Is This Humanity's First Planetary Emergency? (Mainstream Global Warming)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

April 14, 2006 — The reports of a number of leading scientists show a new level of concern about the possibility of global warming producing planetwide upheaval in the lifetimes of today's children.

Please don't shoot the messenger. Those of us who cover global warming already have enough to think about as we consider some of the latest assessments coming from established scientists.

And it's important to mention at the outset that most of these scientists say there may still be a chance for humanity to avoid the worst if we get our global act together immediately — though they do say we are in for at least some very rough times.

This is also necessarily a psychology story. No two people receiving potentially bad news will greet it with exactly the same medley of natural denials and particular ignorance of probabilities, say psychologists. Each reader (and writer) must deal in his or her own way.

Peter Cox, a climate expert at the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in England, is quoted in the Guardian as saying, "The Scientific agenda has moved from improving the predictions to thinking about what are the chances of something awful happening."

More: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id=1843086&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Long piece and worth reading. Glad to see it mainstreamed.

[soothsayer]

1. Not just Earth but Mars, Triton (neptune moon) and even Pluto

have been warming up.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17977

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_puzzle_020816.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/120259.stm

[Boomer]

2. Perfect timing

At a time when there may well be a solar influence for planetary warming, we humans have made the Earth even MORE vulnerable by releasing as much C02 as we can into the atmosphere.

Way to go!

[neuvocat]

3. I don't follow.

This sounds more like a cosmic phenomenon than merely a planetary one if I'm reading that correctly.

[The Traveler]

7. Interesting ... and really bad news

Pluto is not a factor, of course. Any increase in solar output that would measureably raise the temperature of Pluto would probably cook us all alive. (If you were standing on Pluto, you would notice that the sun is really, really small and provides about as much warmth as a 100 watt light bulb.) Pluto is way the hell out there and received power (energy per unit time) falls like 1/r**2 ... it's simple math.

Martian warming is more indicative of increased solar output, and of course there is other evidence of it.

This sounds to me like really bad news. Any warming effect due to greenhouse gas emissions will of course be amplified by an increase in solar output. This is probably why rates of polar melting exceed the predictions of existing climate models.

[megatherium]

9. Your first link is to an organization that advocates "free market

solutions" to problems and seems to be generally skeptical about global warming. (The Heartland Institute claims to have no political affiliation, but it sounds like an industry-supported group; although I don't know who they are.) Your other two links, mentioning warming at Pluto and Triton, do not mention possible changes in solar output as an explanation but do mention other explanations for these bodies' changes in temperature.

It is my impression that the climate science community has a very good idea as to what percentage of the current warming is due to solar variability, and it is only a small portion. (One-third at most, if memory serves.)

[expatriot]

4. Glad to see it mainstreamed?!?! I for one would have been glad for it

never to have left the pages of Popular Science's 'what if' articles. Damn...

[scot]

5. I remember the "coming Ice Age" warnings of the 1970's.

What happened? Was the research of the time faulty? Is it just the advance of technology over the past 30 years that has yielded different data? If anyone is in the know on this, I'm interested.

[XemaSab]

8. Our ability to understand and predict the climate

has changed dramatically since then.

We didn't even really have computers or satellites to help us figure it out then. :shrug:

[NEOBuckeye]

6. Peak Oil production will be the other "planetary emergency"

Though I put it into quotes, as I believe that some countries and some people will be better prepared to deal with that one than others. I don't know what to make of the US' energy prospects right now, aside from the fact that there couldn't possibly be a worse time for religious zealotry to be taking center stage in our politics.

Global Warming, however, is definitely The Big One. No one living on this planet's surface will be able to escape the effects of this one. I predict that the big turning point with respect to this issue will manifest during the 2040s.