're cooked - in at least two senses.

It's also interesting that grain stocks are being
drawn down, year by year. So as climate change hits,
and population grows, and we use more corn for ethanol,
expect famine.

Party hardy, 'cause the hangover isn't going to be pretty.

This is just guesswork by a small handful. The reality of global warming models is that they cannot even correctly predict the past, let alone the future. They are getting better, but until they can at least match existing data I wouldn't place much stock in anyone's predictions.

And please, do not take this post as saying that there is no such thing as global warming. That's NOT what I'm saying.

It really freaks me out in a way that Bird Flu never will. A pandemic will happen or it won't.

This WILL happen, it is just exactly when? and how long will it last? Which experts do you believe?

It is scary.

Like I said, until we have computer models that can correctly predict the past, using them to guess at what will happen in the future is pointless.

it's written by a scientist in the field who
has peer reviewed publications - lots of them.

It addresses your specific concerns - and the
models discussed in the book DO come very, very
close to matching the past.

Not the online things - the book.

That's one of the downsides of the internet. Getting
someone to look at a book instead of a link is roughly
equivalent to a root-canel with no pain killers.

:-(

in the Blue Ridge Archipelago.

risks to all these things, like the climate, are being "underestimated" in the dangers and severity.

We are in deep, deep scheisse....

I saw the show on this recently.

"In the early 21st century, it's become clear that air pollution can significantly reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, lower temperatures, and mask the warming effects of greenhouse gases. Climate researcher James Hansen estimates that "global dimming" is cooling our planet by more than a degree Celsius (1.8°F) and fears that as we cut back on pollution, global warming may escalate to a point of no return. Regrettably, in terms of possibly taking corrective action, our current understanding of global dimming has been a long time in the coming, considering the first hints of the phenomenon date back to 18th-century observations of volcanic eruptions. In this slide show, follow a series of historic events and scientific milestones that built the case for global dimming. Click on the image at left to begin.—Susan K. Lewis ..."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/dimming.html