wrigley
2
More scientist check in and agree with Gore , Its to bad the righties can't admit Gore is right since their children and their childrens children will be affected the most by what we humans are doing time to ban together on this no matter if your left or right.
Global warming: It's not pretty | IndyStar.com
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David Ignatius
Global warming: It's not pretty
<!--PRINTER FRIENDLY ARTICLE-->March 2, 2007
The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over.
A leading international group of climate scientists reported last month that the evidence of global warming is "unequivocal" and that the likelihood it is caused by humans is more than 90 percent.
Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, but this isn't a "call both sides for comment" issue anymore. For mainstream science, it's settled.
The question now is what to do about global warming. This is a political problem more than a scientific one.
The solutions (if we can agree on any) will require political will and imagination -- and also pain. That was my only reservation about the Oscar night celebration of Al Gore's leadership on this issue.
The gowns and black ties and the celebrity back-slapping made it look like dealing with global warming will be fun, a walk down the red carpet. But it's more likely to be about catastrophe, and how to share the pain.
These issues come into focus in a startling new report by futurist Peter Schwartz. Rather than starting with detailed estimates of climate change, he looks instead at systems that already are vulnerable to such stresses.
What Schwartz discovers with his stress-testing makes climate change even scarier: The world already is precarious; the networks that maintain political and social order already are fragile, especially in urban areas; the dividing line between civilized life and anarchy is frighteningly easy to breach, as the daily news from Iraq reminds us. We look at the behaviors of butterflies or migratory birds as early harbingers of climate change.
But what about early impacts on human beings?
"The steady escalation of climate pressure will stretch the resiliency of natural and human systems," writes Schwartz. "In short, climate change pushes systems everywhere toward their tipping point."
Schwartz's report, "Impacts of Climate Change," was prepared by his consulting group, Global Business Network, for a U.S. government intelligence agency he doesn't identify (The text is available at www.washingtonpost.com/postglobal). Here's a brief trek through the ravaged landscape Schwartz describes.
A first set of disasters waiting to happen involves stressed ecosystems. Human actions have created special vulnerability to catastrophic natural events that are likely as the global climate changes. In an interview, Schwartz cited the example of Haiti, which because of deforestation and loss of topsoil is "an ecosystem at the edge." A prolonged drought or a devastating hurricane could tip Haiti over that threshold.
Or take the problem of rising sea levels: Climate scientists are uncertain how fast the icecaps will melt and the seas will rise. But in Bangladesh, where millions of people already live at or near sea level, even a small rise could produce a catastrophe. If a monsoon strikes, 60 million to 100 million people could be forced to flee inundated areas, Schwartz warns
Lack of water may be as big a problem as flooding. Schwartz notes that more than 700 million people now live in arid or semi-arid areas. Climate change could tip this balance, too, producing severe water shortages and even "water wars." Tens of millions of people may become water migrants.
And finally, there is the problem of maintaining social order in a stressed world. You don't have to go to Baghdad to see how quickly the social fabric can shred; just look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
The stresses come in part from rapid urbanization. Schwartz notes that in 1900, one in 20 people lived in cities; today it's about half, and the percentage is rising fast. Without strong and supple governments, this could become a world of vigilantes and militias, desperate to control scarce resources.
The big problems in life aren't the ones that hit you by surprise, but the ones you can see coming. That's surely the case with climate change: We can measure it, we can imagine its catastrophic effects. But can we do anything to stop it? If we let ourselves visualize how bad it could get, as Schwartz does in this report, will we make changes that might reduce the disaster? That's the real stress test: It's coming at us. What are we doing about it?
Global warming: It's not pretty | IndyStar.com
<!--Site Catalyst macro --><!-- sitecatalyst.pbo version 1.42 2007.02.07 --><!-- Added BT logic integration with LD.ini for CT rollout --><S_SUITEID_DEFAULT value="indystar" /><!-- SiteCatalyst code version: H.3. Copyright 1997-2005 Omniture, Inc. More info available at Web Analytics | Web Analysis | Online Business Optimization --><COBRANDSITEDOMAIN value="www" /><SITEDOMAIN value="indystar" />
David Ignatius
Global warming: It's not pretty
<!--PRINTER FRIENDLY ARTICLE-->March 2, 2007
The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over.
A leading international group of climate scientists reported last month that the evidence of global warming is "unequivocal" and that the likelihood it is caused by humans is more than 90 percent.
Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, but this isn't a "call both sides for comment" issue anymore. For mainstream science, it's settled.
The question now is what to do about global warming. This is a political problem more than a scientific one.
The solutions (if we can agree on any) will require political will and imagination -- and also pain. That was my only reservation about the Oscar night celebration of Al Gore's leadership on this issue.
The gowns and black ties and the celebrity back-slapping made it look like dealing with global warming will be fun, a walk down the red carpet. But it's more likely to be about catastrophe, and how to share the pain.
These issues come into focus in a startling new report by futurist Peter Schwartz. Rather than starting with detailed estimates of climate change, he looks instead at systems that already are vulnerable to such stresses.
What Schwartz discovers with his stress-testing makes climate change even scarier: The world already is precarious; the networks that maintain political and social order already are fragile, especially in urban areas; the dividing line between civilized life and anarchy is frighteningly easy to breach, as the daily news from Iraq reminds us. We look at the behaviors of butterflies or migratory birds as early harbingers of climate change.
But what about early impacts on human beings?
"The steady escalation of climate pressure will stretch the resiliency of natural and human systems," writes Schwartz. "In short, climate change pushes systems everywhere toward their tipping point."
Schwartz's report, "Impacts of Climate Change," was prepared by his consulting group, Global Business Network, for a U.S. government intelligence agency he doesn't identify (The text is available at www.washingtonpost.com/postglobal). Here's a brief trek through the ravaged landscape Schwartz describes.
A first set of disasters waiting to happen involves stressed ecosystems. Human actions have created special vulnerability to catastrophic natural events that are likely as the global climate changes. In an interview, Schwartz cited the example of Haiti, which because of deforestation and loss of topsoil is "an ecosystem at the edge." A prolonged drought or a devastating hurricane could tip Haiti over that threshold.
Or take the problem of rising sea levels: Climate scientists are uncertain how fast the icecaps will melt and the seas will rise. But in Bangladesh, where millions of people already live at or near sea level, even a small rise could produce a catastrophe. If a monsoon strikes, 60 million to 100 million people could be forced to flee inundated areas, Schwartz warns
Lack of water may be as big a problem as flooding. Schwartz notes that more than 700 million people now live in arid or semi-arid areas. Climate change could tip this balance, too, producing severe water shortages and even "water wars." Tens of millions of people may become water migrants.
And finally, there is the problem of maintaining social order in a stressed world. You don't have to go to Baghdad to see how quickly the social fabric can shred; just look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
The stresses come in part from rapid urbanization. Schwartz notes that in 1900, one in 20 people lived in cities; today it's about half, and the percentage is rising fast. Without strong and supple governments, this could become a world of vigilantes and militias, desperate to control scarce resources.
The big problems in life aren't the ones that hit you by surprise, but the ones you can see coming. That's surely the case with climate change: We can measure it, we can imagine its catastrophic effects. But can we do anything to stop it? If we let ourselves visualize how bad it could get, as Schwartz does in this report, will we make changes that might reduce the disaster? That's the real stress test: It's coming at us. What are we doing about it?
