Perfect Storm
A report from Copenhagen:
I got to Copenhagen’s main Lutheran Cathedral just before the start of a special service designed to mark the conference underway for the next week. It was jammed, but I squeezed into a chair near the corner. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave the sermon; Desmond Tutu read the Psalm. Both were wonderful…
my tears started before anyone said a word. As the service started, dozens choristers from around the world carried three things down the aisle and to the altar: pieces of dead coral bleached by hot ocean temperatures; stones uncovered by retreating glaciers; and small, shriveled ears of corn from drought-stricken parts of Africa. As I watched them go by, all I could think of was…the people living in the valleys where those glaciers are disappearing, and the people downstream who have no backup plan for where their water is going to come from. The people who live on the islands surrounded by that coral, who depend on the reefs for the fish they eat, and to protect their homes from the waves. And the people, on every corner of the world, dealing with drought…
Those damned shriveled ears of corn. I’ve done everything I can think of, and millions of people around the world have joined us at 350.org in the most international campaign there ever was. But I just sat there thinking: It’s not enough. We didn’t do enough. I should have started earlier. People are dying already
As it happens, this fellow apparently has a kindred spirit in the US. We’ll know who was right about these cataclysmic predictions shortly. Can’t wait! (HT: Ace)
December 16th, 2009 at 8:08 am
So let’s see if I understand this correctly. Drastically reducing CO2 will be good for plants how? Oh, and the villages they uncovered on Greenland that had been covered for centuries by glaciers were put ther how?
I just heard Arnold (Gov of California) say that he can’t understand why people don’t believe in global warming. To him it’s a fact. He also says that the saving the economy and preventing global warming can be done at the same time. Look at his state, he says. They’ve been working on the economy and the environment together for years. Hey, Arnold. Your state is billions in debt with no relief in sight, short of being bailed out by the Fed. How’s that doing both together working out for ya? Must be a bitch when everyone decides they want to leave and live somewhere else.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Let me get this straight–these jokers are claiming that drought in Africa is the result of anthropogenic global warming?
Debates about AGW aside, I don’t think any serious person has proposed that the desertification of Africa has anything to do with global warming–it has to do with intensified agriculture and animal husbandry using primitive techniques, similar to the process that caused the Great Plains Dust Bowl during the 1930′s. The solution is the same as was applied here–education of farmers and re-capitalization of the agricultural infrastructure. Which, by the way, was one of the success stories of the New Deal.
December 16th, 2009 at 11:08 am
100 reasons why our climate is natural…
Talking points and debating points, at Daily Express. Not that facts matter any more.
Related: Al Gore’s mosquito story is pure BS. Malaria is only a tropical disease due to public health advances, DDT, and drainage of marshes in the develo…
December 16th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
There is an old school of thought that CO2 changes are the result of geologic plate tectonics.
http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~jean/paleo/Berner_1983.pdf
December 16th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
“Fifty percent of the glaciers were retreating from 1950 to 1980 in the Tibetan region; that rose to 95 percent in the early 21st century,” Tandong Yao, director of the Chinese Academy’s Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, said in a release.
Melting waters from the Tibetan Plateau’s glaciers feed many of Asia’s longest rivers, including the Yangtze, Mekong and Ganges, which supply water to more than 1 billion people.
“People are dependent on these glaciers for water and it would have a huge impact on their lives if they disappeared,” said He.
Yao Tandong, one of China’s leading glaciologists, warned last year in the journal Nature that two-thirds of the country’s glaciers could be gone by 2050, and has said that “the full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe.”
December 17th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Steve,
Glaciers have been advancing and receeding for centuries. It’s a natural part of the ecological process. What’s your point, that nature is acting like nature?
This is all a hoax. Watch as China changes from one of the greatest polluters on the planet to a country that needs international help to save it’s millions of citizens who are threatened by this “man-caused” disaster. That way they won’t have to pay a penny to the rest of those greedy little dictators who are simply looking for their next handout. What a set of cajones they have. But I have to admire their chutzpah!
December 17th, 2009 at 1:40 am
Steve, what was the magnitude of the retreat in glaciers and what was the status of those glaciers that did not retreat? How much bigger did they become? Are we looking at a net positive increase in the total cumulative volume of glaciers in Tibet between the 1950′s and 1980′s?
Have things changed since the 1980′s?