Lord Stern on global warming: It's even worse than I thought

[steven johnson]

Source: The Independent

Lord Stern issued in October 2006, the 700-page Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is the single most influential political document on global warming yet published.

Lord Stern said new research done in the past two or three years had made it clear there were "severe risks" if global temperature rose by the predicted 4C to 7C by 2100. Agriculture would be destroyed and life would be impossible over much of the planet, the former World Bank chief economist said. Billions of people would have to relocate as a result, he said.

A central assumption of the 2006 Stern Report was global temperatures would rise by between C and 3C over the current century if nothing was done to counter global warming.

Stern also mentioned the possibility of a 4C rise. Yesterday, Stern said 4C, 5C, 6C and even 7C degree rises were a real possibility by the end of the 21st century, taking the world into new territory - agriculture would be destroyed and life impossible in many areas.




Read more: www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/lord-stern-on-global-warming-its-even-worse-than-i-thought-1643957.html

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Each new reassessment of the data has made climate change from increasing CO2 levels look worse.

[canetoad]

1. In many ways

I think we here in Oz consider climate change and the attendant alterations in life as we knew it, a done deal. The recent widespread and deadly bushfires brought home to many the fact that we live in an increasingly drier country and we must plan for these conditions to continue in the future.

On one hand our state government is planning a large de-salination plant. On the other we must weigh up the effects of the marine environment at the outfalls and the amount of power it will take to operate it. There is talk of building solar arrays sufficient to power small cities but there are still people who argue the usefulness of solar power.

Welcome to DU!

[hay rick]

2. K & R and thanks for the link.

[Baby Snooks]

3. "We won't be here, so who cares?"

That is really the attitude of most of our world "leaders" who pander to the polluters who have continued to enrich themselves off the destruction of the planet. "But we won't be here, so who cares?"

[riverdeep]

11. That is the attitude, if it even registers.

But think what would happen if the ancestors of those saying it thought that, they wouldn't be here to say it, most likely, if all they thought about was today.

[MasonJar]

4. i won't be here, but I refuse to let the world's creatures disappear if

I can stop the downslide. I am grateful that my grandparents did not leave me such a depleted world. Why would I leave it for mine? America is the biggest problem; we must step up NOW!!!!!!!!!

[hatrack]

5. Uh, duh.

That is all.

You may now reconnect your normal celebrity scandal/police pursuit video/porn download infotainment drip.

Have a nice day!

[defendandprotect]

6. Ironically, the hold on Global Warming information was somehow broken . ..

during the Bush years!! Though he kept anything meaningful from being done

about it and the government from confirming/acknowledging any of the facts!

Information about the oil industry's propaganda campaign came out about a year

and a half ago via the Royal Academy of Science which called on ExxonMobil --

about the only one left still spewing misinformation and disinformation among

the oil giants --- to stop financing the decades long propaganda campaign.

I presume that corporate-media didn't relate this tale?

At any rate, there is a 50 year delay in Global Warming --- what you are feeling

now only reflects human activity up to 1958 -- !!! Here in NJ, we already have

average temperatures increasing by 25 degrees . . . !!!

[wroberts189]

7. Welcome to consensus reality ..Lord nt

[Occulus]

8. We need a whole series of green energy solutions

There's solar, true, and battery advances (like the one recently announced from MIT regarding lithium ion batteries, I believe), and several other viable choices. But what we really need is something that generates much more energy than those sources provide over a given course of time.

Fusion energy is, obviously, at least possible (unlike silly ideas like "zero-point energy"). The radiation from one great big obvious example of fusion energy silently crashes down upon our world every moment of every day. That form of fusion reaction, however, is caused by gravity, and that's something we don't (yet!) know how to replicate.

One of the people responsible for our nation's efforts toward fusion power thus far was Assistant Director Robert Bussard of the Controlled Thermonuclear Reactor Division in what was at the time known as the Atomic Energy Commission. He and Director Robert Hirsch founded the mainline US fusion effort, known as the Tokamak.

He also made something else.

The Polywell reactor is a continuation of his research in this area. Briefly and oversimplified, the Polywell is, if Bussard's power output scaling laws are correct, the proverbial "magic bullet". A success with this form of reactor represents a fundamental change in human history.

Meet WB-6 of this family of reactors:



Briefly and oversimplified (hope I get the concept right, as it's a bit complicated), the reactor creates an electrically charged potential well in the core of the device. The coils (each one, individually) produce an electromagnetic field around themselves; these fields push against each other in such a way that the open "cusps" where the fields don't touch get squeezed shut (this is a scaled-up version of two small magnets meeting at points of equal polarity).

Boron-11 ions are fired into the core of the reactor and circulate along the field lines. As the cusps become more and more closed, fewer and fewer ions escape to recirculate. Additionally, more and more ions get fired into the core; you can see a simulation of that in this video. Eventually, they begin to fuse, releasing energy, then they actually split, releasing more. I believe helium is the "exhaust".

There is enough boron on the Earth to supply such reactors with fuel for several thousand years. I do believe it may actually be orders of magnitude higher than that.

Bussard, at the time of his death, was convinced this would work. Given he's certainly no kook, I'm willing to at least fully fund a Polywell yay-or-nay program with my tax dollars. Apparently, the US Navy shares some of that optimism- they've been bankrolling the research thus far.

You can learn about the lab doing the research here, the Polywell concept itself at the Polywell Wiki page, and discuss it at talk-polywell.org. I should add that the lab's director and others working on the project, some of whom worked with Dr. Bussard, are known to post on that last.

Here's to hoping Bussard was right about the scaling laws of this thing. If he was, and we build it right, our energy concerns will be a thing of the past, in one fell swoop.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ghost Dog]

10. See here:

Greenpeace & Senator Sanders: How to Solve Global Warming for Half the Cost and Twice the Jobs as Dirty Energy
March 11, 2009 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x189847

[riverdeep]

12. There is a race going on.

A race between business as usual for the human race and a major shift in the way we organize our lives. It's about more than just technology, it's about an embrace of a whole new way of being.

Which one will get there first? A betting individual would have to bet against us if they had no emotional stake in the outcome. We have too far to go, there are too many people, too much of the world is still stuck in primitive thinking, etc. Still, we need to do whatever we can, because although the odds are slim, what we stand to lose is so extreme that it's worth it.

[WriteDown]

13. I'm not the least bit worried...

The reptiles will inherit the Earth again. They had it first anyway.