A lot of us like to think of man-made climate change as a problem that we'll have to deal with later on this century. Because we live in the West (the lucky "least and last" affected) we've been able to ignore the reality that global warming is already killing 300,000 every year and severely impacting on another 360-million in less advantaged countries. Worse yet, the pace of death and devastation is speeding up quite rapidly.
The Global Humanitarian Forum (Geneva) has just released a 127-page report, "The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis" available, free, in PDF format here: http://assets.ghf-ge.org/downloads/humanimpactreport.pdf
This is an excerpt from a summary:
Climate Change is here. It has a human face. This report details the silent crisis occurring around the world today as a result of a global climate change. It is a comprehensive account of the key impacts of climate change on human society. Long regarded as a distant, environmental or future problem, climate change is already today a major constraint on all human efforts. It has been creeping up on the world for years, doing its deadly work in the dark by aggravating a host of other major problems affection society, such as malnutrition, malaria and poverty. This report aims at breaking the silent suffering of millions. Its findings indicate that the impacts of climate change are each year responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths with hundreds of millions of lives affected. Climate change is a serious threat to close to three quarters of the world population. Half a billion people are at extreme risk. Worst affected are the world´s poorest groups, who lack any responsibility for causing climate change.
And we're sitting around singing the praises of bitumen as the key to Canada's prosperity and national unity for the 21st Century?
12 comments:
Man made? Really?
Then why is Mars going through global warming them?
Hello CC, nice to meet someone from Mars. How is the weather like there these days?
Usual childish substance-less reaction from the CC cult followers who actually have no idea of the reality; try educating yourself a little before your leap of faith:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars#Evidence_for_recent_climatic_change
Oh CC, seems I touched a nerve. Your remarkable leap of faith is to link anthropogenic global warming here on earth to climatic variation on a distant planet.
Of course it's hard to doubt you when you cite such profound sources as wikipedia, timesonline and natgeo. Maybe you should delve a little deeper. Have you tried FOX News or NewsMax?
And again, yet more predicable childish substance-less reactions: attack the sources!
Of course the sources are just the medium of other authoritative sources - the result of intense studies; or do you not really believe that there is global warming on Mars?
As the former editor of New Scientist expalins, CC has become a political possession rather then an independent scientific study:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece
Climate Change has become an odd cult of faith-based layman zealots who use Orwellian terms such as 'Climate Change Denier' as an ostensible smear against detractors; it is bizarre.
Man accounts for only around 4% of all carbon emissions, and that is only from very recently; volcanoes over history have spewed out far more C02 then man could ever achieve.
Many independent scientist believe that we are emerging from a mini Ice Age. One example that would support that is the fact that the River Thames in London used to freeze over regularly, with such depth that markets and fairs were held on it: 1408, 1435, 1506, 1514, 1537, 1565, 1595, 1608, 1621, 1635, 1649, 1655, 1663, 1666, 1677, 1684, 1695, 1709, 1716, 1740, (1768), 1776, (1785), 1788, 1795, and 1814.
It has never frozen over again since 1814 - long before the purported man made causes.
We know that Mars is undergoing global warming, most likely due to solar winds and we know that we are due to experience a massive solar flare in 2012.
There is much to consider in this argument, and CC hardly has universal acceptance in science as is so often implied in the media. Over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition against CC:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
But tell me, instead of rational and evidenced adult debate, why do you feel the need to resort to childish mockery and irrational derision?
Well CC, we differ. I think I'm going to rely on every - that's EVERY as in all of them - national academy of science on this planet on the question of AGW. I think I'll rely on the extensive studies conducted by the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence too. I've actually read them, have you? Of course not or you wouldn't be writing gibberish.
I'm not interested in arguing this with you. Go back to your conspiracy theories.
Oh, by the way. I went to that oism.org site you mentioned and what was the first thing I saw? Fred Seitz, RJ Reynolds pointman in refuting the link between tobacco and cancer. Wow, rock me right on my heels! Between Seitz and Singer you're going to get exactly what you want to hear. If you're following those clowns, you're not to be taken seriously. Go away.
Oh yeah, one more thing. That oism site also is worth a second look. Try SourceWatch and clear your mind:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine
Well there you go.
The responses pretty much confirm what I contended in the first place: This movement has a cult - more of a religious - basis for its layman zealots; firstly my enquiry was taken VERY personally and treated with mockery and contempt, and then finally - after a bit more factual enquiry - obvious anger; secondly YOU have not been able to address any of the contentious points raised, instead telling me that you RELY on OTHERS to form your view for you rather being able to answer these contentious points for yourself.
The very definition of a faith based cult / religion zealot.
The National Academy of Science has only 2100 members all limited to the US (with just 380 foreign associates) compared to the 33,000+ international scientist members of the 'opposition.' Picking one name to sully out of 33,000+ and then declaring the rest as null and void is, to say the very least, extremely bizarre and again indicative of a cult zealot rather then a rational open mind. You sought instant confirmation of the righteousness of your position, the position that you RELY on OTHERS to give you. And there is no evidence at all that every member of the NAS unreservedly accepts man-made CC in any case.
Then you cite studies by the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence (which was called the Ministry of War only until 1964) as some sort of gospel proof - do you need reminding that both these organisations also told us with absolute certainty that Iraq had WMD's capable of striking the US and the UK (within 45 minutes) in the not too distant past?
Was any of it true?
Then as a parting piece of anger you say "I'm not interested in arguing this with you. Go back to your conspiracy theories" - when clearly YOU would never have been arguing with me in any case, because you RELY upon OTHERS for your arguments; and then of course we return back to the cult - religious - faith based system of this man-made CC movement in that any detractors are part of the "conspiracy theorists" sect, when this man-made CC position has never been actually been proven and has just as many, if not more, detectors then supporters.
I'm just surprised that you didn't bestow me with the neo-witch label of 'climate change denier!'
It is all, as I said, just a politicised CC Myth perpetuated by politicised layman zealots who are based wholly upon faith and you are a case in point.
Thanks for that CC and have a delightful day.
Hey Mound, try reading "Global Warming and Other B@ll@cks" by Professor Stanley Feldman and professor Vincent Marks.
But as it doesn't subscribe to your limited views I doubt that you will.
As CC says above you find it all too easy to dismiss the 33,000 respected scientists that don't believe CC is man made because you like to believe the hippies, politicians and businesses that are now making fortunes out of jumping on the green band wagon.
Don't forget they are the same people that warned us about the millennium bug and the disasters that would follow and the same people that charged us all lots of tax dollars to fix things that weren't busted. According to them CC shouldn't have mattered anyway because Bird Flu should have wiped us all out by now, or was it WMDs that would kill us all?
Don't believe the hype !
You're right, Anon, I don't believe your bollocks. Nor do I believe your "list" of scientists. Now push off. Nobody here is buying what you're selling.
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