Het Grote Klimaatverandering Topic #3 De ondergang van Heartland

quote:

Op zaterdag 15 september 2012 09:10 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:

[..]

Jij ziet ook alles

quote:

The mass slaughter of millions of farm animals across the world is expected to push food prices to their highest ever levels.

As well as hitting consumers' pockets, the predicted 14% jump in food prices will also dash the Bank of England's hopes of pushing inflation down to 2% by next year.

Farmers across the world have begun a mass slaughter of their pig and cattle herds because they cannot afford the cost of feed, which has soared following the worst US drought in living memory, according to a report published on Wednesday.

Experts at investment bank Rabobank warn that the mass "herd liquidation" will contribute to a 14% jump in the price of the average basket of food by next summer.

quote:

The price of soybeans and corn hit a new high – as the devastating heat and drought takes its toll of farmers’ fields. Soybean futures rose more than 2.5 percent yesterday alone. They’ve soared 40 percent this year. Wheat prices are at their highest levels in more than four years. The drought now covers more than half the continental US. More cuts in official crop estimates for this year are expected.

How will the drought hit consumers? Supermarket prices for some foods may rise, but it’s not yet clear how big the increase will be. Milk and cheese may be more expensive soon. Dairy goods are among the first to be affected, because cows produce make less milk. But right now – says USA Today, “milk prices are actually the lowest they’ve been in 18 months because of surpluses built up over an ultra-mild winter and spring. In March 2011, wholesale milk sold for $19.60 per hundred pounds. Last month, it was $16.10, according to USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service figures.” Meat prices are likely to rise later this year. The grain price increases will have some impact on consumers, but they make up a relatively small share of processed food costs.

quote:

Extended dry spells have devastated maize crops, leading to a dramatic increase in demand for wheat, with prices rising by a third in a month in London and Paris, The Grocer magazine said.

Consumers have been warned bakers will be forced to increase the price of a loaf to cover their costs.

The cost of a sliced loaf from a supermarket ranges from about 45p to 1.40.
Michael Clarke, chief executive of Hovis baker Premier Foods, said: ‘The sheer magnitude of the wheat price increases means that we will have to pass them on.’

quote:

The Cheney Test for Climate Change by L. Ronald Scheman - The Globalist

Friday, August 10, 2012

Former Vice President Dick Cheney once said that if there was a one-percent chance that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the United States had an obligation to take action. L. Ronald Scheman asks why today's conservatives don't take a similar approach on climate change — when the chance of catastrophe might be much greater.

Then questioned about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction former Vice President Cheney once commented that "if there is one chance in a hundred that they have WMD and something catastrophic could happen, it is essential to take action."
If we apply his rule to the ongoing concern about climate change, this sweltering summer and the general trend toward escalating weather volatility make it reasonable to project that there is at least one chance in a hundred that something serious — and possibly catastrophic — may be occurring in the earth's environment.

What many people generally do not recognize is that former Vice President Cheney's reasoning had roots in the logic of another leading conservative, Blaise Pascal, one of history's mathematical geniuses, who lived from 1623 to 1662.

Equally important, he treaded ground that intellectually, culturally and emotionally should be very familiar to today's conservatives. Applying probability theory to religion, Pascal set forth what is known as Pascal's wager. Imagine you have to bet on a coin flip in which "heads" means God exists and "tails" that He does not. What would you bet?

Cost-benefit analysis, Pascal reasoned, requires you to bet "heads." If God exists, you win big. If He does not, you lose nothing — and you might benefit by leading a virtuous life.

To bet tails has zero benefit. If God does not exist, it matters little. However, if you are wrong, your loss is infinite. The conservative choice is clear.

Cheney's and Pascal's cost-benefit reasoning apply readily to climate change. If we bet that something may be amiss in the way we are dealing with environmental issues and begin to take action, we win big.

If it is not, our wrong bet has no consequences except that our air and water may be a little cleaner and our technologies a little more advanced. If we bet to the contrary and do nothing, the potential of catastrophic result of Pascal's probabilities is a realistic probability.

These two conservative thinkers provide a unified framework for action on climate change. They affirm that inaction, despite the claim by skeptics of gaps in our knowledge, is a totally illogical choice. It also flies in the face of the behavior of most rational adults for the safety of their own families.

Few skeptics deny buying personal insurance for protection from possibly catastrophic events such as hurricane, flood or burglary, however remote they may be. So how do they explain opposition to measures akin to insurance to address the possible causes of extreme weather?

Even if melting polar ice caps is the result of a natural cycle, there is also a reasonable chance — more than one in a hundred — that it is the harbinger of something far more serious. They should be among the first to advocate adherence to the Cheney dictum.

Conservatives rejecting conservative action

Given the inexorable trends of increasing demand for natural resources and energy from rising middle classes in developing countries, factors already in process make it impossible to reverse our course without major dislocations. Improved health programs already mean larger populations eager for education and a better life.

Crowded cities require action to accommodate growth amidst inefficient delivery systems for energy and water, gridlocked traffic and pollution. The clash of global demand for economic development with the imperatives of a fragile environment means that effective action cannot be achieved by one nation alone.

Coordinated international collaboration, especially with the Asian giants, is indispensable. The recent abdication of international cooperation in the Rio+20 Summit is like a scene in an impending classic Greek tragedy.

The irony of climate change is that it finds conservatives rejecting conservative action. The core principals of free markets require an open mind to all sources of information and prudent action when we do not know what we do not know. It requires diligent efforts to understand scientific research of all stripes, not the folly of demonizing information with which we disagree.

The alternative is to burden our children and grandchildren with hard choices we refuse to make. No one can predict when population pressures on earth's finite resources will become unsustainable. However, there is an old adage that warns "that which cannot go on forever, won't."

It is a strange world indeed. Former Vice President Cheney and his colleagues placed a huge bet on looking for something that turned out not to exist. Yet they are reluctant to look carefully at something that a vast majority of the global scientific community acknowledges as real.

Given the increasing extremes in climate and melting polar caps, which everyone can see, there is clearly more than a 1% chance that something is awry in our earth's climate. Maybe this time his dictum is really relevant.

quote:

Op zondag 23 september 2012 19:58 schreef cynicus het volgende:
The Globalist probeert met een rationeel argument de deniers te overtuigen om tot actie over te gaan. Maar dat werkt natuurlijk niet met mensen die niet rationeel zijn.

quote:

Op zondag 23 september 2012 21:02 schreef Terecht het volgende:
Maar zo vertellen conservatieven ons, de kans die wetenschappers ons voorhouden is gemanipuleerd door (s)linkse krachten.

Santorum: 'There Is No Such Thing As Global Warming'

Republican candidates deny global warming

Gingrich's Laughable Climate Change Denial

Romney: Young People Should Vote For The Climate-Denial Party

quote:

Maar zo vertellen conservatieven ons, de kans die wetenschappers ons voorhouden is gemanipuleerd door (s)linkse krachten.

quote:

Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical malfunction.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

quote:

The Conservative Case for a Proactive Climate Policy

by Brent Ranalli | Tuesday, August 28, 2012

One form of American exceptionalism is that the climate change debate is fought with more vigor and mercilessness in the United States than in any other country in the world. But are conservative values well served by current conservative policies? Brent Ranalli seeks a way to break the deadlocked American debate.

Climate activists have an image of an grim, dystopian future that spurs them to action. It is a future of disappearing glaciers, stranded polar bears, parched cropland and deluged coastal cities.
Climate skeptics see this as pure scaremongering. Theirs is a world where global warming is a myth, or at least something we can't do much about and probably shouldn't lose sleep over. Climate activists, for their part, consider this stance utterly naïve and completely irresponsible.

With their irreconcilable differences, the two camps would appear to inhabit different planets.

And yet there is one fascinating parallel: Conservative skeptical activists, for their part, are frequently motivated as much by a vision of a dystopian future as are climate activists.

Except that their source of cataclysm is of a completely different nature. Conservative skeptical activists fear a world in which governments around the globe use the real or imagined threat of climate change to justify an extraordinary expansion of their powers.

Carbon is, of course, central to virtually all economic activity. Any effort to systematically reduce our carbon emissions will necessarily mean some kind of intrusion of government into the marketplace. Systems of taxes and permits have been proposed, as well as the establishment of international institutions.

In the worst-case scenario of the conservative skeptical activists, efforts to mitigate climate change are seen as leading toward the establishment of a one-world government, universal socialism and the end of cherished civil liberties.

Each set of activists thus has its own frightening vision of the future, and each vision is reinforced and given legitimacy by its own echo chamber of media reports and authorities and its own set of shared values.

This gives both sides a voice of conviction and authority, as well as a strong tinge of desperation. In their interminable skirmishes on the Internet, each side views itself as the last line of defense in preserving the world as we know it — a world with honeybees or, alternatively, a world with national sovereignty.

So far I have focused on the symmetries of the debate. One prominent asymmetry is that the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion is on the side of climate alarmism.

In order to view their own position as plausible, conservative activists must be prepared to view the scientific community as incompetent — or worse. And it is clear that many are prepared to view things that way.

Still, no climate skeptic would wish to simply throw science and the scientific method overboard. On the contrary, skeptics view themselves as the champion of better science. So they must draw a line somewhere between the official science they accept and the official science they reject.

Occasionally, you will find a skeptic who argues that there is no real warming trend or that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activity do not contribute meaningfully to climate change.

But these days, the most respectable intellectual position among climate skeptics is one that accepts most of what the official science has to offer, while still holding out a reason to delay action. It is argued that climate change is happening, and that human activity is undoubtedly a factor, but that other factors have not been adequately explored.

Climate activists — and mainstream scientists — dispute the idea that there are still great gaps in our knowledge. But in the minds of conservative activists, this position suffices to justify the argument that the right course of action is no action at all.

If we are holding out for new data and new lines of evidence, in this view, perhaps the best we can do at present is to "do no harm" in terms of intrusive regulation.

This appears to be Mitt Romney's current position. A year ago, in New Hampshire, Romney endorsed the mainstream view that man-made global warming is a real problem that requires action.

Today, tilting toward the position of Paul Ryan and skeptical elements in the Republican base, he says "scientists will figure that out ten, twenty, fifty years from now."

But "ten, twenty, fifty years from now" we may be dealing with an entirely different set of issues. As Bill McKibben recently noted, the best science available today tells us that the window for effective climate change mitigation is closing fast.

As that happens, the scientific and policymaking agenda will shift from mitigation (preventing potentially catastrophic climate change) to adaptation (that is, coping with the results).

Conservative nightmare

As that transition looms, the advocates of doing nothing may want to reconsider their worst-case scenario. Their efforts to hold governments in check on the climate issue for fear of complete overreach (for example, stifling economic activity and exploding bureaucracy) may blow up in their own collective face.

What if the climate models are indeed not purely fanciful? What if the record-breaking extreme weather we have been experiencing this past year is not a statistical aberration, but a portent of worse to come?

What if we really are forced to adapt to drastic climate change to deal with failed harvests, unprecedented mass migrations and international conflicts over scarce water resources?

Is that a world in which free markets can thrive and traditional liberties can be preserved? Is that not a recipe for failed states — where private property and constitutional liberties become a dead letter — and their twin, totalitarian states?

Under pressure from climate stresses, even the most robust constitutional democracy may find its character altered. When faced with more severe or more frequent floods and extreme weather, people will become accustomed to looking to central authorities for aid and direction.

New public works projects like building levees will expand the role for the public sector, and will necessarily be financed by public debt — or taxes. National life will be more crisis-prone. There might be drought, new agricultural infestations, displaced internal populations, and security problems caused by mass migrations and failed states abroad.

Tough challenges like these could hardly fail to increase the role and reach of government. So would maintaining order if the economy tanks. If crises pile on quickly, the power of the executive is likely to expand — and both economic and personal liberties are bound to suffer.

Arguably, they would suffer far more under this sort of reactive adaptation scenario than under some sort of proactive international accord on the model of Kyoto.

In other words, the costs of eternal delay could be very real — not just in economic and environmental terms, but in the very dimension that so worries conservative climate skeptics, citizens' liberty.

Viewed in that light, American conservatives ought to be the ones leading the charge to preserve our current way of life from climate-induced threats.

If they chose to take a leadership role on the issue, conservatives could ensure that the means match their values as well as the end. That is, they could ensure that the most market-friendly mitigation and proactive adaptation measures are enacted, and that bureaucracy is not expanded unduly.

And they would also win by restoring the United States' international prestige, improving U.S. security, and putting the U.S. private sector at the forefront of a new generation of world-leading energy technologies.

Achieving all of these things in one fell swoop, complex as the maneuver would no doubt be, ought to be all American conservatives' very American Dream.

Thus, I wonder: Will American conservatives be willing to accept this grand challenge, to struggle and compromise and expend real effort in a bid to preserve the American way of life? Or will they double down on "wait and see"?

We will likely find out in Tampa, when the Republican Party nominates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as their standard-bearers.

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 11:17 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
Opwarming Aarde gestopt

De reacties

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 11:17 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
Opwarming Aarde gestopt

De reacties

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 12:16 schreef RetepV het volgende:

[..]

Echt ook een LTS bericht... Als de cijfers vertekend waren door 2010 als eindpunt te nemen, dan zijn ze net zo goed vertekend door 2012 als eindpunt te nemen. In 2013 kan het wel veel warmer zijn dan in 2010, en dan is er dus ineens weer geen sprake van een halt maar juist van een versnelling.

Maar waar ik het meeste mee zit is DAT het bewezen is dat de mens invloed heeft. De mens verpest het klimaat niet zozeer, maar versnelt het verpesten ervan.

Dat versnellen betekent dat wij als mens ook sneller met uitvindingen zullen moeten gaan komen om dat te kunnen overleven. We zorgen er dus ZELF voor dat we de voorbereidingstijd voor ONSZELF aan het verkorten zijn.

Dat is reden genoeg om maatregelen te nemen. Waarom zou je het jezelf moeilijk of zelfs onmogelijk maken?

En dus is er helemaal geen discussie nodig. Er zijn redenen voor maatregelen, als we ze nu nemen geven we onszelf meer tijd, dus is er geen reden tot discussie. Gewoon maatregelen nemen. Sim-pel.

Tegenhouden kunnen we het niet, want dan moeten we alles wat de mensheid bereikt heeft terugdraaien. Dat heeft geen zin, want dan stopt de ontwikkeling van de mensheid.

Afremmen kan wel. De ontwikkeling van de mensheid zal echt niet zo veel nadeel ondervinden van een iets langzamere ontwikkeling. Misschien zelfs voordeel omdat achtergestelde delen van de mensheid dan bij kunnen komen en zo in plaats van een last te zijn ook een bijdrage kunnen leveren.

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 12:29 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

[..]

De houding die ik zie is: "Ah klimaatverandering, das onzin. Laten we lekker met onze luie reet weer terug naar de kantoorbaan gaan en we zien wel. Alles gaat goed toch nu? Waarom zouden we er extra geld in moeten steken?"

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 13:26 schreef Tha_Duck het volgende:
Wat wordt het volgende sprookje van de milieugekkies die ons bakken met geld moet gaan kosten? De zure regen, ozongat en opwarming zijn nu bewezen onzin, wat wordt het nieuwe fabeltje?

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 13:58 schreef Terecht het volgende:

[..]

1/10 voor je trollpoging.

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 13:26 schreef Tha_Duck het volgende:
De zure regen, ozongat en opwarming zijn nu bewezen onzin,

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 17:47 schreef cynicus het volgende:
Noor zal later erg trots zijn op haar papa. Nou, dag troll!

quote:

Op zondag 14 oktober 2012 18:44 schreef attila_de_hun het volgende:

[..]

van welke planeet kom jij? jij hebt het in ieder geval niet over de planeet aarde!

quote:

2 graden warmer
Een alternatieve plaats is de ijsvrije plek Vestfold Hills bij Davis. De Zuidpool is de laatste 50 jaar 2 graden warmer geworden, ruwweg drie maal zo veel als het wereldwijde gemiddelde.

quote:

Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes

Key Points:
* Enhanced Arctic warming reduces poleward temperature gradient
* Weaker gradient affects waves in upper-level flow in two observable ways
* Both effects slow weather patterns, favoring extreme weather

quote:

Op vrijdag 2 november 2012 09:45 schreef Norrage het volgende:
Artikel is aan elkaar geregen met onjuiste feiten, maar de rode draad is wel duidelijk en tsja...klimaatverandering draagt er vast aan bij...

quote:

Studie: Extreemste klimaatmodellen zijn de meest accurate

vrijdag 09 november 2012 om 04u34

Hoe hard warmt de aarde precies op? Het blijft een onderwerp van de discussie onder klimaatwetenschappers. Volgens een nieuwe studie doen de extreemste klimaatmodellen de beste voorspellingen.

quote:

Het realiseren van de 2°C doelstelling is nu al een mega uitdaging. Om de opwarming van de aarde tot 2 graden Celsius te beperken moet het tempo van de wereldwijde CO2-reductie stijgen met ruim 600%. Europa houdt zich goed staande tegenover de afspraken, Amerika scoort redelijk maar juist grote opkomende landen als China en India blijken niet in staat om hun broeikasuitstoot sterk te reduceren. Dat blijkt uit het rapport ‘Low Carbon Economy Index 2012’ van accountants- en adviesbureau PwC.

2°C doelstelling
In 2010 stelden de Verenigde Naties het doel om de stijging van de temperatuur te beperken tot niet meer dan 2 graden. Dit is nodig om gevaarlijke effecten van klimaatverandering te voorkomen. Om dit doel te behalen moet de globale CO2-uitstoot tot 2050 elk jaar met 5,1% worden verlaagd. Van 2000 tot 2011 was de jaarlijkse vermindering 0,8%.



Somber
PwC ziet het somber in. “Zelfs een verdubbeling van ons huidige tempo van CO2-reductie zou nog steeds leiden tot een opwarming van zes graden aan het eind van deze eeuw” zegt Leo Johnson, partner bij PwC op het gebied van duurzaamheid en klimaatverandering. “Om onszelf een kans van meer dan 50% te geven om de verwarming van 2 graden te voorkomen is een zesvoudige verbetering in het tempo nodig”. Het adviesbureau twijfelt dan ook aan de haalbaarheid van de doelstellingen. Doelstellingen van landen zijn in veel gevallen onvoldoende ambitieus en door de economische mailaise ligt de prioriteit vaak op het herstellen van de economie.

Europe loopt voorop
Uit het rapport Low Carbon Economy Index 2012 komt naar voren dat de Europese landen de snelste voortgangen boeken. Zo hebben Groot-Brittannië, Frankrijk en Duitslandhun hun O2-intensiteit tussen 2010 en 2011 met meer dan 6% procent verminderd. De Verenigde Staten realiseerde een afname van 3,5%. Het probleem ligt echter bij de grote opkomende landen – zo is de vermindering van CO2-uitstoot in bijvoorbeeld China en India in het afgelopen decennium tot stilstand gekomen.

Ecofys: 21 initiatieven
De waarschuwing van PwC is niet nieuw. Ecofys, een adviesbureau gespecialiseerd in duurzaamheid en klimaatverandering, heeft eerder dit jaar soortgelijke bevindingen naar buiten gebracht. Ook heeft Ecofys een aanpak ontwikkeld om de 2°C doelstelling alsnog te realiseren. Het Utrechtse adviesbureau heeft 21 concrete initiatieven opgesteld die samen de wereldwijde broeikasuitstoot kunnen verminderen met ongeveer 10 gigaton CO2 equivalenten (Gt CO2e) – genoeg om de kloof te dichten.

Eind november komen diverse landen weer samen voor milieubesprekingen van de Verenigde Naties.