Why should we fear climate change?

[iceaura]

So far the greatest fear is flooding. Yet that is offset by greater fresh water supplies.

You mistake the matter, at least in the more common predictions.

More water vapor in the air does not necessarily mean widespread rain, as the warmer air better holds it as gas (and sucks more out of the soil and plants). It takes more to shake it out, and places not blessed with mountains or fortunate locations in places of global updraft and the like suffer drought. Australia may be very hard hit, for example.


Places with the requisite geography get all of it, and suffer episodic deluge.

Neither is ideal farming weather.

 

[Blindman]

The tropics deal very well with heavy rain fall.

Still no fear. I guess that the only thing to fear is change. 10 years for humanity is a long time. 100 years is an eternity. We are adaptable, we can live in the harshest environments the Earth provides.

Water can be pumped across continents, barren soils can be made fertile. The huge variate of crops at our disposal allows us to produce something in most climates. All we need is warmth and sunlight.

Don't let GW fear mongering hinder human growth.

 

[iceaura]

The tropics deal very well with heavy rain fall.

In places. And the deserts deal very well with drought.

Agriculture is what feeds people.

Water can be pumped across continents, barren soils can be made fertile.

Not realistically - most of that has been done, to the extent feasible.

The people currently restoring fertility to degraded farmland in the Appalachian Mountains of North America report (Wendell Berry is a decent and widely accessible source of informative anecdote) that it seems to be taking about fifty years, as a rule of thumb, if the damage is not too severe. Of course only limited research has been done - so perhaps after we begin to investigate and try ideas, in a couple of decades we can find ways of speeding things up.

Perhaps the CO2 effects will not be too rapid or severe. That's certainly possible: we could be lucky.

 

[engineerjoe]

The individuals pushing for CO2 reduction mandates are the same ones who pushed to outlaw DDT and in doing so are responsible for millions of malaria related deaths. Stop screwing up the world by trying to save it.

 

[spidergoat]

Guilt by association? There is no scientific basis for the comparison. DDT was a definite problem and that's a fact.

 

[engineerjoe]

Same ideology, and millions of human deaths is more of a problem than a few thin egg shells.

 

[Trippy]

Same ideology, and millions of human deaths is more of a problem than a few thin egg shells.

And of course you understand that 'A few thin eggshells' wasn't the only['i] problem that DDT caused (even then, and as I understand it, it was the widespread indiscriminant use that caused the problem - Got a moth problem? Hose your clothes down with DDT).

 

[engineerjoe]

Good point...now go explain that to all the dead people

 

[Trippy]

Good point...now go explain that to all the dead people

You really are that ignorant aren't you?

The use of DDT was never fully banned.

Under the Stockholm Convention it was/is only the agricultural use of DDT that was banned, even then some countries choose to ignore that.

The use of DDT for vector control, which is what you're talking about was never banned. There's been nothing (legality wise) stopping people from using DDT to control malaria, in fact, the lack of reasonable alternatives to DDT for malaria control was one of the main reasons that the use of DDT for vector control has been continued to be allowed.

 

[James R]

The individuals pushing for CO2 reduction mandates are the same ones who pushed to outlaw DDT and in doing so are responsible for millions of malaria related deaths. Stop screwing up the world by trying to save it.

Seeing as you're so concerned about malaria, you'll be lobbying for action on climate change, I'm sure.

Take New Guinea, for one example. There, the lowland forest areas are malaria ridden, so that essentially nobody lives there. Higher up the mountains, there are currently thriving communities. But as the globe warms, conditions for malaria mosquitos become favourable at the higher elevations.

Hence, by doing nothing on climate change, you are condemning a large proportion of the inhabitants of the New Guinea highlands to annihilation from malaria - exactly the kind of thing you say should not be done.

 

[Blindman]

Oh no... Arrrhhh run for the hills... Not according to James for you'll all be ANNIHILATED. Strong words James.

Lets put this is some perspective. Leading cause of preventable death world wide, road traffic accidents. Over 10 million people since 1999 DEAD, 200 million injured costing us trillions.

So with in your face synergy, lets ban cars. GW scare mongers get their emission cuts in one fell swoop, and humanitarians get to save countless lives.

Not going to happen. Knowing the risk I gladly get in my car and drive. Gee just sitting in a parked car is dangerous.

GW activists claim to have a humanitarian agenda, or are they all on some mix up environmental band wagon???:shrug:

 

[Buffalo Roam]

Why fear something that we can do nothing about?

 

[Repo Man]

The individuals pushing for CO2 reduction mandates are the same ones who pushed to outlaw DDT and in doing so are responsible for millions of malaria related deaths. Stop screwing up the world by trying to save it.

Overuse of DDT for agricultural purposes caused insect populations to become resistant, greatly decreasing it's effectiveness in controlling mosquito populations.

 

[Repo Man]

Why fear something that we can do nothing about?

I'd love to hear you say that if it were discovered that a very large asteroid were on a collision course with Earth. "Hey, it will devastate the biosphere, and cause the extinction of just about all animal life, but we cannot stop an asteroid, so why sweat the little things?"

There are a couple of thousand million people living in Asia (Bangladesh to give one example) that are in very serious trouble with even a minor increase in sea level. Should the cause of the projected rise turn out to be wholly natural, it would be of little comfort to these people.

 

[James R]

Oh no... Arrrhhh run for the hills... Not according to James for you'll all be ANNIHILATED.

No. Just the inhabitants of the New Guinea highlands. Like I said. That's if they don't become climate change refugees like millions of others will, of course.

Lets put this is some perspective. Leading cause of preventable death world wide, road traffic accidents. Over 10 million people since 1999 DEAD, 200 million injured costing us trillions.

So with in your face synergy, lets ban cars. GW scare mongers get their emission cuts in one fell swoop, and humanitarians get to save countless lives.

Certainly I agree with you that we should reduce our reliance on cars. Good suggestion.

Not going to happen. Knowing the risk I gladly get in my car and drive. Gee just sitting in a parked car is dangerous.

We've already established that you lack a common sense reaction to danger that most people have.

GW activists claim to have a humanitarian agenda, or are they all on some mix up environmental band wagon???:shrug:

It's one and the same (apart from the "mixed up" part).

Why fear something that we can do nothing about?

We can do something about climate change. We can limit its extent.

I note that you are afraid to debate me on the reality of climate change.

 

[Arch_Rival]

Overuse of DDT for agricultural purposes caused insect populations to become resistant, greatly decreasing it's effectiveness in controlling mosquito populations.

It is improper use that caused this to happen.

DDT reduced the cases of malaria in India from millions to double digits per year.

Then came the Silent Spring shit and the "need to save money". DDT treatment was halted.

When the authorities saw malaria on the rebound, they realized they screwed up and reimplemented the program. By then they were too late.

 

[Pipes75]

Please some tell me why we fear climate change. I have not heard "Runaway green house" for years but its still seems to be the backbone of climate change fear mongering.

Change presents opportunity. The glass is half full.

As a child I was taught to fear nuclear war, then as the walls came down, global cooling, now global warming. Predictions in the mid 90's lead us all to believe we would be stuffed by now.

Please someone tell me what to fear as apathy, coupled with boundless optimism has given me no reason the reduce my consumption.

I agree. Nothing to fear, life goes on.
However awareness is always good, so if we really knew what was happening we might prepare to adapt to the change if need be.
Personally, I just think governments like to use scare tatics to keep people in line, it's a bit out played and kinda sad.

Even if changes are inevitable, I doubt we caused them, the world has went through many changes in the past, and it will go through many more in the future.

To be honest, a common threat might be the only thing that pulls us all together anyway, so maybe a natural or supernatural threat can actually be good for humanity in the long run (assuming we overcome the threat of coarse ).

 

[Arch_Rival]

Storms will be more frequent and more violent. And so on and so on.

This is a very dangerous line of thought, because it distracts the world from the more pressing issue of how to deal with disasters.

Take for example An Inconvinient Truth. There is this scene where Al Gore shows his sob face with the Katrina disaster playing in the background.

The message implied is clear. Global warming/climate change caused this disaster. Hundreds of people died because of that. Fighting climate change is therefore urgent and important.

But think a moment. Is preventing climate change the key to preventing those deaths from happening again?

Consider Katrina, a cat 3 storm when it hit. At places where most people died, the storm was somewhere between cat 2-3, or thereabouts. 700 people died.

Compare this to Taiwan. Every year they get storms, often cat 3, occassionally higher. Yet each time only a handful of people died. 20 is a high number, usually about 10.

So why are severe storms less destructive for Taiwan? Simply because they learnt to deal with it. They maintain good drainage, flood control, take safety measures, etc. In contrast, New Orleans was ill-prepared for the disaster

It is actions like this that will save lives and property the next time a disaster hits. Yet climate scientists only seek to further their own cause by using this incident to showcase the effects of climate change.

In the end, lets face it. Learning and spending resources to deal with disasters saves lives. Wasting resources fighting climate change wouldn't.

 

[Trippy]

It is improper use that caused this to happen.

DDT reduced the cases of malaria in India from millions to double digits per year.

Then came the Silent Spring shit and the "need to save money". DDT treatment was halted.

When the authorities saw malaria on the rebound, they realized they screwed up and reimplemented the program. By then they were too late.

BS.
DDT was never completely banned, only it's agricultural use was, it's use for controling disease vectors was still permitted under the Stockholm Convention.

Obviously you're completely ignorant of the effects its impurities had and have on people, as well as the other problems associated with organochlorines, and persistant organic pollutants.

 

[Arch_Rival]

Not bs. That was what happened.

"When it was first introduced in World War II, DDT was very effective in reducing malaria morbidity and mortality. The WHO's anti-malaria campaign, which consisted mostly of spraying DDT, was initially very successful as well. For example, in Sri Lanka, the program reduced cases from about 3 million per year before spraying to just 29 in 1964. Thereafter the program was halted to save money, and malaria rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968 and the first quarter of 1969. The country resumed DDT spraying, but it was largely ineffective because mosquitoes had acquired resistance to the chemical in the interim, presumably because of its continued use in agriculture. The program was forced to switch to malathion, which though more expensive, proved effective."

from wiki

Malaria mosquitos became resistant because of the halt. If the program had persisted things would have became better for India.