Credit: iStockphoto/Tobias Helbig
Humanity is facing a perfect storm: a confluence of forces we've never encountered before. Our population continues to grow at the same time as we're seeing strains on global food supply, increasing water scarcity, concerns about energy security and the paranoia and cost that the fear of increased terrorism brings.
As if that weren't enough, this is all happening at the same time as we're trying to deal with the accelerating effects of climate change.
World population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9 billion by 2050. That's a 30 per cent increase, and it's going to place enormous pressures on an already buckling system – on our established industrial and agricultural infrastructure, and on the ecological services provided by nature, upon which all of us rely.
The carbon crisis
Even now we're having trouble dealing with the booming demand for more food, more water, more oil, more land – and climate change is only going to make these resources increasingly scarce over the next 40 years.
It's distressing to admit, but no matter what we do today, the climate is going to get hotter and nastier and more unpredictable in the next few decades – that's even if we shut down all coal-fired power stations tomorrow and ban all cars from our roads.
Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas that stays active in the atmosphere for 400 years, trapping heat close to the Earth and further warming our world. Some of the CO2 still warming our planet today was generated when Galileo first turned a telescope towards the heavens.
And every year, our growing populations, with their growing taste for more energy for their plasma screens and air conditioners, and the resulting dramatic increases in the burning of coal, oil and natural gas – as well as deforestation and land-clearing – are releasing billions upon billions more tonnes of CO2.
It's a recipe for disaster. People know this – despite a disinformation campaign by climate change deniers that's the most concerted and effective since the tobacco lobby tried to make us all believe smoking didn't cause lung cancer.
Problem of paralysis
Just about everyone now accepts that global warming is real, and largely caused by human activity (even certain Vice-Presidential candidates). Recent polls show that 80 per cent of Britons are very concerned about climate change, while 75 per cent of Americans believe global warming can only be reduced if individuals change their lifestyles.
So why aren't we doing more? Because people are increasingly paralysed by the enormity of the problem.
One socio-economic impact of climate change is that citizens, governments and corporations have begun to believe that it's all too hard and nothing can really be done. This response is like standing on train tracks being mesmerised by an approaching train while doing nothing to get out of the way.
Fear-mongering.
You sound like a cheerleader for that scientific moron Al Gore. Next you'll want to ban photosynthesis.
We need a world infrastructure development program with the most advanced science and technology as a driver to get the physical economy functioning. That means building advanced nuclear plants and a crash program to develop fusion; high-speed rail and maglev systems around the globe; advanced agriculture to feed a growing world.
FDR brought the United States out of depression to be an industrial powerhouse in a few short years. We can do it again.
P.S. Temperatures have been cooling for the past 10 years.
Can tell from your language
Can tell from your language that it will be a waste of time trying to convince you with data. But I'm also reticent to have your claims posted here unchallenged.
Earth's climate is complex and influenced by many things, particularly changes in its orbit, volcanic eruptions, and changes in the energy emitted from the Sun. We have experienced warm and cold periods in the past without CO2 emissions from humans. The ice ages are a good example.
Over the several hundred thousand years covered by the ice core record, temperature changes were primarily driven by changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, which in turn drove changes in CO2. Since the Industrial Revolution, CO2 concentrations have increased by 30% due because to human-induced emissions from fossil fuels.
The bottom line is that temperature and CO2 concentrations are linked. In recent ice ages, natural changes in the climate, such as those due to orbit changes, led to cooling of the climate system. This caused a fall in CO2 concentrations which weakened the greenhouse effect and amplified the cooling. Now the link between temperature and CO2 is working in the opposite direction - Human-induced increases in CO2 are driving the greenhouse effect and amplifying the recent warming.
There is no cooling over the past decade - the hottest 11 years on record have all been in the last 13. This is also what the long term record shows.
There will be some cooling in the years ahead, maybe even a few years in succession; this will be short term variability which will not overcome the long-term trend (which is clear in the ice record stretching back 700,000 years). When cooling does occur, it will not mean global warming has stopped - any more than the last couple of weeks of mayhem on financial markets mean the financial system is broken.
What climate change deniers like you cannot understand is that debating data with pithy, dismissive commentary has no effect on the data. In science, what wins is not debating flourishes or witty put-downs: it's facts vs facts. And in that battle of wits, you are unarmed.
Wilson da Silva
Editor-in-Chief
I apologize but with this
I apologize but with this issue of global warming being thrown around when there is a multi-billion war or two going on, when banks and other financial institutions do whatever they please without regard to anything, when medical insurance companies steal outright from everybody, when other much more urgent pollution issues need to be tackled (such as nuclear waste disposal), when politicians are tools of the lobbys in Washington and there is worldwide dissatisfaction with how the USA conducts its foreign policies, when all that is going on and more, we the public, are mercilessly served a dose of weather discussions by the media. I can only call global warming a global straw man.
If scientists are truly that worried about pollution affecting the ozone layer, why do they continuously invent gadgets to be manufactured in China under conditions detrimental to saving it? And why are scientists advocating the general use of said inventions? Like computers.
And then why are they getting into battles of wit either pro or against their own frankensteins?
Once the issue of global warming and such gets de-politicized, then I will take it seriously.
Respectfully,
Jonas Thadeus.
Try thinking
Mr. Thadeus,
I would like to know where your opinions lye when fresh water shortages become more frequent. Much of the world's fresh water supply is retrieved from glacial melt. If they disappear as does the majority of humanity's water supply. Much of the prehistoric aquifers in the central and western United States are rapidly being emptied (by prehistoric I mean that they take as long to develop as coal, oil, or natural gas). Southern California is importing fresh water from Northern California via any means possible, and many major rivers have been diverted and irrigated to supply water to major (mostly desert) cities. The threat of water shortage for our society and others is very real. This is just one aspect of a possible increase in global climate. And according to geologic data we are exiting an ice age and entering a climate similar to those in the past that have caused major mass extinctions. So if you think the temperatures are hot in central Africa as of now, please look to the future because according to scientific data we have a long time until world temperatures peak, plateau, and possibly decline, millions of years. And if humanity runs out of water I am positive that many people will neglect to assign importance to things such as insurance policies or mortgage crises, and perhaps divert their attention to the basic human necessities, maybe even come around to environmental protection. Consider that without the soil and other geologic and biotic cycles working as they are your life would not be supported. This is as much your problem as it is my own.
Thanks.
Dear Sir, To begin with, let
Dear Sir,
To begin with, let me thank you for your prompt reply. I apologize in advance if my reply is too long. The issue with the potable water supply around the globe is not new - as witnessed by worldwide conflicts which have been always about resources, especially water. The issues with drinking water have been around for millenia, as the historical record can confirm; the conquering Roman Armies used to set up their barracks upstream from a village, meaning the villagers would end up with polluted water to drink and to cook with. I find it hard to believe humanity will run out of water unless there is an alien invasion that takes most of the water away into outer space, sir.The current mis-use of water resources is what is the issue. Assuming you have it correctly; that glaciers are melting at an unparalled rate, then isn't the volume of water available increasing instead of decreasing? Glaciers don't always directly melt in the oceans, they melt and make rivers bigger, increase supply of (non-salt) water to underground aquifers and increase the size of lakes. I could argue that intensive cattle growing is actually increasing the size of the desert in the Sahara region and that corruption and war make it harder for everybody to make a living (and to administrate their resources wisely)in the crushing majority of the african continent, and that unwise administration, as you put it so well, is the cause of the current California difficulties.
The multi-billion dollar interests for the sake of a minority in the nation are drying up the country.Is it not correct that the Earths' weather has fluctuated between ice ages and desert ages and that, as far as the geological record has shown us, life on Earth has survived, each time with new species arising from tough conditions, including our own, even in the face of mass extinction?I would think some in the scientific community would have been a little more pro-active in water resource admnistration than they have been instead of blaming the weather for its misuse, with so much technologically originated pollution destroying the environment, even with the best of intentions.I suspect because it is harder to tackle the social and political aspects that worldwide water administration involves than it is to check incoming data from a satellite and extrapolate the end of Mankind as we know it. Prophecy should not be the realm of the scientist but here we are, with highly conflicting data and someones' doctoral thesis being waved as the Truth, giving the time till Doomsday, with anedoctal means to reverse "The Evil"... but spewing forth more "Evil" machines and chemical concoctions that render potable water undrinkable.In the civilized world, basic necessities are met but squandered (the example of creating unsustainable cities and green golf courses in the desert in the USA is absolutely stupid), but countries struggling to fight off extreme poverty and where water consumption isn't nearly as high, face extreme water shortages even when monsoon rains fall every year. Even richer countries and cities, like Dubai, face water shortages because they were (are being) built in the middle of the desert, surrounded by sand dunes.The agricultural soil available for farming is being taken over by cities, not global warming. Cairo today is a monstrous city that has devoured the best known fertile soil in history and cities around the US are growing in tremendously fertile land such as in the Pacific Nortwest. European cities have swallowed vast areas of arable land and the same has happened in Asia. South American cities, when they are large, they are tremendously large, with water supply issues that are caused by innefective and many times, innexistent plumbing and sewage grids and South America has plenty of water to go around in their rivers, and rainfall. I believe a lack of realism is shown by over-emphasizing Global Warming but not giving enough attention to administration of water resources.
Thank you very much for your attention and hope the best for us all.
Heat
I keep my car cool with a sun reflector INSIDE the windscreen.
Reflectors on Earth would do the same thing.They do not need to be in space.
The underside could be black and would be pointed upwards at night.
If the night sky is clear then the black reflector surface soon falls in temperature to cooler than the dew point.Water condenses on the surface
and can be used to grow plants (in the desert).
There are easy fixes for most of the problems.
Many solutions exist, it is
Many solutions exist, it is a shame people desire to remain on the beaten path. Even computers parts are being made out of biodegradable materials to help eliminate the threat of e-waste.
Maybe because we don't see
Maybe because we don't see the pollution caused because the old computers are taken apart in China and far away from our eyes.
a reader
I would like to know what Mr. da Silva really understands and/or published about climate change. Is he an expert in the field or a journalist who, most likely, has his sources in the well oiled academia machine of "scientific consensus".
Statements like "the climate is going to be less predictable in the future" are vague and meaningless. Is it more predictable now? What, exactly, are the parameters that are going to make it less predictable in the future? If it is so, what is the validity of current climate models in predicting temperature and CO2 concentrations in a 100 years?
Moreover, the simple fact that Mr. Silva refers to a commenter as a "denier" reveals where he is coming from.
I suggest Mr. Silva adds a disclaimer below his columns:
"I am a believer"
the reality is ...
I am 45 years old and i have 4 young children. I know the climate is changing and that normal weather patterns are no longer applicable to the world in which we live. 9 billion people by 2050 is an unsustainable population when half of the worlds population already lives in poverty without food, water, sanitation, health care. this is a global horror scenario. the immediate future looks incredibly dismal as 1st world countries deflect our attention from what awaits us as we fight wars and protect our financial bottom line. we live in a way that my parents could never have imagined. Its not going to last forever. and we wont be returning to the 'good old days' either when we had less, and lived more. Millions and millions and millions of people are likely to die through the knock on effects of climate change - no rain, no crops, dwindling availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, contaminated oceans, contaminated air, rampant speading of disease, increased volcanic / tectonic activity.
Acting now, is no longer going to halt this process. Acting now will help humanity to adapt before our opportunity to adapt is no longer an option. People are dying now, in huge numbers. It will be our turn soon enough. No country has immunity in this unstoppable process. Turning a blind eye is not going to save anyone. WE can talk about the wild weather all we want, but its just a symptom of a problem we cannot and will not be able to circumvent for many many many generations.
seriously susan