Alaskan Warm Up
Reuters
Parts of the world could heat up by over 10 degrees Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) this century with big areas becoming uninhabitable, according to a climate prediction experiment.
"We are very rapidly heading back toward the greenhouse world of the dinosaurs," Bob Spicer, one of the scientists who mounted the joint BBC/Oxford University study, said on Friday.
"Back then northern Alaska had mean annual temperatures of about the same level as we have in London -- about 10 degrees (C)."
Most scientists agree average world temperatures will rise 2 to 6 degrees C this century, mainly because of carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport, putting millions of lives at risk from flood and famine.
A draft report by 2,500 scientists of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sees world temperatures rising 2.0-4.5 C (3.6-8.1 F) by 2100 unless greenhouse gas emissions from factories, cars and power plants are cut radically, informed sources told Reuters on Friday.
This stuff brought this to mind:
It seems strange to me that the Righties, in general, have taken the position that concerns about global warming, discharge of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the general quality of the environment that our children will live in are dismissed as junk science, hysteria and some sort of plot against happiness. Rush, Inhofe, Coulter and the rest of the "theoreticians and spiritual guides of the Right" hammer this message day in and day out. Why do they want us to believe this so strongly? It is because if we face the obvious fact that the earth and its atmosphere increasingly are being degraded, and that they are resources of finite quantity, then they would have to act for the sake of their own progeny - if nothing else. But to act to somehow turn the tide and slow down and eventually reverse the trend towards ecosystem destruction would require regulation, accountability beyond the bottom line and, in fact, collective work among people and institutions. And therein lays the rub. Collective versus the individual. They are still fighting godless communism.
It is good to see the Democrats getting the nation moving on this stuff. I am impatient, but they are moving. And I am thankful.
Posted for: Gregg
It seems strange to me that the Righties, in general, have taken the position that concerns about global warming, discharge of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the general quality of the environment that our children will live in are dismissed as junk science, hysteria and some sort of plot against happiness. Rush, Inhofe, Coulter and the rest of the "theoreticians and spiritual guides of the Right" hammer this message day in and day out. Why do they want us to believe this so strongly? It is because if we face the obvious fact that the earth and its atmosphere increasingly are being degraded, and that they are resources of finite quantity, then they would have to act for the sake of their own progeny - if nothing else. But to act to somehow turn the tide and slow down and eventually reverse the trend towards ecosystem destruction would require regulation, accountability beyond the bottom line and, in fact, collective work among people and institutions. And therein lays the rub. Collective versus the individual. They are still fighting godless communism.
It is good to see the Democrats getting the nation moving on this stuff. I am impatient, but they are moving. And I am thankful.
Posted for: Gregg
Labels: Global Warming
posted by Barbi @ 12:07 AM
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