Global Warming | Fact or Fiction?

[work in progress]

That's actually because I didn't want to portray you in a negative light. But if you want the context, no problem.

Another member posted a link which discussed the resignation of a nobel-prize winning physicist from the American Physical Society because the society made a public claim concerning AGW he disagreed with:


Your response was to malign his character, integrity, even his intellectual capacity (emphasis added and quoted links snipped for brevity)

I have been getting sick and tired of oil-funded propaganda in corporate media presenting one story after another about so called experts who disagree with the consensus views on global warming. Personally, I don't care if this retired scientist is motivated by greed, ego, or political ideology. It may have been politics in the first place that got him included on that presidential panel. His personal qualifications, if based on his work in designing superconductors, is not climate change, so he is as "expert" an opinion as the more recent rocket scientists and engineers at, or more correctly, formerly at NASA, who have been trotted out by the Exxon propagandists as the latest examples of scientists who say ignore global warming and keep burning all that god-dammed oil! The actual climatologists working for NASA and NOAA, have been very clear about where they see the evidence leading, and are even mostly in agreement on what they would advise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A brief synopsis of Dr. Gaiaver's actual work in the Indian National Daily: The Hindu: Leo Esaki, Ivan Giaever: pioneers in electron tunnelling and superconductivity
Maybe you can tell me what the discovery of quantum tunneling has to do with studying the greenhouse effect or analyzing climate data!

Background data on Giaever indicates that he was the "skeptic" on Obama's climate panel, so problems should have been expected, and it also indicates that including him was a concession to some forces within the energy lobby or the Republicans. They wanted him on the panel because he represented their views. But just as that idiot - Sen. Inhofe presented Fake Lord Monckton as his "expert' at a Congressional panel on climate change a couple of years ago, the right wing knows or cares little about actual credentials of their chosen experts. They just hear that he won a Nobel Prize, and that's all they want to know! And that's what makes right wing idiots especially dangerous: ideology trumps reality:

According to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Oslo and Google Scholar, Ivar Giaever has not published any work in the area of climate science. Giaever's climate science resume is limited to serving on a climate change discussion panel at the 51st convention of Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine. At the convention, Giaever stated he is skeptical of the importance of the issue of global warming.


March 30, 2009
Giaever's signature is displayed alongside a full-page ad funded by the CATO institute that appeared in numerous newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune in 2009.
The advertisement responds to President Obama's declaration that "few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear" by saying that "with all due respect Mr. President, that is not true." It goes on to describe how "there has been no net global warming for over a decade," and how global warming is "grossly overstated." [6]
November, 2008
Ivar Giaever's name appears on a full-page ad funded by the CATO Institute that was featured in numerous newspapers including the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune in 2009.
The advertisement refutes President Obama's declaration that "few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change." It describes how "there has been no net global warming for over a decade," and that global warming is "grossly overstated."
The Cato Institute has received $125,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, and lists Phillip Morris as one of its "national allies." They have also received undisclosed amounts of funding from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and Koch Family Foundations.

Ivar Giaever


​

Not only does his expertise (physics) have quite a bit to do with climate research, but apparently your view of the earth is heavily influenced by someone who is even older and whose expertise is even less relevant:

You seem to think that every physicist does exactly the same work and knows all of the same basic things. That likely hasn't been true since the time of Isaac Newton. The info I was able to pick up about Gaiaever indicates he is the typical choice for right wing hacks -- he has impressive credentials, but not anything related to the field he is critiquing; and he is a member and paid speaker for both right wing propaganda organs -- Cato Institute and the Heartland Institute. He's an ideologically motivated HACK, case closed!

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I have been getting sick and tired of oil-funded propaganda in corporate media presenting one story after another about so called experts who disagree with the consensus views on global warming. Personally, I don't care if this retired scientist is motivated by greed, ego, or political ideology. It may have been politics in the first place that got him included on that presidential panel. His personal qualifications...

...better equip him to understand climate scientist than James Lovelock. It's not just because physics is absolutely central to climate science, but because his work in solid state physics and biophysics involve the kind of indeterminacy and complex models we see in climate science. Certainly, nothing in his educational background qualifies him as an expert in any sense. But the same is true of Lovelock, only more so. Lovelock, however, took the time not only to research the issue but also (after obtaining his degree) worked in a directly related field and has since published on the climate. It could be that Giaever didn't bother to do any research, and is only concerned with politics. But his backgrond more than enables him to judge the research. And he is hardly the only nobel winner to to come out with a statement (or a book- Burton Richter, a nobel prize winning physicist whose field also has nothing to do with climate science, wrote a popular book Beyond Smoke and Mirrors in which he states that the science is settled and AGW is real, dangerous, and must be addressed) on the matter. To malign him as you did (particularly given how much you seem to respect Lovelock's views) is highly objectionable and it is just that kind of mentality (on both sides of the issue) which is making the problem worse.

so he is as "expert" an opinion as the more recent rocket scientists and engineers at, or more correctly, formerly at NASA,

Wrong. But it is certainly true that his statement is no more meaningful when it comes to the "scientific community." That's not the issue. You act as if the only people with an agenda are "deniers" when that utterly incorrect. Again, Richter is another nobel prize winner who didn't stop at making a public statement, but wrote an entire book (and not a technical, academic work, but a work intended for the public) on how real and dangerous AGW is, which may be short on the science side but lacks nothing when it comes to what you call "propaganda" when it is issued by "deniers". If the fact that the "right wing" is behind so much of the "denier" scientists, foundations, "propoganda", etc., is enough to write off any such research as "right-wing ideology" how does this not apply to "left-wing ideology" as well? You think that guys like Hansen or Jones are apolitical compared to people like Spencer? Everyone has biases. And in the case of climate science, the people who control what gets published in the journals, and which published articles are prominently discussed on websites like NASA or by the IPCC, are not "right-wingers." Quite the opposite.

 

[work in progress]

...better equip him to understand climate scientist than James Lovelock. It's not just because physics is absolutely central to climate science, but because his work in solid state physics and biophysics involve the kind of indeterminacy and complex models we see in climate science. Certainly, nothing in his educational background qualifies him as an expert in any sense. But the same is true of Lovelock, only more so. Lovelock, however, took the time not only to research the issue but also (after obtaining his degree) worked in a directly related field and has since published on the climate.

Lovelock at least has the credentials to qualify for the title - Polymath, I don't see anything similar in Giaever's writing, except that he retreads the same arguments and opinions of other climate change deniers. And I said from the beginning, I wasn't presenting James Lovelock as the authority on global warming, and in his own books he doesn't classify himself as a climate scientists, but rather, takes the data and analysis of other climate researchers and wants to know how it applies (or doesn't apply) to Gaia Theory...which so far, is still the only attempt anyone has made to try to propose an explanatory theory for WHY climates and environments change, instead of just noting that have done so after the fact! Specifically, I'm not aware of anyone else who has bothered to tackle the question of why Earth's early atmosphere was so apt to push up greenhouse gas levels, while in the last 2 billion years it has moved in the other direction over time...favouring carbon sequestration to very low levels that get surprisingly close to the threshholds that can support photosynthesis.

But, what really drew me back to Lovelock's writing and research, is that he was the first scientist I had encountered who seemed willing to express an uncomfortable truth out loud that no one else was: that the planet is already unsustainably overpopulated and natural resources are over-exploited. If the truth is a bleak future, I'd rather hear it than listen to a series of hopeful commentators talking about the importance of reducing greenhouse gases, recycling and slowing population growth.

It could be that Giaever didn't bother to do any research, and is only concerned with politics. But his backgrond more than enables him to judge the research. And he is hardly the only nobel winner to to come out with a statement (or a book- Burton Richter, a nobel prize winning physicist whose field also has nothing to do with climate science, wrote a popular book Beyond Smoke and Mirrors in which he states that the science is settled and AGW is real, dangerous, and must be addressed) on the matter. To malign him as you did (particularly given how much you seem to respect Lovelock's views) is highly objectionable and it is just that kind of mentality (on both sides of the issue) which is making the problem worse.

Wrong. But it is certainly true that his statement is no more meaningful when it comes to the "scientific community." That's not the issue. You act as if the only people with an agenda are "deniers" when that utterly incorrect. Again, Richter is another nobel prize winner who didn't stop at making a public statement, but wrote an entire book (and not a technical, academic work, but a work intended for the public) on how real and dangerous AGW is, which may be short on the science side but lacks nothing when it comes to what you call "propaganda" when it is issued by "deniers". If the fact that the "right wing" is behind so much of the "denier" scientists, foundations, "propoganda", etc., is enough to write off any such research as "right-wing ideology" how does this not apply to "left-wing ideology" as well? You think that guys like Hansen or Jones are apolitical compared to people like Spencer? Everyone has biases. And in the case of climate science, the people who control what gets published in the journals, and which published articles are prominently discussed on websites like NASA or by the IPCC, are not "right-wingers." Quite the opposite.

No, you are making a false equivalency argument here. The simple fact is that conservatives are authoritarian thinkers, while most liberals tend to be egalitarian. The difference between the authoritarian followers of a dogmatic movement and liberals was noted several years back in Robert Altemeyer's book: The Authoritarians, which consistently hammered home the point through survey analysis that the authoritarian thinker does not want uncertainty or complicated answers. They want simple answers, and answers that fit their existing ideology. Any science that threatens their ideology becomes suspect and is rejected. As we can see with the progression of opinion on global warming; conservatives were either indifferent or accepting of the science 10 to 20 years ago when much less was known and could be verified. It wasn't until they realized that solutions to increased greenhouse gas emissions would come at a price of ending their dogma of laissez-faire capitalism that the fight against climate change became identical to the fundamentalist fight against evolution.

And, the scientists like Michael Mann or James Hansen have been more careful about defining what they consider as likely vs. certain conclusions from the research. This is part of the reason why conservatives don't appreciate science in the first place -- it comes couched in equivocal language about probabilities, when they want certainties.

As for the other side...we could call the liberal or egalitarian thinker...I guess that was my set point all along, because I drifted towards acceptance of a lot of conservative and libertarian ideas from the late 80's throughout the 90's, because it seemed like they were correct. Since 9/11, and especially since the financial collapses that started five years ago, I've had to go back and rethink alot of things I previously believed. And the more I read about the combined problems of climate change, resource scarcities, and overpopulation, the more convinced I became that capitalism in its present form has to be abolished, or there will be nobody on planet earth in 200 years. Rather than rejecting the science, the science has turned me into a radical, and sent me from the right to the far left of the political spectrum....and it doesn't seem to me that it's a journey that many people are willing to take.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Lovelock at least has the credentials to qualify for the title - Polymath, I don't see anything similar in Giaever's writing, except that he retreads the same arguments and opinions of other climate change deniers.

That's because unlike Lovelock, Giaever hasn't spent a whole lot of time publishing and promoting views outside of his field. He has certain made his opinions known, and he has said (in brief) the reasons for them.

And I said from the beginning, I wasn't presenting James Lovelock as the authority on global warming,

That's true. But he is 1) older than Giaever whom you referred to as an "old fool" 2) lacks an educational background in a field (like physics or statistics or engineering or something similar) which is directly related to climate science and 3) promotes views also rejected by mainstream science. Yet you didn't malign him the way you did Giaever; in fact, you support his views.

but rather, takes the data and analysis of other climate researchers and wants to know how it applies (or doesn't apply) to Gaia Theory...which so far, is still the only attempt anyone has made to try to propose an explanatory theory for WHY climates and environments change

This is simply wrong. The climate is a dynamical system far from thermodynamic equilibrium. It MUST change, and every scientific climate model in existence has an explanatory theory as to what causes it to.

Specifically, I'm not aware of anyone else who has bothered to tackle the question of why Earth's early atmosphere was so apt to push up greenhouse gas levels, while in the last 2 billion years it has moved in the other direction over time...favouring carbon sequestration to very low levels that get surprisingly close to the threshholds that can support photosynthesis.

There is a massive amount of research on these issues. In fact, it's now an established field: paleoclimatology.

But, what really drew me back to Lovelock's writing and research, is that he was the first scientist I had encountered who seemed willing to express an uncomfortable truth out loud that no one else was: that the planet is already unsustainably overpopulated and natural resources are over-exploited.

Actually he's just one of many. The first was Malthus who expressed this in the 18th century. We've had scientists predicting the eminent end of civilization as we know it due to overpopulation and the exploitation of natural resources ever since. So far, every single prediction has proved wrong.

No, you are making a false equivalency argument here. The simple fact is that conservatives are authoritarian thinkers, while most liberals tend to be egalitarian.

Which, if true, is meaningless here. The left tends to favor big government, and the right tends not to, giving each political reasons for government intervention when it comes to social and economic policy. Likewise, the left tends to be more associated with environmental activism, giving yet another reason for bias.

The difference between the authoritarian followers of a dogmatic movement and liberals was noted several years back in Robert Altemeyer's book: The Authoritarians,

Which was just about as statistically and methodologically sound as the racist The Bell Curve.

Any science that threatens their ideology becomes suspect and is rejected.

Which describes very accurately the reaction from many on the left to every peer-reviewed, scientific study conducted which undermines mainstream AGW theory. The scientists get maligned, they are accused of being paid off by "big oil" or of shoddy research, while shoddy climate research which supports AGW is published and then ends up having to be withdrawn or amended (to the embarassment of the scientists, the journal, and even the IPCC). Of course, the right simply accuses the the whole climate science community (accept for the minority dissenters) of supporting a theory simply for political ideological reasons. But both sides have plenty of biases to go around.


As we can see with the progression of opinion on global warming; conservatives were either indifferent or accepting of the science 10 to 20 years ago when much less was known and could be verified. It wasn't until they realized that solutions to increased greenhouse gas emissions would come at a price of ending their dogma of laissez-faire capitalism that the fight against climate change became identical to the fundamentalist fight against evolution.

And, the scientists like Michael Mann or James Hansen have been more careful about defining what they consider as likely vs. certain conclusions from the research.

Michael Mann published two studies which were used by the IPCC, only to be pulled from the report and subject to two seperate hearings which found that at the very least his analysis was flawed (and subsequent research has failed to reproduce his results). And why did neither the journal which published his work, nor the IPCC which initially included it in their report, catch the errors in this "careful analysis?" What he did was provide "a very sloppy piece of work" (to quote what Tom Wigely, a big name AGW proponent said privately in an email), not a "careful" analysis.

More importantly, however, James Hansens "predictions" have (since his original big announcement in 1988) continually been wrong.

This is part of the reason why conservatives don't appreciate science in the first place -- it comes couched in equivocal language about probabilities, when they want certainties.

Certainties like "the science is settled!" ?

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

Wow, I take a few weeks off to do some writing and interest in the environmental apocalypse dies off? What's up with that?

So this articles illustrates that climate change occurred even before man had the ability to drastically impact it. What can we learn from it?

Harappans may have lived, died by monsoon

Climate change may have determined the fate of the ancient world’s most expansive civilization. A new study suggests that the waning of monsoons spurred both the rise and fall of the Harappans, who flourished in the floodplains of the Indus Valley thousands of years ago.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Wow, I take a few weeks off to do some writing and interest in the environmental apocalypse dies off? What's up with that?

So this articles illustrates that climate change occurred even before man had the ability to drastically impact it. What can we learn from it?

That climate change occured even before man had the ability to drastically impact it. And nothing more with respect to climate change today.

 

[painted wolf]

I know it's totally anecdotal... but I'm currently sitting though another severe thunderstorm. I can't remember any time when there has been so many really dangerous storms. Last year was bad and it looks like this year isn't going to be any better.

We had two tornado warning just today... and New Hampshire isn't generally known for tornadoes. (not that we don't have them, but they are uncommon.)

wa:do

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

I know it's totally anecdotal... but I'm currently sitting though another severe thunderstorm. I can't remember any time when there has been so many really dangerous storms. Last year was bad and it looks like this year isn't going to be any better.

We had two tornado warning just today... and New Hampshire isn't generally known for tornadoes. (not that we don't have them, but they are uncommon.)

wa:do

Not to mention a couple of early Hurricanes this season too.

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

That climate change occured even before man had the ability to drastically impact it. And nothing more with respect to climate change today.

Nothing else huh? Not even a wake up call for planning ahead? The Indus civilization was not prepared for climate change and it was destroyed. Will we wait to be destroyed as well or is it possible to predict the changes and make plans for the future? Try thinking outside the box.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Nothing else huh? Not even a wake up call for planning ahead?

We got the "wake-up call" for planning ahead in terms of climate in 1988. The issue is what to do. We know how drastic climate changes can effect life on the planet. But that doesn't get us very far.

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

We got the "wake-up call" for planning ahead in terms of climate in 1988. The issue is what to do. We know how drastic climate changes can effect life on the planet. But that doesn't get us very far.

Exactly right. Personally, I think the type of planning needed is so politically and morally distasteful that everyone is shying away from it. As our environment changes there will have to be some changes in how and where we live as a race. Typical bury your head in the sand approach.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Personally, I think the type of planning needed is so politically and morally distasteful that everyone is shying away from it. As our environment changes there will have to be some changes in how and where we live as a race. Typical bury your head in the sand approach.

Actually, I think equally problematic is an "we have to act now and do X" even if we aren't really sure what "X" will do, positive or negative. Politics influences both. The big issue is the politicizing of the science and research. Scientists are loathe to share data and source code because they are afraid that small, unimportant errors will be used to undermine their entire work. Theories become entrenched even when there is ample evidence that something about them is wrong. Scientists are accused of being mouthpieces for enviornmental, governmental, or industrial/corporate groups and attacked on this basis rather than for their research. There is extreme pressure for research to have results, rather than that the results be sound. Most, if not all, of these problems are always a part of scientific research, but the more political the issue, the more pronounced they are.

 

[LongGe123]

Regardless of how much we have to do with global warming, we should do more to be green and eco-friendly. Even if it was discovered that our activities had nothing to do with it, who cares? It's no reason not to pursue renewable energy, cleaner transport, greater conservation etc. That's what annoys me about skeptics on this issue - they seem to think that if we're not responsible for global warming, that gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want!

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It's no reason not to pursue renewable energy, cleaner transport, greater conservation etc.

Absolutely. However, there are good methods and bad methods. For example, I happen to think that nuclear power is a good idea, but nobody wants one in their backyard, so no new ones are built, despite the capacity for an increase in efficacy and safety. Arguably, not building more is better (there are pros and cons and experts on both sides) but what isn't arguable is how much we could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by using nuclear power. Yet we don't. It's a risks/benefits issue.

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

EARTH APPROACHING A TIPPING POINT: NEW STUDY ON THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET

Is the biosphere nearing a ‘tipping point’? A new study written by over 20 major scientists, published in Nature this month, suggests that irreversible, planet-scale biological changes are plausible– and probably likely– unless society makes significant changes.

Personally, I think the tipping point is irrelevant. Global society will never come to a universally agree method of environmental behavior, especially to a level that would curb or reverse climate change. We need to do more studies to predict the level of change and the impact that change will have on individual regions, then make plans for dealing with those changes. While that isn't likely to happen either, it is at least within the realm of possibility.

 

[Alceste]

EARTH APPROACHING A TIPPING POINT: NEW STUDY ON THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET



Personally, I think the tipping point is irrelevant. Global society will never come to a universally agree method of environmental behavior, especially to a level that would curb or reverse climate change. We need to do more studies to predict the level of change and the impact that change will have on individual regions, then make plans for dealing with those changes. While that isn't likely to happen either, it is at least within the realm of possibility.

That kind of research does happen. I read a book called Six Degrees that was filled with references, and painted a general picture of the kind of environmental changes we can expect for each additional degree of warming.

I also read Gwynne Dyer's book, Climate Wars, in which he bases an assortment of predictions on the possible geopolitical consequences of these changes (IOW, where the wars will be and what they will be fighting about). It's speculative, but his past analyses have been spot on most of the time, so I give his opinion a lot of weight.

The take home message I got was that wherever we live in the world, local communities will have to become more independent and resilient, growing their own food and producing their own energy. We will not be able to rely on the global distribution network of monoculture crops for much longer. That system is cumbersome, complex and too slow to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Whatever food drought, fires and flooding don't rob from us, the collapse of the credit that sustains the shipping industry, soaring oil prices and wars will.

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

That kind of research does happen.

Oh I know that the research happens, its the contingency planning that falls to the wayside. Some of those wars that are probably going to happen could possibly be avoided with some prior planning. I consider it very unlikely but still more possible than actually reversing climate change.

I check into those books you mentioned. Thanks.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

EARTH APPROACHING A TIPPING POINT: NEW STUDY ON THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET


Is the biosphere nearing a ‘tipping point’? A new study written by over 20 major scientists, published in Nature this month, suggests that irreversible, planet-scale biological changes are plausible– and probably likely– unless society makes significant changes

Is the biosphere nearing a ‘tipping point’? A new study written by over 20 major scientists, published in Nature this month, suggests that irreversible, planet-scale biological changes are plausible– and probably likely– unless society makes significant changes.

This is an example of one of the major impediments to finding and implementing solutions: sensationalist news/reports/propaganda. Either climate scientists are all fear-mongering left-wing radicals and global warming is a myth, or the science is settled and it's an unmitigated disaster (and anybody who says differently has not scientific integrity). There was no "new study" written by "over 20 major scientists." For those interested, I've uploaded the entire Nature paper here. It's a review that relies heavily on dynamical systems modeling, a brief review current studies in various areas of environmental sciences, and climate history. No studies/research was conducted, no models (local or global) are either developed or even discussed, and the only conclusion is "given that dynamical systems often have critical bifurcation points or thresholds at which their phase space changes abruptly (often chaotically) this might happen on Earth at some point soon". Well, great. How is that news? Luckily, despite the fact that the Earth is and has almost always been a complex system far from thermodynamical equilibrium, if it was filled with chaotic repellers or similar points at which the system drifted off into chaos rather than oscillations, attractors, fixed points, periodic or eventually periodic points, than hominids would probably never have evolved at all. But we also know that
1) There have been drastic climate changes in the past (as the Nature paper notes), so such state shifts are possible and
2) Never before has any single species spread as far over the earth, altering as much of the landscape and emitting enormous amoungs of various elements, as humans during the last 100+ years.

Clearly, this is a serious issue. But the plethora of sensationalist or similar reports and articles bombarding the public does nothing other than obscure the state of research and encourage political and ideological rifts. It's depressing.

We need to do more studies to predict the level of change and the impact that change will have on individual regions, then make plans for dealing with those changes.

We can't. Or at least, we can't (and haven't) yet. First, local conditions are subject to all sorts of variables which don't actually matter. For example, the difference in temperature increase over the past century between a major city in the US and a smaller suburb or town a few miles away is enormous, but it has nothing to do with climate change. What matters (as far as climate and emissions) is what is happening in the atmosphere, not in localized regions. Second, so far all of our models are pretty poor at predicting what will happen. Nonlinear modeling is pretty much in its infancy, and the climate is about the most complex example of a dynamical system we know of. Predicting effects isn't the way to go (not that we shouldn't try, but we don't want to create such models and then depend on them when our track record is so poor). What we should do is start putting in place economically feasible and realistic subsitutes for oil and coal. Nuclear power is a good place to start. It may not work in the long run, because at the moment we have no good way of dealing with (let alone recycling) the waste, but at least it can dramatically curb emission levels while other technologies are developed or improved.

 

[painted wolf]

I think everyone is waiting for a single big "solution" to the problem as well... when a plurality of smaller ones can make a major impact right now.

For example my family of three has managed to cut our electricity consumption down to about 11 kWh per day which is about the same amount that the average individual in the US uses. I'm not saying everyone needs to live like we do, but it's amazing what a few small changes can accomplish when carried out en mass.

Nor do I think that small changes only will fix the problem... but it's a workable start that can help buy a little more time for bigger changes to happen and take effect.
wa:do

 

[work in progress]

That kind of research does happen. I read a book called Six Degrees that was filled with references, and painted a general picture of the kind of environmental changes we can expect for each additional degree of warming.

I haven't read that book, but from what I've heard previously, 6 degrees of warming means an ice-free world with sea levels about 240 feet higher than present...which would mean a lot less land area available. Modern agriculture would be a thing of the past as there would be no such thing as stable, reliable weather patterns. That would mean a rapid dieoff of our present oversized population. Considering the ensuing wars, disease epidemics, it's a good chance that the human race could end up so weakened and degraded that the survivors would dwindle down to extinction. And what if some of the thousands of nukes still out there were unleashed?

I also read Gwynne Dyer's book, Climate Wars, in which he bases an assortment of predictions on the possible geopolitical consequences of these changes (IOW, where the wars will be and what they will be fighting about). It's speculative, but his past analyses have been spot on most of the time, so I give his opinion a lot of weight.

Gwynne Dyer is especially concerned about worsening environmental conditions on the Indian Subcontinent, since the land is shared by two large populations that both have nuclear weapons. Both Pakistan and India are depleting available sources of water and have been in conflict since their origins over control of the Kashmir...where the Ganges and other rivers begin from the runoff of Himalayan glaciers. What happens when there long running water disputes turn desperate?

Gwynne Dyer claimed that his Bush Administration sources took climate change seriously, and I wish he had followed up the paradox between the Bush public policy and private discussions by questioning their motives. They obviously did not want to take action to support carbon taxes or even cap and trade schemes, so were they just allowing a catastrophe to occur through their inaction, or was their reactionary strategy part of a deliberate campaign to encourage mass death and destruction, and have plans that an elite of wealthy and well-connected people will be among the survivors.

The take home message I got was that wherever we live in the world, local communities will have to become more independent and resilient, growing their own food and producing their own energy. We will not be able to rely on the global distribution network of monoculture crops for much longer. That system is cumbersome, complex and too slow to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Whatever food drought, fires and flooding don't rob from us, the collapse of the credit that sustains the shipping industry, soaring oil prices and wars will.

One of the most likely prognostications for the future I've seen, comes from former CIBC economist - Jeff Rubin, who forsees a future where civilization gradually winds down in the same pattern that it began at the beginning of the age of industrialization. Rubin says we have to factor in the enormous extraction of natural resources during the last 150 years, that make carrying on our present course impossible. Metals, minerals and carbon-based energy sources are all declining in quality, and require more energy for extraction and more waste products left from production. The first casualty Rubin sees of rising energy costs is globalization...Yeah:trampo::bounce As energy costs rise, it becomes more and more costly to produce in China and ship all over the world...even using slave labour! And rising energy prices will make private automobiles disappear off the road again, except for the very wealthy...the first people who were able to afford cars at the turn of the last century.

All in all, it's easy to see how the future will end up looking like the past, as more and more commercial activity has to become re-localized. The future could unwind smoothly if everyone was cooperative....and that's the big problem! As Gwynne Dyer, Christian Parenti, and many other analysts of wars and civil strife have noted, when food becomes scarce, neighbour starts turning on neighbour, and plundering and taking from others. It's hard to say where would be a safe place ahead of such a crisis, since the quite, peaceful idyllic community with plenty of food will be the first place raided as more societies turn into failed states, and just like after the fall of Rome, refugees start wandering out into the countryside looking for food.