Climate Group: Kilimanjaro a 'wake-up call'

[Darius11 12]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/03/14/climate.kilimanjaro.reut/index.html

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LONDON, England (Reuters) -- A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap will be used as testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet on Tuesday.

Gathering in London for a two-day brainstorming session on the environment agenda of Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations, the environment and energy ministers from 20 countries will be handed a book containing the stark image of Africa's tallest mountain, among others.

"This is a wake-up call and an unequivocal message that a low-carbon global economy is necessary, achievable and affordable," said Steve Howard of the Climate Group charity which organized the book and an associated exhibition.

"We are breaking climate change out of the environment box. This crisis affects all of us. This is a global challenge and we need real leadership to address these major problems -- and these ministers can give that leadership," he told Reuters.

The pictures include one of Kilimanjaro almost bare of its icecap because of global warming, and coastal defenses in the Marshall Islands threatened with swamping from rising sea levels.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has vowed to make climate change and Africa the twin targets of Britain's presidencies of both the G8 and European Union this year -- bringing both to the fore at a summit meeting in Gleneagles in Scotland in July.

The Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases came into force in February but is still shunned by the world's biggest emitter, the United States, and puts scant limits on China, rising fast up the ranks.

Senior officials from both countries will be at the London meeting, whose main thrust is how to achieve the environmental Holy Grail of a sustainability growing low carbon economy.

"There is an attempt to draw the United States in after its refusal to sign Kyoto," said a spokeswoman for environmental pressure group Greenpeace.

"It is very sensitive given that the developing countries are trying to climb the development curve and the developed countries must not be seen to be doing anything to hold them back," she told Reuters.

A senior official at Britain's Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is co-organizing the meeting -- the first of environment and energy ministers from developed and developing nations -- said the aim was to find common ground.

"This is a chance for people to get together and by not forcing them to negotiate a very concrete outcome ... allow them to explore common interests," she said.

"There are plenty of technologies out there which we can deploy which can help with that shift (to a low-carbon economy) straight away. We know that energy efficiency can already deliver huge carbon savings at a net benefit to our society," she told Reuters.

British think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research has proposed a multi-tiered approach, calling for progressively deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by rich nations but more flexible commitments from the developing world.

These should be made against the backdrop of long-term efforts to take Kyoto -- with the United States and Australia aboard in some form -- beyond the end of its first phase in 2012, it said.

I wonder if there are still people who think there is no such thing as global warming.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[CanuckInUSA 0]

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I wonder if there are still people who think there is no such thing as global warming.

GWB doesn't think there is a problem. Then again, GWB doesn't do a lot of thinking to begin with.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[Darius11 12]

He is waiting for his lord and savior to come to the White House and tell him the planet is getting warmer.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[christelsabine 1]

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I wonder if there are still people who think there is no such thing as global warming.

GWB doesn't think there is a problem. Then again, GWB doesn't do a lot of thinking to begin with.

Why should he? In 15 yrs, that mountain will be completely ice-free, no one will be able to judge the consequences/influences on eco systems.

Georgie boy will have a last look into his bible and go to bed. That's it. Why should he ever break his head? Africa is sooo far away.

dudeist skydiver # 3105

[TypicalFish 0]

How can I doubt or question it?

I am all for a discussion over the effect of the human race on global warming, however, how can you be sure this has ANYTHING to do with industrialization/more bodies on the planet/whatever?

Maybe it's just part of the natural trending up and down of the planetary climate system?

What happened to the glaciers? What brought us out of the ice age? I guess I have a hard time with the "cause vs. effect" arguments I have seen so far that "definitively" prove that global warming is both real AND (most importantly) somehow under our control...

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[dropoutdave 0]

Is it worth the risk to just sit back and see?

------------------------------------------------------
May Contain Nut traces......

[TypicalFish 0]

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Is it worth the risk to just sit back and see?

About as much as it's worth the risk to throw solutions (posssibly ignoring the one that really WOULD work) at a problem that no one really has a firm understanding of. To me, it's like saying "OK, the patient is having trouble breathing but, rather than diagnose him, let's just start giving him random drugs"...

I am only saying that I don't accept a "definite" conclusion that can be explained away by existing experience and geological history.

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[lawrocket 3]

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- A photo of the Yosemite Valley stripped of its snow and glacier http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Del%2Bcapitan%26ei%3DUTF-8%26fr%3DFP-tab-img-t%26fl%3D0%26x%3Dwrt&h=600&w=800&imgcurl=peter.odryna.com%2Fphotolib%2Fvacations%2F2003feb%2520Yosemite%2520to%2520Sedona%2520Arizona%2Fimages%2Fhalf%2520dome%2520and%2520el%2520capitan.JPG&imgurl=peter.odryna.com%2Fphotolib%2Fvacations%2F2003feb%2520Yosemite%2520to%2520Sedona%2520Arizona%2Fimages%2Fhalf%2520dome%2520and%2520el%2520capitan.JPG&size=114.1kB&name=half%20dome%20and%20el%20capitan.JPG&rcurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpeter.odryna.com%2Fphotolib%2Fvacations%2F2003feb%2520Yosemite%2520to%2520Sedona%2520Arizona%2Fimagepages%2Fimage7.htm&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpeter.odryna.com%2Fphotolib%2Fvacations%2F2003feb%2520Yosemite%2520to%2520Sedona%2520Arizona%2Fimagepages%2Fimage7.htm&p=el+capitan&type=jpeg&no=2&tt=29,720 will be used as testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet on Tuesday.

Gathering in London for a two-day brainstorming session on the environment agenda of Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations, the environment and energy ministers from 20 countries will be handed a book containing the stark image of California's sheerest walls, among others.

"This is a wake-up call and an unequivocal message that a low-carbon global economy is necessary, achievable and affordable," said Steve Howard of the Climate Group charity which organized the book and an associated exhibition.

"We are breaking climate change out of the environment box. This crisis affects all of us. This is a global challenge and we need real leadership to address these major problems -- and these ministers can give that leadership," he told Reuters.

The pictures include one of Half Done almost bare of its icecap because of global warming. The great glacier that once resided in Yosemite Valley has melted due to global warming, revealing sheer granite walls.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has vowed to make climate change the of Britain's presidencies of both the G8 and European Union this year -- bringing it to the fore at a summit meeting in Gleneagles in Scotland in July.

The Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases came into force in February but is still shunned by the world's biggest emitter, the United States, and puts scant limits on China, rising fast up the ranks.

Senior officials from both countries will be at the London meeting, whose main thrust is how to achieve the environmental Holy Grail of a sustainability growing low carbon economy.

"There is an attempt to draw the United States in after its refusal to sign Kyoto," said a spokeswoman for environmental pressure group Greenpeace.

"It is very sensitive given that the developing countries are trying to climb the development curve and the developed countries must not be seen to be doing anything to hold them back," she told Reuters.

A senior official at Britain's Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is co-organizing the meeting -- the first of environment and energy ministers from developed and developing nations -- said the aim was to find common ground.

"This is a chance for people to get together and by not forcing them to negotiate a very concrete outcome ... allow them to explore common interests," she said.

"There are plenty of technologies out there which we can deploy which can help with that shift (to a low-carbon economy) straight away. We know that energy efficiency can already deliver huge carbon savings at a net benefit to our society," she told Reuters.

British think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research has proposed a multi-tiered approach, calling for progressively deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by rich nations but more flexible commitments from the developing world.

These should be made against the backdrop of long-term efforts to take Kyoto -- with the United States and Australia aboard in some form -- beyond the end of its first phase in 2012, it said.

"Presidents Bush and Reagan caused global warming. It's up to the Americans to restore Yosemite Valley's glacier."

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[TypicalFish 0]

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"Presidents Bush and Reagan caused global warming. It's up to the Americans to restore Yosemite Valley's glacier."

Show me how, besides the fact that they happened to be in office at the time. (BTW, if global warming really is continually trending upward, you forgot Clinton)

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[lawrocket 3]

Clinton tried to stop global warming, and he was doing a fine job reversing it until 1995, when Republicans took control of Congress. It was not enough time to repair the damage that Reagan and Bush, Sr. did, cowtowing to corporate swines hell-bent on environmental mayhem...

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[rickjump1 0]

[reply To me, it's like saying "OK, the patient is having trouble breathing but, rather than diagnose him, let's just start giving him random drugs"...


Is there any doubt that polluted air and water are not good for life? I understand that nature sometimes pollutes the air, and we have little control over that.

Do your part for global warming: ban beans and hold all popcorn farts.

[TypicalFish 0]

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Clinton tried to stop global warming, and he was doing a fine job reversing it until 1995, when Republicans took control of Congress. ...

Again, how? Did the temperature take a nose dive? Did the trend slow AT ALL? The answer is most probably "no". So where is the evidence?

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[GTAVercetti 0]

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Is it worth the risk to just sit back and see?

About as much as it's worth the risk to throw solutions (posssibly ignoring the one that really WOULD work) at a problem that no one really has a firm understanding of. To me, it's like saying "OK, the patient is having trouble breathing but, rather than diagnose him, let's just start giving him random drugs"...

That is not even the same. Studies have been done that show that excess CO2 and CFC's are bad for the air. It may indeed be that the world is on a natural climate change, but if we know that certain items DEFINITELY have detrimental effects, why would be not try to limit them?

As to temperature nose dives, a reduction in emission will not immediately afftect temp or rapidly reduce damage. THis is a long term process. Just by reducing production, you can not quickly reduce what is already there.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[lawrocket 3]

Have you read "The Earth In Balance?"

The Kyoto Treaty does not go far enough. In order for a drop in manmade CO2 emissions to have any effect on the climate, reductions of greater than 60 percent from the current level are needed.

In 1997, pursuant to extensive lobbying by right-wing polluters and Halliburton, the US Senate voted 95-0 against implementing the Kyoto protocol, reasoning that the economy would be harmed by lowering CO2 emissions. Despite this, and at great personal risk, Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol in 1998.

Only President Bush is causing global warming to escalate.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[TypicalFish 0]

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As to temperature nose dives, a reduction in emission will not immediately afftect temp or rapidly reduce damage. THis is a long term process. Just by reducing production, you can not quickly reduce what is already there.

Does this logic work in reverse as well? Then how is it Bush and Regan's fault?

You know, this is a point I am fascinated with, but unfortuantely am at the office and time-limited to terse responses. Hopefully this thread is still alive later to continue the discussion.

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[GTAVercetti 0]

Quote

Quote

As to temperature nose dives, a reduction in emission will not immediately afftect temp or rapidly reduce damage. THis is a long term process. Just by reducing production, you can not quickly reduce what is already there.

Does this logic work in reverse as well? Then how is it Bush and Regan's fault?

You know, this is a point I am fascinated with, but unfortuantely am at the office and time-limited to terse responses. Hopefully this thread is still alive later to continue the discussion.

I never said it was their fault. However, Bush has done a fine job of NOT HELPING and reversing actions previously taken. The fact that we have said no to the Kyoto treaty is part of the problem.

But I am getting away from what I mean to say. I am not trying to turtn this into Bush bashing. I was arguing against your response that since we do not know definitively, we should do nothing. My response was that we DO know something about CO2 and other emission and from that we know what we can TRY: reduce them.

plain and simple.

Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing.

[wmw999 2,457]

I went to a really interesting lecture about global warming a couple of weeks ago. Lots of charts, graphs and the like. Using data gathered from the 400,000-year-old ice cap in Siberia, and from tree trunks, they plotted the average temperatures as best they could using the amount of dissolved oxygen and nitrogen in the ice. The tree rings confirmed the data for the last 2,000 years or so. There's probably other data, but it was only a 1-hour lecture.

Anyway, if you take into account:
natural changes in the orbit of earth
natural changes in the tilt of the earth
volcanoes
several other cycles (don't have the notes here)

Each of them has a cycle; the longest being a roughly 100,000-year cycle, and on down from there. Mapping all this, they get decent predictability for things like the mini-ice age of the middle ages, the gradual warming before and after, etc.

Since the mid-1800's (the beginning of fairly serious industrialization), there has been a separate warming trend. It went up solidly until the end of WW2, then dropped a little, then started back up again. We're probably .6 degrees higher than the models predict we should be. We could be 2 or more degrees hotter by the end of the century.

That doesn't sound like much? Well, the mini-ice-age of the middle ages was about a 1 degree difference. Going the other way, the dust bowl begins to look pretty inviting. Much of the middle latitudes become virtually uninhabitable, and people start migrating north.

His take was that Kyoto didn't go nearly far enough, for all countries. We need to start taking steps now to avoid having to take bigger steps later.

Burning of hydrocarbons and coal are two of the biggest contributors. By industry and by people.

The charts were impressive.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[billvon 3,006]

>About as much as it's worth the risk to throw solutions (posssibly ignoring
> the one that really WOULD work) at a problem that no one really has a
>firm understanding of.

The solution is easy. Stop emitting so much CO2. Let the earth's normal regulatory mechanisms work.

>To me, it's like saying "OK, the patient is having trouble breathing but,
> rather than diagnose him, let's just start giving him random drugs"...

More like "we're giving this patient more and more of this drug, and he's having more and more trouble breathing. But we shouldn't stop increasing the dosage! Maybe the two have nothing to do with each other. And besides, just giving him more and more of the drug is convenient."

>I am only saying that I don't accept a "definite" conclusion that can
>be explained away by existing experience and geological history.

We can get definite proof by continuing to emit ever-larger amounts of CO2 until portions of the planet become uninhabitable. Is that a good goal?

[TypicalFish 0]

Bill, I happen to agree with everything that you are saying (and have a great amount of respect for your own personal dedication to the cause), my frustration is just in trying to find some meaningful science behind the rhetoric from environmental groups that passes for discussion. Quite frankly, it strikes me as very "I'm the mommy, that's why"...

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[billvon 3,006]

>my frustration is just in trying to find some meaningful science behind
>the rhetoric from environmental groups that passes for discussion.

You have to pretty much ignore what any political environmental group (or what any climate-change-denier group) says, and look at the data. To me, the most compelling bits of data are:

-Average global temperature vs CO2 PPM in the atmosphere over the past 100 years or so
-Fuel usage predictions based on current trends in fossil fuel usage
-Ice core samples that allow comparison of trapped CO2 and snowfall in times past

The problem is that since the climate is such a massive, complex and varied topic that you can always pick and choose your data to 'prove' your point. Want to prove global warming is going really fast? Alaska permafrost is disappearing at an alarming rate. Want to prove it's all a bunch of hooey? Upper atmospheric temperatures aren't changing much, and some locations in Antarctica are actually getting colder. Crichton's latest book was a superb example of this. If you pick your data carefully enough you can use it to 'prove' almost anything.

[kelpdiver 2]

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In 1997, pursuant to extensive lobbying by right-wing polluters and Halliburton, the US Senate voted 95-0 against implementing the Kyoto protocol, reasoning that the economy would be harmed by lowering CO2 emissions. Despite this, and at great personal risk, Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol in 1998.

Why didn't Clinton sign it? Gore is veep.

And 95-0 suggests more going on than mere lobbying. I didn't know left wingers like Barbara Boxer were easily swayed by Haliburton types.

[penniless 0]

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Bill, I happen to agree with everything that you are saying (and have a great amount of respect for your own personal dedication to the cause), my frustration is just in trying to find some meaningful science behind the rhetoric from environmental groups that passes for discussion. Quite frankly, it strikes me as very "I'm the mommy, that's why"...

It has been proven without a shadow of doubt that humans can cause major atmospheric changes. The "ozone hole" is 100% certainly due to human actions. The evidence is overwhelming, and the chemistry has been confirmed empirically and theoretically. There are no natural sources of CFCs.

Having established our capability to damage the atmosphere it would be extreme stupidity to assume that other changes are not due to human activity, especially when the mechanism has been established. Of course, extreme stupidity is the hallmark of the Bush administration.

[penniless 0]

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"This crisis affects all of us. This is a global challenge and we need real leadership to address these major problems" he told Reuters.

Well, that exludes the US administration.

[rushmc 23]

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Is it worth the risk to just sit back and see?

Gotta quit driving cars then too because a drunk might drive it

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

I, for one, do not believe it. Too many questions.
Based on what I have learned we are just in the warm part of a cycle.

I remember in the 70's another ice age was coming. When that did not fly the story changed to global warming

Global warming is about political power and money.

...........I am going to get flamed on this one ain't I

Thank God GWB is president!

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln