In its most comprehensive analysis yet of the impacts of climate change, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) painted a worst-case scenario of a rise of up to 5.1 degrees Celsius by 2090 if there are no actions taken to cut greenhouse emissions.
"There is a very high confidence that hot days will become more frequent and hotter," CSIRO principal research scientist Kevin Hennessy said. "We also have very high confidence that sea levels will rise, oceans will become more acidic, and snow depths will decline."
The dire warning from the government-funded agency is at odds with the official line from Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who in 2009 declared the science of climate change was "crap". Abbott last year scrapped a tax on carbon pricing and abolished the independent Climate Commission, saying recent severe droughts that have crippled cattle farmers were "not a new thing in Australia".
As the host of the Group of 20 last year, he attempted to keep climate change off the agenda, resulting in an embarrassing backdown at the Leaders Summit in Brisbane after US President Barack Obama used a high-profile speech to warn Australia that its own Great Barrier Reef was in danger.
One of the world's biggest carbon emitters, Australia has declined to join the United States, Japan, France and others in contributing to the United Nations' Green Climate Fund.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:02PM
What did you expect?
(Score: 1) by gawdonblue on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:22PM
... a complete drongo who should lose his job in charge of the sheep dip.
Australia, Australia, Australia,
We love you.
Amen.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:32PM
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, / Oi, oi, oi... [wikipedia.org]
(vey)
FTFY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by PartTimeZombie on Friday January 30 2015, @12:38AM
I'm pretty sure he will too.
Looks like Australia voted the Labor Party out of office instead of the Liberals in, and they got what they paid for.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:30PM
the CSIRO actually does real science that is good
the Independent Climate Commission was a useless bunch of lobbyists. i'm glad they're gone
i do agree with putting some kind of environmental factor into corporate balance sheets, but i'm not convinced a tax was the way to go. an emissions trading scheme might be a better approach. the more control you give government, the more likely it is to be corrupted by corporate welfare and political lobbying
i actually agree with the PM that severe droughts aren't new. history backs him up
the ABC is facing some severe cut backs in government funding. i think this article may have been a bit of a hatchet job
also, i read somewhere (and thought reasonable) suspicion of corruption in UN environmental programs
the US also tends to take the same position as Australia on most of these issues, preferring to act in their own national interest (as all countries do/should). financial black holes are everywhere. just because something sounds like a good thing (there is no doubt that reducing human impact on environment is a good thing) doesn't mean we should waste a heap of taxpayer money paying greedy corporate lobbyists to achieve little if any public good. if anything we should channel any money that might have been wasted on the UN into the CSIRO, since they are far more likely to come up with practical scientific solutions that might help than any bureaucratic UN paper shuffling exercise.
-- crutchy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:32PM
heh. i still can't read, since TFA wasn't on the ABC website........
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:09PM
>the US also tends to take the same position as Australia on most of these issues, preferring to act in their own short-term national interest
Fixed that for you. The question is not whether or not we pay to deal with climate change - it's whether we pay today to try to stabilize the climate at historic levels, or do we pay tomorrow to relocate all the cities that have been permanently flooded by rising sea levels and to build massive infrastructure projects to maintain reliable growing seasons as the climate becomes increasingly chaotic during the centuries of transition as we go over the climate tipping point towards a new tropical/desert-dominated global climate.
Most of the forecasts I've seen put the cost of adapting to a new reality at a few orders of magnitude higher than the cost of transitioning the entire world to 100% sustainable energy over the next couple decades. Even assuming adaptation costs can be spread out over several centuries, that means we could be voluntarily paying for the next few decades, or involuntarily paying a comparable annual amount for several centuries after that.
And if we choose to wait and adapt, then those will be costs will have to be paid at a time when we're all struggling to adapt, rather than while we're mostly all sitting comfortably with lots of excess production potential that could be re-routed with minimal impact on quality of life. The actual reality will likely be that the middle and lower classes will struggle to avoid starvation as they lose the capital investment in their homes (most people on Earth live well below the high-water line), and can't afford the greenhouse-grown produce to feed themselves.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:31PM
In any decision involving A) "Pay $X now" and B) "Pay 100*$X later", almost everyone with power now chooses B, because by the time "later" comes there is a good chance that they've moved on to a different position and are no longer responsible for coming up with 100*$X, and in the meantime they look good to whoever they answer to for having saved $X.
Also, there's also a climate-change-specific reason why nobody in power is actually doing anything substantive about the problem: They believe that if they do something, the others will use it as an excuse to pollute even more, and the problem will happen exactly the same way as if they did nothing. By all appearances, they are correct in that belief. If there's one thing international leadership does really really badly, it's global cooperation.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:53PM
it's whether we pay today to try to stabilize the climate at historic levels, or do we pay tomorrow to relocate all the cities that have been permanently flooded by rising sea levels and to build massive infrastructure projects to maintain reliable growing seasons as the climate becomes increasingly chaotic during the centuries of transition as we go over the climate tipping point towards a new tropical/desert-dominated global climate.
The problem is that adaptation to global warming just doesn't look much more expensive than adaptation to a world that isn't experiencing global warming. There's a lot of real estate churn and infrastructure building even in the complete absence of any sort of climate change. All these items aren't that hard or costly to implement especially for a wealthy future world.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 30 2015, @06:25AM
There's a lot of real estate churn and infrastructure building even in the complete absence of any sort of climate change.
But not so much of it is underwater! So this is the denier fall-back position? Yes, AGW is real, but it won't cost us anything, so we don't have to do anything about it, anyway. Brought to you by BP (formerly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, bailed out of a sticky spot by Kermit Roosevelt and the fledgling CIA) and EXXON (the extra x's are for Valdez.).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 30 2015, @06:57AM
But not so much of it is underwater!
Thing is, moving to higher ground when you were going to move anyway, is not that big an extra cost. Similarly, most infrastructure gets rebuilt every few decades anyway. Just rebuild it on higher ground, if you can't, build new infrastructure elsewhere. Sure, underwater property loses most of its value. But above water property increases in value. One of the biggest claimed harms, the loss of value due to flooding of property is far lower than claimed due to the increasing of value of other property.
So this is the denier fall-back position? Yes, AGW is real, but it won't cost us anything, so we don't have to do anything about it, anyway.
I suppose so, though at this point, we're haggling about price which is a considerable move in your direction. The problem is that it also moves your argument from its strong aspects, the relatively solid physical arguments to its weakest aspects, the terrible economic arguments.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 30 2015, @07:31AM
What did you do with the real khallow? This is an eminently reasonable response, and so I am left speechless.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday January 30 2015, @07:08PM
if you're going to move anyway, yes. but as the people in new orleans, for example demonstrate, the people in places that are already under sea level don't want to move, so "if you're going to move anyway" doesn't apply to them, or lots of other people. depending on how high and how fast the water rises, we could have a lot of venice-clones for a while, which could be kinda cool, but as the water rises the people living there will face the choices of abandoning infrastructure, building in advance of the rising water, or building as the water rises (although eventually "abandonment" may be the only option); it shouldn't be a fast rise so there should be plenty of time, but its the same question here: plan and work in advance or wait until its already happening and struggle try to keep up. other places will face similar choices, as arable land is lost and (hopefully) new lands become arable, but the assumption that "we'll be moving anyway" is unfounded.
a lack of planning is a terrible plan, but we can't even agree that plans need to be made, so we don't even have the option to make plans.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday January 30 2015, @07:37PM
"It shouldn't be a fast rise" is the most likely scenario, but not the only one. Greenland appears to be melting faster than predicted. If Antarctica is also, then the rate has been strongly underestimated, and though that would still be slow it would mean the high water mark will be a lot higher than predicted. If the methyl cathlates go, however, we may get a fast rise as measured on a human scale. Warmer waters increase the likelihood that that will happen, but AFAIK nobody knows just how much methane is likely to get released. Theres also a question as to how much methane will be released by melting permafrost...and again, nobody knows. (I tend to think of permafrost as the lesser problem, but that could be just my bias as I'm not expert in either the area of permafrost or methyl cathlates.)
OTOH, the ocean is now warm enough that we are already committed to a large global melt, even if we totally stopped CO2 emissions today, which is impossible. So there is going to be a need to relocate cities in low lying areas no matter what we do. The speed and what counts as "low lying" is what is dependent on our current actions. It might be well, however, to begin planting coral reefs as far North and South as they can survive, and doing other things that will mitigate the destructive effects of increased warming. (Note that as with planting coral reefs, many of these don't require lots of cash, they require a few people with commitment and minimal economic support. And much will probably just need to be written off.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 30 2015, @09:41PM
Greenland appears to be melting faster than predicted.
Only when the volcanoes in Iceland are going off. Keep in mind that each episode of melting observed has been preceded by a substantial injection of volcanic ash.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 30 2015, @09:33PM
if you're going to move anyway, yes. but as the people in new orleans, for example demonstrate, the people in places that are already under sea level don't want to move, so "if you're going to move anyway" doesn't apply to them, or lots of other people.
I don't see a reason to care. They can always get a houseboat, if they want to stay in a flooded area.
a lack of planning is a terrible plan, but we can't even agree that plans need to be made, so we don't even have the option to make plans.
So my mental failwaves keep you from making plans? Then deliver a billion dollars of rubies in the gold-coated skulls of my enemies. Perhaps then, I will allow you to plan, but only a little bit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Saturday January 31 2015, @08:28AM
there's that traditional, sociopathic "its not happening to me, so i don't give a fuck" that conservatives are famous for. that is the reason we, as a whole, can't make plans, because too many people elected to positions where the job description is to work for the benefit of the people they represent say that exact thing, that its not happening to them specifically at this very moment, so there's no reason for them to give a fuck.
sociopaths should not be allowed to represent people. at the very least, people need to stop re-electing sociopaths.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 31 2015, @05:58PM
1) Global poverty - I'll just point out that making people wealthy is the number one way to make things better. It cures so many of the various problems on this list, particularly the next item on the list.
2) Overpopulation - everything including global warming is driven by overpopulation.
3) Desertification - destroys more arable land per year currently, than global warming is supposed to over the next century.
4) Corruption - this is the prime reason poor places are poor.
5) Societal inability to evaluate risk - there's this deeply flawed decision making process which ignores orders of magnitude differences in risk. Prioritizing AGW over other problems is merely a symptom of this.
6) Habitat destruction - this is the number one cause of extinction of life on Earth right now. Invasive species comes next. AGW is well down this list.
7) Real pollution - all this blather about the harm of global warming ignores the more serious harm done to people by actual pollution in air, water, and ground.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday January 30 2015, @10:22AM
Broken window fallacy - losing low land, often the most populated and agriculturally productive is NEVER a good thing. The problem isn't just temperature and sea level. Ice in the north and south drives ocean currents - as ice freezes it leaves behind a frigid dense brine. This causes surface waters to sink oxygenating the deep ocean - you REALLY don't want circulation to stop and the deep ocean to die and become anoxic. This circulation also sequesters carbon stopping things getting much worse more quickly. No circulation would also starve the land of oxygen due to ceasing nutrient-rich upwelling cold currents stopping algal growth, not to mention ocean acidificating disolving the algaes microscopic calcium skeletons.
Five out of six global mass extinctions happened due to global warming. The worst (ie. the Permian/Triassic) almost caused the extinction of proto-mammals, and as a result dinosaurs took over the world, which was probably due to the more efficient breathing system (which birds have inherited). The same event caused the extinction of almost all cockroach species. It was driven by only a 5 degree temperature rise (massive volcanic activity released greenhouse gasses, which also literally burned through massive coal reserves in Siberia). The 5 degree rise triggered some kind of feedback mechanism (possibly dying sea life and/or outgassing of methane from permafrost and deep sea clathrates) which fed back causing a further 5 degree warming.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 30 2015, @03:59PM
Broken window fallacy - losing low land, often the most populated and agriculturally productive is NEVER a good thing.
What makes my observation the broken window fallacy? I'll just point out here that my argument isn't that losing land is a good thing, but rather that it is much less bad than presented by people looking to exaggerate the costs of sea level rise. And keep in mind that land inundated by sea water won't be the most populated or agricultural productive land.
Five out of six global mass extinctions happened due to global warming.
This is supposition not fact. For example, the worst, the Permian-Triassic Extinction event, is known to have a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with the extinction event, but we don't know, despite assertions to the contrary, that this was a significant factor in the extinctions. Volcanoes spew out a lot more chemicals than just carbon dioxide and some of these are quite toxic. And shouldn't you have solid evidence that burning coal beds were a significant factor before asserting that they are? You need more than heat from volcanoes. You also need an air supply. Dumping several hundred meters of lava on top of your coal bed helps keep the air out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 30 2015, @04:15PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 30 2015, @04:14PM
Broken window fallacy - losing low land, often the most populated and agriculturally productive is NEVER a good thing.
What makes my observation the broken window fallacy? I'll just point out here that my argument isn't that losing land is a good thing, but rather that it is much less bad than presented by people looking to exaggerate the costs of sea level rise. And keep in mind that land inundated by sea water won't be the most populated or agricultural productive land.
Five out of six global mass extinctions happened due to global warming.
This is supposition not fact. For example, the worst, the Permian-Triassic Extinction event, is known to have a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with the extinction event, but we don't know, despite assertions to the contrary, that this was a significant factor in the extinctions. Volcanoes spew out a lot more chemicals than just carbon dioxide and some of these are quite toxic [ucalgary.ca] (note, same three authors as the burning coal beds research [nrcan.gc.ca] asserting significant environmental hit from mercury introduced by volcanic eruption not burning coal beds). And shouldn't you have solid evidence that burning coal beds were a significant factor before asserting that they are? You need more than heat from volcanoes. You also need an air supply. Dumping several hundred meters of lava on top of your coal bed helps keep the air out.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday January 30 2015, @11:12PM
It was bad for the people who live behind me - they were flooded during the last storm surge, and one house has been permanently abandoned - apparently due to repeated flooding. I'm not in a poor part of the world either (Townsville, Australia). My yard was flooded with salt water right to the front curb... and the street in front of me is the main way into the central part of the city from the north. The three story set of units next door had a pump truck working for a solid week to empty the underground car park. The city spent tens of millions in flood mitigation in the early 2000's in a very clever way - The Strand has a completely artificial beach and beautified shoreline protecting the city, but it has to be continually replenished, and as things get worse it won't do the job indefinitely.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 31 2015, @06:28AM
It was bad for the people who live behind me - they were flooded during the last storm surge, and one house has been permanently abandoned - apparently due to repeated flooding.
So what? If it's flooding now, it'd flood anyway even if there wasn't sea level rise from global warming. And how valuable is a house that repeatedly floods? I'm just not seeing the problem here, especially since we're not even starting to speak of AGW-related problems.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday January 31 2015, @03:59PM
We've already had a 20cm sea level rise since 1993, and this suburb is one of the oldest here so it's safe to say things were fine when those houses were built. Apparently you're not aware that the north of Australia is suffering three times [abc.net.au] the global average sea level rise due to global warming induced changes in weather patterns so we've been feeling it for a while now. My childhood holiday-home is already mostly gone, and just out of the people I know there are two other holiday-homes which are gone or regularly are flooded on high tides. In the USA it seems things are different with oyster farmers the first to be adversly affected [smh.com.au]. *shrug* Not to mention the arctic... people all over the world have been feeling this for a while now.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 31 2015, @06:12PM
Apparently you're not aware that the north of Australia is suffering three times the global average sea level rise due to global warming induced changes in weather patterns so we've been feeling it for a while now.
So what? You're not aware of this either. It's an unfounded assertion which is particularly dishonest given that we know regional sea levels change anyway, even in the complete absence of AGW. Even if it were true, that would just mean that there's some other places with lower sea level rises due to global warming. After all, these regional flows don't actually create water, they just move it around so that some places get more and some less.
In the USA it seems things are different with oyster farmers the first to be adversly affected.
Please. Even a little looking into this would reveal that the acidification effects are vastly bigger than anything provided from AGW theory. These bouts of acidification have probably been going on since the end of the last glacial period, but we weren't looking for ocean acidification, ten thousand years ago.
There's two terms that describe your claims: confirmation bias and observation bias.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday February 01 2015, @02:33AM
"Unfounded assertion"? It's the CSIRO that's making these "unfounded assertions" (both on temperature and sea level rise), and it's not like it has earned them any kudos from Canberra. The Abbott government is famously pro-coal and in the last few months has sacked 20% of CSIRO staff, and the rest are not even allowed to officially attend any scientific conferences due to budget cuts.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:53PM
It's the CSIRO that's making these "unfounded assertions" (both on temperature and sea level rise),
Argument from authority. An expert authority making an unfounded assertion is no better than one which doesn't have that expert opinion.
and it's not like it has earned them any kudos from Canberra. The Abbott government is famously pro-coal and in the last few months has sacked 20% of CSIRO staff, and the rest are not even allowed to officially attend any scientific conferences due to budget cuts.
Ad hominem. Australia is highly dependent on fossil fuels for its economic well-being. We would expect their government to reflect their interests. From my angle, this is the really annoying thing about the arguments for any sort of near future harm from AGW theory. It quickly turns into a tour of lists of fallacies. Where's the actual evidence?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 02 2015, @12:17AM
About as close as I've gotten personally to this research is helping out the Marine Modelling Unit at the School of Engineering at James Cook University when I worked there, and the MMU were informed by and had close contacts at the CSIRO whos campus was quite close. To be honest I didn't really know what the Marine Modeling Unit was doing as that wasn't my concern at the time, but I did get to watch some simulations of tidal effects of sand deposition... I think it was at The Strand (ie. Townsvilles sea barrier disguised as a tourist attraction/beach). The Strand has several artificial rocky headlands to protect the sand, and it was interesting to watch how these did their job amidst vortices, current and the in-out of the tides. BTW, they used Linux workstations because they were connecting to the JCU Unix-based supercomputing facilities. The JCU School of Engineering also has the Cyclone Testing Unit which has a fun wind tunnel and informs eg. building codes. Townsville was badly damaged by Cyclone Althea in 1971, and around the same time Darwin was practically destroyed by Cyclone Tracey. We've had winds approaching the same strength since and thanks in part to these guys we've been more-or-less fine.
I guess what I'm saying is I have more reason than most to trust the CSIRO, but even if I didn't - we're talking about the scientific method. This stuff is humanities best informed guess as to what's happening, and in addition there's increased flooding up and down the coast here so in this part of the world we have practical reasons to believe it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 02 2015, @01:14AM
I guess what I'm saying is I have more reason than most to trust the CSIRO, but even if I didn't - we're talking about the scientific method.
The basis of the scientific method is evidence.
This stuff is humanities best informed guess as to what's happening, and in addition there's increased flooding up and down the coast here so in this part of the world we have practical reasons to believe it.
And what are those practical reasons for belief? As I've pointed, bad things would happen anyway, whether or not they got blamed on global warming.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 02 2015, @01:32AM
Sea level rise is happening. Temperature rise is happening (although some like to ignore the part of the atmospheric system under the waves and say "temperature hasn't risen in ten years"). I guess that qualifies as something happening... and for Australia this is a bad "something". The most scientifically credible explanation is global warming due to CO2 emissions, though nothing is certain of course... and humans, both individually and collectively can only hold a pathetically simplified model of reality in their heads - yes, there is doubt about EVERYTHING. Nothing is truly known, even the things that we learn as "fact"... but even so, we need to interact with the world even given these limitations. The best reachings and grapplings-with-reality of our scientists say it's happening... even when they're being punished with de-funding and being sacked... so if torture works they're probably telling the truth. ;)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 02 2015, @01:51AM
Sea level rise is happening. Temperature rise is happening (although some like to ignore the part of the atmospheric system under the waves and say "temperature hasn't risen in ten years"). I guess that qualifies as something happening... and for Australia this is a bad "something".
So what? It's not a bad thing happening in isolation. There are trade offs and given our ignorance of how bad global warming actually would be, I think it would be foolish to just assume that cranking the carbon dioxide emissions dial to zero (especially when most of the world won't follow suit) is a good thing.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 02 2015, @08:57AM
The rest of the world (including the US and China) are making commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions... as a matter of fact the Chinese are basing their emissions trading scheme on the Australian model which was working fine and doing the job, but our current government ended prematurely on idealogical grounds.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 02 2015, @07:20PM
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 02 2015, @12:38AM
It seems our local council comissioned a report from the CSIRO in 2008 ie. climate change projections [creektocoral.org] for the Townsville region. You might be able to take climate change lightly, but most of Australias population live on a thin band around the coast... even if we didn't have increasing coastal flooding, and there was only a 5% chance of this being true we'd have to take this very seriously.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 02 2015, @01:28AM
and there was only a 5% chance of this being true we'd have to take this very seriously.
What does "take very seriously" mean? I've never advocated ignoring global warming, especially since it does appear to be happening and does have global impact. But I do advocate being a lot more cautious about acting on global warming with expensive remedies of dubious value when the research upon which justification for those remedies are dependent is so shifty right now.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 02 2015, @04:03AM
Well, we've got no choice but to take it very seriously - over 100 million in flood mitigation in this city alone. In addition to the measures I've already mentioned I've seen a whole park that was dug out and is now hole... a slope down to a drain at the bottom - it's there to buffer flood waters because there's not enough fall for drainage to work as quickly as it once did and to provide a pressure differential even when the outflow is under water. Of course we care because we pay a lot extra in our rates... we're one of those "externalities" for whom there should be at least a tax on carbon emissions to offset.
Even if global warming isn't a problem for you, you should probably care about air quality, being held to ransom by the Saudis/Russians/Fossilfuelistanis, being dragged into more resource wars, gradually paying extra year on year as easily accessed fossil fuel reserves are depleted etc... Global warming mitigation, investing in renewables, electric vehicles etc... just makes sense, even if you think global warming is rubbish.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 02 2015, @05:34AM
Well, we've got no choice but to take it very seriously - over 100 million in flood mitigation in this city alone.
So what? You haven't shown what the flood damage would be in the absence of global warming. To make a choice on economic grounds, we have to understand what the costs and benefits are to each choice. And one problem with current cost arguments associated with global warming, is that the current costs would likely happen anyway. The real costs to global warming happen decades and centuries from now. At that point, you have to consider time value, particularly, whether it's a good idea to incur substantial costs now to prevent costs at some distant future time.
Even if global warming isn't a problem for you, you should probably care about air quality, being held to ransom by the Saudis/Russians/Fossilfuelistanis, being dragged into more resource wars, gradually paying extra year on year as easily accessed fossil fuel reserves are depleted etc... Global warming mitigation, investing in renewables, electric vehicles etc... just makes sense, even if you think global warming is rubbish.
You do realize most of these aren't actual open problems? Air quality is a solved problem even in the presence of oil and coal usage. I also question "Held to ransom" by a bunch of countries which aren't actually doing that. Sure, some of them are engaging in typical oligopoly behavior, but I don't see a problem with that. It encourages genuine investment in energy production of all sorts. I think radical carbon dioxide emissions reduction will cause more resource wars than the strategy prevents (poverty and its accompanying resource mismanagement problems are a more serious provocation source than the relatively mild effects of global warming). We're benefiting, not paying, by using fossil fuel reserves. They don't gain value by not being used.
Global warming mitigation, investing in renewables, electric vehicles etc... just makes sense, even if you think global warming is rubbish.
No, it doesn't automatically make sense. For example, Germany and Denmark have gone whole hog into renewable electricity production, that just doubled their electricity bills (relative to the EU which is already on the expensive side) while making them dependent on foreign suppliers of electricity (including Russia and a few Fossilfuelistanis). Using the word, "investing" doesn't mean anything unless you have positive return. A lot of these renewable energy schemes have just encouraged massive malinvestment, such as Spain's solar and wind power initiatives.
And how does global warming mitigation make sense to me, if I think global warming is rubbish? Should I think tin foil hats make sense, even if I think mind control satellites, the sole reason for wearing these hats, are rubbish?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 02 2015, @08:30AM
Haven't shown it's from global warming? The sea level has risen GLOBALLY. There are two ways this can happen - thermal expansion and land-ice melt. If you've got another mechanism that's massive enough I'm all ears. In any case it doesn't matter what you or I think... most world leaders are already taking action. Our coal lobbyist Prime Minister found this out when he was the lone voice talking about coal being the fuel of the future at the recent New York summit.
Regarding sea level there are also local effects eg. subsidence due to ground water extraction, and regional effects eg. changes in weather patterns (in our case due to PREDICTED global warming changes) pushing or pulling water from the coastline giving us 3x more rise than the global average. I'm not sure who crunched the numbers, but if the Marine Modeling Unit guys at JCU had anything to do with it I have a high level of trust in their professionalism and conclusions - I know them personally... but of course the climatology they relied on would have had to come from elsewhere... I guess that means I have to get shifty eyed because science is untrustworthy when it's done by STRANGERS... especially from the CSIRO. That's why our government had to sack 1/5 of them, cut their funding, and discontinue the science ministry - yes, our government no longer has a ministry of science. You should visit Parliment House - you'd meet many like minded people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 02 2015, @07:27PM
Haven't shown it's from global warming? The sea level has risen GLOBALLY.
Yes. The sea level has risen for the past 14k or so years. Yes, it's due to global warming, but no, most of that is not due to anthropogenic global warming. And of the 20 cm of claimed sea level rise for your location in recent decades, at best you can claim 6 cm or so for AGW by your own admission (being the global sea level rise over the period in question). And this all ignores that the flood mitigation spending probably would have to be done anyway, because it's due to changing land use. After all your location has grown substantially in population over the past few decades. That means more marginal land is probably being settled with high value property like homes and shops rather than low value property like farmland.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 02 2015, @07:30PM
I'm not sure who crunched the numbers, but if the Marine Modeling Unit guys at JCU had anything to do with it I have a high level of trust in their professionalism and conclusions - I know them personally... but of course the climatology they relied on would have had to come from elsewhere... I guess that means I have to get shifty eyed because science is untrustworthy when it's done by STRANGERS... especially from the CSIRO.
Here's yet another long winded argument from authority.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday January 31 2015, @12:00AM
Perhaps you're right and the mercury and coal char/fly ash were the culprits and the 10 degree global warming had nothing to do with the Permian extinction... but the greatest damage in the oceans was to organisms with calcium carbonate skeletons which strongly suggests ocean acidification due to CO2 at least played an important part.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 31 2015, @07:44AM
and the 10 degree global warming had nothing to do with the Permian extinction...
It's worth noting that we don't actually know how the Permian extinction happened. These things we discuss are good guesses, but they're not a substitute for actually being there and measuring directly what's going on.
but the greatest damage in the oceans was to organisms with calcium carbonate skeletons which strongly suggests ocean acidification due to CO2 at least played an important part.
Or ocean acidification due to the numerous other acidic compounds that volcanoes emit like hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen fluoride.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday January 31 2015, @04:25PM
Perhaps you don't understand why a foot or so of sea level rise can make such a big difference here. Behind the Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral lagoon in the world - three meter swells are exceptional, and we're sheltered even further by Magnetic Island. Sea level rather than wave action is the largest part of our problem. For example during the last storm surge my yard was only flooded with 10cm of seawater - that's the sea level rise since the year 2000.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday January 31 2015, @04:43PM
Oops... the reply above was to the wrong comment.
Yeah, sure... those acidic compounds were probably very destructive, and there's not much doubt that the Permian mass extinction had to be multifactorial - noone has suggested a single mechanism which could account for all of it, but the fact remains that global temperatures rose 10 degrees for some time (after a period of global cooling due to the volcanism).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 31 2015, @06:22PM
but the fact remains that global temperatures rose 10 degrees for some time (after a period of global cooling due to the volcanism).
Unless, of course, it didn't happen that way or that temperature rise was just not that important. It's not a fact yet. Things may well have happened as you suggest, but I think this transition is a lot more complicated than suggested by current research.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday January 29 2015, @08:43PM
Oh sure, they call it "global" warming, but if it's only a few countries it can't really be global, can it? We should call it "foreign warming".
And if it's foreign warming, it's not really our problem, is it? Why should good, hardworking Americans pay more taxes for some rich aussies to retire to someplace colder? That's just commie talk, that's what it is. We might as well just carve a statue of Stalin out of the Washington Monument.
Did you ever notice how all this "global warming" nonsense started after we fixed the hole in the ozone layer? I think God put that hole there, to help keep the planet cool. It's like opening a window when you get too hot. Simple common sense. I don't know why we need to pay scientists trillions of dollars to figure this out when it's so obvious. That's why I support the AMERICA Act of 2015 - I don't know what the acronym is yet, but it takes all of NASA's budget and spends it on opening old CFC-based hairspray canisters and piping it straight to the stratosphere, where Jesus and Reagan intended.
The addendum about bombing Tajikistan is just to get cross-party support. You know how politics is, can't pass a law to save the country without a little bit of pork.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:28PM
Well now if you were Russian you might be right, - after all they'll be sitting pretty on lots of nice, fertile, freshly thawed tundra. The US though is one of those foreign countries likely to be a climate loser - we're an agriculture-based economy after all, and the great plains, breadbasket of the world, were already marginal growing environments and are being rapidly decimated by even the small weather fluctuations we've seen so far. And of course we're busy trying to authorize the Keystone oil pipeline - which is virtually guaranteed to poison the existing aquifers all along the Mississippi river with the inevitable leakage.
My god, that's it! The pipeline is a shrewd Russian conspiracy to ensure that America's economic viability crumbles even faster than the rest of the world, leaving Canada virtually defenseless in the face of well-fed Russian troops invading across the freshly melted Arctic. Russia will then control not only the vast Arctic oil fields, but virtually all the arable land on the planet. Thus will begin the dominance of the new Russian Empire. It's all so obvious!
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:37PM
Yeah, but in the temporally local examination, without looking too far into the future, the continental US, particularly the eastern 60ish% is one of the few places where the shifts climate change cause are for the colder.
This local trend will reverse in not too long as the global sub-ocean currents are already as dead as they're going to get.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday January 30 2015, @03:17PM
I've always read Russians hate thawed tundra, except when they're being invaded. They call it rasputitsa, or quagmire season.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 30 2015, @06:29PM
Well, on a seasonal basis it's probably quite ugly - but give it a decade or three of thaw and I bet you it becomes much more pleasant.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:27PM
The report said the annual average temperature in Australia would likely be up to 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer in 2030 than the average experienced between 1986 and 2005.
The actual range [climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au] is 0.6 C to 1.3 C increase in average annual temperature from 1986-2005 to 2020-2039 ranges with little difference between low CO2 emission and high emCO2 emission scenarios.
By 2030 (the period 2020-2039), Australian annual average temperature is projected to increase by 0.6-1.3 °C above the climate of 1986-2005 under RCP4.5 with little diff erence in warming between RCPs (Section 7.1.1).
This is something that can be verified experimentally over the near future since current increases to the present are moving up at the bottom of that range of temperature increases. An increase in global warming temperature that fits the near future models, would be good support for their longer term predictions;.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by gnuman on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:45PM
If you live in the arctic, you already have +5C over 1900s baseline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_the_Arctic#Rising_temperatures [wikipedia.org]
A 2013 article published in Geophysical Research Letters has shown that temperatures in the region haven't been as high as they currently are since at least 44,000 years ago and perhaps as long as 120,000 years ago.
That is today, not 50 yeas from now. In 50 years, they may get another +5C. Dancing trees, and other stuff, already there.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/arctic-soil-thaw-may-unleash-runaway-global-warming/ [scientificamerican.com]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mysterious-craters-are-just-the-beginning-of-arctic-surprises/ [scientificamerican.com]
Even more widespread than blast craters or burning ice are drunken trees. When permafrost thaws, soil that was once as solid as concrete becomes mud, due to the fact that ice makes up as much as 80 percent of the ground in some parts of the Arctic. And because ice takes up more space than water, the ground subsides, causing trees that grew upright to lean as the ground liquefies beneath them. Whole forests have listed like an army of drunkards as a result. This is also bad news for modern infrastructure in the Arctic as well: Roads, pipelines and building foundations sink into mud and crack or entire landscapes subside. "Long term, there are huge economic and social impacts to permafrost degrading," Schaefer notes.
But the warming will continue, even if we stop ALL CO2 emissions, for at least the next 200-300 years. Planetary size changes do not happen overnight. We live on surface flakes of crust, believing and relying on them being stable. But that is only during our lifetimes. Over millions of years, they move around, floating like scum on river water (and about as thick!). And Global Warming on the same timescale, is like a terrible explosion of greenhouse gases, not seen on this planet for millions of years, not since the last super-volcanoes and massive lava flows encompassing areas larger than most of our nations. But since most people can't comprehend timescales, and we ridicule people that do, we laugh at the explosion we have ignited, our lives too brief to even realize what we have done.
All we care is how will it affect us. Maybe a better question would be how will it affect our great-great-great grand children?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 30 2015, @12:23AM
... relocate or learn life-long swimming - the longer you can swing, the longer you'll stay alive [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by dltaylor on Thursday January 29 2015, @10:20PM
That's TOWARD the Equator, for geography-challenged Americans.
If your continent is moving from the Antarctic toward the tropics, shouldn't it be getting warmer?
5 cm/year may not sound like much, but it does add up.
;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @12:14AM
Yeah, the CSIRO does this every year. Will soylent print csiro's clarification in a week or so?
Thats the question I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30 2015, @12:30AM
Actually the models say we should have experienced 6 degrees of warming by now.
The world's temperatures have been flat since 1998.
Yet another 'scare them' campaign from green peace.
(Score: 2) by ksarka on Friday January 30 2015, @10:46AM
Prove it.
I, myself, have the latest IPCC report (http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/) sitting on my desk, that shows a steady increase in global temperatures over the last 4 decades. Same for smaller scale temperature change. Same for CO2 content in oceans. Same for CO2 concentrations in atmosphere. Same for methane concentrations in atmosphere. Same for ALL of the major climate impact trends.
You DO NOT CHOOSE whether to believe in proven science. It's not a religion.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday January 30 2015, @07:47PM
Temperature fluctuates a lot, and I believe that you can still pick sets of years that show things not getting warmer, though its getting more difficult.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday January 30 2015, @04:36PM
Of course, as soon as you submit the story.
(Score: 1) by Andhesaidtome on Friday January 30 2015, @02:19AM
As of December last, the Government had committed AUD$200mil to the GCF.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-10/bishop-200-million-to-green-climate-fund-at-un-climate-summit/5956676 [abc.net.au]
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 30 2015, @08:14AM
The headline states the issue as fact, but the story seems to be just about climate predictions for the future.
Australia faced [wrong tense?] a rise in temperature of potentially more than 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees fahrenheit) by the end of the century, an increase that would outpace global warming worldwide, the country's national science agency said on Tuesday.
So are temperatures already rising faster down under, or is this just one projection?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk