Just for the record, the phrase “climate change” is heard often outside of the US – quite a regular topic here in the Caribbean where people do have some sense of the impending disaster.

I think we’ve moved to a point where climate mitigation will factor more heavily than emission reduction.

Just wait until the bills start rolling. How much you figure it will cost to relocate Miami? The damage from AGW climate change will make the costs associated with moving from fossil files look like a pittance. Of course, it won’t be us paying those costs, it will be our children and grandchildren. Us? We’re getting our “cheap” energy that is only cheap because others are paying the costs for it. History will be unkind to my generation.

Did you read Marcy’s post a few weeks ago about the need to shape Foreign policy around climate change policies?

It was a great post.

OK! I agree, but this has been heard before — Copenhagen was the last chance three years ago. Someone walked the plank by that reckoning, and there was nothing more to be done.

We know otherwise, though. I think the message has been out of kilter. It would be better to emphasize rapidly escalating costs of mitigation as an ongoing, worsening problem over time rather than an end tomorrow — that is, more at wait a generation and the kids will be in deep do-do with a depleted living standard none of us would want.

There was a James Burke (the UK historian of the Connections meme) series on “global warming” in the early 1990s. It was sort of a future history. In the plot nothing really happened until the consequences started occurring in unmistakable ways. His putative date: 2015.

At the time, I thought he was pessimistic about action, but he might turn out to have been pretty much on target. Worth revisiting his predictions just for fun.

Climate change is a euphemism adopted by the corporate deniers. Or at least that’s been my impression.
Looks like they’ve sold the phrase. I don’t think you are a corporate shill.
Hard heads call it Global Warming, hard asses call it Anthropogenic Global Warming.
See you on the beach.

Have a friend just got her PhD in, of all things, the history of ports. She says the future of ports–how to prepare for rising seas, how to rebuild to keep docks active, when to do it, how much, where’s the money–is on everyone’s minds. But nobody’s talking about it in any significant way, like maybe it’ll go away or be someone else’s problem years down the line.

The costs are a nightmare and no one in any organization wants to even think about funding the changes, let alone start making plans.

I’m afraid that’s everyone’s direction: to even start thinking out loud about what to do would admit the immense cost and radical changes that will have to be made to accommodate to a new reality.

Said one frog to the other, “Seems to be getting a little warm in here, doesn’t it?” “Yeah, but we’re not boiling yet, so whatever.”

It’s pushing ninety degrees in Beaumont, Texas today. We haven’t sought more bed covers in two months. That is not just an inconvenience. What’s the temp. of the Gulf? What does it bode for this summer? 2015 sounds like a repreieve.

Fracking for natural gas does not make a profit unless natural gas prices are double what they currently are. Either prices rise and then coal power becomes cheaper or natural gas companies involved in fracking go bankrupt. There is a question of how many years companies that frack can lose money before enough natural gas power plants come online to raise demand and price.

The burning of fossil fuels is only half of the problem… the other half is the total and complete corruption of our corrupt Democratic and Republican government and government regulators by the energy industry.

The corruption of our entire Democratic and Republican government…

In nearing the irreversible stage.

Change that… it’s already too late.

The Two party system has failed. Both parties have been corrupted to the core by the exact same cabal of criminals and wealthy special interests. These people have not just sold out the American people… they have sold out the entire planet.

As the heat goes up I expect more crop losses in the northern hemisphere because we grow more crops and are crops are not adapted to heat.

Also we had 85 degrees in Chicago about a week ago as a high. We have had high 30′s as a low this week we its not only the heat its the change in temp from hot to cold that will hurt our crops. So far the plants seem ok but if we get another freeze who knows.
I’m pretty sure no farmer had any crops planted yet so we are ok in Illinois.

My prediction is we will see 2 115 degree days at least this summer given that we had 85 degrees in March before St Patrick’s day.

For now.

The political system has utterly failed to address this challenge.

also worth mentioning…. the almighty free market. the cruel joke of our society.

even the North American politicians who are so bold as to admit the truth, still cling to the “free market” dogma.

I guess we should have let the

free market

take care of Hitler, and the Nazis, and the Japanese in world war two.

I just read, probably at climate progress, that the cost of natural disasters LAST YEAR, in the USA alone, was fifty eight billion dollars.

fifty eight billion dollars.

just getting started folks.

hang on to your food supply.

Malthus: prophet.

“The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.

“The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves.

But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands.

Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world”.

Quit supporting mediocrities like the new democrats as lesser evils. In reality they are substitutes for ethical leaders!

I recall that program(me). Burke said if everything stays the same — no increases in so-called greenhouse gases — the catastrophic warming will continue, and in 50 years (from then) the oceans will rise, the ice caps will be gone, and the consequences from those are end-of-civilization realizations.

Incidentally, the “six degrees Celsius” rise by 2100 in the SA quote means 42.8 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean, huh?

you’ve got an error there.

6 degrees C = 42.8 F
and
12 degrees C = 53.6 F

so a RISE of 6 degrees C is a rise of almost 11 degrees F

Whew! Thanks for the clarity.

Worth an hour’s time: After the Warming (James Burke 1989)

Don’t you people know this problem was already solved???
June 3, 2008.
“We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

Actually, we are past the irreversible point.
Apparently, no one wants to face this.
Every time CO2 in the air gets to 375 ppm, the climate is much warmer a decade later. And it is currently at 390+.
So the world is about to be cooked.

This coming decade is the one where we will see the first obvious effects of a climate gone nuts – changing patterns of water circulation in the atlantic, permafrost melting, oceans warming, plus storms that get stronger and stronger.

And the American south will be bakin’ In general, ignoring all the people in the south that would have liked us to be more responsible, they deserve those tornado s, heat, drought, etc., that is coming their way. How many believe you can make climate change go away just by saying it is not there? That might work for people you don’t like (Muslims, blacks ..) but it don’t work well with science.

Yeah, pretty sure we are all going to die anyway, so why not vote for obama?
Shit, it’s just a joke anyway right?
Ha-ha.
Funny shit!

It will be ‘really cool’ watching the ‘South’ burn though huh?
Those ‘evil’ people deserve it.
I’ll laugh.
Ha ha.

you’re most welcome.

thanks for the link. i’ve got a broken wrist and will save it to watch for one of those times when i just can’t try to do one more thing one-handed and must take a break.

Hey, pups:
Check out the ‘commander and chief’
What a stud huh?
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A sense of urgency !

um. i resemble that remark. that’s my house and backyard burning you’ll be cackling over.

Ohhh’
SO IT REALLY GOT YOU HOT?
Was it sexy?
Tell us about it?
The fantasy of dominating your opposition is really hot huh?

For the world they will inherit grandchildren will spit on the graves of their fore bearers for being ignorant, superstitious idiots.

That requires a president that does not just run everything past the rich and corpoprate.

Hillary has been doing a good job despite Obama – but in the end Obama runs things and his corporate/rich attitude makes the need to shape Foreign policy around climate change policies a wish that is not going to happen (but then it will not happen with the GOP – makes 2012 an election without a choice except 3rd party – at least on the Presidential line).

Every time CO2 in the air gets to 375 ppm, the climate is much warmer a decade later. And it is currently at 390+.

If you mean there’s historical evidence for this, I’d appreciate a link. If you mean that’s what ‘all’ the climate models say, please don’t bother. AFAIK, the IPCC climate models all appear to be a bust, and overall they haven’t improved, in spite of vast increases in computer horsepower, and tons of money thrown at the problem. Maybe it’s my conspiracy theory genes talking, but, silly me, I tend to believe that the climate models are not improved because some people in positions of power don’t want them improved. Improving the models would be, ah, politically awkward, and upset a huge gravy train.

I’m aware of 3 different measurable historical correlations between CO2 and temperature; however, in all of them, temperature changes lead CO2 changes.

The most impressive of these correlations is the one comparing 21 year (=2 solar cycles) moving average of Sea Surface Temperature, discovered by Endersbee. He found a correlation of .9959. I don’t know the numerical correlation, but the ice core data show (at higher resolution than was shown in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”) temperature leading CO2 by about 600-800 years.

The climate catastrophists explain the ice core results away by invoking their models. They say that the Milankovitch cycle kicks off some warming, CO2 gets released into the atmosphere, and then the CO2 does it’s positive feedback thingy (even though the bulk of the evidence shows that feedbacks are negative, increased water vapor that would evidence the supposed postive feedback isn’t there, etc.)

From where I sit, the “climate realists” have an awfully hard time dealing with scientific reality….

Best intro to the real scientific controversy is here.

Ports can accept fill and become deeper. Causeways can be built.

Sewage Treatment Plants? Much more vulnerable and will affect many more people.

Hard to build, hard to maintain when operating, and useless if the sewers leading to them become flooded with sea water.

Mose sewers leading to coastal sewage treatment plants are already constructed below sea level. Flooding as a result of the rising sea is relatively easy.

The quote is from Reuters, not SA. It is not clear which SA article is being referenced. SA’s recent editorial by its editor, who in addition to knowing nothing about the humanities apparently lacks an advanced degree in any scientific discipline, was a total embarassment. In 2012, SA has no particular claim to the truth. It has been polticized and debased. Gary Stix’s editorial was a recipe for fascism. After reading it, one is left with the thought that even if everything Al Gore claimed were true, rising temperatures would be better than some Stalinist nightmare solution. Nothing remotely scientific about Stix’s piece.

And while all this is going on, companies are making plans to export 100 MILLION tons of Wyoming coal per year, to Asia, from Pacific Northwest ports.

http://nwpr.org/post/coal-train-traffic-increase-could-be-bad-news-human-health

You have no gay friends, do you?

That was then this is now. I hope you live at MSL + 30m. Then you’ll be able to ride your hubris while the rest of us drown.

Not sure what you mean. The Endersbee analysis uses recent data. The third correlation, which I didn’t get into, was a yearly fluctuation, with the time interval between leading temperature change, and lagging CO2, at 5 months (IIRC). This is also using recent data.

The ice core data, of course, goes back many thousands of years.

Do you have a link for

Every time CO2 in the air gets to 375 ppm, the climate is much warmer a decade later. And it is currently at 390+.

Methinks it would serve you well, if you’re going to be claiming a 30 m sea level rise.

Of course, you can just waive your hands, and hold your breath until you turn blue, also.

Oh, yeah. Global sea level fell 6 mm in 2010, after averaging a rise of 3.2 mm/year since about 1992. Not sure what it did in 2011. Anybody?