Why Climate Change Matters to the Lives of the Poor

Then why try to stop what is meant to be? Or is it now our obligation to stop the evolutionary process?

First of all, what is 1 degree C in F?

Second of all, it's an average. My average speed on a typical bike ride is 17 miles an hour. In some places on my ride, my speed is a glorious 32 miles an hour. In other places, it is a grinding, frustrating 7 miles an hour. Someone seeing my average as 17 miles an hour should probably ask about high and low speeds, as well as terrane and conditions.

For example, another biker, biking in the flats of Indiana and going with the wind, might have a 25 mph average. Without knowing anything about the terrane or conditions, one might think that biker is a faster biker than me.

So it is with climate. What is the temperature increase at the poles as opposed to the equator? And how much of an impact does 1 degree C have in regions that are hovering around 0 degrees C? What are those implications?

FWIW, 1 degree in C is 1.8 degrees F.

Average temperatures in the Arctic have risen much more than one degree. Shishmaref, Alaska, an Inuapaq (Inuit Eskimo) village on the coast north of Nome, is being inundated by rising sea waters, caused by climate change. A few years ago, it was decided to move the village to higher ground. They chose a nearby spot along Tin Creek. Recently, however, they learned that the chosen spot is unsuitable because melting permafrost caused by climate change is making the ground there unstable. So now they have to find another place to move.

The villagers are mostly Christians, and they are not wealthy by anyone's standards. These are the kinds of people worldwide who are being harmed by our addiction to carbon-based fossil fuels. Jesus told us we need to have special concern and compassion for the poor. If we don't stop burning fossil fuels at the rate we're doing, we're going to cause them even more harm, not good. Would you want to tell Jesus that you did these things to the poor because you wouldn't cut back on your use of fossil fuels?

And by the way, I've reported a couple of your comments because of calling us names like "carbon-phobes" and asserting that we're creating "hysteria." I suggest that you be a bit more respectful toward people with whom you are disagreeing here. You might want to re-read the Comment Code of Conduct reproduced above the comment section.

First of all, what is 1 degree C in F?

Second of all, it's an average. My average speed on a typical bike ride is 17 miles an hour. In some places on my ride, my speed is a glorious 32 miles an hour. In other places, it is a grinding, frustrating 7 miles an hour. Someone seeing my average as 17 miles an hour should probably ask about high and low speeds, as well as terrane and conditions.

For example, another biker, biking in the flats of Indiana and going with the wind, might have a 25 mph average. Without knowing anything about the terrane or conditions, one might think that biker is a faster biker than me.

So it is with climate. What is the temperature increase at the poles as opposed to the equator? And how much of an impact does 1 degree C have in regions that are hovering around 0 degrees C? What are those implications?

Not much! Definately not the problems mentioned in the article.

FWIW, 1 degree in C is 1.8 degrees F.

One degree? Non linier feed back loops.

Melt the methane hydrates and release methane, good feed back loop. Does not take much of a temperature change to trigger this in the tundra.

It's already happening, especially in Siberia. Methane bubbling up from the melting permafrost is keeping pools of water there from freezing.

Average temperatures in the Arctic have risen much more than one degree. Shishmaref, Alaska, an Inuapaq (Inuit Eskimo) village on the coast north of Nome, is being inundated by rising sea waters, caused by climate change. A few years ago, it was decided to move the village to higher ground. They chose a nearby spot along Tin Creek. Recently, however, they learned that the chosen spot is unsuitable because melting permafrost caused by climate change is making the ground there unstable. So now they have to find another place to move.

The villagers are mostly Christians, and they are not wealthy by anyone's standards. These are the kinds of people worldwide who are being harmed by our addiction to carbon-based fossil fuels. Jesus told us we need to have special concern and compassion for the poor. If we don't stop burning fossil fuels at the rate we're doing, we're going to cause them even more harm, not good. Would you want to tell Jesus that you did these things to the poor because you wouldn't cut back on your use of fossil fuels?

And by the way, I've reported a couple of your comments because of calling us names like "carbon-phobes" and asserting that we're creating "hysteria." I suggest that you be a bit more respectful toward people with whom you are disagreeing here. You might want to re-read the Comment Code of Conduct reproduced above the comment section.

Perhaps Prince Charles should not have flown to Copenhagen in his private jet.

Let's see. What is the evidence that climate change isn't real?

So far this is what has been offered by you and other detractors:

1. Al Gore is a hypocrite

2. People are pouring carbon into the atmosphere to go to Copenhagen

3. It will ruin the economy

4. Climate has changed throughout Earth history, therefore this time cannot possibly be because of human interaction with the atmosphere

5. Conservative websites tell me it is a lie

6. I don't understand how one degree C on average of change can possibly have any effect on the Earth's climate, so therefore it can't be that significant

7. Scientists are just a bunch of godless atheists

8. It will lead to a one world government

It might go without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Not one of those arguments is scientific.

Thanks, Sam. Believe me, I hope I'm wrong.

G'day

Thanks. I get a bit frustrated about the lack of the understanding re
science exhibited by many on this site. Like wise, the lack of a wide world
view. Far too US centric.

Could this be in part the continual denigration of the biological sciences
by the Young Earth Creationists, or as function of the right wing of the US?
This continually erodes understanding on how the world works.

Some of us are exposed to a much wider range of media.

You may be interested in the a couple of articles from New Scientist

The ice age that never was
03 September 2008 by Hazel Muir

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926721....
s.html?full=true

And
Ancient Amazon civilisation laid bare by felled forest

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427383....
on-laid-bare-by-felled-forest.html

Cheers

John Holmes
46 Gallagher St, Eden Hill, 6054
Ph (08) 9377 0607
Mob 0400 185 458
Email homesjc@iprimus.com.au

Thanks for thinking about my questions.

Care to elaborate on the scientific evidence supporting why those problems wouldn't result from climate change?

One degree? Non linier feed back loops.

Melt the methane hydrates and release methane, good feed back loop. Does not take much of a temperature change to trigger this in the tundra.

Gore actually didn't make it up. He just got a bit excited and exaggerated, that was all. I wrote a reply to someone's comment about this on the Bishop Tutu thread. He had posted the link below and tried to have us think that Gore's exaggerating meant that the whole climate change thing is a fraud. As if Gore himself were behind it all!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-cli...

Here was my reply:

Did you read the last part of the article?

"'You really don't need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.' (Translation: The situation in the Arctic is so serious that exaggerations are unnecessary.)

"Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said: 'It's possible but not likely. We're sticking with 2030.'

"Average global temperatures have increased by 1.3F (0.74C) in the past century, but the mercury has risen at least twice as quickly in the Arctic.

"Scientists say the make up of the frozen north polar sea has shifted significantly in recent years as much of the thick year-round ice has given way to thin seasonal ice.

"In the summer of 2007, the Arctic ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles in September. The melting in 2008 and 2009 was not as extensive, but still ranked as the second and third greatest decreases on record. "

So Al Gore made an exaggeration. Big deal. The fact is that Arctic ice is melting and melting far faster than scientists back in 2000 had predicted it would.

It's already happening, especially in Siberia. Methane bubbling up from the melting permafrost is keeping pools of water there from freezing.

You sound like the last jury holdout in "Twelve Angry Men":

"What do you mean by that? The kid yelled 'I'm going to kill you' and he did kill him! A kid who says something like that the way he said it means it!"

It's only a lie in your estimation because Al Gore said it. Didn't you read what I quoted from the report? "We're sticking with 2030 (as an estimate for a pack-ice-free Arctic)." Gore said 2014. What's a difference of sixteen years when we're talking about pack ice that's been in place for thousands of years?

Al Gore is really not relevant anyway. If he got run over by a bus on his way to the airport in Copenhagen, do you really think that will really make the climate change issue go away?

Ignore Al Gore. I do. He's not important. As Squeaky has suggested, e-mail some of the climate scientists. I'm sure you would find some willing to share what they know with you.

I'm not putting a lot of faith in the Copenhagen proceedings. I really am rather pessimistic that we humans will address the climate change challenge in any real substantive way--at least not from the top down. Too much is invested in the way things are now, and the price required for proper mitigation is just too high. We need to stop burning carbon-based fuels. Now. Nothing else will really cure the problem. No politician will tell us that we need to drastically change our lifestyles. None will do that.

The thing is, if we don't change voluntarily, then nature will step up and force the changes on us. Nature bats last, as one blogger writes. But the results of waiting for nature to act against us will be far more unpleasant than if we voluntarily change.

No, I don't look for a real breakthrough in Copenhagen. We need to begin the changes ourselves, beginning with us, our neighbors, and our communities. It's the only way out of this mess.

Squeaky, There are few places where the temp "hovers" around freezing. Most places on the planet have winter and summer. Even the poles. During winter, temps retreat far below freezing. In the summers they warm up enough for some ice to melt. Since the end of the last ice age, more ice has melted in the summer than reforms in the winter. The real question is what role does industrialization play in that? Apparently, the science demonstrates it is quite small.

Years ago I read a Canadian climatologist who wrote a book on how glaciers form and he wrote that glacial formation requires a very specific type of weather. Normal weather, what we have experienced for thousands of years, won't do it. More snow melts in the summer than forms in the winter. That's largely because the air in winter is too cold to hold enough moisture. Glacial formation requires warm oceans and heavy cloud cover for many years. The warm oceans pump moisture into the atmosphere. Cloud cover reduces the extremes of summer and winter. The summer heat doesn't melt as much snow and the winter air is warm enough to hold lots of moisture but cold enough to snow. And that climate must persist for hundreds of years. The normal summers and winters we have experienced since the last ice age make it impossible for glaciers to form. Much the same could be said of the North and South Poles.

squeaky, I was thinking about your example of using children in coal mines to work small veins when it occurred to me that the invention of dynamite made that unecessary. Dynamite is just one of many examples where innovation helped reduce the need for child labor.

Is that a regular dare or a "triple-dog dare"?

Big Brother, where art thou? That George Orwell and his pesky prophetic eye to the future. Small wonder privacy issues are gaining more and more importance.

Did you hear about that journalist who tried to "disappear" for a story for the magazine he worked for (can't remember his name or the mag--I think it was a tech mag. I heard the story on NPR). He challenged readers to find him via the electronic trail he left, even though he changed all the info about himself. There was a cash prize. Pretty tough to disappear in this day and age.