h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How many people out there have been watching the current British TV Channel 4 series on Climate Change, especially last night's (Saturday 9th.Jan) programme whose title I've used for this thread?

Seems to me that the evidence is pretty incontrovertible. We're screwing up our planet even quicker than we thought, and with both India and China (to name but two of the biggest emerging economies) scrambling onto the energy-wasteful, emission-toxic consumer band-wagon just as quick as they can, the prospects for reversing the current trends are dim.

Having said that, it is seriously worrying that the USA, which currently produces the largest share of CO2 emissions, is refusing to engage with the problem ( or at least, the Bush executive is refusing to engage with it...) And if the USA refuses to, why should China or India?

Any thoughts, anyone?

Just in case you need material to think about in this regard, here's a couple of links to diametrically opposed websites which both claim to be scientific truth on the questions of global warming, greenhouse gases, climate change, inter-glacial periods, mini-ice ages etc. etc.

http://www.keepmedia.com/featuredtopics/globalwarming?extID=10036

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm#Message53

I agree with the basic tenet of your argument, and wonder if the 'end of days' is indeed closer than many think.

I'm not a doom-monger, or a particually religious person in accepted ways, but would say that things are getting pretty odd in this little puddle of ours.

Try looking at even the last five years from an impartial point of view; its SCARY!

All we can do is live the best we can. If it turns out that our great-great grandchildren laugh at us, let them: I for one dont expect to be around then to complain, but lets live well so they can laugh.

* We're going to need a bigger boat.*

You get the boat, use my tail as a paddle, and just hope we meet someone with a spare sail!



Ps gonna catnap now.

It gets cold you put on a coat, too hot a cotton shirt. So in view of the programme Im just going to learn to snorkle.

one love

I haven't made up my mind on this, as the environmental movement didn't do themselves any favours in the past by presenting the evidence as definite fact, when there really were quite a lot of holes in their evidence. The Earth has gone through massive temperature cycles even in the quite recent past - and none of these cycles can be attributed to man's involvement. However I have noticed that many of the recent scientific studies confirm the same fact again and again - the planet is getting warmer: whether it be the disappearance of glaciers, or the permafrost becoming more slushy or giant icebergs sloughing off the ice Antarctic shelf.

So my position is that yes, this place is rapidly becoming warmer, but it could still be primarily a natural occurrance. The question is, what to do about it. Even a drastic measure such as putting an end to all industrial emmisions tomorrow would probably do little to change this fact either now or in a hundred years time. We all hear the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle", and I agree with this, but we never hear people or politicians telling people to "prepare, plan, protect". To me the question should be what needs to be done to deal with the fact of climate change and not to prevent it from happening in the first place. The fact of climate change means that large areas of land are threatened with inundation; that other areas become deserts; that insects and microbes migrate to new habitats; that dramatic climatic phenomena become more commonplace. Unplanned for, this will lead to mass immigration, famine, wars, disease outbreaks and the occasional preventable catastrophe. In my opinion, emissions should not be the only thing people think about. The world needs to consider the changes that need to take place to protect lives and habitats in a world where all these changes are happening either because of us or despite us.

And no, I don't think its the end of the world for us. Life and humanity has proven itself more than capable of adapting to anything the earth throws at us. A bit of planning though could improve our chances greatly.

I saw those.

I thought one of the better comments he made was that after looking at the history of climate change and how the world copes and so forth, "it isn't the planet that needs protecting. It's us".

The thing with global warming is not only that it will in the short term increase temperatures, but will also change the deep sea currents.
This could easily cut off the gulf stream which flows between the East coast of America and the British Isles. This would give the UK a similar climate to Canada and Northern Russia. Given the increased amount of ice on the surface of the Earth from this event, global cooling could easily occur very rapidly!

Just something to think about

Looking at the OISM link, I can't help thinking that they have been extremely selective about the data and analyses that they have used. Damn lies and statistics, I wonder? What is the bigger picture here? What would different cuts of the same data yield? What data have they intentionally left out which might spoil the story they want to tell?

And the quote that the earth has been much warmer during the past 3000 years without catastrophic effects is a bit of a dodge, and probably not even true. There were catastrophic effects in the 1300's due primarily to a rapid change in climate. I also recall that, even 2,000 years ago, the Middle East was quite fertile. What was the extent of the Sahara back then? And why just 3000 years? Why not further back? Only a few thousand years earlier, entire areas of Northern Europe and the Near East were rapidly inundated by water due mainly to global warming. There was a sudden decrease in global temperatures 12,000 years ago which put most temperate zones into deep-freeze almost over night. Before that we have the last Ice Age, which is a completely climate related event, and where sea levels were hundreds of feet lower than they are today. Not only that, but the argument itself is fallacious - just because nothing happened in the last 3,000 years doesn't mean it couldn't happen in the next 3,000.

What is most revealing (and appaling) is the final comment : "Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution." Notwithstanding that the author admits that this is an ideological tract, what an arrogant statement to make! No mention of the decline in bio-diversity. Its not much help to any if us if the majority of thriving plants are algal blooms, rye grasses, and domesticated food animals who have been artificially selected to worrying levels.

Well, the jury is out on the future cooling of NE Europe. There was a rapid cooling event known as the Younger Dryas 12,000 years ago which is attributed to the closing down of the Gulf Stream. However it co-incides with a massive and sudden dumping of billions of tonnes of fresh water into the Atlantic from the melting ice sheets which covered North America at the time. This is not likely to be repeated to such a scale in the near future.

So why should this not happen again with global warming?

The remaining ice sheets are just not as big. Plus, the event is preceeded by a build up of ice-bound lakes - huge reservoirs of liquid water that are prevented from flowing into the sea by walls of ice. The ice walls melt gradually and the water builds up gradually until *wham* the barrier breaks suddenly and billions of billions of litres of water all flow into the sea at the same time. I am not aware of such ice lakes in Greenland, which has the largest remaining ice cap in the Northern Hemisphere.

If there is less ice to melt than in the previous event, there's less potential fresh water to flow into the North Atlantic, and increase the bouyancy of the surface water, potentially curring off the Gulf Stream.

Of course, it's perfectly debatable how much fresh water is needed to cause a problem, and there *may well* be enough ice around now to be possible problem.

However, to quite a large extent, it's an issue of rate of melting, rather than absolute amounts *available* for melting.
Below a certain rate of production, the fresh water might simply get dragged around with the general flow and not cause significant changes, but a slightly greater rate could slow the circulation to a point where a pool of less and less salty water starts to build up quite rapidly, and effectively switches off the ciculation completely.

Isn't there also a huge amount of freshwater in Russia which is expected to melt and flow into the sea at the other end of the Gulf stream? This is meant to stop it from sinking or summit.
I'm sure I've heard of this in some documentary or other, but couldn't find anything on google.

Hmmm. I should have checked for new (better) postings before hitting 'Post'.

Aha, so you liked my sound effects!

<>

There is much in what you say, Woodpigeon. Perhaps the strongest point in support of your remark is that the Mount Toba caldera explosion circa 75,000 years ago is known to have reduced the entire human population to a few thousand during a decade-long volcanic winter. The DNA evidence tallies with a genetic bottle-neck at this period, such that we are all, obviously, descended from those few thousand survivors.

What is at issue regarding global warming is not so much whether there will be any human survivors if climate-change accelerates beyond a critical, self-perpetuating threshold, but what sort of world it might be, and what sort of life the survivors might have.

Of course, TV documentaries thrive on shock-horror scenarios, which make for good viewing, but Theroux was being quite unassertive in his presentation. The fact that we can't change a global warming pattern dependent on the Earth's "wobble" should not deter us from trying to prevent the human contribution in terms of greenhouse gas emmissions.

I found the US website, www.oism.org truly alarming because of their gungho attitude that global warming might be a good thing. Last night's Channel 4 documentary, on "Seven Days That Shook The Weathermen" presented information that should give any American pause for thought. Both the marked increase in hurricanes hitting Florida last autumn, and the similar increase in tornado activity to previously unseen levels are indicators that at the very least, the climate is changing, whatever the cause.

How we respond to the whole business comes down to the personal sense of responsibility to our descendants. I have both children and now a grand-daughter. I seriously wonder what kind of a world she will live in.

Other than that, we all face the end of our own personal world at some stage. Whether we depart solo, or as part of a mass extinction, or a local calamity doesn't really make much difference. Maybe, in the words of the Tom Lehrer song, "We will all go together when we go...", or maybe not. He was satirising America's preparations for all-out nuclear war. Which now seems a remote possibility, a relief to those of us who grew up under the very real shadow of "The Bomb."

And maybe planet Earth may decide that after all, she's had enough of our planetary exploitation/pollution, and decide it's time for a cull. The Yellowstone caldera, which blows reasonably regularly every 600,000 years, is 30,000 years overdue, according to the geologists. And Yellowstone National Park is bulging even now, to the extent that Yellowstone Lake is spilling over at the down-hill end.

Interesting times, folks.

Ahh... the Yellowstone "super-volcano".... the ground in Yellowstone is 74cm higher than in was in 1923, just to give an indication of the rate of magma recharge.

Studied a bit about this at uni, and global temperatures could plummet... but I'm at work at the moment, and can't possibly say too much

and there is that island with half off it about to drop off into the ocean and cause another tsunami disaster, only this time covering most of the east coast USA.
The problem with all these is that no-one was around last time it happened, or at least, no one with a laptop and seismograph or whatever, so we don;t know if 10% is nothing, a bit worrying, or get-the-hell-out-of-here time.
The switching off of the warm water to the north of europe, for example, is projected to only need a 20% change. But we don;t actually know if it did turn off in the past, just that it wasn;t, for a period, where it is now. It might have moved for all we know.

Ictoan: >>>and there is that island<<< - Hawaii we go wee...