Is Global Warming Inevitable?

[Elok]

Compare the Cold War:

Starting in the late fifties, early sixties, we faced a clear existential threat from nuclear weapons; if a nuclear war occurred, the combined arsenals of the U.S., U.S.S.R. and sundry allies would wipe out most life in the civilized world, if not the world period. There was essentially no doubt about that, as no fool would ever believe life could go on after a thermonuclear blast. Global Warming/Climate Change would cause a change in global weather patterns, a rise in ocean levels, but nobody can say for certain how much or how fast. Not even the most extreme predictions cite death for 90% of the human race and an end to civilization. And the evidence is too complex for the layperson to readily grasp.

The Cold War was between the world's two greatest powers, with all others largely accessories. It could have been ended at any time by achieving something resembling normal human relations with Moscow, at a cost of pride and ideology but not a whole lot else. In the long run it would have saved a considerable amount of money on the construction and maintenance of nuclear arsenals, and manning the hair-triggers all the time. The solution to Global Warming will need to involve the separate governments of the entire industrialized (and industrializing) world working together towards one solution. It will require a massive overhaul of infrastructure all over the world at spectacular expense, and we won't see results for some time.

The Cold War gradually warmed up in a series of disarmament talks that reduced the number of nukes on each side to just enough to kill the whole world fifty million times over, as opposed to the previous fifty bajillion. It only actually ended, after about forty years of playing apocalyptic chicken, when one of the two superpowers collapsed under the weight of its dysfunctional and retarded 19th-century economy. With Russia a pseudo-capitalist kleptocracy, we get along much better. There are continuing worries about terrorists getting their hands on ill-guarded nukes over there, however, and the remaining U.S. stockpile alone is enough to kill us five hundred or so times over, at least according to that dude on the Colbert Report the other night. Whatever, it's a ****load. The greatest and plainest threat the human race ever faced went away by a kind of default (also, Reagan made a stirring speech of some kind, on the advice of his astrologer).

Do we actually think any number of summits will get us a meaningful solution to climate change? Especially with a very stark time limit?

[Drake Tungsten]

There was essentially no doubt about that, as no fool would ever believe life could go on after a thermonuclear blast.

BS. The effects of a global thermonuclear war are generally overstated by the ignorant.

[Kuciwalker]

His point remains valid, though.

[Kuciwalker]

The Cold War gradually warmed up in a series of disarmament talks

"Defrosted" is the metaphor you want to use.

[Drake Tungsten]

His point remains valid, though.

I stopped reading once he pissed me off.

[Kuciwalker]

"It took us almost 50 years to actually end the Cold War, despite the potential consequences being universally recognized. Given the apparent time limit on AGW and the large faction that denies its existence, why do we think it's possible at all to stop?"

[notyoueither]

There was essentially no doubt about that, as no fool would ever believe life could go on after a thermonuclear blast.

BS. The effects of a global thermonuclear war are generally overstated by the ignorant.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054790/plotsummary

[Elok]

For that bit you quoted, at least, I was referring to the effects of a bomb blast on a city. I'm assuming you don't think that, if a nuclear bomb hit your town, the residents could somehow brush it off and continue inhabiting the city. Little Boy and Fat Man were utter pansies compared to the H-Bomb, or even to nukes developed shortly after 1945.

I will yield to KH or other resident ubernerds' opinion as to the potential consequences of a global nuclear war, though as Kuci said it's pretty well irrelevant. Certainly most people believed we'd all be in deep ****, which is what mattered. And it still took decades to end it.

[Elok]

"It took us almost 50 years to actually end the Cold War, despite the potential consequences being universally recognized. Given the apparent time limit on AGW and the large faction that denies its existence, why do we think it's possible at all to stop?"

And don't forget that it requires a multilateral (basically global) agreement and considerable expense. If even one major power refuses to stop using fossil fuels, it won't work. The remainder will say, with some justice, "Screw this. Why should we dismantle and rebuild our infrastructure if [X] is going to keep going and we'll be hosed anyway?"

[Ben Kenobi]

Do we actually think any number of summits will get us a meaningful solution to climate change? Especially with a very stark time limit?

There's no evidence that global warming is at all harmful to people, contrary to what we know about thermonuclear weaponry.

[HalfLotus]

Institutions are in place for multilateral agreements, obviously. UN & UNFCC, World Bank, BIS, and several large think tanks have significant sway over many governments, lawmakers, and the nearly every "expert" community.

The western business world is moving at light speed toward "sustainable" and "green" tech. The prickly part will be governments. However, the carbon trading market is where the money will be, and politics follow money.

All the big nations are on board as far as I know. Copenhagen will annouce the results of a previously arranged agreement at WBSCC.

China says they will reduce their "CO2 density", meaning C02 produced per Yuan of economic output. Considering that their economy stands to increase substantially over time, I wouldn't expect a reduction in total C02.

Major countries are planning to fund third-world "transition" to "sustainable" tech to the tune of trillions, since most third world countries aren't dumb enough to blow tons of money on bad technology in the name of shaky climate "science".

[trev]

There may be movement by some towards action on global warming, but in Australia our major right/centre party kicked out its leader who supported an ETS and replaced him with a right wing leader against an ETS and Carbon Tax. The Australian parliament has rejected an ETS scheme and looks unlikely to vote for one unless party numbers change after the next election due late next year. But in recent by elections voters elected candidates who supported parties against an ETS. So the future for an ETS and tough action in Australia on climate change is highly doubtful despite a Prime Minister who strides the world preaching real action on climate change, but without a parliament that will vote in his policies.

[Zevico]

The notion of giving third world governments in the general sense money to 'fight' climate change is insanity--their leaders will use it to buy private jets.

[notyoueither]

This doesn't happen every day.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/06/copenhagen-editorial

'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

Editorial
The Guardian, Monday 7 December 2009

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.


This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

[Drake Tungsten]

History's judgment on the Baby Boomers is already sealed. Ya'll ****ing suck.