IPCC - 400 Million Face Famine As Warming Powers Mass Extinction

[hatrack]

GLOBAL warming is made worse by man-made pollution and even optimistic projections suggest that the Earth will warm by a dangerous 3 degrees by 2050, according to a draft report by the world's leading climate scientists. The increase will be the biggest in 20,000 years and is likely to cause drought, famine and mass extinction, scientists said.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that humans are the main force behind warming and that further temperature increases are in store even if emissions are curtailed. The report will mark the first time the IPCC has placed a figure on the progress of warming, an assurance of scientific certainty that it avoided in its last report in 2001.

The figure is also significant as it follows a report by Sir David King, Britain's chief scientific adviser, that laid out the effects of such an increase - drought, devastated wildlife and 400 million people at risk of starvation.

The IPCC also concludes that temperatures could rise by as much as 6C as the result of "positive feedbacks" in the climate resulting from melting sea ice, thawing permafrost and the acidification of the oceans.

EDIT

http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=674972006

[getwesback]

1. I think they're lying, they probably expect the tipping point in 5 years

I mean, just think of how much IRRESERVIBLE damage has ALREADY been done.

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Or 5 years ago.

If you're tied to a stake at someone shoots you, are you screwed when the trigger is pulled - or when the bullet reaches your forehead?

Edit - Welcome to DU, BTW!
:toast:

[NNadir]

5. I think you're right.

It's not like where going to have some mythological tipping point on Thursday, May 12, 2011.

Tremendous damage has already been done.

[NNadir]

4. Welcome here.

[4dsc]

3. By 2050 peak oil will cause more damage

I don't know why these people bother to worry about global warming in the year 2050 when most of the worlds oil will be GONE by then there will be a massive dieoff of the earths populations!! 400,000,000 will be a crop in the bucket!!

[NNadir]

6. The simple answer: The oil can be replaced. The atmosphere can't.

[4dsc]

7. NO viable alternative to oil

when taken to scale!! While there may be plenty of so called alternatives to oil that "supplement" our wasteful way, and the US recently reported also that there is no viable alternative to oil..

[NNadir]

8. This is pure nonsense.

Oil is merely the cheapest liquid fuel, if one agrees to ignore the external cost. If, on the other hand, one includes the external cost of oil, it has been too expensive since the early 1960's.

In theory, I note that oil replaced coal in about 30 years, and we could reverse the process, but it behooves environmentalists to fight this approach.

I defy you to name one vital compound in petroleum that cannot be replaced via synthetic means, given energy, on scale.

Just one.

If one looks at the energy chart:



one can see that most of the oil in this country goes to transportation. It is absurd to say we need oil. We can do transportation much, much better. In fact, we could eliminate coal use in this country by switching our baseload electricity to nuclear, and we could easily make all of our synthetics by other means. The first industrial plastic was cellophane, which is made from cellulose, wood.

Note that the "industrial" sector defined here includes agricultural use, and the "non-fuel" use includes synthetics, including fertilizers. By the way we don't need that plastic. Environmentalists know we don't want it.

Maybe your panic in this case is simply a fondness for the suburban life style? We can live without it.