Vision of the Future
The UN Framework on Climate Change just finished their meeting. It appears the biggest danger will be for the huge part of humanity that lives near sea level or major river basins (like the people trying to move about in Venice yesterday).
“We have projected that the number of people living in severely stressed river basins will increase from 1.4 to 1.6 billion in 1995 to 4.3-6.9 billion in 2050. That’s almost the majority of humanity.
“Roughly 20 to 30 percent species assessed will be at increasingly high risk of extinction as global temperatures exceed two to three degrees Centigrade (3.6-5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
“Abrupt and irreversible changes are possible, such as the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic icesheets,” leading to a rise in sea levels measurable in metres, or many feet, he said.
“For Greenland, the temperature threshold for breakdown is estimated at about 1.1 to 3.8 degrees Celsius (2.0-6.8 F) above today’s global average level. We’re very close to that.”
From what I’ve read there will be lots more salt water and lots less potable water. Not a good thing for a whole lot of folks.
The NIA assessment mentions some seriously bad options as the warming continues – beyond losing Venice, a real catastrophe in and of itself. Minor things like wars…
At least they [wars] are ok at population control according to Malthus. I’m not sure we want to go there though.
I’ve some friends who are just returning from an extended time in the Antarctic area and they say the changes are very noticeable from even their first trip, only a few years ago. Kind of scary stuff!
From what I’ve read there will be lots more salt water and lots less potable water. Not a good thing for a whole lot of folks.
The NIA assessment mentions some seriously bad options as the warming continues – beyond losing Venice, a real catastrophe in and of itself. Minor things like wars…
At least they [wars] are ok at population control according to Malthus. I’m not sure we want to go there though.
I’ve some friends who are just returning from an extended time in the Antarctic area and they say the changes are very noticeable from even their first trip, only a few years ago. Kind of scary stuff!
Ditto on Antarctica from my pal Henry Kaiser who is now the senior under ice shelf SCUBA diver/camera man of the American mission there. Also there are major funding cutbacks and some really dumb “private contractor” logistical decisions making life more difficult for those who go down there. Things like six to a room bunking, but instead of three upper/lower bunk beds, the contractor now insists on all six mattresses being down low so nobody will fall out of bed at night…which never happened. So you’ve got a bed room with no room for personal lockers, no floor space, and all your stuff has to go under your bed. Just unpleasant. They need a good ex-submariner commander running the place.
Ditto on Antarctica from my pal Henry Kaiser who is now the senior under ice shelf SCUBA diver/camera man of the American mission there. Also there are major funding cutbacks and some really dumb “private contractor” logistical decisions making life more difficult for those who go down there. Things like six to a room bunking, but instead of three upper/lower bunk beds, the contractor now insists on all six mattresses being down low so nobody will fall out of bed at night…which never happened. So you’ve got a bed room with no room for personal lockers, no floor space, and all your stuff has to go under your bed. Just unpleasant. They need a good ex-submariner commander running the place.
Not sure if the sub-mariner would do well with all that oxygen – none pressurized and recycled – you know free air. Too much living on the faux air and it does funny things to the brain
!
Not sure if the sub-mariner would do well with all that oxygen – none pressurized and recycled – you know free air. Too much living on the faux air and it does funny things to the brain
!
Well I’ll admit, Rick: the truth is I’ll never play well enough to merit one of your instruments, but if I try hard enough I might someday make the shape-up for one of your friend Henry’s teams. I’ve been at it for 35 years, but in that line experience is nothing compared to spirit, imagination and intrepidity, all of which he obviously has in spades. Godspeed him, your friend Henry Kaiser.
Well I’ll admit, Rick: the truth is I’ll never play well enough to merit one of your instruments, but if I try hard enough I might someday make the shape-up for one of your friend Henry’s teams. I’ve been at it for 35 years, but in that line experience is nothing compared to spirit, imagination and intrepidity, all of which he obviously has in spades. Godspeed him, your friend Henry Kaiser.
Rick, I’ll take Hugo’s, then.
Rick, I’ll take Hugo’s, then.
You dirty rat, you take the cold air floorward, whilst I at least elevate my mattress a few inches above the catabatic chill.
Who IS this idiot contractor anyway, Rick? Somebody from Halliburton?
You dirty rat, you take the cold air floorward, whilst I at least elevate my mattress a few inches above the catabatic chill.
Who IS this idiot contractor anyway, Rick? Somebody from Halliburton?
Venice seems to get worse every year. As many Italians know, Berlusconi’s [non]aggressive [nonexistent] environmental climate change policy is helping that. But OK, Venice has not been an major functional trade hub since the 14th century, but what happens when rising sea levels hit places like Amsterdam, New York, Hong Kong and hundreds of other coastal cities?
We’ll all be heading to high value real estate plots in Antarctica. Then I’m sure the contractor situation will improve.
Venice seems to get worse every year. As many Italians know, Berlusconi’s [non]aggressive [nonexistent] environmental climate change policy is helping that. But OK, Venice has not been an major functional trade hub since the 14th century, but what happens when rising sea levels hit places like Amsterdam, New York, Hong Kong and hundreds of other coastal cities?
We’ll all be heading to high value real estate plots in Antarctica. Then I’m sure the contractor situation will improve.
Speaking of change and the arctic regions of Planet Earth, here’s another reasonably quick read and another reason to get the shivers about human-modulated climate change. Notice the effects of a number of “local pollutants.” One can bet that the “scientists” who support the position that global warming is no big deal or from some other source (cosmic rays?) might seize on this to argue that local effects will zero out the macro effects by LOWERING temperatures, so let’s all spew out more small carbon particulates, okay?
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/15669/2007/acpd-7-15669-2007.pdf
Speaking of change and the arctic regions of Planet Earth, here’s another reasonably quick read and another reason to get the shivers about human-modulated climate change. Notice the effects of a number of “local pollutants.” One can bet that the “scientists” who support the position that global warming is no big deal or from some other source (cosmic rays?) might seize on this to argue that local effects will zero out the macro effects by LOWERING temperatures, so let’s all spew out more small carbon particulates, okay?
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/15669/2007/acpd-7-15669-2007.pdf
Hopefully, JTM, the folks who were most responsible for framing the whole “man caused” argument as “inconclusive” will be leaving office not soon enough, and we will have access to better science. Without Dick Chaney’s organized delaying tactics of declaring “inconclusive” as sufficient argument not to do anything, which was good enough to delay compliance costs for big energy, we may be hearing some very different conclusions soon.
Science unfettered by a need for forgone, industry favoring, conclusions could be very refreshing. Although I do anticipate a funny sort of backlash in the conservative press arguing that it is impossible for things to have “changed” so drastically; implying that folks have to be lying for (as an example) the ice sheet to have melted that much “in such a short time” as their next line of attack.
Hopefully, JTM, the folks who were most responsible for framing the whole “man caused” argument as “inconclusive” will be leaving office not soon enough, and we will have access to better science. Without Dick Chaney’s organized delaying tactics of declaring “inconclusive” as sufficient argument not to do anything, which was good enough to delay compliance costs for big energy, we may be hearing some very different conclusions soon.
Science unfettered by a need for forgone, industry favoring, conclusions could be very refreshing. Although I do anticipate a funny sort of backlash in the conservative press arguing that it is impossible for things to have “changed” so drastically; implying that folks have to be lying for (as an example) the ice sheet to have melted that much “in such a short time” as their next line of attack.
I can’t help but think of the ludicrous claims, two years ago, of one Albert Gore, Jr., of twelve-foot tides swamping e.g. Florida, over against today’s concerns for perpetually boggy…Venice.
Oh, big shit. Tell me another.
I can’t help but think of the ludicrous claims, two years ago, of one Albert Gore, Jr., of twelve-foot tides swamping e.g. Florida, over against today’s concerns for perpetually boggy…Venice.
Oh, big shit. Tell me another.
It happens that I wrote this yesterday morning, Eastern, on a friend’s blod here:
“If it’s any consolation to you, my guess is that Barack played the enviro-metaphysicists just for sport. And fun. And profit.”
“You may be right, that we’ll hear more from them during this ensuing Admin., but I think that’s all that will be: that he, we, will hear them. ”
“They’re dust to dust anyway, ashes to ashes. Fools.”
“Not to worry, now.”
It ain’t immortal, to be sure, but it’s a real dispatch from…Atlanta…
It happens that I wrote this yesterday morning, Eastern, on a friend’s blod here:
“If it’s any consolation to you, my guess is that Barack played the enviro-metaphysicists just for sport. And fun. And profit.”
“You may be right, that we’ll hear more from them during this ensuing Admin., but I think that’s all that will be: that he, we, will hear them. ”
“They’re dust to dust anyway, ashes to ashes. Fools.”
“Not to worry, now.”
It ain’t immortal, to be sure, but it’s a real dispatch from…Atlanta…
er, a blog. A friend’s bloG. Thank you…
er, a blog. A friend’s bloG. Thank you…
Ken, I was an EPA enforcement attorney with EPA when the Reagan Kristallnacht took place in 1980.
Suddenly there appeared in all the Regional libraries 15 copies a fascinating book by the Heritage Foundation titled “Mandate for Leadership.” If you need a long, horrible read, you might find a copy on Amazon, the 1980 version and the several reissues since then. The Bushies did a book-burning of EPA libraries a few years ago that puts the Roman thuggishness in ancient Alexandria to shame. There are no more Regional libraries, that used to contain so much publicly available info on so many interesting topics.
This “Mandate” thing had laid out in pretty plain prose just about everything you have seen from the Radical Right since then — not just as to the regulatory agencies, but banking, military, privatizing, Big Business, you name it.
On the point of “science,” the plan to damage regulation by insisting that no regulations would be proposed, let alone adopted, until they were absolutely supported by “good science” was spelled out. Along with the hint that the Reagan transition team was already developing what became the “Green Book,” a list of “scientists” with the Right opinions and bent. Not long after, catsup was declared to be a “vegetable” for purposes of the federal school lunch program. Despite the fact that tomatoes are FRUITS, not VEGETABLES, let alone hardly a source of quality nutrition.
The “change” that came with Gingrich and Reagan and those scum at the Heritage Foundation was kind of like certain diseases, where the infection advances implacably with maybe only “flu-like” symptoms, until the patient fulminates with a 108 degree fever and dies of cachexia.
I had some direct involvement in one tiny incident of what happens when “business” interests dominate stuff like public health and so on. Dow Chemical was allowed to re-write and essentially turn on its head a report on toxic chlorinated crap from its Midland, MI plant flowing largely unregulated into the Tittabawasee River and Saginaw Bay. The report orignally concluded that this was a BAD thing, but top Reagan appointees made it a point to let Dow’s “scinetists” and PR people re-write it to essentially read that this stuff actually improved water quality. Only the leaking of a copy of both versions to the detroit Free Press (what a wonderful moniker!) kept this from silently morphing into permits from the Mich Dept of Nat Resources, signed off on by EPA, to Just Keep Discharging with Dilution as the Solution to Pollution and no discharge treatment.
There were hundreds of other incidents like that, along with the new learning that “industry” was no longer the guys who already had a ton of clout to delay, stop or warp ( and as they do now, actually WRITE) regulations, “and this is good for the whole country,” they would say, and of course the statutes (even Nixon’s Clean Air Act) that were supposed to protect public health. They were “customers,” and we were supposed to provide “customer service” to them. Say what? And do you think that under the Bush Leaguers things were any better?
Civics classes do not, as far as I can determine, teach about how much of “law” in America is contained in regulations, regulatory interpretive memoranda, private opinions, guidance documents and such. Or how that brand of sausage is made, and who gets to eat the good ends. The problem with “all this,” all the stuff that makes up “the rule of law” in our country, is that it is just so overwhelming to anyone of good will, who thinks that the greatest good ought to be the welfare of the greatest number. Most of us have either just either shrugged and driven to the mall, or just given up in despair.
Any bets on what’s going to happen under the new administration? Since the whole enormous lobbying machinery has not lost a bit of its momentum, and all the people who have made bureaucratic careers out of doing it the Right way and are Civil Service and have their own massive inertia, and incumbency is still going to by fueled and preserved by good old Campaign Contributions?
Too bad there’s not some social-science Richard Hawking or Einstein working on some kind of Unified Field Theory of how humanity can continue with so many disease processes going on, where the tumors and boils thrive until they kill the host, though the individual pathogens and tumor cells have just a great old ride in their lifetimes.
Incidentially, cancer cells and reproduce-by-mitosis bacteria and even viruses have, like corporations, the potentiality to be immortal. As well as adaptive enough to morph around the best our immune systems can throw at them.
Need to find some more reasons to gnash your teeth? Try this:
http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/about/Reagan.html
Who’s going to write the next chapter for the Bush League’s term? Any bets on who gets pardoned before 1/19/09?
Ken, I was an EPA enforcement attorney with EPA when the Reagan Kristallnacht took place in 1980.
Suddenly there appeared in all the Regional libraries 15 copies a fascinating book by the Heritage Foundation titled “Mandate for Leadership.” If you need a long, horrible read, you might find a copy on Amazon, the 1980 version and the several reissues since then. The Bushies did a book-burning of EPA libraries a few years ago that puts the Roman thuggishness in ancient Alexandria to shame. There are no more Regional libraries, that used to contain so much publicly available info on so many interesting topics.
This “Mandate” thing had laid out in pretty plain prose just about everything you have seen from the Radical Right since then — not just as to the regulatory agencies, but banking, military, privatizing, Big Business, you name it.
On the point of “science,” the plan to damage regulation by insisting that no regulations would be proposed, let alone adopted, until they were absolutely supported by “good science” was spelled out. Along with the hint that the Reagan transition team was already developing what became the “Green Book,” a list of “scientists” with the Right opinions and bent. Not long after, catsup was declared to be a “vegetable” for purposes of the federal school lunch program. Despite the fact that tomatoes are FRUITS, not VEGETABLES, let alone hardly a source of quality nutrition.
The “change” that came with Gingrich and Reagan and those scum at the Heritage Foundation was kind of like certain diseases, where the infection advances implacably with maybe only “flu-like” symptoms, until the patient fulminates with a 108 degree fever and dies of cachexia.
I had some direct involvement in one tiny incident of what happens when “business” interests dominate stuff like public health and so on. Dow Chemical was allowed to re-write and essentially turn on its head a report on toxic chlorinated crap from its Midland, MI plant flowing largely unregulated into the Tittabawasee River and Saginaw Bay. The report orignally concluded that this was a BAD thing, but top Reagan appointees made it a point to let Dow’s “scinetists” and PR people re-write it to essentially read that this stuff actually improved water quality. Only the leaking of a copy of both versions to the detroit Free Press (what a wonderful moniker!) kept this from silently morphing into permits from the Mich Dept of Nat Resources, signed off on by EPA, to Just Keep Discharging with Dilution as the Solution to Pollution and no discharge treatment.
There were hundreds of other incidents like that, along with the new learning that “industry” was no longer the guys who already had a ton of clout to delay, stop or warp ( and as they do now, actually WRITE) regulations, “and this is good for the whole country,” they would say, and of course the statutes (even Nixon’s Clean Air Act) that were supposed to protect public health. They were “customers,” and we were supposed to provide “customer service” to them. Say what? And do you think that under the Bush Leaguers things were any better?
Civics classes do not, as far as I can determine, teach about how much of “law” in America is contained in regulations, regulatory interpretive memoranda, private opinions, guidance documents and such. Or how that brand of sausage is made, and who gets to eat the good ends. The problem with “all this,” all the stuff that makes up “the rule of law” in our country, is that it is just so overwhelming to anyone of good will, who thinks that the greatest good ought to be the welfare of the greatest number. Most of us have either just either shrugged and driven to the mall, or just given up in despair.
Any bets on what’s going to happen under the new administration? Since the whole enormous lobbying machinery has not lost a bit of its momentum, and all the people who have made bureaucratic careers out of doing it the Right way and are Civil Service and have their own massive inertia, and incumbency is still going to by fueled and preserved by good old Campaign Contributions?
Too bad there’s not some social-science Richard Hawking or Einstein working on some kind of Unified Field Theory of how humanity can continue with so many disease processes going on, where the tumors and boils thrive until they kill the host, though the individual pathogens and tumor cells have just a great old ride in their lifetimes.
Incidentially, cancer cells and reproduce-by-mitosis bacteria and even viruses have, like corporations, the potentiality to be immortal. As well as adaptive enough to morph around the best our immune systems can throw at them.
Need to find some more reasons to gnash your teeth? Try this:
http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/about/Reagan.html
Who’s going to write the next chapter for the Bush League’s term? Any bets on who gets pardoned before 1/19/09?