Global Warming - Cost and effects

While the buzz is about sub-prime and credit crunch. This time i think the one thing that will hit the nail on the head is global warming.

Imagine dry crops, floods, devastation, storms etc etc. These things are something that we have not faced on a full scale before. And almost every other nations are facing a problem with it.

Would like to get inputs and views from fellow members.

I can't agree more with you. I went to a seminaar today and it is like having a blind eye towards global warming. Or maybe it is a oneway street that is very difficult to reverse. We are very aware regarding nuclear power because of the half life of radioactive material. Recovering of CO2 gasses to normal is also in the order of 2000 years if starting from today. Carbon footprint creditation and carbon taxes will hopefully create awareness. Enough of the philosophy, my thought is that the economic impacts on self sustainable countries will be less.

I'd be very careful "going long" re. global warming. It's still in a religious hype phase and it will be a while before anything is sorted out. For example, one of the biggest arguments in favour - that 9 of the last 10 hottest years on record happened in the last 10 years (something along those lines) - has recently been shown to be incorrect and the propagators of the myth (NASA) have quietly backed down - whoops, seems to have been an error in the calculations - though I doubt the high priest of the movement (Al Gore) is likely to do the same...

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/c...1-2fefe0905363

When Greenland is green again, then I'll take a look.

When something is repeated enough times, some people will start to think it's true -- that would be called brainwashing.

Sure, corporate America is coming around and jumping on the bandwagon - only to the degree that they can make money on it.

"Carbon offsets" are the biggest joke of the whole cult. Almost like the "tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it" riddle.

OK, there's a tree somewhere, taking up co2 and producing o2. It does that regardless. Now, I'm gonna pay to have my name put on it, so that I can pollute more. The only end result is, I've polluted more. The tree doesn't offset anything, it was already there. Maybe I've offsetted the tree since I decided I can pollute all I want.....

Dennis Miller was recently on a late night show, and produced an old Newsweek magazine from the mid-70's. The theme of the magazine was "the coming ICE AGE".

One of the suggested remedies given by the junk scientists of the day was "deliberate melting of the polar ice caps".

Global warming is not the problem.

Human health is the problem. The earth really dont care about us, every plants, or living species on the planet is temporarily here untill they disappear (same goes for humanity)

So the problem is how can we manage to stay as long as possible alive on this planet without ruining our environnement so we can still breath, eat and drink normally (ie: not dying in agonizing pain because our air is polluted, our food dissapear and our drink is full of germs/chemical residues etc...)

This is why everyone need to take a real stance against highly polluting activities.

I've heard that over 99.5% of all species simply go extinct. Either a new predator evolves and eats up a whole species or the Earth's climate changes somehow to induce an extinction or a meteor/comet simply smashes into the planet and it's lights-out for mostly everything living.

I have also heard that evolution does not equate to "survival of the fittest" but really describes "survival of the most adaptable to change". Just playing the odds, and assuming that adaptability is key to survival, I'll bet that humans will follow suit with the 99.5% of extinct species eventually.

BTW, 99.5% is worse than the odds of becoming a successful trader! Yikes!

Maybe this is an interesting book to read for those who are interested in this subject...

Here in Southern Germany we are seeing very dramatic changes.
The glaciers are melting. Where there was ice just a few years ago, only dirt and rocks remain. By the way a big problem, because of erosion.

We can now grow wine that only grew in Italy, and it's getting better and better.
The temperature in my town has gone up 1,1 degree C° in the past 100 years. That's the average.

It means that our winters are becoming warmer and warmer and our summers mostly too.

Last year the winter was 5 degree C° too warm. We even had one night with over 20 °C and that in January (or December can't remember exactly)

Normally the temperature is below - 10°C.

We only had 2 days below 0. It was a strange thing to see cover crops growing that should have started 2-3 months later.

We have had the almost no rain in spring. Now it's raining quite a lot which is not unusual.

And these are not isolated incidents, it is just another crazy year after the other.
We have insects and other animals here now, that are only known in southern Europe.
By the way Southern Europe is having extreme drought the last years.
I know from Italy where water is getting more scarce (?) in summer.

We can feel and see the changes everywhere but unfortunately most people are too stupid and too detached from nature (if you can call it nature what is left of it) to see the warning signs.

But what the heck, life goes on and on. Eventually virus Man is going to be killed in my opinion.

revisited,

so guys other than the current influx in demand, i have heard that the scarcity of agri products and crops has caused a meteoric rise in prices. How would one classify this issue under? Global warming?

first visit:

Sorry to post on an old thread, but I do think we'll see this issue resurge in the next few years.

I live in Australia (QLD) and we've seen some crazy weather patterns in the past year. From 75%+ of our state being in drought to an almost *overnight* shift to being 75% flood declared. Some parts have recorded the most rainfall ever in the history of recording.

For those who don't know our country, the state of QLD is quite large. Close to 1.75 million km2 - more than seven times the size of the UK. 75% of it in flood is a lot of water. It was all dumped on us in the matter of a month too. The old 100 year floods theory was blown out the door for some as it occurred two or three times in under 6 months. Some of us however are still in drought.

We're also witnessing strange weather shifts. Victoria at the lower southern end is experiencing similar weather patterns to what was only known to be experienced in northern states. There's no doubt we're seeing some unusual erratic changes.

I think the US crisis shadowed the full financial effects of the QLD floods, our dollar continued to climb against the greenback throughout the whole period. Even though the costs ran into the billions, farmers were just happy that the drought was broken.

It's looking like that it will take something like a tropical cyclone in Melbourne to become a major issue.

I'm guessing that once the US gets back on their feet, we'll start to see a focus shift towards global warming and its effects. Oil will always remain a strong issue, some are saying they can't see it ever going back below $100 per barrel.

Al Gore,

More Kool-AID please!

Thanks,

One of your loyal sheep that will gladly sacrifice others money thru taxes to make the world a happier place!

This is an interesting perspective on the whole issue.

The Great Global Warming Swindle
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...52680655100870

Touches on the economics in 3rd world countries more towards the end (not allowing mining of coal or oil for power plants, etc), but the whole video is good, in general.

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