Empire of the Iguanadons

Well it looks like ol Kim Jong Il is flexing his muscles again. North Korea opened fire on a South Korean island. Several people have been injured, and one South Korean marine has been killed in the attack. South Korea returned fire, and scrambled a number of fighter jets but no information is forthcoming on how many casualties they inflicted in return.

The island is home to at least 1300 people and lies within the disputed territory not far south of the 38th parallel which is the established border set by the UN in 1953 when the cease fire agreements were drawn up. North and South Korea have never signed a peace treaty, so they have technically been at war with each other since 1950, when the Korean Conflict began as a UN operation. Tensions between the two have been rising lately, most recently after North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship, killing 46 South Korean naval personnel. North Korea denies they were involved, but the evidence was overwhelming.

No information appears to be forthcoming on China's stance in all of this. Technically these hostilities would legally enable both the South Koreans and the US to resume military action against North Korea. Unfortunately with Obama in office, any such action is highly unlikely to take place despite it being the clear and proper thing to do in response.

Kim Jong Il recently appointed his son, Kim Jong Un, as the successor to the North Korean government. Kim Jong Il has been sick with cancer (most likely) for several years and isn't likely to survive much longer. In all likelihood this latest round of hostilities is the north's way of telling the world they can still wield military power at will.

Tensions being what they are, and the world being in the mess it's in, it's entirely possible we could be bearing witness to the opening salvos of World War III. North Korea needs to be dealt with one way or the other. Let's just hope things hold together long enough for a president with a brain and a backbone to take office here in the US so we can do what's right and end their regime once and for all.
.........................
RIP United States of America

July 1776 - November 2012.

I did say that any one of the current major world powers could pull it off and that it'd take some real planning and it'd be enough to put all remaining life on the planet at risk. It would take more nukes than any of the minor powers could muster, but it wouldn't take the full nuclear arsenal of even the U.S. by ourselves, let alone a full scale nuclear war. In fact, it'd be much more effective if it was handled as an intentional global climate shift with very specific strategic detonations all timed fairly closely together than as the side effect of a nuclear war.


To the best of my knowledge, neither Samson nor I either worship money from fossil fuels nor make money from them and, on this site, we're the two biggest supporters of the notion that the scientists lead by Al Gore who claim that the current climate shift is both man-made and devastating are full of BS and gaining tremendously from their attempts at fear-mongering.

Actually, aside from the fact that the evidence we've all been presented and argued over countless times here seems to point to a climate change that could actually be the beginnings of an ice age as easily as a warming trend despite Al Gore's self-admitted faked evidence. And, from what we've been able to determine from the publicly available resources on the web, there's no indication that it's anything beyond what should be happening anyway due to global natural climate cycles that have happened hundreds of times in the past before there were humans on this planet to have potentially influenced anything. Are you suggesting that in the future we will invent time machines so we can dispose of our pollutants in the past and thus cause all previous ice ages and warming trends? I'm probably not going to argue this one too much this time around, we've argued it plenty here before already. When I plug "global warming' into the search box under the calendar on the top right of this site, it returns 20 blog entries starting from February of 2007. Trust me, we've covered it already.

The planet is actually not heating anymore and is showing a wide trend toward cooling. Just look at the last North American winter and tell me that wasn't a clear indication of an over all change in the climate. Then look at this winter up here and tell me its normal for it to be 35 degrees before sundown in California at this time of the year. This could be a temporary thing, or the cycle has ended early this time and we're at the peak.

The facts are plain. The sun is the primary cause of all warming trends here. The fact that Mars exhibited the same warming trends at or above the same rates we had here on Earth is concrete proof that we had nothing to do with it. Unless you're going to tell me the Martians have SUVs. We have no direct impact through our activities as a species on the direction of the climate, regardless of the CO2 count. I'm also not buying for one second the "data" that we doubled the atmospheric content of CO2. It would take several large volcanic eruptions to produce that much CO2. We haven't got the industrial capacity to equal that.

Climategate was all the proof anyone needs to know man made global warming is a hoax. Al Gore has now admitted it was all a hoax and that he was pushing the agenda in order to make money. Scientists the world over are openly debating it. So the issue is clear not settled by any means except to agree that, yes, the climate is changing. Since it's all part of a normal cycle anyway, who are we to say that right now, in 2010, the climate is right where it belongs? We aren't.

The Earth's history is filled with rises and falls in the global climate and the general consensus is that the last ice age ended about 15,000 years ago at the start of the last warming cycle. These warming cycles last roughly 20,000 years according to geologists and other paleoclimetologists. Given that we have another 5,000 years to go, one wonders how we can be so arrogant as to say we have to stop it. We can't. It's going to go where it wants to whether we do anything about it or not.

Simple logic here. Oil is fossil fuel, from the remains of a shit ton of dead plants. If permanently frozen polar caps and a temperate middle-latitude is normal, explain why all the largest oil reserves on the planet are in places that have next to no plant life at all. Clearly they must have at some point in the past or the oil wouldn't be there.

tl;dr: The planet is possibly warming, and we didn't cause it.

I wasn't actually insinuating you guys, but the scientist's who deny climate change. Al Gore himself has nothing to do with the actual scientific part of the climate change issue or the scientists themselves. Yes I know he's made lots of money out of the whole thing, I do not worship him or follow his works, and can proudly say that I have never watched 'An Inconvenient Truth'. He's an outsider who's jumped on the whole bandwagon. What he has done is raised public awareness of the issue for better or worse. As a result he's held in high esteem amongst groups of 'greenies' and may well be a leader to them, however, he is an outsider to the scientist's who have brought up this whole issue.



I hear you when you tell me you've covered it already, but that's a load for me to go on.

Once again...a rise in temperature does have the ability to cause and ice age of sorts (more accurately, it can exemplify the ice age we are currently in) via the shut down of the gulf stream, however, this moves into fairly uncertain and hotly debated aspects of the science. If the planet is heated enough it will cause the shutdown, but we've got no idea how much that takes, so it could happen in ten years or it could happen in two hundred. That's the risk of conducting a vast and unregulated experiment with the Earth's thermostat.

What won't happen however is the day after tomorrow.

As for Al Gore's evidence...Al Gore is not a scientist. He takes his evidence from scientific papers. I haven't ever looked at the paper's he's used because I don't like to waste time material that is dumbed down for public viewing. What I do know is that over the last two years only a single scientific paper has been published challenging the scientific conclusion that humans are causing climate change (this can be summed up as 'the IPCC consensus', which represents a largely accurate image of the scientific opinions on the matter, if somewhat watered down).

Saying that the planet's climate has changed is the past is irrelevant, it neither proves or disproves anything. The evidence for things like the Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period is often either circumstantial or contradictory to their existence (I could go into more detail, but it could take a while).

Here's the point of the whole issue anyway. If the planet cools down and we have and ice age, large areas of land will become uninhabitable (like all of Europe and much of North America) and the world will become much more arid. Bad for crops, bad for civilization. If the planet heats up and the ice caps melt then the sea level will rise and the bulk of the low lying farm land will become unusable, once again threatening crop production and therefore threatening civilization. Climate Change is a genuine threat to our civilization. If its man made it can be stopped, and if its not, well, we're screwed then aren't we?

And there you have it. We're screwed, because it isn't a man made change.

Ok...Samson, that post came in while I was writing up mine so I didn't see it (there's some sort of catchy comment for that but I forget what it is).



No its not. By using specific data sets (the ones made by the scientists from climate gate, coincidentally) and chopping off the temperature line at 1998 and not informing people about the El Nino/La Nina cycle, you can create the illusion the planet is cooling. Use that graph, or any other in the correct context and you get quite the opposite picture.

Also, while you were having you're epically cold winter we were having a record heat wave in Australia. This is weather you see, and yes, it is a temporary thing. Climate change is about climate; the patterns in weather events over a decade or more.



That's simply not true. The sun has been demonstrated through countless scientific studies not the cause of the warming trend. Further more, Mars isn't actually experiencing a warming trend or at least if it is nothing has detected it.

I'm not quite sure why you're doubtful that by increasing the CO2 count could not affect the climate. CO2 is a major part of the greenhouse affect, and there is no way you can increase the CO2 count like we do without increasing the temperature. By the way, I checked the CO2 count, and since the beginning of the industrial era is has gone from 220 parts per million to 380 parts per million. CO2 lasts for several decades as a greenhouse gas, which allows it to accumulate very easily.



The independent inquiries sanctioned by the British government have cleared the scientists from Climategate of any wrong doing. Skeptics have decided to unofficially investigate the inquiries themselves. Go figure. I haven't heard Al Gore say that, but if he did I don't really care because he's a celebrity trying to make his bucks out of it and has nothing to do with climate science. And while exact effects of climate change are being debated by scientists around the world, whether or not humans are causing it is not. The proportion of scientist's who disbelieve this is roughly the same as those who think smoking doesn't cause cancer.



There is rough truth there, but the earths climate cycles are far more complicated. This isn't a natural temperature change we are seeing. Its an abnormally rapid temperature rise with know known natural cause.



That stuff was made back in the Jurassic, when the CO2 concentration in the air was ten times that of today and the earth was a hell of a lot warmer. And it was a very different world. Burn this stuff, and the coal and we're heading back to the Jurassic, climate wise. And do we want to go back there?



I don't have a problem with the conclusion that we're screwed, but if we are, then there's not point stopping the people who believe that Climate Change is man made and can be solved, because, hey, we're screwed anyway aren't we.

I hate to sound like an ass, but I skipped the rest of your post once I got here. Whoever told you that is the true deceiver, for without the sun, we all freeze and die no matter how much CO2 is up there or where it came from. Any scientist who seriously tells another that humans output more energy than the sun should be stripped of his credentials and drummed out of the scientific community. They are morons.

I resumed here:



There's a very good reason to stop them. Their policies are economically destructive. Allowing them to continue unchecked and enact everything they want would be enough to send us all back to the stone age and I'm pretty sure none of us wants that.

The part I found humorous was you saying that Al Gore's just a celebrity who's ridden this for the money because he's the one who the Nobel over it, wasn't it?

Oh, and the term you were looking for was Ninja'd.

It was wasn't it.

Anyway...



I know he got the laurel, and its and abomination of the first order. It should go to actual climate scientists.





I think you're seeing that comment in a completely different context to what I meant. The sun heats the earth, without it we'd all die. Simple fact. Also, without the greenhouse effect the average temperature on earth would be -52 degrees Celsius. Another Simple fact.

Anyway, away from that, when I was talking about the sun being behind the warming trend, what I was referring to was whether or not changes in the levels of solar radiation is responsible for the warming trend in the temperature. It didn't have anything to do with whether or not the sun heats the earth (because of course it does).



I know there are ridiculous green groups who want all CO2 pollution and coal mining to end right now and everyone to go solar, and I'm not one of them. I don't see how a gradual switch to nuclear taking place over four decades (that's about how much time we have left) is going to damage the economy (hey look at that, there's prettyfly's solution to climate change opinion in one sentence).

I fail to see how the US switching entirely to nuclear power solves anything given than China and India are spitting out 100x the CO2 we are. So even if we assume man's CO2 emissions are doing climate damage, logic suggests you go after the countries who are pouring it out by the ton rather than the country who isn't burning nearly as much and who's reductions would amount to removing a drop from a bucket of water.

That's what we're ultimately talking about here too. Man's total output is the equivalent of a single drop of water in a huge bucket.

That said, I support nuclear power all the way. It's cheap, safe, and clean. Although it's not going to do any good trying to run your car on it unless you like glowing in the dark. So we DO still need oil.

I'm also not buying the alarmist argument that we have 40 years to live. I've been through that one already - about 30 years or so ago - when the very same alarmists were sounding the warning about how we were heading for the next ice age because we were emitting too much. They said then we had about 30 years to fix it. Have we? Nope, because we didn't cause it.

Solar cycles. Read up on them. Then marvel at how the data gathered from them matches perfectly with every warming and cooling trend we've had since we began keeping detailed records of it.

I think you're underestimating the amount the US pollutes in terms of CO2, but no solution would work without China and India involved (along with the rest of the world). Yeah, everyone needs to go nuclear.

As for mans output versus natures output, mans output is comparatively a drop of water in a bucket, however, here's where things get a little bit more complex. 95% of that bucket comes from decaying plant matter. But as one plant dies another takes its place, which is why this part of the bucket doesn't matter. As for the 4% that come from living organisms, this is taken from the atmosphere to form the shells of tiny sea creatures, which sink to the bottom of the ocean when they die, form rock, and half a billion years later come out of volcano, forming the carbon cycle.

The remaining 1% in about nine tenths caused by us and one tenth caused by volcano's. The earths carbon processing systems have the ability to compensate for about 60% of this, the rest accumulates over the decades, and becomes eventually quite a significant amount, which is why it becomes a problem. The carbon cycle is very fine tuned.

As for oil, I don't oppose oil because a) we need it and b) we can burn all the oil there is and not have an issue with climate change. Coal is the problem, not oil. We do of course need to find alternatives to oil as it is going to run out in the near future, but that's another issue.



That 'ice age' thing you are talking about was Global Dimming, due to particle emissions. You can see the impact it had if you look at the temperature graph over the last hundred years. However it was dealt with by tightening regulations on pollution (all gas no soot) and over powered by the glowing influence of green house gas driven warming.

By 40 years I meant 40 years before dangerous climate shifts become inevitable. It shouldn't kill people in the western world for a while at least, but it is likely to cause us to start having to pay a shitload more for various goods. And god help you if you live in the third world.



I am familiar with the basics of solar cycles. And yes, they do still have and effect on the climate. For instance, the last 10 years have not seen the rapid warming of the previous decade as the solar cycle became negative. That's now come to an end and this year looks to be the hottest year on record. The solar variation within these cycles however, has been shown to be not responsible for climate change.

Honestly at this point I can't tell if you're trolling the subject or if you've really bought into the lie that we have this much power.

The entire industrial output of all mankind since the industrial revolution has not produced enough CO2 to equal the output of a single volcanic eruption. Ever. I'd go dig up the site I read this on but it's been ages and I don't recall where it was and Google is failing me at the moment.

Bottom line is we don't have the power to influence the climate beyond triggering a nuclear winter. Which would of course freeze everyone to death rather than deep fry us all.

Well, I'll certainly agree that it shouldn't have gone to him (nor Obama either, but that's another thread as well), I'm just not so convinced that it should've gone to a climate scientist either.


A bit of what Samson said. Ultimately the US as a whole doesn't have the "carbon footprint" to even come close to comparing to China, but even if we got the whole world, including China, to switch to nuclear within the next forty years (you really do believe that forty years is the limit to save ourselves, don't you?) I suspect those same groups of crazies would find devastating new evidence that nuclear power was causing the world to end again on us within that same forty years. Sadly, like Samson, I also personally remember the same claims thirty years ago and so I'm a bit unconvinced these wolf criers aren't blowing smoke up our collective asses yet once again.


Man, if there were some way to economically shield cars so that each one could run off a single small plutonium or uranium rod so we didn't need oil anymore.. I'd consider that a hell of a boon, and not for any environmental reasons but simply because it'd mean that I'd never need to stop at a gas station ever again or care about my car's MPG or.. but even then, we'd most likely still need a much smaller quantity of oil for engine lubricant, unless you've got another substance we can use instead for that too.. personally, I pay the extra for full synthetic oil for my car just so I don't have to change the oil nearly as often and, in the long run, it saves me money on the stuff. (Using real oil I'd have to change 6 out quarts every 3000 miles, on full synthetic I can go 7500 miles between changes, and the synthetic stuff's no where near double the price.)

Re: Solar cycles: Um, yeah.. next we'll be getting told by Fury that solar flares and such are just more of those left wing conspiracies too.

The idea that volcanoes are a dominant source of CO2 emissions is a myth. Google's messing around with me too, but I this and this. The last one is actually quite a reader friendly site, though I suspect you won't like it.

Are you all overlooking the one small but essential detail that nuclear fuel is not renewable either? It may be safe and clean, but it isn't cheap, and it definitely won't be once everyone goes nuclear. The world's fossil fuel reserves have longer to go than the uranium reserves, even at today's usage patterns.

The USA controls about 5% of the world's uranium production, about the same as its share in oil production. The energy import dependency would shift from Canada and the middle east to Canada and Russia. I'm not absolutely convinced that would be very much of an improvement. As irritating as the middle east is, at least it is divided and weak and can be kept so with relatively modest investments.

Ok you guys have been busy, and i have attempted to post this 3 or 4 times already and still dont know how i should respond. Ok, as the ONLY science guy in the room, BA of Applied Science, and as the only person other than perhaps Dwip who has access to scientific data bases, who has read some of the ACTUAL scientific literature as it has related to my studies and personal interest, I think i have a basic grasp of the science. Most of what has been bashed around here in this thread now and in others is mostly rubbish. If anyone would like to read some actual science i could download a couple of hundred papers for you to begin to get your head around things and learn some actually climate science.

So FUD and red herrings arguments aside, this argument should not be about the science, there has been a scientific consensus on climate change and its causes since 1988. Just as much as there was a scientific consensus on the health effects of tobacco smoke much longer before the Government took it seriously. But it has taken the Government over 40 odd years to catch up with reality on tobacco smoke and start to crack down on it. The reason for this is simple, think tanks and industry groups have lobbied hard and intentionally obfuscated the truth, spread misinformation and done their best to not have any regulations at all which would cost the tobacco business money. This is not a war on science either, it is a war on politics and giving business whatever they want.

The same has happened with climate change, the very people who ran the tobacco campaigns have been running the anti climate change campaigns, using the same tactics as they did with tobacco, misinformation, bring doubt about the science, make it out to be some left wing conspiracy to make you pay higher prices and more taxes for your energy costs. The issue is settled for many scientists, climate change is happening and we need to do something about it. Whats not settled is the political will or desire to do anything about it.

For me, i do not care weather you agree with the science, or not, of if you agree that we are experiencing climate change but do not accept that the causes are anthropocentric, there is one answer to it all. PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE.

We can actually do things to stop climate change from getting to a point where we can no longer live where we currently do, or from it the ways of life we currently enjoy or understand. These range from simple things like planting trees, though to climate engineering, like the 6 million dollar man, we have the means and the technology to do it, all we need now is the political will to make it happen.

Wow, you two each got a post in while I was typing up that last one. :sigh:


Seriously, prettyfly? You think we humans, over the last few hundred years, have generated nine times the carbon output of all the volcanos that have ever erupted on this planet over the past few hundred million years?? In the span of our existence on this planet nuclear power is the only thing we've found close to powerful enough to even be close to the force of a single major volcano or earthquake. If you doubt that one, just go check out the seismic scale at http://earthquake.usgs.gov sometime.

As for triggering a nuclear winter freezing us all to death rather than frying us, I suppose that depends on how close one happens to be to ground zero of the nuclear blast that triggered the nuclear winter.


Um, yeah.. I'll stand by what I said in my previous post. I do not begin to seriously believe we narrowly averted total planetary disaster by reducing vehicular carbon emissions any more than I believe that if we don't convert the entire world to nuclear within 40 years the climate shifts we've caused (which I've already stated I don't believe we caused) will become irreversible and we'll all start dying off shortly after that deadline.


Maybe where you live, but we just had our third freeze for the year here over Thanksgiving in an area that has only seen snow three times in the last decade. We're looking forward to a very cold winter this year. I'm raising livestock and crops on my farm here, I really do pay fairly close attention to the weather.

Holy shit, how much have you guys posted in five minutes

*snicker* Geologic timescales are irrelevant? I love it. On one side, you have scientists who argue it's the very foundation of such bogus things as Evolution. On the other, you have these climate guys saying only the last 150 years matter. Can't have it both ways and expect anyone to take either group seriously. You're right, I don't like that second site. They've all bought the lie totally.

I don't like the first because they're using the IPCC data that even Al Gore is now claiming was bogus to back up their argument, so I afford them zero credibility. You can't put forth any serious argument based on such a flawed collection of data - data btw that the climategate scientists now claim got "lost".

Also - since it came up while *I* was posting - I find it incredibly ironic that the exact same methods we were told to use in the 1970s during the global cooling scare are the very same ones we're now being told to use. IE: Reduce vehicular emissions. How exactly does one reconcile this? If vehicular emissions are causing global warming, logic suggests reducing them would lead to global cooling. However, since "all the scientists" agreed back then that reducing them would halt the cooling effects they were causing, it stands to reason then that reducing vehicle emissions leads to global warming. So why aren't we being told to ramp up our emissions?

The reason is simple. It's all about the money and always has been. The scammers who duped us once made billions off of it and now they want billions more and need something new to scare us all with. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.

Sheesh, another three posts while I typed up that one?


No one's saying volcanos are a dominant source of CO2, just that they are much more dominant a source than humans are.


I can't say that I'd heard that one before. I do agree that it's not a cheap alternative by any measure, but I hadn't heard that our global uranium supply was in danger of exhaustion faster than our fossil fuel supply.


So, only you (with a bachelor of ARTS and Dwip) qualify as having potential access to scientific data bases and with your art degree you're the only science guy in the room? Boy, that's even better than you telling us that solar flares are just a left wing conspiracy... you really need to take that tin foil hat off a bit more often, it's starting to cut the O2 flow to your head..

Mostly, just lightweight responses to you, actually.

@Samson: Yeah, lovely sites, huh?
Perhaps we should just take Fury's word for it all, he's the only science guy amongst us who's had enough personal interest to take the time to read any of the real scientific papers that his degree doesn't qualify him to understand anyway afterall....

Oh yeah. I forgot. I'm an uneducated redneck hick from... uh... that state above Mexico. No, not the one with the movie place either. That one where all the people have guns and shoot each other for fun. You know, the Alamo one?

Oil may be running out, but there are immense reserves of coal and natural gas left.

I would not be all that worried about CO2, i would be worried about the perma frosts melting and letting go all the methane trapped underneath, that is a distinct possibility within the next 50 to 100 years and if it happens it will turn the temperature up to 11.



100 years of uranium vrs 400 odd years of coal. Uranium can be recycled i think almost indefinably but for that to happen, laws need to be changed because reprocessing of spent fuel is how you make bomb grade materials.



Sorry i was not trying to be smug, or anything, only trying to say i have read 100's of papers on this subject and i know some of the basics and i mean BASICS. One thing i want to mention now, is that all the little things you guys are fighting over in the above posts, really mean nothing in the scheme of things, climate science is complex and it is not ONE thing in isolation that is causing it, it has 100's of potential elements that all work together to deliver the final outcome.

SO we spend our time arguing about the cause, when the cause is irrelevant, what is important is What are we going to do about it. Are we going to do things to reverse it, or are we going to do nothing about it at all and what do the ACTUAL climate scientists (not lobby or industry group funded misinformation units) say the potential damage might be and how probable those outcomes are. This should be the debate, not fucking volcanoes and solar fluxes.

For the record, I haven't had database access for a good long while now. Last I used it for this sort of thing was 6-7 years ago. Historian not scientist etc.

That said, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because I don't care to have the argument and I care a lot more about Korea and Wikileaks anyway:

- Think the man-made climate change case has essentially been made. Even if it hadn't, there are pretty compelling reasons to get as much fossil fuel pollution out of the air as we can and to stop blowing up mountains and crap.

- That said, wind sucks, hydro has its own issues, and solar is bloody expensive. Nuclear the hell out of everything and go. Check out how the French do reprocessing, and run with it.

- India/China make convenient scapegoats to do nothing, but that's really kind of bullshit. We're capable of doing our own thing without them, although obviously they would eventually need to be brought on board.

- In general more or less down with Fury's last second to last post. Speaking of which:

@Fury -

You should know by now that appeals to academic authority gain you nothing with these guys. See how far my history degree gets me most of the time around here.

Anyway, and hoping a don't get Ninja'd.

Fury's whole comment I basically agree on. I don't have the same level of knowledge as he does so something he says about climate science that contradicts what I said then he's probably right. That said Fury, I have read an number texts on climate change, so I do have some idea on the science, but unlikely as much as you do. Also I got some of the emission portions disproportionate. this should give a bit of an idea of what the proportions are.




These various environmental issues are clear cut theories that are tested by scientist, peer reviewed, seen to be real and thus acquire a vital scientific consensus. Sure, crazy green groups rush in and make it a mess. Ignore them. And yeah, there will be a hell of a stink kicked up due to nuclear waste disposal. However, it can be disposed of safely and is rapidly becoming less and less potent in is waste stage due to improving technology, so I think it is within our rights to put a plug in the mouth of some of those groups.

As for global dimming, it never got the point where it could be seen as a genuine threat to our society (the temperature drop only occurred for something like fifteen years) and was cheaply and easily solved ( it also to do with particle emissions from manufacturing more than anything else). As such, its been largely forgotten. We didn't exactly narrowly avert a disaster, we just dealt with a potential threat.

Also, convert the entire world to nuclear or we'll start dying out is well, pointing out a poor simplification from me. We need to reduce green house gases to a certain level by 2050 ( I think it was 70-80% reductions or something like that), else we will begin to experience dangerous climate change. This will have a wide range of implications that are at first expensive to the western world and live costing to the third world. Keep on polluting and eventually however, there will be climate change severe enough to begin to tear out the supports of our own western societies, at which point it should start costing us lives. Obviously, we don't know the exact effects that could occur and we also don't know a lot of other details, and I can't go and explain them all because it would take a few hours to write up.



That's the thing about global weather. It varies. You might be having a cold one, but world wide it is abnormally hot at the moment.