"Dangerous" global warming possible by 2026-WWF

[RawMaterials]

OSLO, Jan 30 (Reuters) - World temperatures could surge in just two decades to a threshold likely to trigger dangerous disruptions to the earth's climate, the WWF environmental group said on Sunday.
It said the Arctic region was warming fastest, threatening the livelihoods of indigenous hunters by thawing the polar ice-cap and driving species like polar bears towards extinction by the end of the century.
World temperatures have already risen by about 0.7C since 1750 with most scientists blaming a build-up of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars.

The European Union and many other environmental groups say that governments should cap emissions of greenhouse gases to try to prevent a 2.0C temperature rise. The United States has rejected binding caps under the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol

TIME BOMB?

He told Reuters his study was based on a review of climate models used by the U.N. climate panel in its latest 2001 report. Another international report last week said that rising temperatures were a ticking time bomb for the climate.
Others scientists say that such projections are scaremongering and reckon temperatures will rise far less sharply, if at all, because of the buildup of greenhouse gases.
New's study projected that the Arctic would warm by 3.2-6.6C if the globe warmed by 2.0C overall.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L29659920.htm

[mr_hat]

1. Pffft! Who cares what a bunch of pro wrestlers think?

[Nitrogenica]

2. lols

[RawMaterials]

3. Can ya digit were all gonna die but the US is the only

ones who don't care. oh ya can ya digit? I can.

Bush "no i wont sign that keota trety, my daddy says it would be bad for business"

[Lorien]

11. So is not being able to grow food

or trying to keep warm during a global Ice age. Massive forest die offs aren't great for the timber industry, either, and dead oceans don't do much for fisheries. Lack of oxygen and the death of the human species can also cut into profits.

50 years, Tops. Personally, I expect only 20-30.

[RawMaterials]

12. everyone always asks me when i think that man

is going to destroy it self with nuclear weapons or what not.
I always say that the world will destroy man before man destroys itself.

[BrightKnight]

13. What did James Watt say?

Something like: It doesn't matter because I won't be around to worry about it.

---------

Perhaps the religious wrong wants to expedite Armageddon.

[mordarlar]

8. Damn beat me to it

[Lorien]

10. The World Wildlife Fund

and why do EVERY ONE of these global warming threads get filled up with cute, flippant remarks? Terrorism scares the shit out of most people on DU, while environmental collapse gets a yawn or a few jokes? Eating, breathing..yeah, sure, who needs it? Kids, it's going to happen IN OUR LIFETIMES. Make it an issue NOW with your reps, otherwise, you will certainly live to regret it.

[Voltaire99]

16. We must study more pro wrestlers before drawing any hasty conclusions (nt)

[BuyingThyme]

4. Global Warming vs. Armageddon

Just as the Fundamentalists turned evolution into intelligent design, they're now attempting to turn global warming into Armageddon.

From here on out, it's going to be difficult to separate the science from the insanity.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Predictions are tricky to make

Since the process of global warming itself is accelerating, most of the predictions made since about 1990 have had to be moved up. For instance, nobody thought the ice pack on Greenland would ever shrink as fast as it has.

The interruption of the thermohaline current is also a problem; if and when it is impeded by lower-salinity water from the runoff water, it will result in a little ice age that could easily run into the real thing. The north will re-freeze, but more of the heat energy will go into the weather and the equatorial ocean. That will bring an era of severe winter blizzards to the Northern Hemisphere, with shorter, hotter, stormier summers.

But the real danger is the potential loss to agriculture. Any of these factors would change the weather in the world's "breadbaskets". A severe-enough disruption would cause the era to be better remembered for famine than for blizzards.

I think the process is inevitable at this point; but we still have a lot of choice in how we'll handle it. Mass death and destruction is not inevitable. All we need is a generation of intelligent, altruistic, and visionary leaders who can avoid being assassinated.

So, no, it's not looking too good right now.

--p!

[RawMaterials]

6. Just like the movie -hu

funny how movie seam to imitate real life and predict the future with other events.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. The Day After Tomorrow -- ?

Well, it was a tad overblown, and condensed a decade-long process into a month's time, but the overall idea was there.

NYC probably won't be ice-locked before a full Ice Age sets in, but I'd still keep an extra bag of driveway salt handy.

--p!

[mordarlar]

7. what the heck does the World Wrestling Federation know about warming lol

:+

[wildflower]

14. Question: Is there anyone the U.S. will listen to? Seriously.

Unfortunately the U.N. and EU (mentioned above) are probably guaranteed to elicit nothing but derisiveness on this issue.

Groups of scientists have banded together to write letters begging the administration to do something, to no avail.

Anyone even remotely associated with the left and/or "environmental wackos" is out.

Is there any group, any country, any advisor that could get the message across to those in charge? The right religious figure or corporation, perhaps? Anyone?

I think this is one of the crucial things we need to figure out.

-wildflower

[al bupp]

15. The Evidence for Climate Change Is Compelling

Here's some more evidence of the simple fact of climate change, not coming in the future, but right now:

"Glaciers are shrinking in a warming world"

http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=38353

Chacaltaya was once the world's highest ski slope. But no one has skied down its tongue of snow-coated ice since 1998. The melt has exposed rock right across its midsection, splitting the glacier in two.

It covers an area of less than 15 acres, with ice less than 26 feet thick. Ramirez said it lost two-thirds of its mass in the 1990s alone, and is now probably a mere 2 percent the size it once was.
<snip>
What we see in the Andes is happening in Kilimanjaro and in the Himalayas. We've just been in southeast Alaska, and 1,987 out of 2,000 glaciers are retreating there," the Ohio State University scientist said in a telephone interview from Columbus.

The canary's singing, but do we hear it?

[RawMaterials]

17. Europe has all ready notice the change

and they are just as worried about it as well.

[Delphinus]

22. No, Al ...

The canary's singing, but do we hear it?

We don't hear it. And I want to get off this planet and go live with some species that really does care about the world on which they reside.

[wildflower]

23. Sadly, they don't. What will they listen to? (See my post above.) n/t

[zwielicht]

18. Related thread from earlier today: Oil firms fund climate change denial

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1189042

[radfringe]

19. shaking my head

I just don't get it -- bushies discount information as "junk science" and refuse to believe in it dispite the mounting real evidence

yet they will defend "creation doctrine" even though it's all based on pure faith and belief

[Cooley Hurd]

20. "The other night I tripped at Knox..."

Continental drift divide
Mountains sit in a line
Leonard Bernstein
Leonid Brezhnev
Lenny Bruce and Lester Banks
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!
You Symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right?
Right!

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine...

It's time I had some time alone...;)

[Cooley Hurd]

21. I don't want anyone to think I'm making light of this most serious subject

...but, for some reason, this song pops into my head every time I read a story like this...:(

[Massachusetts]

24. Our ignorance of the fragility of Mother Earth

and those little pesky microbes will get the Human race in the end.

Excellent song to sing as we head for the Exit doors!