A rise of 2 degrees Centigrade "very unlikely" to be avoided?

Question

According to the world's leading climate scientists it's now very unlikely that we can limit global warming below 2 degrees Centigrade which is predicted to lead to up to 3.2 billion people will face water shortages and up to 600 million will face hunger.

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2976669.ece#2007-09-19T00:00:01-00:00

What can we do about this? Will the countries least affected by devastating climate change be prepared to open their borders and welcome all these people who no longer can live where they used to? For some reason I doubt it and I find it extremely unfair that some of the "lucky" countries is historically those who has contributed the most to global warming.

Comments please?

bootedbylibsx2:
Most of the water that comes from melting polar caps will go where 97% of all the water on earth is, to our oceans and become salt water. That will not help us.

I do not wish for anyone to "suffer" from global warming and maybe I should have used the word "unfortunate" instead of "unfair" when speaking of rich countries and their better ability to cope with global warming. That is if the big emitters where the ones being most affected from global warming I'm sure we would see much more powerful actions to prevent it.

The Voice of Reason:
A source to support your claims would have been interesting...

Bob:
I see your point and realise that short term commercial and political interests are part of the problem, but everything is based on risk calculations. Up until now their calculations has been that the benefits of not acting overweights the risks from global warming. If they where more personally (and short term) affected there's a good chance they would have made other decisions...

Answer 1

Indeed, we've got a 1.5-2°C warming "in the pipeline", as they say. You are correct that the poorer countries will face the most devastating consequences while the richer countries who contributed most to the problem will generally see the less damaging effects.

One would hope that the richer nations will aid the poorer nations in this scenario. However, the richer nations will have to deal with their own problems (reduced crops, water shortages, etc.) which will strain their resources at the same time that the poorer countries need their help most. It will be the start of very trying times for the world. I wouldn't be surprised to see increased wars over limited resources.

And this is just due to the warming already in the pipeline. We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions very soon in order to avoid further warming and worse consequences.

Answer 2

What we can do about it is to follow the practical and affordable plan developed by hundreds of scientists and economists from all over the world.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,481085,00.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf

Your claim of "unfairness" is not fully justified. The rich countries who used fossil fuels to attain wealth had no idea how it would affect the world at large. In fact, they were much more aware of negative impacts to themselves (local air pollution), but judged it worth it.

But, if we do nothing, it will be really unfair. First the rich countries will, as you say, be less affected. Second, by putting off action, they will be so desperate to address the issues in their own countries (coastal flooding and damage to agriculture) that helping others will be a low priority, and probably not politically feasible. Any official who proposed it would be voted out of office.

The world is very likely to become a pretty nasty place. Desperate poor people fleeing over national borders are very likely to cause wars.

If it's any consolation, the rich countries won't have it easy, either. The costs of dealing with unreduced global warming will send the whole world into an economic depression that will make the 1930s look like good times.

At this point, everyone has an interest in working on reducing global warming.

EDIT - "That is if the big emitters where the ones being most affected from global warming I'm sure we would see much more powerful actions to prevent it."

I disagree strongly with this. The problem is not uneven effects, since they will be terrible everywhere. The problem is the short term focus of many commercial and political interests, and their influence.

The reason this is important to me is because, if you misunderstand the basis of the opposition, actions to counter it will be ineffective.

Answer 3

I would say that a rise of 3-4 degrees Celsius is very unlikely to be avoided. After all, the peak temperatures of all past global warming events were 3-4 degrees C above current temperatures, and I see no reason to believe the peak temperature for this current warming trend will be any less.

Answer 4

I believe in pragmatic environmentalism, which is the kind that most of us favor; for example, being thrifty with resources, lowering air and water pollution, and conserving wildlife. All of us should be doing something about these things.

On the other hand, ideological environmentalism is a fairly new "Matrix that has been loaded", and the Neos of this world, like me, don't want anything to do with its lies and deception. Man made global warming is a political ideology that embodies a sweeping agenda aimed at radically transforming how we live and work, and not exactly for the better.

The problem with ideological environmentalism, as with all other political ideologies, is that key predictions made by environmentalist ideologues about the future state of the Earth and humanity are simply not coming true. This is, indeed, a hidden crisis growing in the very heart of ideological environmentalism. Three of the canonical books at the modern founding of ideological environmentalism made sweeping claims about the impending fate of humanity and the Earth. The three books are: Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson in 1962; The Population Bomb, written by Paul Ehrlich in 1968, a biologist from Stanford University; and The Limits of Growth, a report to the Club of Rome, published in 1972.

Carson predicted that modern synthetic chemicals, especially pesticides, would cause epidemics of cancer and kill off massive quantities of wildlife. Her predictions did not come true.

In the Population Bomb, Ehrlich confidently predicted that “the battle to feed all humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines- hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” His predictions did not come true.

The Limits to Growth incorporated the dogma of imminent depletion of natural resources to concerns about growing population and rising pollution. Its predictions did not come true.

This is very critical because Environmentalism is the first ideology to be deeply rooted in the natural sciences.

Like all ideologies, political environmentalism consists of two parts: a diagnosis and a cure. The ideological environmentalist diagnosis of the problems facing humanity is that modern societies are destroying the Earth and thus imperiling humanity. The cure they recommend is, as I said above, a series of sweeping policies that would radically reshape how the world works. “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization”, declared Al Gore in his own manifesto, Earth in the Balance.

The political message at the core of ideological environmentalism was then and is now “Do what I say or the world will come to an end.”

But the fact is that the original, enduring claims that first captured the attention of the public and policy makers have not turned out to be true. Science and economics simply have not backed up the predictions of ideological environmentalism.

Today, what is tottering is ideological environmentalism (which includes the man made global warming hysteria), not modern civilization. As more critics- including epidemiologists, demographers, toxicologists, climatologists, and economists- point ever more insistently at the yawning gap between claims of political environmentalism and scientific and economic reality, green ideologues are becoming ever more frantic to deny the growing contradictions.

LIKE COMMUNISM BEFORE IT, IDEOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM WANTS TO CLAIM THE MANTLE OF OBJECTIVE SCIENCE TO JUSTIFY ITS POLITICAL PROGRAMS BECAUSE IN THE POST-ENLIGHTENMENT WORLD, SCIENCE IS THE FINAL ARBITER OF WHAT IS OBJECTIVELY TRUE OR NOT. HOWEVER, AS THE COMMUNISTS DISCOVERED, THE FAILURE OF ONE’S IDEOLOGY TO CORRESPOND TO REALITY IS ULTIMATELY FATAL.

Answer 5

I think this has been obvious for quite a while to anyone who has followed the problem for more than 30 years. I think the more important question is whether we can stop it short of 4 degrees, where we'll have catastrophic extinction of advanced life on land (including ourselves), and trigger "runaway" effects that will add an additional 4 degrees. There seem to be so many people unwilling to trade their current circumtances for preventing this scenario, I wonder at times if it can be stopped. I'm sure it's possible technically, but when you see people start quoting New Republic in discussions about it, you can see it will take great effort on the part of the majority of the planet's humans to prevent it. I fully expect any nation who tries to stand up to the USA on this or any other environmental issue to be threatened with nuclear weapons, and I think it's pretty obvious too that has created a stampede among recently industrialized countries to develop them.

Answer 6

I thought "global warming" was melting all of the polar icecaps. Where is all that water going to go? If that much water is going to be added to the equation how can so many suffer water shortages? If these scientists are so brilliant that they can predict nature why can't they do something constructive and figure out how to use all this extra water so no one has shortages?. Do you alarmists realize how ridiculous your theories sound?

Answer 7

I'll believe this when people can start predicting the future.

All that they are doing is taking a big enough guess to get their name in the paper. Yes, it's just a guess.

For all anyone knows it will be much colder 5 years from now.

Your use of the phrase "lucky" countries only shows your contempt of man and the reason why you want to believe man is destroying the Earth. At least no one will accuse you of being objective.