We
are rolling loaded dice on global climate change, playing a dangerous game.
Further, it is economically less expensive to enact precautionary measures to
reduce damage to the environment rather than deal with the consequences of
doing almost nothing, risking incalculable cost in loss of life and
treasury.
Any
good businessman reviewing risk assessment would have to agree that limiting
the impact of natural disasters is wiser than doing nothing. An essential
precautionary principle is that you
don’t have to have 100% of the science in agreement
in order to act proactively for the public safety/security. That’s why the
global insurance companies have moved their clients, some of the world’s
biggest multinational firms, towards more ecological practices – to protect
their assets. The insurance folks, a conservative lot by nature, are convinced
climate change is real. They don’t care about who is right or wrong, they want
to protect their investments.
You
can split the difference between the naysayers and extreme climate change
prophets like Jan Lundberg, who predicts widespread depopulation and societal
havoc before a new world order is restored, and still take meaningful,
practical and immediate action.
The first step is to acknowledge that the preponderance of scientific
evidence says that climate change is occurring, and action is required now,
not in the future when options are more limited. kwc
So
who is right about the role of global warming?
In fact, two recent studies of hurricanes, by different scientists using
different methods, claimed to detect a big rise in hurricane intensity around
the world over the last several decades. But the authors of both analyses
acknowledged that more data would be needed to confirm a link to human-caused
warming. The
murkiness arises because the relationship between long-term warming of the
climate and seas is only perceptible in statistical studies of dozens of
storms, not in the origin or fate of any particular storm.
The
growth and trajectory of any one storm is shaped by big natural vagaries in
the atmosphere and oceans and chance occurrences, like the passage of both
recent hurricanes over meandering eddies of unusually warm water in the Gulf
of Mexico. "It's a coincidence of ideal conditions," said Christopher W.
Landsea, a hurricane expert at the Commerce Department's Atlantic
Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory outside Miami.
Kerry Emanuel,
the author of one of the recent studies showing rising intensity, echoed many
colleagues in saying that the impact of global warming was unlikely ever to be
manifested in a black and white way that could serve as a call to arms for
those seeking curbs on emissions. Instead, Dr. Emanuel, an atmospheric
scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said
it
would emerge as if someone had subtly, but progressively, loaded a pair of
dice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/national/nationalspecial/24warm.html
UK
Chief Environmentalist says US climate loonies ignore the global
warming ‘smoking gun’ of stronger
hurricanes:
Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking
gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.
The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and
Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said
Sir
John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution.
Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they
would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. "The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme
storms is very likely to be due to global warming."
In a series
of outspoken comments - a thinly veiled attack on the Bush administration, Sir
John hit out at neoconservatives in the US who still deny the reality of
climate change. Referring to the arrival of Hurricane Rita he said: "If
this makes the climate loonies in the States realise we've got a problem, some
good will come out of a truly awful situation."
Independent
UK via http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0923-01.htm
Hurricanes
fiercer with global warming, MIT scientist says http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/hurricanes.html
Land surface changes in Alaska tundra creating
longer, warmer summers in Artic http://www.terradaily.com/news/climate-05zzzzw.html
More scientists say global warming
affecting hurricanes: recent
studies convert skeptics
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/HurricaneRita/story?id=1154125&page=1
NOAA
Global Warming and Hurricanes http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html
