We're ruining Earth, scientists warn

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Fabulous

Guest
Messages
91
Reaction score
0
Location
Melbourne Australia
# of dives
50 - 99
DROUGHTS will be longer, flooding rains will be rarer but heavier. Cyclones will hit harder. Violent storms and extreme heatwaves will strike more frequently. Evaporation will suck up scarce inland water. Sea levels will creep up half a metre. Oceans will be so acidic that in some places shells and reefs will dissolve.

And humanity, not nature, will be to blame.

This is the assessment of the state of the planet according to what is possibly the most reviewed document in history.

Containing contributions from 2500 scientists, citing 6000 reports and reviewed by 750 experts operating under a United Nations banner, the first part of the report will be released on Friday after line-by-line consensus is reached on its conclusions.

The most important paragraph in the 1200-page report is the strength of the scientific statement on the question that has most inflamed climate change sceptics — what is driving global warming — according to internationally recognised climate expert Dr Graeme Pearman, a former CSIRO chief of atmospheric research.

"It makes a much stronger statement about unequivocal evidence of air and ocean temperature rises, of the melting of snow and ice and the raising of sea levels, and that the effect is from human activities," he said. The report says the human influence on climate is at least five times that of any natural variation of the sun.

"Everyone realises that climate has varied in the geological past for a number of reasons, and one of them is that the output of the sun is not constant," Dr Pearman said. "But this report looks seriously at the evidence for that being the cause of this current warming, and is quite strong that if there is a solar influence, it is only a small part."

Dr Pearman has just completed his own review of the draft fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report largely confirms findings outlined in the third assessment, in 2001, but improvements in the science have produced a more authoritative, and frequently bleaker, document to guide policymakers around the world.

The last report built projections mainly on the basis of two climate models; this paper cites results from 21 models. They allow new insight into processes such as how the carbon cycle and climate change interact.

"When you release carbon dioxide, how does it get cycled into the atmosphere, the oceans, and the living plants and animals of the earth? One of the unanimous agreements in this is that the efficiency with which the earth can take up carbon dioxide is likely to decrease in coming decades.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/were-ruining-earth-scientists/2007/01/26/1169788693774.html


Food for thought for those with "their head in the sand". (Read Global Warming thread)
 
:popcorn:



http://www.intellicast.com/DrDewpoint/Library/1210/
http://www.canadafreepress.com/global-warming.htm
http://www.sitewave.net/news/
http://edeldoug.blogs.com/thoughts_rants_raves_and_/2005/09/the_whole_globa.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/12/12/publiceye/entry2250283.shtml



Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years (Paperback)
by Dennis T. Avery, S. Fred Singer

Book Description
Singer and Avery present in popular language supported by in-depth scientific evidence the compelling concept that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming explains why we're warming, why it's not very dangerous, and why we can't stop it anyway.

http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Every-Years/dp/0742551172

Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (Paperback)
by Patrick J. Michaels

Book Description
Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming convincingly demonstrates the remarkable differences between what we commonly read about global warming and what is really happening. Nine chapters describe major problems with computer simulations of future climate that are the basis for wrenching policies being proposed by world leaders. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a new appreciation of the complexity of the climate issue and will question the need for expensive policies that are likely to have little or no detectable effect on the planet's temperature

http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Con...0742549232/ref=pd_sim_b_1/104-5890092-1668737



Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Hardcover)
by Patrick J. Michaels

From Publishers Weekly
This spirited critique challenges the conventional doom saying about global warming. Climatologist Michaels acknowledges that the earth is warming because of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but he insists that the warming will probably be modest and that nature and humanity will easily adjust to it. Writing in a lucid, engaging style supported by a mountain of data, he debunks such recent scare stories as melting ice caps and glaciers, intensifying storms and droughts, species die-offs and a Day After Tomorrow–style ice age. He argues that researchers and reporters mistakenly ascribe normal fluctuations in local weather to global warming and commonly ignore the facts (reports that the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is being submerged by rising sea levels, for example, ignored research demonstrating that sea levels in that region have actually been falling). Michaels, who is a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, sometimes allows his own agenda to intrude. Advocates of the precautionary principle will note that he fails to demonstrate his claim that "there is no known, feasible policy that can stop or even slow these climate changes." And while he chalks up global warming alarmism to an unholy alliance of climatologists hungry for grants and media sensationalism, his remedy for biased science is not better science but a "wider source of bias" in the form of more funding of climatology by the fossil fuel industry. He also calls for the abolition of academic tenure—a crushing blow against an independent professorate that libertarians and their allies in the world of academia view as the intellectual wellspring of the regulatory state. Nonetheless, Michaels’s challenge to global warming orthodoxy should invigorate the debate over climate change.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
An eminently readable and often humorous critique, Meltdown documents hundreds of exaggerations from scientists, politicians and the media, and ties them together with the common thread of rational self-interest.
 
This is news?

Seriously, why some people (especially in my country) can't face consensus (not to mention facts) amazes (and disheartens) me.
 
Patrick Michaels
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Patrick J. Michaels (born c. 1942?) is a Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. He has been the State Climatologist for Virginia since 1980 [1] although lately there has been some confusion over the status of this role [2].

His professional specialty was the influence of climate on agriculture. Although Michaels agrees with the basics of greenhouse theory and acknowledges a warming earth, he is a well known global warming skeptic. Michaels contends that the changes will be minor not catastrophic and even beneficial in many cases. He has written extensively on this topic for the mass media and for publications such as Regulation[3].

He is a fellow of the Cato Institute and edits the World Climate Report, published by the Western Fuels Association through WFA's Greening Earth Society. He has received substantial financial support from the energy industry. His work has been published in Climate Research, Climatic Change and Geophysical Research Letters. He is the author of several books including: Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming, 1992, Satanic Gases, as coauthor 2002, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media, published by the Cato Institute, 2004, and Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming as editor and coauthor, 2005.
 

Back
Top Bottom