climate change in our lifetime

Great Debates
1

  1. assume changing mans behavior will have no effect on global climate change.
    1.a. No more “When In Trouble Or In Doubt Run In Circles Scream And Shout”
    1.b. the climate will change.

  2. assume that Climate is changing at rate such that it is the major problem of the current generation (18 to 30 year old).
    2.a sea level rise are inundating coastal areas.
    2.b. flora and fauna of lower latitudes are migrating toward upper latitudes.
    2.c . Human populations are migrating from hot and getting hotter clims to cooler clims.

  3. assume that climate change is cyclical and that there will be a period of rapid global warming followed by rapid global cooling.
    3.a. glacier melt cause the ocean conveyor to shut down in particular the gulf stream ceases to exist and its warming effect on northern clims has no effect.

  4. Assume that western civilization wishes to survive the changes.
    4.a. Is questionable as the birth rate in EU are below ZPG level.
    4.b. and current immigration polices are tending to dilute the western body politic.

I would like zero nota nil discussion of assumption 1.

I would like discussion of assumptions 2 thru 4.

The questions to be debated are:
At what point or on what evidence will policy action be necessitated to ameliorate effects of climate change?

What effect will climate change have on western institutions ie. global economy and interdependence. insurance, capitalism, military, urban life, rural life, land ownership, and democracy.

What technological fields and disciplines need to be given priority research and development budget to contend with the social disruptions?

What do we as parents do now for our children?

2

Melting polar ice will not increase sea levels. The ice caps float on the sea. Archimedes’ principle states that floating bodies displace a volume of water equal to their weight. Place some ice cubes in a glass of water, mark the level and see what happens after the ice melts: no change in level.

…So? And are they? And is global warming the cause?

There’s lots of room up here.

OK

…yeah… What prof is there of any of this happening?

Yep.

Is this a question?

I know you didn’t want debate on this, but there’s no proof that climate change isn’t just normal cyclical variations in temperature.

None. The sky isn’t falling. We’ll survive.

Not sure there will be any social disruptions. Are you?

I think we have more to worry about frankly: education, health, physical fitness, war, disease, nuclear proliferation, etc.

3

You never learned about Greenland and Antarctica? Look at a globe.

:dubious: What else would you propose?

Really, *do * look at a globe. The Earth gets *smaller * towards the poles. Land is less fertile up there, too.

Wrong.

There are plenty of responsible ways to address the myriad problems the *fact * of global climate change is causing. Denial is not one of them.

4

Suppose that due to warming, the huge empty wastelands known as tundras, begin to support forests. Would such a development tend to netralize further warmiong? larger forests would use more atmospheric CO2. Just speculating, maybe warming would not be all bad.

5

These seem mutually exclusive to me. If we assume there is nothing we can do, how can there be policies to ameliorate the effects of climate change? Unless you are assuming that southern nations will need to invade northern ones to find cool places to live…or something.

Unknown. Depends I suppose on how bad it is. You are postulating a rise in the sea level that floods coastal cities. That would be more than a few feet rise…and would require more than a few degrees of rise in temperature. Such an occurance would have a fairly profound effect on not just western institutions, but world wide…in fact, I’d guess that it will hit the third world a hell of a lot harder than it does the west. How rapidly are we talking about the seas rising here…and how large a rise are we talking about? If its 100 feet in a decade then it will be a disaster…if its 20 feet in a century, then not so much.

Were I to guess, I’d say that the technologies most in demand if such befell us would be those of food production in a changed environment and fresh water creation and distribution. As long as the food can still be grown and fresh water provided I don’t see an other show stoppers for western civilization…again, depending on how rapidly this crisis hits. Most (western) coastal cities can probably be reasonably protected from a 20 foot rise in sea levels over a century or so…while nothing could help them if there were a 100 foot rise in a decade.

No idea how you would prepare children for this because I don’t have a crystal ball to see how it will play out. I suppose you could put them through survivalist type training in case its the 100 feet over a decade thingy. :stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

6

'Fraid that’s a bit of a common misconception. Did you try that experiment in a glass of saltwater? Icebergs are far less salty than the surrounding ocean; that difference means that there is a slight increase in sea level when they melt. If I recall, that would be a few centimeters rise in sea level if only the floating ice were to melt. I’m pretty sure this has been covered here on the Dope before.

And as noted, if there’s enough warming to melt the floating ice, there’ll be enough to cause big pieces of ice currently resting on land to either melt and flow into the ocean, or fall (or slide) directly into the ocean from ice shelves. Then we’re talking about some significant rise.

Overall, there are three main factors that will raise the sea level: 1) floating ice fields melting; 2) land-based ice melting or entering the ocean as ice (in which case there might be a two-stage rise – first with the additional ice, and then when it melts); 3) thermal expansion as the whole ocean becomes warmer. (And the ocean will be warmer both because of an increase in the mean temperature of the whole planet, and because open water absorbs more heat from the sun than does a floating icecap.

7

True, only the Arctic ice cap is floating.

But really, to cite Wikipedia as your source for proof of anthropomorphic global warming is ridiculous. Try here.

8

…or, much better, try here instead. (And it’s anthropocentric, unless you ascivbe to an extreme Gaia theory!)

Greenhouse gas concentration has undeniably shot up an incredible 30% in just a few decades, from digging up carbon stores and releasing them on a vast scale. Higher greenhouse gas concentration undeniably means higher temperatures. No professional climatologist denies these facts, only non-experts sounding off outside their respective fields.

As to the OP, I don’t think climate change means the end of civilisation. It just means genuine suffering for billions of human beings. And most of them will not be “Western”.

The time to shift policy is yesterday. Kyoto was a promise to give ourselves more time to develop alternative energy sources by reducing emissions to a level below those of 1990, somehow. It did not dictate how we should do this - lots more nuclear power stations is not “barred” - only that we should.

And the trouble with melting ice caps is not just higher sea levels (in the case of Grenland and Antarctica) but the disruption in the Global Ocean Conveyor, and a reduced reflection of sunlight. The greater part of the sea level rise, however, will be from thermal expansion.

9

Of course your cite is from the UN’s IPPC group, who use blatant misinformation in furthering their cause of the redistribution of global wealth.

10

And from the Friends Of Science website:

11

I don’t think the OP is referring to policies that effect the climate change, but the policies we may have to adopt because of an unstoppable climate change…

12

allow me to paraphrase the OP so attention is not diverted in fighting the particulars:

“Forget the causes, global warming is happening and we cannot stop it. This warming will have various measurable effects on the planet. What will change because of this? What can be done to deal with those effects?”

right?

Going to extremes, here is my prediction:

The rich will manage to fend off the effects at an ever increasing cost. This will cause many to fall into poverty as they are unable to keep up. The divide between the Haves and the Have-Nots will widen.

Agriculture will move with the changing climate. As populations try to follow and run into cities and national borders, refugee crises will pop up everywhere.

Insurance will cease to be a profitable business. As the risks of doing businesses increase and with no insurance to fall on, governments will have to step in to maintain the productive apparatus. This makes them grow in power and there is a general trend towards more centralized governments.

Governments start to cooperate with each other, forming more solid blocs. If the scacity of resources continues, inter and intra-bloc fighting might occur.

Humankind will spend so much effort managing the effects of this warming that it will, effectively, fall into survival mode. No serious progress will occur in areas not directly aimed at offsetting the results of warming.

A population crunch might follow. As cheap labour will be the first to go, the prices of basic resources (food, water) will increase and shift the emphasis of the economy.

Tips for survival, buy some land and try to go off-grid. Teach your kids basic survival skills. Don’t let them become lawyers or astronauts or movie stars. Put your head between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye.

Or something else not so dire.

13

Or, the climate change (if there is in fact one at all) will be so gradual and insignificant that we will slowly adapt and continue to thrive, as we’ve done for millennia.

14

I plan to invest heavily in canned food and shotguns.

15

Putting aside the blatant paranoia of considering the climatology departments of the world’s most august hundred or so universities to have a Marxist agenda, the “misinformation” in that link is that … ready? Sometimes the surface measurements don’t follow the satellite measurements exactly.

That’s, like, it! Leaffan, I’m happy to discuss with you why such correlations might not be perfect, but do you understand that it is rather like discussing whether a certain document tallies precisely with a particular trainload of Jews with a Holocaust Denier?

The modus operandi of those who wish to Deny the undeniable is surprisingly similar: choose a tiny piece of the whole puzzle and cast aspersions upon it, then infer that the entire edifice must crumble. CO2 concentration is now 380 parts per million, and was below 300 ppm mere decades ago. This is undeniable, as is the physics of the greenhousing effect of certain gases. The only point for debate is how much is too much, in parts per million, given that every year the concentration rises by up to 3 ppm. We cannot know how much, if at all, ACC contributed to the tragedy of New Orleans. All every professional climatologist says is that if the CO2 ppm continues to rise at the current rate, there will be more tragedies like it far more often.

So I will ask you directly, Leaffan. Do you think that a CO2 concentration of, say, 600ppm - more than twice the level it was for millennia before the industrial revolution - will have “insignificant” consequences?

16

I’ll get back to you on that. I seem to recall recently reading that increased global atmospheric CO2 levels were a result of, not a cause of increased global temperatures. In other words, the warmer it gets the more CO2 is released to the atmosphere. Let me find a cite.

Obviously there are two sides to this debate. I am respectfully not convinced that yours has been proven.

17

When floating ice melts it does not change the sea level (but see Greenland and Antarctica). But an increase in the world ocean’s average temperature will change the sea level. A mass of warm water occupies more volume than an equivalent mass of cool water.

18

:dubious: How exactly does that threaten Western civilization?

19

What? Really? I’d love to see that cite.

IANAGlobalWarmingExpert, but it seems like the fact that digging up tons of fossil hydrocarbons and burning them increases atmospheric CO2 concentrations is pretty well undisputed. Claiming otherwise doesn’t even seem to pass the laugh test.

Or perhaps you’re saying something slightly different from how I’m interpreting this. Either way, I’d love to hear you elaborate.

20

So what was that astoundingly-ignorant “Melting polar ice will not increase sea levels” stuff for?

Wiki’s only a quick one-stop-shopping trip for its own references. A good place to start learning about a subject from complete scratch. Which is why I referred it to you.

Detect any agendas there? No? Okay, then, taking that at face value anyway, are you aware that not only the data but the research on the subject is much more extensive now than 10 years ago, when in fact there *was * considerable scientific debate about the topic? No longer. It’s a consensus now.
Now, to try to restore the thread away from that hijack and respond to the OP’s topics, to wit:

For a quick start:

  1. Right damn now. Decades ago would have been a lot better. Some measures are already underway, though.

  2. Your list is as comprehensive as civilization, and the effects are comprehensive as well. Can you narrow it down any?

  3. Short summary: The highest priority has to be to stop making it worse, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Mostly that means switching from fossil fuels to renewable and nuclear energy sources. Much of that is already underway, but could use tech advances, particularly in vehicle engines (look for hydrogen fuel cell cars in the next decade or sooner). Carbon sequestration technologies could use a tech boost as well. Biofuels, particularly corn-derived ethanol, are actually worse than nothing, though.

  4. Apologize. Then take them to Alaska to see glaciers while you still can. Feed them fish so they’ll be able to remember what they tasted like. Cut back on your own fossil-fuel use. Get them used to vegetarianism (the meat supply depends on petroleum-based fertilizers for feed, and is a highly inefficient means of producing nutritional energy). Get them used to riding bikes instead of cars for short trips.