Climate change worse than feared: Australian expert

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: AFP

SYDNEY (AFP) — Global warming is occurring at a faster rate than the worst-case scenario envisaged by experts just six years ago, Australia's top climate change scientist said Thursday.

Tim Flannery, named the 2007 Australian of the Year for his work in alerting the public to the dangers of global warming, said the issue was the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st century.

Flannery said predictions in a 2001 UN report, warning the atmosphere was likely to warm by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5-10.4 Fahrenheit) from 1990 to 2100 now appeared conservative.

"In the six years since then, we've collected enough data to (check) whether those projections are valid or not," he said.

"It turns out they're not valid, but in the most horrible way -- because for the key performance indicators about climate, change is occurring far in advance of the worst-case scenario," he said.

Read more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxWJKLkcfTaS_o4BHS9AUvspDoyA

[5fingersurfer]

1. My Analogy

We have been watching that large truck (global warming, environmental degradation, etc.) come down the road for a while now. We are standing in the middle of the road and haven't even thought of moving out of the way yet. The longer we wait, the more likely that the truck is going to hit us and cause a considerable amount of damage or even death. What's easier, to move out of the way or to stay in the road and worry about it after the truck has already hit?

The scary thing is that the proverbial truck may have hit us already and we just don't know it.

Spokane Greenfest - Sept 22nd and 23rd in Downtown Spokane's Riverfront Park.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. Did you ever see the ad that had the little girl on the train track

You just reminded me of it.

Here's a link to it on MSNBC if you've not seen it yet.

It's very powerful.

Edit to add link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11992630/

[TheMadMonk]

12. Ouch. eom

[martymar64]

4. Welcome to DU!

From a former resident of Spokane and Pend Oreille Co.
It's nice to see a DUer from that neck of the woods, there are way too few.

[Gregorian]

2. The people of this planet are burning nearly 1000 barrels of oil PER SECOND.

That is significant. Even for an 8000 mile in diameter sphere in space, with 2/3's of it's surface covered in water.

[0rganism]

5. 2nd and 3rd order feedback effects, is my guess

E.g., greenhouse effect -> melting the tundras -> huge releases of methane (greenhouse gases) -> more tundra melt ->...

The prevailing models of 6 years ago may have only scratched the surface.

[defendandprotect]

6. There is a 50 year delay in the effects we feel: We're only at 1957......

so, scientists keep pointing out that they don't know how drastically and quickly this may all compound.

Besides cars and burned fossil fuels since 1957 --

Increases in population now about to bring us to 7 BILLION --

and the horrendous and overwhelming pollution of the planet don't point to favorable outcome.

Wars and exploding bombs are not helping us either --
I don't think we still know what impact atomic weapons are having on the environment --
and the ozone hole is barely discussed anymore in MSM.

Dams and reservoirs which our Army Corps of Engineers built over the past 50 years are "impacting the rotation of the earth."

Even recognizing so much of this, I was still shocked about a dozen years ago when I came to understand that not only would humanity probably disappear from this planet, but the planet itself may not survive our ignorance.

When Al Gore appeared before the USHR or the Senate, he began by mentioning seismic reports which are showing an increase in the "shaking" of the planet.

Unfortunately, he was interrupted, and the discussion wasn't continued.

[PATRICK]

7. Something else is worse

Back when the media watchdogs began puzzling what was wrong with American journalism, the problem was becoming so acute that many answers crowded suddenly into focus.

I proposed that something similar was happening to the scientific community. For a long time specific things had been criticized about corporate influence, the competition for money. Perhaps it takes something this big to get at the big systemic bias. Why is this such a surprise? Why do outliers and doomsayers have it more correct on the facts? The bias toward corporate convenience, economic optimism and the repression of bad news- that will cost change and big money- shows that science itself is owned by governments and business and in fact has largely existed and been funded from birth to Nobel Prize by these largest of interested parties. Specific persons and excellent, objective work and daring truth speaking and fearless research is considered the hallmark of an institution that in fact has been historically repressive, guided, pressured toward conservatism- economic conservatism.

Like the most glaring crises and issues today the huge disconnect is how powers divert and avert the simple gaze away from clear, hard reality and especially insightful, critical thinking. And this force of lie is killing us all and killing the truth even more.

So big the scandal that such a proposition- the failure of science- can be shoved under the rug along with the oxymoron of corporate journalism. We are made to appear more ignorant and dumb for the sake of the God Mammon, but these surprises do not convince me "who could have known?" So whenever you get rosy, hopeful pictures from scientists that are products of the economic system beware that mountain of salt that looms over our house. The truth.

In the spectrum of lying opportunists saying nothing is happening to the MSS(mainstream scientists) "balancing" prudent caution with calming optimism to the harsh outliers of real consequences the truth on the scale can most weightily fall to the truthsayers on the far end.

[Mnemosyne]

8. knr for more exposure. n/t

[f the letter]

9. Different times

It's going to be something _else_ when it's too warm in New England for maple trees.. either that or the gulf stream will move offshore slightly and send us into a legit ice age up here.

p s global warming is just some type of crazy bad dream right??

[progressoid]

10. Who the hell cares. Brittany could lose her kids!!!11!

[tom_paine]

11. "No one could have foreseen the extinction of the human species."

they can carve that right on the Redwall of the Grand Canyon in 200 foot tall letters right next to our other last missive to the alien anthropologists who will be here sometime in the future to pick over the remains of extinguished humanity (of course, humanity may survive in clusters at the Polar Jungles in 2100, as an eminent British Climatologist speculated, or things may not get as bad as people think, which is unlikely given the reality of the data described in this article),
.

The other missive will say "We could have saved it but we were too cheap."
--Kurt Vonnegut

[daleo]

13. Australia is experiencing severe water shortages

Australia is one of the first countries that are seeing the impact in a major way.