Who Will Be US President In 2015? 25 comments

20 Nov 2007 @ 02:23, by Richard Carlson The timpanist plays upon a living being. The stars are bursting with their messages: Turn to a child for the star's announcement. ---Robert Aitken Greed is the basic cause of misery. Free yourself of greed, and the mountains, rivers, and earth do not block the light of your eyes. ---She-Hsien To enter one's own self, it is necessary to go armed to the teeth. ---Paul Valery Why 2015? That is the year, dictated by consensus of the 2500 scientists whose work created the UN report on global warming, when further growth of carbon emissions on this planet must cease. Within 35 years from that date, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric polluting gases must be reduced by 50 to 85 percent to avoid killing as many as a quarter of the species on Earth. [link] This was the announcement on Saturday, when the final portion of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) study was released to the public by this group that already has won the Nobel Prize. I try to be a patient man. I waited Sunday and I waited today. I expected lead items in newspapers and broadcasts in this country. Well...let's say I hoped for them. Certainly it is the case elsewhere in the world, where concern is at the forefront. One of the good things about Google News is you can see what makes news in the various nations of the world...and what that news is. At the moment you have to type "global warming" into Search to find anything about these stark pronouncements. We have people campaigning for President right now. The New York Times reported today that in Iowa, a sixth-grader asked Mrs. Clinton if she had any views on global warming. The paper went on to consider whether the question had been planted in the student's mind. There was no mention of what the candidate replied. [link] Have we all gone mad? Recently it has been the pattern in this country for a person elected (or otherwise achieving the office of) President to serve 2 terms or 8 years. If that continues, whoever ends up President in 2008 still may be there in 2015. Do any of these candidates have a plan for such an incredible challenge? Next month---that's NEXT month---President Bush will lead the United States delegation to the United Nations Conference on climate change in Bali. Last year around this time that man announced he was pretty sure global warming wasn't caused by anything consumers in the free market might be doing...like burning coal or oil. US News & World Report asked this morning Do we HAVE to have this guy representing us? [link] I listened pretty hard to my world today to see or hear if anyone seemed concerned about the IPCC report or global warming. It's going to be in the mid to upper 60s tomorrow and probably for Thanksgiving. People did remark on that...and sorta smile and shake heads. Ten years ago Dana and I were proud to go out to the garden and kick some snow off a little kale that was left to serve our smoked oysters on for Thanksgiving dinner. The other day people were telling me the crocuses and daffodils they planted in September are coming up already. What will it take to crash through all this denial? If you care to catch up with the weekend news, there are a couple of significant and brief summaries of the report. Thankfully one will appear tomorrow in Science Daily, and here's a look at it~~~ ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2007) — The challenges and opportunities facing the world as a result of climate change have been distilled into a concise and sobering guide by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This fourth IPCC report raises serious concerns of species extinction as well as arguing strongly in favor of stepping up support and action on adaptation to the effects of global warming. The guide, officially known as the Summary for Policy Makers, underlines the urgency to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions alongside the economic costs of a transition to a low carbon society. It also argues strongly in favour of stepping up support and action on adaptation. "Neither adaptation nor mitigation alone can avoid all climate change impacts. However, they can complement each other and together can significantly reduce the risks of climate change," says the report by the IPCC, a panel jointly established by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). It also highlights five "reasons for concern" which are now stronger than before. This is because scientists now conclude that they may happen at lower increases in temperature or because the risks may be larger than had previously been supposed. These include the impacts on species and biodiversity hotspots as temperatures rise including polar and high mountain communities and ecosystems. Key points The report says that around 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the plant and animal species assessed are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if global average temperatures exceed 1.5 degree C to 2.5 degree C over late 20th century levels. The report also points to the likelihood of "irreversible" impacts. For example if temperature increases exceed about 3.5 degrees C, between 40 per cent and 70 per cent of the species assessed might be at increased risk of extinction. Increases in sea surface temperatures of about one-three degrees C are projected to result in more "frequent coral bleaching events and widespread mortality." There is also concern over the oceans and seas becoming more acidic as they absorb rising levels of carbon dioxide and the impacts on "marine shell-forming organisms" like coral reefs. Other reasons for concern focus on the risks of extreme weather events with higher confidence in the projected increases in droughts, heatwaves and floods as well as their adverse impacts. The report also flags up concern that the poor and the elderly in low-latitude and less-developed areas including those in dry areas and living on mega-deltas are likely to suffer most. There is high confidence that by mid-century "many semi-arid areas, for example the Mediterranean basin, western United States, southern Africa and northeast Brazil, will suffer a decrease in water resources due to climate change." The IPCC summary also expresses concern that any benefits linked with climate change will be gone after more modest temperature rises. The guide, launched after five days of discussions in the Spanish city of Valencia, will be essential reading for delegates attending the upcoming UN climate convention meeting in Bali, Indonesia. Concern is also raised that new observations linked with the Greenland and possibly Antarctic ice sheets may mean that the rate of ice loss will increase above previous forecasts. Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director, said: "This is perhaps the most essential reading for every person on the planet who cares about the future. In this Summary, the hard science has been distilled along with evidence of the social and economic consequences of global warming but also the economic rationale and opportunities for action now." "While the science will continue to evolve and be refined, we now have the compelling blueprint for action and in many ways the price tag for failure-from increasing acidification of the oceans to the likely extinctions of economically important biodiversity." "The momentum on climate change in 2007 has been nothing short of breathtaking and in no small measure due to the series of assessments from the IPCC. Today's final synthesis report translates the complex science into a lingua-franca so that governments meeting in Bali can not only understand the challenge but be empowered to act collectively on a decisive post 2012 emission reductions regime," he added. "This pocket guide for policymakers is also more than that. It is also a citizens guide for engaging political leaders, their members of parliament, local authority officials the chief executive officers of national corporations in a public debate on what needs to happen next," added Mr Steiner. Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the WMO, said: "The science of climate change has been finally and forever heard in 2007 as a result of the painstaking and transparent assessments of the IPCC. Agreement on the climate assessments should stimulate action to protect lives and property against natural hazards and to reduce risks of economic setbacks and conflicts over water, food and energy." "Now that the issue of climate change is established and recognized, observational and research efforts should be increased, rather than reduced. Because societies need more detailed information about anticipated impacts at regional and local levels for responding and adapting to climate change," he said. "Individuals, enterprises and civil society cannot adapt autonomously without reliable information and projections, especially since they should make some of their investment choices well before the effects of climate change are fully visible. They should have access to scientifically credible and adequate information on climate, from prediction on the likely timing, extent and effects of climate change, to knowledge of drought and flood resistant crops and new crop planting techniques," said Mr Jarraud. The summary makes a strong link between climate change and the wider challenges facing in particular developing countries a result of issues like poverty, unequal access to resources, conflict and disease. On an optimistic note, the summary point out that combating climate change does not have to damage or derail economies. "There is high agreement and much evidence of substantial economic potential for the mitigation of global greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades" if governments adopt the right policies and incentives, it says. Bringing down global carbon dioxide emissions to 2005 levels by 2030 will require a big shift of investment patterns -- "although the net additional investment required ranges from negligible to five to 10 per cent," concludes the report. The IPCC estimates that biggest prospect for emissions cuts comes from buildings, followed by industry and energy supply, agriculture and forestry under a variety scenarios based on the market price of carbon. Adapted from materials provided by United Nations Environmental Programme. www.unep.org/ [link] Another appeared in The Independent overnight, with the forboding headline A World Dying~~~ Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse. The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore. Drawn up by more than 2,500 of the world's top scientists and their governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national governments, the report also predicts that nearly a third of the world's species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that harvests will be cut dramatically across the world. United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the launch of the report in this ancient Spanish city, told The Independent on Sunday that he found the "quickening pace" of global warming "very frightening". And, with unusual outspokenness for a UN leader, he said he "looked forward" to both the United States and China – the world's two biggest polluters – "playing a more constructive role" in vital new negotiations on tackling climate change that open in Indonesia next month. The new IPCC report, which is designed to give impetus to the negotiations, highlights the little-known acidification of the oceans, first reported in this newspaper more than three years ago. It concludes that emissions of carbon dioxide – the main cause of global warming – have already increased the acidity of ocean surface water by 30 per cent, and threaten to treble it by the end of the century. Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said yesterday: "The report has put a spotlight on a threat to the marine environment that the world has hardly yet realised. The threat is immense as it can fundamentally alter the life of the seas, reducing the productivity of the oceans, while reinforcing global warming." Scientists have found that the seas have already absorbed about half of all the carbon dioxide emitted by humanity since the start of the industrial revolution, a staggering 500 billion tons of it. This has so far helped slow global warming – which would have accelerated even faster if all this pollution had stayed in the atmosphere, already causing catastrophe – but at an increasingly severe cost. The gas dissolves in the oceans to make dilute carbonic acid, which is increasingly souring the naturally alkali seawater. This, in turn, mops up calcium carbonate, a substance normally plentiful in the seas, which corals use to build their reefs, and marine creatures use to make the protective shells they need to survive. These include many of the plankton that form the base of the food chain on which all fish and other marine animals depend. As the waters are growing more acid this process is decreasing, with incalculable consequences for the life of the seas, and for the fisheries on which a billion of the world's people depend for protein. Every single species that uses calcium in this way, that has so far been studied, has been found to be affected. And the seas are most acid near the surface, where most of their life is concentrated. A report by the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, concludes that, as a result, of the pollution, the world's oceans are probably now more acidic that they have ever been in "hundreds of millennia", and that even if emissions stopped now, the waters would take "tens of thousands of years to return to normal". Professor Ulf Reibesell of the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany's leading expert on the process, concludes in an issue of UNEP's magazine Our Planet, to be published next month, that, if it continues to the levels predicted by yesterday's report for the end of the century, the seas will reach a condition unprecedented in the last 20 million years. He recalls how something similar happened when a comet hit Mexico's Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, blasting massive amounts of calcium sulphate into the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid, which in turn caused the extinction of corals and virtually all shell-building species. "Two million years went by before corals reappeared in the fossil record," he says, adding that it took "a further 20 million years" before the diversity of species that use calcium returned to its former levels. Scientists add that, as the seas become more acidic, they will be less able to absorb carbon dioxide, causing more of it to stay in the atmosphere to speed up global warming. Research is already uncovering some signs that the oceans' ability to mop up the gas is diminishing. Environmentalists point out that the increasing acidification of the oceans would in itself provide ample reason to curb emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and felling forests even if the dwindling band of sceptics were right and the gas was not warming up the planet. But yesterday's cautiously worded report, which was agreed by the US government, also provides ample evidence that climate change is well under way, and is accelerating. It concludes that the warming is now "unequivocal" and "evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level". It adds: "Eleven of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature". It goes on: "Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases." If humanity were not affecting the climate, it concludes, declines in the sun's activity and increased eruptions from volcanoes – which throw huge amounts of dust in the air that screen out sunlight – would have been likely to "have produced cooling" of the planet. But emissions of all the "greenhouse gas" pollutants that cause global warming increased 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004 alone, it reports, adding that levels of carbon dioxide, the most important one, in the atmosphere now "exceed by far" anything that the Earth has experienced in the past 650,000 years. And it goes on to conclude that "continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century." It makes a host of specific predictions for every continent (for examples, see graphic) and warns that "impacts" could be "abrupt" or "irreversible". One example of an irreversible impact is an expected extinction of between 20 and 30 per cent of all the world's species of animals and plants even at relatively moderate levels of warming. If the climate heats further, it adds, extinctions could rise to 40 to 70 per cent of species. The IPCC scientists and governments say that they are also more concerned about "increases in droughts, heatwaves and floods" as the climate warms. They believe that the damage to the world's economy would be even greater than they had previously predicted, and were even more certain that the poor and elderly in both rich and poor countries would suffer most. Yet the report also concludes that, while some climate change is now inevitable, its worst effects could be avoided with straightforward measures at little cost if only governments would take action. It says that the job can be done by using "technologies that are either currently available or expected to be commercialised in coming decades". It could be done at a cost of slowing global growth by only a tenth of a percentage point a year, and might even increase it. The missing element, virtually everyone agrees, is political will from governments. Next month they meet in Bali to start negotiations on a new treaty to replace the current provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, which run out in 2012. The timetable is desperately tight; time lags in the process of getting a new treaty ratified by the world's governments means that it will have to be agreed by the end of 2009 – and there is no sign of anything on the horizon. Yet the treaty will have to go far beyond the protocol in order to put the whole world on track rapidly to reduce emissions if the world is to achieve the pollution cuts that the scientists say will be needed to avoid catastrophe. And it will have to ensure rapid action. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman, yesterday repeated a consensus among experts that the world as a whole will have to start radical reductions within eight years if there is to be any hope of preventing dangerous climate change. Stephanie Tunmore of Greenpeace International said: "It is clear from this report that we are gambling with the future of the planet – and the stakes are high. This document sets out a compelling case for early action on climate change." The UN Secretary-General, agreed. The effects of climate change have become "so severe and so sweeping" he said "that only urgent, global action will do. There is no time to waste." Mr Steiner called the report "the most essential reading for every person on the planet who cares about the future". He added: "The hard science has been distilled along with evidence of the social and economic consequences of global warming, but also the economic rationale and opportunities for action now. While the science will continue to evolve and be refined, we now have the compelling blueprint for action and, in many ways, the price tag for failure – from increasing acidification of the oceans to the likely extinction of economically important biodiversity." And Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the parent treaty to the Kyoto Protocol – told the IoS that reaching agreement was "incredibly urgent". He pointed out that the world would replace 40 per cent of its power generation capacity in the next five to 10 years and that China is already building one or two coal- fired power stations a week. Those installations would last for decades – and the nations that built them would be reluctant to demolish them any earlier – so that unless the world rapidly changed direction it would be all the more difficult to avoid climate change running out of control. Sticking poin: It is crucial to get the US and China on board Getting agreement on a new treaty to tackle climate change hangs on resolving an "after you, Claude" impasse between the United States and China, the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. China insists – with other key developing countries like India and South Africa – that the United States must move first to clean up. It points out that, because of the disparity in populations, every American is responsible for emitting much more of the gas than each Chinese. But the US refuses to join any new treaty unless China also accepts restrictions. There is hope of breaking the logjam. Chinese leaders know their country would be severely affected by global warming, and have done more than is generally realised to tackle it, not least by rapidly expanding renewable energy. The US will have a new leader by the time negotiations are completed, and even President Bush is backtracking, at least rhetorically. Yesterday UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he was optimistic. "I look forward," he said, with a hint of steel, "to seeing the United States and China playing a more constructive role in the coming negotiations." Arctic Greenland ice sheet will virtually completely disappear, raising sea levels by over 30 feet, submerging coastal cities, entire island nations and vast areas of low-lying countries like Bangladesh Latin America The Amazon rainforest will become dry savannah as rising temperatures and falling water levels kill the trees, stoke forest fires and kill off wildlife North America California and the grain-producing Midwest will dry out as snows in the Rockies decrease, depriving these areas of summer water Australia The Great Barrier Reef will die. Species loss will occur by 2020 as corals fail to adapt to warmer waters. On land, drought will reduce harvests Europe Winter sports suffer as less snow falls in the Alps and other mountains; up to three-fifths of wildlife dies out. Drought in Mediterranean area hits tourism Africa Harvests could be cut by up to half in some countries by 2020, greatly increasing the threat of famine. Between 75 million and 250 million people are expected to be short of water within the next 30 years [link]

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