[dohboi]

Lake Superior is already in steep decline. The east coast just had its worst downpour in history.

These "predictions" are already well underway. Sorry if you find them hard to believe, Tanada, but you might try reading the paper. Or looking out your window. We're well into the "results" stage of GW.

The North America section was one that was watered down under governmental pressure. So the already extremely cautious IPCC report is even fruther from stating the likely full impact. Indeed, as just noted, they are really just stating what is already well underway.

Wake up, people. We've got to change NOW!

Stop driving and flying. Stop denying. Start demanding immediate and comprehensive changes at all levels to reduce contributions to GW and start getting us ready for life on a whole new planet.

[Lore]

Wait till heat waves set in with associated brown outs or rolling black outs. There are going to be thousands dead just with that.

[Tanada]

Lake Superior is already in steep decline. The east coast just had its worst downpour in history.

These "predictions" are already well underway. Sorry if you find them hard to believe, Tanada, but you might try reading the paper. Or looking out your window. We're well into the "results" stage of GW.

The North America section was one that was watered down under governmental pressure. So the already extremely cautious IPCC report is even fruther from stating the likely full impact. Indeed, as just noted, they are really just stating what is already well underway.

Wake up, people. We've got to change NOW!

Stop driving and flying. Stop denying. Start demanding immediate and comprehensive changes at all levels to reduce contributions to GW and start getting us ready for life on a whole new planet.

Given that I live here next to the shore I take an active interest in lake levels. Despite your claim above Lake Superior since 2001 has stayed within the same five feet of its level, some times two feet higher, sometimes two feet lower. GRAPH from the NOAA data center.

If you want people to panic you really should try and know what you are taling about.

[Lore]

I was born and raised on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan and there has been cycles when the lake level would rise and fall substantially.

The "lowest" monthly average lake level for the representative network of gages on Lake Michigan/Huron, 576.05 feet IGLD 1985 International Great Lakes Datum, occurred in March 1964. The "highest" monthly average lake level for the network of gages, 582.35 feet IGLD 1985, occurred in October 1986. This is a difference of 6.30 feet in water level elevation since records have been kept.

LINK

[dohboi]

Tanada wrote:

"If you want people to panic you really should try and know what you are taling about."

"...panic..." hmmm... I don't personally consider a call to wake up to be equivalent to a call to "panic," but if you choose to interpret it that way, well, panic on!

I prefer to call it powerdown.

All the climate info I've seen about MN and evirons suggests that, even before GW effects, we were heading toward the much drier conditions that have been the norm around here through much of the holocene. Add to that the drying predicted for most inland areas with GW and it is quite reasonable to expect drier and drier conditions from here on. Yes there is static that makes it hard to determine the true long term direction, but given other factors, it is likely that this latest drying is going to get worse. Wetter conditions along coasts are also widely predicted with GW. I just don't see the contradiction you see, though perhaps they were a bit broad to talk about increased rain fall east of the Mississipi rather than along the East coast.

I'll supply you with links when I have a bit more time so you won't think I don't know what I am "taling about."

[dohboi]

"The level of Lake Superior recently hit an all-time low"

minnesota.publicradio.org/ display/web/2006/12/21/superiorlevels/

So what part of "all time low" don't you understand?

[Blueberry]

This stuff isn't new. My mom used to go through this list with me 25 years ago. I'm sure the info was available long before that.

[Zardoz]

We all knew this, of course, but now it's official:

U.N. says it's time to adapt to warming - In the final installment of its landmark report, the climate-change panel says many countries will just have to learn to live with the effects

The United Nations' Nobel Prize-winning panel on climate change approved the final installment of its landmark report on global warming on Friday, concluding that even the best efforts at reducing CO2 levels will not be enough and that the world must also focus on adapting to "abrupt and irreversible" climate changes.

New and stronger evidence developed in the last year also suggests that many of the risks cited in the panel's first three reports earlier this year will actually be larger than projected and will occur at lower temperatures, according to a draft of the so-called synthesis report.

The report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summarizes thousands of pages of research produced over the last six years by delegates from 140 countries and is expected to serve as a "how-to" guide for governments meeting in Bali, Indonesia, beginning Dec. 3 to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in five years.

[Almuth]

This is clearly NOT what the IPCC are saying, and not what the paragraph you've copied says. You've missed the word 'also'. Of course there is a need for 'adaptation'. Of course, some degree of further warming is inevitable. But they certainly don't suggest that it makes no difference whether or not we burn fossil fuels until we push CO2 up to 500 or even 1,000 ppm!

[Bas]

IPCC: Too late for GW mitigation; we can only adapt

I'm always afraid that such language will result in people and politicians thinking that we don't have to do anything because we can't do anything, which is not true; such thinking is defeatism, and defeatism on very big scale and important issue.

[Zardoz]

This is clearly NOT what the IPCC are saying...

We can argue the fine points forever, but the harsh reality is that it was way too late to avoid disaster twenty years ago. We're in for it, period, end of discussion.

The changes, which will NOT be changes for the better, will be "abrupt and irreversible", and will happen no matter what we do. That is quite clearly what the IPCC is saying.

[americandream]

It's sad that we're now at the point where the demise of our planet is being so publicly profiled and yet nothings changed. How did we get into this lamentable state?

[americandream]

This is clearly NOT what the IPCC are saying, and not what the paragraph you've copied says. You've missed the word 'also'. Of course there is a need for 'adaptation'. Of course, some degree of further warming is inevitable. But they certainly don't suggest that it makes no difference whether or not we burn fossil fuels until we push CO2 up to 500 or even 1,000 ppm!

I think the inference is clearly that the world as we know it is due for a nasty change and that no one will be spared. All of this has to then be read within the lrger debate that has been underway for the last two decades and the scope of that debate. As I recollect, the tone of that debate was and is that warming, whilst an imprecise science will at the very least result in a serious loss of life quality on the planet and worst case scenario, the collapse of our planets atmospheric envelope. I do not relish either ends of that loss spectrum.

[americandream]

IPCC: Too late for GW mitigation; we can only adapt

I'm always afraid that such language will result in people and politicians thinking that we don't have to do anything because we can't do anything, which is not true; such thinking is defeatism, and defeatism on very big scale and important issue.

Aaahhh..and here was I thinking that the instinct for self-preservation (very evident in the tendency to fight) was a compelling one. I live and learn each day.

[kjmclark]

This is clearly NOT what the IPCC are saying, and not what the paragraph you've copied says. You've missed the word 'also'.

Agreed. They're saying that at this point, we can kiss much of Sub-Saharan Africa, the US Southwest, parts of Australia, Bangladesh, etc. good-bye. It may take a while yet, but they're pretty much done for in the next century no matter how well we reduce GHG emissions.

However, that leaves the rest of the habitable world hanging in the balance. If we keep on business as usual, our emissions and the positive feedbacks we've unleashed will make Lovelock right. There's still (according to the IPCC) a lot of potential between the warming we've locked in and the last humans hanging out in a tropical Antarctica.

[WildRose]

It's sad that we're now at the point where the demise of our planet is being so publicly profiled and yet nothings changed. How did we get into this lamentable state?

I watched a debate held in Hong Kong in March of this year, broadcast by the BBC. There were CEO's from Royal Dutch Shell, Eskom in South Africa, Dupont China, and a few others. Anyway, what I came away with after viewing this debate was all of the reasons why nothing has changed. The companies say the governments have to lead the way with guidelines for reducing emissions, but the governments don't want to because they'd become unpopular with their constituents, who are the same customers who create the demand for the companies. Of course, the shareholders are impatient for profits. So on it goes, this reluctance to act, to effect any change in the right direction.

[TheDude]

We all knew this, of course, but now it's official:

U.N. says it's time to adapt to warming - In the final installment of its landmark report, the climate-change panel says many countries will just have to learn to live with the effects

"The story you requested is available only to registered members."

Try UN Panel Gives Dire Warming Forecast, fresh from the AP.

[dohboi]

Quote:

"The companies say the governments have to lead the way with guidelines for reducing emissions, but the governments don't want to because they'd become unpopular with their constituents, who are the same customers who create the demand for the companies. Of course, the shareholders are impatient for profits. So on it goes, this reluctance to act, to effect any change in the right direction."

Hence the term "clusterf*ck" (with apologies to delicate sensibilities and to Kunstler's blog name).

[Zardoz]

Excuse my doomerish pessimism, but this is what we're up against:

Coal addiction hinders climate cleanup

Coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is the crack cocaine of the developing world.

It is the inexpensive and plentiful fuel powering the rising economies of Asia -- and because of that, it has become one of the most intractable problems in combating global warming.

Even as the political will and grass-roots support to rein in rising carbon dioxide levels is growing, a large segment of the world is using more coal than ever.

The addiction threatens to undercut the landmark work of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore for work on global warming.

In a series of reports this year, the panel outlined the causes and consequences of global warming, along with solutions to avoid its most serious effects. The final installment of the panel's report -- a synthesis of its key findings approved by delegates from 140 countries -- was released Saturday.

The panel's road map for action hinges on all the world's biggest carbon polluters significantly reducing their emissions over the next 20 years.

But the reality is that for many countries, coal has been too good to give up.

"A gigaton of carbon here, a gigaton there -- we've got a disjunction between the rhetoric and the reality," said David Wheeler, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research group in Washington that recently compiled a database of the world's 50,000 power plants.

Leading the coal spree is China, which has more than doubled its CO2 emissions from coal since 2000 to more than 2.7 billions tons a year, according to the database.

Over the last eight years, China has built 603 coal-fired generators -- 64% of the new generators installed worldwide. India has added 133 generators, according to the database.

They're not the only coal addicts.

In raw numbers, China has merely caught up to the United States, according to the database. In Europe, which has led the world in greenhouse gas reductions, coal use is expected to creep up in the next several years -- driven by rising oil and natural gas prices.

But a recent analysis by MIT climate experts found that even if the U.S. and Europe could somehow stop all their carbon emissions, the developing countries are on pace to create a climate crisis on their own.

Yeah, I know: I shouldn't have such a defeatist attitude. I shouldn't give up hope. I shouldn't be so negative.

However, in the face of the reality that all the mitigation efforts being made are way more than cancelled out by the rapidly-increasing use of coal as a fuel, it's very hard to feel otherwise.

[roccman]

IPCC: Too late for GW mitigation; we can only adapt

I'm always afraid that such language will result in people and politicians thinking that we don't have to do anything because we can't do anything, which is not true; such thinking is defeatism, and defeatism on very big scale and important issue.

What can be done Bas...??

We burn more coal/oil/wood we heat the planet ...

We burn less coal/oil/wood we heat the planet...

Coming to the realization that we are fucked and nothing can be done is not defeatism...

In fact it brings one closer to being content with their lives...it makes life that more fragile and cherished...every moment counts...if one chooses to face this reality...if not then I agree...it is defeatism.