Comments on: Our Climate's Tipping Point: Only 100 Months Left

By: Middle East Oil Barons See Green Oil Fields in Clean Technology - Mideast Youth - Thinking Ahead

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:32:35 +0000

[...] 2008 It’s kind of ironic, but good news: As the world suffers from rising fuel costs and weighs the consequences of global warming, investors and oil barons in Dubai may play a pivotal role in a swift move towards green technology [...]

By: Small ‘e’ Environmentalist « littleblackduck

Small ‘e’ Environmentalist « littleblackduck — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:08:24 +0000

[...] more proposed regulation, intrusiveness, calls for McCarthy-style witch hunts and show trials, irrational hysteria, and [...]

By: james

james — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:52:44 +0000

thanks for all these comments & the debate. keep it coming.
According to a top climate scientist in the UK, we should now start preparing for a temperature rise of 4 degrees…instead of a maximum of 2:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/06/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange

By: Daniel Pedersen

Daniel Pedersen — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:12:38 +0000

The current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are at about 385 ppm and rising, measured by NOAA at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii as part of the longest available record (since the 1950′s).
graphs at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
and at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html.
Pre-industrial levels (from around 1850) were at about 280 ppm.
The levels of CO2 talked about for stabilization targets range from 450 to 550 ppm (with an “increased but bearable” probability of catastrophe) to a reduction to 350 ppm. It’s difficult enough to talk about “only increasing up to 450 ppm”, so it will be a tremendous challenge to reduce to 350 ppm.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/plehner/whats_the_right_target_for_co2.html

The cautions are being sounded not by “environmentalists” but by respected and skeptical environmental scientists. The IPCC is a group of thousands of the leading scientists in the climate field, and they do not use “fuzzy statistical work.” In fact, they started out being overly skeptical of the “anthropogenic climate change” scenario, and became convinced of it based on scientific research over a period of 2 decades.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:52:47 +0000

This does sound eerily familiar to other alarms like “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich in the 70s that predicted that we would have already been annihilated due to atomic war over lack of supplies as a result of overpopulation. To this day Ehrlich keeps saying, “just wait,” though he’s been widely discredited. I feel like these alarmist tendencies among environmentalists are meant to scare people into action and are thus somewhat respectable, though they do get a bit frustrating when they make such specific claims backed by somewhat fuzzy statistical work.

Nevertheless, we do have a real problem on our hands and Israel and the rest of the world is far from prepared to tackle it. Thanks for the post (and the scare), James.

By: ecodavid

ecodavid — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:14:38 +0000

whistle-blowers only? i don’t really undertsand how can anyone measure and predict the CO2 content of the atmosphere. and why they think that their alarm will be much more believeable, if they refer to IPCC data and sources.
NIMBYs find these kind of messages rather a smart PR trick to get into the mainstream media.
anyway, the critical level of CO2 is 350ppm … according to the 350.org: