"Flabbergasting" Report Coming From IPCC

[RestoreGore]

The time has come for all of us to change. This is no longer a game, a myth, or something to be used as a political wedge issue. This concerns our lives and the continued existence of civilization.


http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/national/story.html?id=365681ff-99b8-4879-807d-b9d95bdd6df4

CanWest News Service, September 25, 2006.
According to one of the authors of the forthcoming new report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change it "will take an unprecedented stance on the urgency of government measures to curb fossil fuel emissions from the combustion of oil, natural gas and coal... The report -- the first major study since 2001 -- will be released next year by an international panel of scientists. The strongest comment in the IPCC's last report, in 2001, was that most global warming in the last 50 years was attributable to human activity.

This time around, the author expects readers will be stunned by the size and scope of environmental problems that the report will link to fossil fuel combustion. Weaver said climate change has been detected in patterns of rainfall, rising sea levels, forest fires, extreme weather events -- and even the availability of drinking water supplies. 'We need to move to a complete and utter change in our energy systems so that we no longer rely on fossil fuels. Period,' Weaver said in an interview. 'I can tell you for sure that the statements in that report will be far stronger than what existed in 2001. It will be flabbergastingly stronger.'"

http://water-is-life.blogspot.com

[bloom]

1. The point of no return

Really it all started with the industrial age. 1800. If we were to all live like people did in about 1750 - there might be progress in the environment. Not that I think that that's going to happen. A small, small number of people choose to live with much less comfort than is available at any given time.

It does tend to be a group mentality that people accept. Whether nuns or monks or Amish or some other group.

There is the group of people with the "compact" - who don't buy anything beyond food/necessities.

I don't buy much beyond food and what is necessary for my occupation. I think it is easier to draw at line at not buying anything unnecessary than to just try to cut down. But that's how I am about things.

It could become a trend - for people to give up the typical American consumerist lifestyle. That would be something to see.

[RestoreGore]

5. Would It ever be something to see...

But the American people are going to have back to away from their TVs in order to do that, and stop listening to the BSers... And I have to state that I am a bit nervous, because reconciling the time we are told we have left with actually changing decades of brainwashing and consumptive behavior patterns that have spoiled us rotten as a whole will be an impossible task. I really think this report will have to come to pass before the majority of people wake up, but by then it will be too late... and we just can't allow that to happen.



However, those paid off by large oil companies and other interests to skew the facts to suit their own economic agendas will now be trying hard to sell their bs and fail to mention the corrolation between population growth to the forcing statistics regarding CO2 and other gases. They will fail to mention the effects of war on the global environment. They will fail to mention that other gases such as methane that are created by burning fossil fuels also contribute to exacerbation of global warming. They will also fail to mention that out of 928 PEER reviewed abstracts reagarding anthropogenic climate change, that NONE of them disputes that humans are "contributing" to global warming.

It is clear their desperation is showing, and that means it is now the time for those of us in this country of all politics who see our moral obligation to this planet to frame this debate in telling them to not get in the way of those of us who will not simply accept THEIR way of living at the expense of our own. Knowledge is power, and we have it. Time to start using it. This isn't only Al Gore's fight, and it shouldn't be.

[hatrack]

2. Color me unsurprised.

Depressed, yes, but not surprised.

[RestoreGore]

6. but there is hope...

Politics is not the only avenue we have and it's time they were made aware of that.

[phantom power]

3. You understand...

that the current Administration and Congress will do squat about this, right? They simply aren't going to listen. They don't even listen to their own scientists, forget any report comming from the United Nations. Cheney and company have nothing but contempt for the UN. Or science, for that matter.

[RestoreGore]

4. Absolutely...

I think in general that politicians are full of crap. I just posted an article here the other day where they claim it will take twenty more years to get alternate fuels to market, so yes, I know that already. However, I think we have to keep drumming it in their ears over and over and over again and continue to bring the people into this fight to cause such a sea change, that they will have no other choice but to go along with it or be relegated to the dustbin of history.

[NNadir]

7. The last IPCC report was flabbergasting. Here is what will be done:

"As little as possible."



Here's what's happened since the 2001 (also useless) IPCC report:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table13.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh2co2.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table14.xls

Who's kidding who?

I am very glad that as a result of the IPCC report we will have lots of cute pictures of windmills to look at, though. The last report 2001 inspired a lot of such pictures. The 2001 report didn't inspire very much clean energy, but it did inspire lots of insipid wishful thinking. The new report is going to do what the old report did: It's going to inspire every cretin on earth to offer paens to ethanol and biodiesel and solar Germany and the percentage growth of wind power from next to zero to slightly farther from zero - but it's all pissing in the wind, literally and figuratively.

Pictures of windmills being quite literally quixotic, it's about what we fucking deserve.

People will issue dumb statements like "By 2030 34.5589% of the electricity in Botswana will come from wind power," without ever stopping to contemplate if there will be such a thing as "2030." I for one, very much doubt if there will be a 2030 IPCC report.

In any case, nobody is going to do anything meaningful about fossil fuels.

It's over. As little as possible.

[mom cat]

8. Conserve and change to alternatives now ... as if your life depended

on it.

[GeorgeGist]

9. It is certainly fair that mankind must determine...

whether the benefits of civilization will be greater than, equal to, or less than, the cost of the damage. Given past performance, I don't have faith in mankind's ability to solve problems that are expensive to solve; unless they are the problems of being rich. Then cost is no object.

[ramapo]

10. Just another blurb on CNN

I can pretty much hear the story. There'll be the usual 15-second news spots on the report. The NY Times will publish an article or two. And it'll pretty much sink into the noise of all the other reports published to date.

Forget politicians acting. Obviously the current administration will not. Sorry to say I don't think the Democrats would do much better.

The reason is that the vast majority of people are oblivious to the developing environmental problems. Politicians won't act until there is a popular demand for change. There will be no popular demand for change until people across the country are affected in their day-to-day lives. Of course by then, the hole will be deeper and far more difficult for us to climb out.

Until then, TV, easy motoring, and a generally pleasant environment will keep people dumb and happy.

[Boomer]

11. Predictable species behavior

Few people willingly give up present-day conveniences and luxuries to secure a hypothetical benefit in the future. Without a clear and present danger RIGHTTHISMINUTE, your average citizen is not going to undergo deprivation or economic hardship, no matter how dire the consequences.

Which is why fisherman will continue to fight quotas to safeguard the viability of crashing fish populations, or why farmers continue to plunder water reserves even in the face of looming drought. They need to feed their families today, and tomorrow will have to take care of itself. The list of self-interested parties doesn't end, and neither do the excuses that we all use to deflect an unpleasant truth.

Animals are simply unable to plan for the future, but humans have perfected the emotional defenses and rationales that undermine our theoretical capacity for long-range planning. In truth, we are only able to plan ahead when the planning is "comfortable" to contemplate and when it meshes with other cultural goals and aspirations.

Curbing our population numbers and living within the means of our ecosystem are not appealing prospects to the vast majority of consumer-driven Americans. So we will hear any number of excuses NOT to stop what we're doing now. Unfortunately, changing attitudes and cultural institutions is a lot harder than changing technology, and it takes longer, too.

All too often, a new paradigm isn't accepted until the entrenched attitudes are lost through the attrition of the older members of the group. That's a process that can take decades.

And unfortunately, I'm increasingly convinced that we don't have decades left.