Mostly, politicians will continue to wonder why the global economy just seems to keep having problems, farmers will be upset that their five-year drought is a ten-year drought, and every month a few hundred to a few thousand people will die in some catastrophic flood/drought/fire/typhoon/heat wave.
And in ten to twenty years time, this will all add up to millions of people suffering or dying, the collapse of more economies and nations, and increases in conflict and war. Humanity did pretty well for thousands of years with fewer than a billion people on the planet. Realistically, it's hard to imagine that we didn't pass the threshold for arctic sea ice collapse and Arctic permafrost melt in the previous decade or so. The only reason for optimism is the long lag time gives us time for adaptation and/or radical geoengineering measures twenty years down the road. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/02/world/main5358294.shtml The flood-ravaged Philippines is bracing for what could be a super typhoon (a category 4 or 5 in the U.S.), even as residents of the capital and outlying areas have barely recovered from last weekend's record rainfall that killed at least 293 people in the country. On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:17 AM, [email protected] < [email protected]> wrote: > > > The leaders are saying that it's almost too late to avert a climate > > disaster. And, it is darn obvious that we are not going to act > > quickly. So, what are we going to be hearing in the future? > > It's obviously rhetoric. There is no deadline of 01/01/2012 by which > we have to turn a switch, and if we do, everything is dandy, and if we > don't every human will die on 01/01/2120 and there is nothing we can > do about it anymore after 01/01/2012. > > And because it is merely a rhetorical device to emphasise "the urgency > of action" (itself a pretty vague concept), politicians and > environmental activists can still use it in 2030, maybe after focusing > on some other rhetoric in between. > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
