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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (760410)	12/31/2013 11:47:51 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1576323

I think we here in the US should thank Jesus for the extra time being given us by fracking, and be smart and invest in renewable energy as vigorously as possible. Knowing my country and it's moronic voters well, I doubt this wise course will be pursued.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (760410)	12/31/2013 12:25:20 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576323

what king really said, back in the day... Professor Sir David King: And to add in the word that was included there, "even". I say that because I cover all of science in government and this, of course, includes our post-9/11 activities—setting up a working group to examine our resilience to post-9/11 type activities—and this became formalised as the Science Advisory Panel for Emergency Response, which I chair. So I work very hard on that front. Nothing I said was intended to underplay the importance of that agenda. My direct answer to you is no, I do not withdraw any of those comments, nor have I been asked to. At the same time, what I was trying to draw attention to was the severity of the warnings from climate change scientists at the moment. I will not spend too much time on this, but if we look back in time for the globe we probably have to go back 55 million years before we find carbon dioxide levels as high as we are now at, and, of course, our carbon dioxide levels are still rising. Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals, because it was the coolest place, and the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot. It is estimated that it was roughly 1,000 parts per million then, and the important thing is that if we carry on business as usual we will hit 1,000 parts per million around the end of this century. So it seems to me that it is clear on a global and geological scale that climate change is the most serious problem we are faced with this century. The science is telling us about it. We are beginning to put together what we have to do to meet the problem, and it is now a question of policy makers getting together internationally and dealing with it. Q97 Chairman: You are absolutely clear that the cause of this lies with mankind's activities and not with some natural phenomenon? Professor Sir David King: Yes. This is an extremely complex problem and there are at least 1,000 scientists who have, over the last 200 years, contributed to our understanding of the earth's climate system, but there is a very, very strong consensus that the 0.6 to 0.7ºC global temperature rise that we have seen over the last 100 years is largely attributable to anthropogenic effects; it is attributable, largely, to increased production of carbon dioxide, methane, NOx, SOx, and CFCs—all of these larger molecules which are greenhouse gases.... Q113 Chairman: When you use words like "sudden" and "rapid" in this context, what do you mean? Are we talking decades, centuries? Professor Sir David King: Of course, in geological time centuries is quite sudden, so when we talk about temperatures rising to the point where the Greenland ice sheet will melt—the Greenland ice sheet has a large heat capacity which means that the process has a lot of inertia in it, so it will take some time. The ice on the Antarctic landmass is considerably bigger and would probably take about 1,000 years. The ice on the Greenland ice sheet is a more difficult one; it may take 50 to 200 years—we do not know. If the Greenland ice sheet melted, we are talking about a sea level rise of about 6 to 7 metres, so we would be withdrawing from London. The point is, it is not as if this is going to suddenly happen in 50 years' time; it is all happening now and it is all a process that has already begun. publications.parliament.uk